A Valentine Kiss. Christy McKellen

realised that something was wrong...that I had done something wrong...and then I saw you, and your face told me that I was right.’

      Tears fell from her eyes and he didn’t care this time if he was interrupting her. His arms went around her and she sobbed—heart-wrenching sobs that broke everything inside him each time he heard them.

      ‘I’m sorry, Jordan. I’m sorry I wasn’t more careful. I’m sorry I didn’t slow down like you asked me to. I’m sorry I didn’t look after him like I should have.’

      ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, Mila.’ He felt his own tears as he said the words. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to slow down. It was just...fear. My own. I think I was hoping to slow us down.’ He paused, held her tightly. ‘Everything was happening so quickly.’

      He could feel her body shake, knew his words weren’t having any effect. So he told her the facts, hoping their simplicity would help her.

      ‘You were walking down stairs we’d both used a million times before. It had been raining—a light summer rain that had come from nowhere. You slipped. It was an accident.’

      He said the words over and over again—to himself just as much as to her—until her shaking dissipated and everything went still. They stood in each other’s arms longer than was necessary, their grief finally—finally—something they shared.

      Not completely, a voice reminded him, and he stepped back. His heart thudded painfully in his chest as a reminder of what he needed to tell her—worse now that he knew about the guilt she felt. And the expression on her face—the completely exhausted expression—tempted him to ignore it, to tell her some other time.

      But he knew that was just an excuse. He wouldn’t ever get to that other time—not when he had been meaning to tell her since the accident. And now she had bared her soul to him he knew he couldn’t keep it a secret from her any more.

      ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ He said it quickly, afraid that he wouldn’t get through it otherwise. ‘I had to give them permission to operate on you, Mila. You were bleeding from the abruption, losing consciousness...’

      He shook his head.

      ‘Waiting for the bleeding to subside would have put you and the baby at risk.’ He took a shaky breath, not daring to look at her—not yet. ‘I had to approve the C-section knowing there was a chance our baby wouldn’t survive. But I couldn’t take a chance on losing both of you...’

      His voice had gone completely hoarse at this admission of something he had carried with him for what felt like for ever, and he forced himself to look at her before he lost his courage. She was staring at him, those eyes more haunting than ever before, carefully blank of all the emotion he wished he could read in her.

      Her hand reached up, and he braced himself for the pain of a slap, but she only brushed away the remnants of her tears from her cheeks. Then she cleared her throat.

      ‘I know.’

      He looked at her, his eyes wide. ‘What?’

      ‘The doctor told me when I went back for my check-up. And then I asked Greg about it and he confirmed it.’

      ‘Your check-up was...’ He sorted through the memories ‘I was still here, Mila... Why didn’t you tell me you knew?’ He couldn’t believe that the burden he had been carrying with him for such a long time wasn’t a secret after all.

      ‘I was waiting for you to tell me.’

      The look she aimed at him made him feel like a schoolboy.

      ‘I wanted to, but I was afraid—’

      ‘That I would blame you for it?’

      He nodded, and she folded her arms.

      ‘I did. I thought it was your fault that I didn’t get to see my son alive. Why do you think I asked for space?’

      He was dumbfounded, the words of apology, of excuse, he’d prepared were wiped from his mind.

      ‘I thought you would go and stay with your dad for a while, and I would be able to deal with all the feelings. I was raw, hurting and in more pain than I thought possible. I just needed time.’

      She looked at him, and he saw her anger.

      ‘But then you left me completely. And instead of space I got divorce papers.’

      ‘You’re angry with me...’ But he’d known that, he thought. Deserved it.

      ‘Yes, I am. But not about you giving them permission to operate. What choice did you have?’ She shook her head. ‘We both might not have survived if you hadn’t.’ She paused, kicked at a stone. ‘I was angry about it. But only because I wished I could have held him during those seventeen minutes he was alive.’

      Her breath caught at that, and Jordan wished he could hold her again.

      ‘And then I thought that if it couldn’t be me—and since I was still under anaesthesia then it couldn’t have been—you were the only other person I would have wanted it to be. So after a while I forgave you.’ She looked at him stonily. ‘It wasn’t your fault either, Jordan.’

      ‘I can’t believe you’ve known all along. I’ve been carrying this with me ever since I...’ He trailed off when he saw her jaw set and she looked away. And then he realised that she’d said that she wasn’t angry with him about that any more. ‘Why are you angry at me, then?’

      ‘You really don’t know?’

      He opened his mouth to answer, but she waved him away.

      ‘If you can’t figure it out then you don’t deserve to know.’ She set her jaw. ‘Can we just leave now, please?’

      ‘No, we can’t.’ He felt uncomfortable, but he said it because he’d shared one of his deepest secrets with her, which he wouldn’t have done with anyone else, and now she was pulling away. Even though he didn’t want to delve any further into emotion—his insides were raw and knotted from what had already been said—he persisted. ‘I want you to tell me what else I’ve done wrong.’

      ‘So you can continue with this victim mentality you seem to have going?’

      Anger sparked, deep inside him, and pumped through his body with his blood. ‘Excuse me?’

      ‘Every tragedy that’s happened to you, you somehow blame yourself for it.’

      He could see the anger in her, too, but that only fuelled his own.

      ‘You blame yourself for approving an operation that saved my life—that gave your son his best chance at living—and you blame yourself for your father’s death. Oh, did you think I couldn’t see the weight of guilt crushing you?’

      He kept his face clear of the turmoil he felt—the anger and truth in her words were daggers piercing his insides—and wondered how she had realised what he felt about his father’s death.

      ‘You think that his heart attacks were because you left. Because you didn’t keep in touch over the past year. You hate it that he died without fixing whatever was wrong between you.’

      ‘Stop!’ he said, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

      ‘Why?’ she demanded, her face flushed from her tirade. ‘You were the one who wanted me to continue, remember?’ She didn’t wait for his affirmation before continuing, as though she was purging herself of everything that she felt. ‘Do you want to know what I’m really angry about, Jordan? It’s because you ran away when I needed you the most.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘You made me feel like you left because I had lost our child.’

      She was trembling, and he itched to touch her, to comfort her, even as her words shook him. ‘Stop saying that! Stop blaming yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.’ And she’d made him see that it wasn’t his either.

      ‘If