Full Circle (13 page)

Like hell. She wasn’t going anywhere until she shared that secret of hers with him. It was closing time and they were alone. No time like the present.

He locked the door and took a deep breath, then turned around. “What was that about?”

“That company in Nashville I told you about. They offered me a job.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She looked at him briefly, but her gaze dropped when she saw that he wasn’t even smiling.

All right, Barton, stop being an ass.
He didn’t want to act like this, but it was difficult to look her in the eye, much less speak civilly to her, when all he wanted to do was shout questions about what had happened to his baby.

He would get his answers. Tonight. But he couldn’t treat her this way after what had happened between them.

“How about a celebration?” He forced happiness into his expression. “Can I buy you a drink?”

So it was a bit lame. He should have asked her that before he spent hours in bed with her. Although, given the circumstances, taking a step back could be a good idea. They could talk over a drink, and he needed to get a conversation started instead of springing his frustration on her. The more defensive she got, the less likely she’d be to tell him the truth.

Her face relaxed, and he was glad he’d made the effort to be kind. The last thing he wanted to do was send them spiraling back into another decade of silence.

They stopped in for happy hour at a local restaurant, and Elisa told him about the new job. He held her hand, enjoying their discussion and their time together. If only he had arrived at Justin and Laura’s house a few minutes later yesterday. He wouldn’t have overheard the bit about Elisa’s baby. He would have taken her home tonight and made love to her again.

But he would still be clueless that he’d been a father. That wasn’t acceptable.

When they ran out of innocent topics to talk about, Liam drove her home. He parked in her driveway, and she looked at him, surprised, when he turned off the engine.

“My car is at the clinic,” she reminded him.

“I know. I’ll take you to get it in a minute. Is it all right if I come in first?”

“Of course.” She got out of the car and led him to the door. When they were inside, she said, “I didn’t get to tell you about the baby. He’ll be in the hospital for a while, but he’s stable.”

Liam nodded. “Justin called earlier, to check on things at the clinic. He told me. I’m very happy for him and Laura.”

Silence. They looked at each other.

It was now or never. Why the hell couldn’t he speak?

“Are you worried about Caleb?” Elisa asked.

“Your nephew? Of course. Do you think I’m completely heartless?”

“Why are you being defensive? What’s wrong?”

His jaw clenched. He should just say it, right now. Tell her that he heard the truth. But he couldn’t get a damn word out.

He glanced at the stairs. “I saw something in your office the other day that needed a repair. Let’s go check it out.”

“Now? But—”

“Sure, no point in wasting time.” He was already halfway up the stairs and didn’t bother listening to her objection. They were going to be fighting soon, anyway. It couldn’t be avoided.

Elisa stopped in the doorway of her study and watched him poke around. “What are you doing?”

Liam was sure the picture she’d insisted on hiding from him would offer a clue. But where had she put it?

“Do you have a file cabinet or something?” Maybe on her desk. He walked toward it and inspected the papers on top of it. Nothing of interest.

“What are you looking for?” she asked again, her voice raised. “You’re freaking me out. Please go home if you can’t tell me the truth.”

He swiveled, fire burning in his lungs at the sound of her demand for truth when she couldn’t give him the same.

“A birth certificate, Elisa. I’m looking for a birth certificate. Some kind of proof.”

She stared at him, her face pale. Oh, she definitely knew what he was talking about.

“Who—who have you been talking to?” she rasped, her eyes filling with moisture. “Laura wouldn’t—”

“I haven’t talked to anyone. I heard what Laura said about the baby when she was in labor.
Your
baby. Or should I say ours?”

Elisa’s chest moved up and down. Her petrified stare shifted to the side of his head. She appeared to be rewinding in her mind and going over the conversation she’d had with Laura in the kitchen.

