Chapter 5

Timid as a Mouse

“Kitty Kat?”

He follows me as I stagger away, his hands reaching for me over and over as I continue to slip from his grasp.

“Katie.”

The world spins around me, the trees loom large, tower over me, the floor stretches away, swoops and slopes, a deadly trap wherever I turn. My chest is tight, the thrum in my ears almost deafening, and my legs are numb, heavy.

“Stop!”

Large hands grip my upper arms as he positions himself in front of me, lifts my chin, locks me in with those deep blue eyes.

“Breathe, Katie. In … and out. That’s it. And again.”

I forgot how good he is with me, how his calm always seemed to soothe me, his relaxed manner a complete balance to my slightly more anxiety ridden one.

“Are you okay? This isn’t because I asked you to marry me, I know that. There was a flicker, a tiny glimmer of a smile before you shut down. It was like someone turned off the light in your eyes. Talk to me.”

Tears are streaming down my face, sobs wracking my body with such force that I’m barely standing by the time James wraps his arms around me and lowers us to the ground. I’m folded in on myself, legs beneath me, leaning into him, and there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. But I don’t want to, I never wanted to. I just … couldn’t tell him.

“Kitty Kat, please.”

“I lost it,” I sob into his chest.

“Lost what?”

He’s so calm. He won’t be in a second, how could he be?

“Our …” Deep breath needed. “Our baby.”

Silence.

It stretches on for days, or seconds, I can’t tell which. I shift, uncomfortable, look down, away, quiet, timid as a mouse, nervous for his reaction.

“We were having a baby?” he says, eventually.

I nod, unsure what else I can do.

“When? How? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I have to answer honestly. It will hurt, but he deserves the truth.

“The week you were away. The trip to Dublin. And there is no how, it just is. My body didn’t work right somewhere along the line, and I lost her.”

He’s quiet again, eyes darting between mine. “Her?”

“I don’t know it was a her. I just … I just felt maybe she was.”

“Sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried. You were busy. Every time I managed to get you for a minute, you were rushing out to meet a client or heading into a meeting. Even in the evenings, you were entertaining them.”

“You should have screamed it at me, made me listen.”

“I didn’t have the words to get it out. And you didn’t have the time to listen,” I manage to sniffle out.

His bottom lip trembles and he bites it away, pulls me to him. “I should have been there for you, you went through this alone. That should never have happened.”

I wipe a tear from his face, amazed he’s not angry at me, for not telling him, for walking away. For losing our baby. “I had Jem. She got me through, like best friends do.”

“Why didn’t you tell me after, when I got home?”

“I wanted to, but my plan had been to surprise you with good news. I had booked a scan for the day after you got home, hoped we’d go together. But then I lost her a couple of days after finding out I was pregnant… I didn’t even remember the scan… Not until the reminder flashed up on my phone…”

“And that sent you spiralling.”

“Yeah, we’d never get to see our baby. Days turned into a week and … I thought you’d be mad I hadn’t said anything. I was still processing it all, totally heartbroken, but when you didn’t notice how low I was … I told myself that just meant you didn’t have to suffer the pain, too.”

As I let the tears flow once more, he holds me close, rocks us both.

“I saw you weren’t yourself, but I didn’t question it. Thought it was just because we hadn’t been getting a lot of time together. I kept telling myself, one more case, one more client, and I could give you the world.”

“I didn’t want the world, Jay. I just wanted you.”

“And then that next week, you left. In the letter, you blamed work. My absence, my constant early mornings and late nights, but—”

I interrupt him. “I thought if I blamed you, you’d hate me enough to not come after me, to try and change my mind. I didn’t deserve you to.”

“For a while I did hate you. Or thought I did, couldn’t even bring myself to go through the part of town I found out you’d moved to. But then I realised your letter was right. And what you just said, that you just wanted me…”

He takes a breath, scrubs at his face, holds his chest. “I’m so sorry, Kitty Kat. I’m so fucking stupid, because you didn’t have me, you’d lost me to the job. I was an absent father without even realising it. No wonder you left.”

“I could have probably handled that,” I tell him. “I’d been handling it. I left because I couldn’t handle that guilt, couldn’t look at you knowing I’d lost our baby, that I was a rubbish mother, that I hadn’t given you the chance to be a dad, to even know that for a time, you were one. You never got to grieve for our baby.”

“Katie, losing her wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. You’d have made the best mum ever.”

“I couldn’t keep her safe, Jay. Our baby, and I couldn’t even keep her alive.”

He takes my face in both hands, wipes my tears with his thumbs. “It wasn’t your fault. It simply wasn’t meant to be. Maybe, even though we lost her, she was sent to teach us something. That nothing is more important than each other. And look at us. We’ve learned that lesson. We can grieve together now, move forward, try again, have our family.”

He’s so loving, caring. “I don’t deserve it, don’t deserve you.”

“You do. You deserve the happy ending, the world, the universe. If I could give that to you, I would. Hang on, is that why you’re out here? Is that why you’re doing something so unlike you? Are you putting yourself through this to punish yourself?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

No probably about it. I told myself I was coming here because I knew it would be hard, that I’d suffer doing it.

“Tell me you’ve spoken to someone. I know you, you bottle things up, hide how you feel. Promise me, no more doing that. If I take my eye off the ball, even for a second, if you’re not getting what you need, you tell me, right?”

I nod, heart lifting as I realise he still wants me, even after what I’ve done. “I didn’t want therapy, still don’t. I don’t want to talk to a stranger. Jem has been there, all hours, whenever I’ve needed her.”

His hand caresses my face, a delicate kiss to my cheek. “Good. From now on, so am I. I want to know everything, when you’re happy, sad, lonely, tired, annoyed at me for leaving the toilet seat up. Everything. I want to know it all.”

I smile. “I’m not a nag.”

“No, you’re not, you never were. And hell, I’m not a savage, I’m house trained, the seat goes down,” he laughs.

We sit for a while, quiet, still, his fingers rubbing small circles in my hair, gentle and tender.

“I hate that you felt you couldn’t come to me. That changes from today.”

I cuddle into him, look out across the lake, and know that things will never be the same again. But they’ll be better, we’ll be better.

“Remind me to thank Jem when we get home, for taking care of you. I saw her a couple weeks back, actually. She’d been to some book signing over near our offices. I thought she’d be angry with me after we broke up, but she was really sweet, chatted for a while and everything.”

“She never said.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to upset you.”

Maybe. Or … no, surely not.