Page 93 of Tragic (Lark Cove 3)

I made an explosion sound.

Piper laughed again, shifting in her seat to reach for a blanket.

I sat up straight, helping her cover her legs. She was in leggings that went to her ankles, the tight black material wrapping around her curves, much like the fitted gray T-shirt she was wearing. She didn’t look pregnant, but that was how Shannon had been too. She hadn’t looked pregnant until around the fifth month.

“About four years ago, I met a woman in a bar. Her name was Shannon. We hit it off right away. One thing led to another, and I took her home. Neither of us wanted anything serious. We had our fun, then I drove her home the next morning. I figured I’d never see her again. She came back about six weeks later and told me she was pregnant.”

Piper flinched and the sound of her gasp filled the room.

“It was never meant to be something serious with Shannon, but plans change when you’re having a baby. Suddenly, this woman who I’d spent less than a day with was going to be in my life for good.”

Just like it would be with Piper. The thought of having Piper in my life felt right, but things with Shannon had never really fit.

“She was a nice person. She was beautiful and smiled all the time. She was so excited about the baby. I swear, Shannon was never anywhere without a pregnancy book in her hands.”

“You keep saying was. Shannon was.”

“She was.” I met her eyes. They were full of dread. She’d mentally skipped ahead of my explanation. “Shannon moved in with me because we thought it would be easier with the baby coming. I’d even asked her to marry me, but she turned me down.”

“Did you love her?” Piper asked.

“No.” I sighed. “It would have been easier if I had, but those feelings weren’t there. We tried to date for a while, but something was always missing. We both felt it. She just wasn’t the one. But we were having a baby and living together just made sense. At least at the beginning.”

In hindsight, we should have kept our distance. She should have stayed in her own apartment instead of moving into my house.

“She decorated the nursery. I made the baby a bassinet. We were still picking out names when she was about eight months pregnant, but neither of us was in a hurry to decide. We had time.”

I stared blankly across the room, unable to look at Piper for this next part. I’d never told this story before. And if I saw Piper cry or her face twist in sadness, I didn’t know if I could get through it all.

“Shannon was out to dinner one night. It was Memorial Day weekend and it was crazy in town. She’d already gone to the parade that morning and spent the afternoon hanging out with some friends. I asked her to just stay home and take it easy. But she wanted to go to this new restaurant downtown.”

She hadn’t invited me to go along. Shannon had stopped asking me out to dinner months before that night. When she’d first moved in, we’d gone out together all the time. I’d figured she’d stopped asking because those dinners had felt too much like dates.

It should have been my first clue that something was different. But I’d been too busy to notice. Plus, I’d been relieved. All I’d wanted to do for Memorial Day was stay home, cook myself a cheeseburger on the grill and drink a beer to relax.

“She never made it home. A drunk driver ran a stop sign going forty in a twenty-five and was T-boned by a truck.”

Piper gasped. “Oh, god.”

“The doctors had already lost Shannon by the time I arrived at the hospital. They delivered the baby, hoping to save her, but . . . I lost her too. They let me hold her for a few minutes after they cleaned her up. To say good-bye.”

“Kaine, I-I’m so sorry.”

“It broke me,” I whispered. “I was so excited about the baby. We all were. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but still, I wanted to be a father. A good father. And I just . . . I loved her. I’d never even met her, but I loved her.”

Piper kicked off her blanket and scooted closer to me on the couch. Then, without warning, she climbed into my lap and hugged me.

Her arms wound tight around my shoulders. Her hair hung loose and brushed against my cheek as she buried her nose in my neck.

It was the embrace I hadn’t even known I’d been craving, the one that would stitch together so many of those open wounds. So I wrapped my arms around her back and held her just as tight.

“You got scared,” she whispered.

“Terrified,” I whispered back. “When you told me you were pregnant, it brought back a lot of pain that I’d buried deep. I know I shouldn’t have left, but I just couldn’t deal with all of it. I needed some time to work it out.”

I’d needed some time to talk it through with someone who’d been just as devastated.

The days I’d spent with Mom had been healing. More times than I could count, I’d kicked myself in the ass for running away. Coming up to this mountain, to live alone, hadn’t helped me process my grief in the slightest. But after uncovering those wounds and letting them breathe, I was starting to feel some much-needed closure.