“Oh, Liam. I can explain…”

“Please do.” He nearly snapped at her. Once again, he was having a terrible time keeping his anger contained. The more he thought about Elisa keeping news of a child—his child—from him, the more furious he became. Was this a child he could have told his mother about before she died? Elisa meant the world to him, but if she had denied his mother the chance to share a few holidays with her grandchild…if she’d denied
him
the opportunity to know his son or daughter… The thought made him ill. If she would do that, then she wasn’t the person he’d always believed in. He couldn’t say she would be much better than someone like Brett.

He tried once more to speak calmly. “Just tell me. All of it. What happened when you and Brett got back together and you found out you were pregnant?”

That was the only time Liam had been more furious with her than he was right now. After he and Elisa spent the night together, after she admitted to him that Brett was a terrible boyfriend on every front and she wished she would have acted on her feelings for Liam sooner, she had turned around and gotten back together with that loser. Had slept with him again. Had announced her pregnancy—courtesy of Brett—just weeks after she’d been in
his
bed.

That had been the end of their friendship. That had been the end of their part in each other’s lives, until his first day at the clinic.

“I’m running out of patience here,” he muttered when she didn’t answer. Her eyes were full of fear. Did she think he would hit her? Which guy did she think she was talking to? “Tell me about the baby, Elisa. Was it Brett’s?”

“No.” Her voice shook. Along with her hands. In fact, pretty much every part of her was shaking.

Liam already knew whose baby, in fact, it had been. But still, he was so shocked he could barely form a sentence. His mouth opened and closed, repeatedly, until finally Elisa began talking again.

“I didn’t keep it from you on purpose. I didn’t know. I swear to you, I believed one hundred percent that it was Brett’s. It wasn’t until my first appointment, when I was supposed to be eight weeks, that I found out I was fourteen.”

Some quick math told him she was already gone from school at that point, and he hadn’t bothered to look her up. Guilt crept in, but only a twinge. How was he supposed to know she needed him if she hadn’t said so?

He blew out a forceful breath, still struggling to form words. “Didn’t we use a—”

“It didn’t work.”

The whispered words hung, life-changing, in the air. She stared out the window. Liam’s heart pounded. What if this was his fault? He couldn’t remember every detail, but it was possible he’d put the damn thing on inside out or something. His mind had been a little cloudy at the time.

They hadn’t been drunk, but they’d had enough. Brett had left for the night after throwing a fit over something and calling Elisa every name in the book, leaving her a hysterical mess. She’d found a bottle of liquor in the room and they had shared just enough to take the edge off before Liam set it aside and held her instead, which led to a night so full of passion, he doubted he’d have noticed a freight train rolling over him.

He found the strength to look at her. “How do you know it was…me and not Brett?”

“Timing. I didn’t see him for a month. I wasn’t with anyone else, and the ultrasound measurements were right on with the night I was with you.” She sighed. “You don’t have to believe me. It doesn’t make a spit of difference now.”

“Wait a minute.” Forget guilt.
Fourteen weeks.
If she’d been pregnant at that point… “You didn’t have an early miscarriage.”

She froze. Like a deer in headlights. Like someone who knew she’d fed him a huge lie and had done it on purpose.

“Where the hell is my child, Elisa?”

She shook her head. He could barely hear her. “I—she—”

“
She?
You know it’s a girl? What happened, damn it?”

“She’s gone,” Elisa choked out. “I lost her at five months. She was born…sleeping. She was stillborn. I’m sorry, Liam. I’m sorry.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. He was so overwhelmed with shock and grief that he couldn’t move. He had gotten Elisa pregnant. They’d had a baby girl…who didn’t make it. His chest felt encased in concrete.

“Why—” His voice cracked and he stopped to take a few heavy breaths. He had to be strong before they both dissolved into sobs.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he finally asked, his voice much softer. He’d damn near screamed at her, and now he was a bigger ass than he’d been earlier. Stillbirth. Jesus, he couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for her.

And at the time, he had been somewhere else, mad that she’d gone back to Brett. Who was the selfish loser now?

“I was going to. I thought I had more time. I’d planned to get in touch with you a few weeks before the birth to see if you wanted to be there, but—” She covered her mouth and shook her head.

