He took in a shaky breath. “What makes you think I have a chance in hell of doing that without you?”
I gulped in air around a hiccup. “I’m starting to think we might be broken beyond repair.”
He shifted beside me. “Sometimes I feel like there hasn’t been better communication between us than there is now. We talk about everything. We don’t keep secrets. Except the one.”
“I’m not keeping a secret from you,” I said.
“You are. Maybe you’re also keeping it from yourself.”
I turned and looked at him. He was looking out over the water, his hand sifting absently through the sand. “I have nothing to hide.”
He tensed, jerked his head toward me. “Really? No self-loathing? All the blame you’ve taken on yourself. The guilt you’ve buried so deep it almost threatened your life—”
I stood up in a huff and looked down at him. “You’re projecting, Adam. I’m fine.”
He didn’t move, kept his gaze out over the water while I stood looking down at him in the dim light. I crossed my arms over my chest. The cool sea breeze ruffled over my bald scalp, making me regret not having pulled on a sweatshirt. I clasped my upper arms tightly, growing impatient.
“You were practically catatonic—for days. No talking…you turned your face to the wall, hardly ate a thing…”
“How can you blame me for that? It was a shitty time—”
“I agree. But you wouldn’t let anyone in to help you. You deliberately increased your own suffering. You refused the pain medications…why did you do that?”
My breath squeezed out of me like I’d just been punched in the gut. Suddenly I was shaking…slowly I sank into the sand beside him again. I didn’t have an answer for him that he didn’t already know. I’d insisted on feeling every cramp, every ache, every bit of the pain. It had been my way of acknowledging the potential life that I was ending.
But Adam wasn’t about to let me off the hook. After minutes of silence he turned and pinned me down with his black eyes. “Why, Emilia? Tell me.”
“You already know why, apparently.”
“Do you?”
I leaned away from him. “That was months ago and I was going through hell…”
He looked away. “We both were, but that gets lost in the shuffle.”
I reached out and touched his solid arm on which he was leaning. My hand closed over it. “I never want you to think I don’t acknowledge that this was your loss, too.”
“What about the blame?”
My jaw dropped and my mouth worked. His eyes were hard, accusing. “I—I’m sorry I got pregnant. It was my fault—”
“Wrong.”
I breathed in, a vice tightening around my chest. That pain was back and increasing. “I don’t blame you—you didn’t know I’d gone off birth control. I didn’t tell you. It is my fault. Everything is my fault.”
“Why not blame yourself for getting cancer, too, while you’re at it? You’re going to punish yourself. Like refusing the meds, you’re going to keep this poison and darkness inside and never let anyone help you—because you never let anyone help you. You’re going to hide yourself from everyone—from me. Like the scars on your chest.”
Tears sprang from my eyes and I shook my head. “You’re not being fair.”
“Neither are you. It takes two people to conceive a child, Emilia. I was there too. I put you in that situation. And I know about the guilt and self-loathing you feel because I feel it, too.”
I put my head in my hands, resting my elbows on my knees. Adam made no move to comfort me and I couldn’t tell if he was angry, frustrated or just scared.
“I’m sorry…”
“No. Stop it. I don’t want to hear that from you. Life happened. Shit happened. You made the decision that saved your life and now you torment yourself for it. You’ve built a prison for yourself and I’m afraid that you’ll never let anyone in to break you free.”
I shook my head, denying his words.
“You have. You told me as much, that night you went to the hospital—” He cut himself off, as if he’d said something he instantly regretted. He jerked his head back and turned to look out over the water again.
“What did I say?”
He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight and then took in a shivery breath. He looked as if he was moments away from breaking down himself.
“Please…tell me.”