He crossed the room and grabbed her, holding her against him while she cried. “You could have told me long before that. You could have told me as soon as you found out. What did you think I’d do?”

“I didn’t want to be a burden. All you ever did was protect me from that idiot. It was time you had a life of your own.”

“You don’t consider a child I fathered to be my own life?”

“You would have married me just because of the baby. I didn’t want either of us to get married because of obligation instead of love.”

Liam closed his eyes. She was right about the first part. Marrying her would have been the right thing to do. But her implication that they didn’t love each other hardly seemed accurate. Sure, they hadn’t known each other well enough back then to use that word. But after what had happened Saturday night? And now, feeling like he’d been absent from his whole life because he hadn’t been there for Elisa and their daughter nine years ago?

He wasn’t certain what to call it, but he couldn’t let her walk away from him again. They had a lifetime to make up for what they’d lost.

Chapter Ten

Elisa took the picture from Liam and tucked it back into the small photo album in her closet. It was an image of their daughter dressed in white, her eyes peacefully closed, taken on the day of her birth. He’d stared at it since Elisa had handed it to him ten minutes ago, and now he looked pained, even more so than the day he’d told her about his mother. She didn’t want him to hurt anymore. Frankly, she didn’t want to look at the picture for another second, either.

If she thought the situation had been painful before, she’d thought wrong. A distant memory, no matter how miserable, had nothing on standing here with Liam. The man she had believed she would never see again sat at her desk, within arm’s reach, his head in his hands. His presence virtually wiped out the past nine years, making her feel as if she’d lost the baby yesterday…as if she’d fallen for him yesterday. The return of her feelings and the light speed rate at which they were growing overwhelmed her.

He got up from the chair. “This is my fault.”

“What?” Elisa shut the closet door more loudly than she’d intended and spun to face him. “Are you crazy?”

“You don’t know how many times I cursed that pregnancy. I hated Brett for being so irresponsible, and I was angry at you for going back to him. I should have been there for you. Maybe we would have found out sooner. Maybe…”

She grabbed his hands. “Don’t do that. I’ve already blamed myself and gone over all the things I could have changed to prevent what happened. There just isn’t anything. There’s nothing anyone could have done to save that baby.”

“Then maybe, at the very least, I could have saved us.”

His eyes reflected her own feelings—sorrow for the wasted years spent apart.

“You did,” she insisted. “Just by being the amazing person you were. The one you still are.”

He didn’t look convinced. She pulled him closer and touched his cheek. It was getting late, and the shadow of a beard scraped her fingers. She gave him a bittersweet smile. “Do you think it would have hurt so much to lose that pregnancy if you were some random guy? Do you think I would have thought about you all these years?”

“I didn’t know that you did.”

“Now you do.”

He pressed his lips together, as if he didn’t know what to think about that. Did he really believe she hadn’t cared about him at all? What kind of person had she made herself out to be when she was younger? Her party-girl side had been worse than she thought.

“Liam, I know I made some stupid choices. But I didn’t fall into bed with you just because you were there. I picked you for a reason.”

“And what reason is that?”

One of his hands landed on her hip while the other stayed intertwined with hers. She swallowed and met his gaze, still blown away by those familiar blue eyes, that quirky smile.

“I trusted you. You had values. You made me laugh. You were always better than him and I knew it even when I was too dumb to act on it.”

His grip on her tightened. Desire coursed through her. “I had a crush on you all along,” she said, smiling now that the tears she’d shed over the past hour had dried. “Couldn’t you tell?”

He cursed and pulled her against him. The brush of his lips over hers was all it took to buckle her knees. She gripped him with both hands, but his arms were cinched so tightly around her waist she doubted she could go anywhere. He wouldn’t let her fall.

She no longer wanted to depend on him that way, but tonight wasn’t about him taking care of her. It was about sharing everything they could before they had to separate again, now that they had nothing to hide. It was about finally letting him know that he was more than a friend to her, even more than a friend with benefits. Nine years ago, he had become a part of her. No matter where life took them, he would stay that way.