“What?”
“Marcus. He wants you back. Maybe you should at least talk to him.” Part of me still wants to talk her out of getting involved with me, but that part is getting smaller with every second I spend with her.
“I’m never going back to him. I don’t care what he says or does. That’s over. It was over the minute he married someone else.” Her brows furrow with displeasure that makes me sorry I mentioned his name.
“I’m very sorry he hurt you.”
“I am, too. He texted me earlier to say he didn’t try to take his life and that he’s sorry his sister made me feel guilty. None of this is my fault. Yada, yada. It’s all too little, too late for me.” Her eyes fill with tears, and she looks down, her hair forming a curtain that hides her face from me. “Right before I heard he got married… I found out I was pregnant.”
“Oh my God, Dee. Oh, God.” I reach for her and hold her as closely as I can with the center console between us. “I can’t imagine what that was like for you.”
“It was horrible, and I couldn’t share it with him or tell him or anything.”
“He never knew?”
“No,” she whispers. “I had a miscarriage at four weeks, right after I found out Marcus had gotten married. I tell myself it was for the best but at the time…”
“It was hell.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so, so sorry, sweetheart. I hate him for breaking your heart that way.” And it makes me more concerned about doing the same thing—albeit for different reasons.
“No one knows that. I only told Maria earlier today—or I guess it was yesterday now.”
“Why didn’t you tell her when it happened?”
“I couldn’t bear to talk about any of it. I was so humiliated by what he’d done, and then when that happened, I just kind of shut down. I was a mess for a long time. My cousin Dom, my roommate in New York, threatened to tell my parents I wasn’t eating or working, using that to get me out of my room. It was bad.”
Hearing that, picturing her flattened by heartbreak, gives me pause. I’d never want to be the cause of that. “Dee, honey, I want you to think some more about this with me. If I ever did to you what he did, even if the circumstances were different… I just can’t bear the thought of you hurting like that over me.”
“It’d be different with you. It wouldn’t be because you betrayed me the way he did or disregarded me, or disrespected the love I had for you. If I lost you, it would be because of something you couldn’t help. At least I hope that’s the only way I’d lose you.”
“It is.” I’m so sure of this, of her, of how I feel about her, that I don’t hesitate to offer that assurance. “If I were lucky enough to be loved by you, I’d never let you go for any reason other than something I couldn’t help. And even then, I’d still love you.”
“See? Totally different.”
“Heartbreak is heartbreak, though. I don’t want that for you.”
“When someone you loved for years does what he did to me, that’s a kind of heartbreak that comes from a place of betrayal and disappointment. Losing someone you love to a death they couldn’t prevent would be brutal, but there’d be love to go with the grief. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but it wouldn’t be the same kind of pain. At least, I don’t think it would be. And besides, I don’t want to talk about you dying. I want to talk about you living a long and healthy life and continuing to defy the odds for decades to come. Just because it’s rarely happened doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you.”
I can’t help but smile at her conviction. “My heart is feeling very healthy since you texted me earlier. It feels better than it ever has.”
“Is that so?” she asks with a sexy little grin that has the organ in question beating faster.
“Mmm-hmmm.” I lean in to kiss her, and the second my lips connect with hers, every worry I have disappears under a tsunami of desire for this amazing woman who’s determined to make me fall in love with her. Falling for her is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
Chapter 9
JASON
I wake to a text from Wyatt that he’s gone out with Dee. I told her everything, so don’t worry. It’s all good.
His words are hardly comforting. Dee knows about his health situation and came to pick him up in the middle of the night, which means they’re only more involved than they were before he and I talked last night. As I make coffee, I feel unsettled and deeply concerned about this development.
I was relieved after hearing he’d decided to take a step back from Dee, and finding out they’re back on this morning isn’t great news. I love Wyatt like a brother. I have for years, and Dee is terrific. She’s been such a great friend to me since Carmen made me part of their family. The possibility of my close friend with her would be fantastic if it weren’t for the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over Wyatt’s life. I hate that uncertainty for him, but he likes to say it beats the alternative. It sure does, except for when my wife’s adored cousin gets caught in the storm.
By the time Carmen joins me on the deck with her coffee, I’m picturing all sorts of hideous scenarios, each of them leading to my wife blaming me for her cousin getting her heart broken—again.
“What’s wrong? And don’t say it’s nothing. You tossed and turned all night.”
Since Wyatt told Dee about the transplant, I feel like it’s okay to tell Carmen. I have to tell her because it’s killing me to keep it from her. “Wyatt took off with Dee in the middle of the night.”
“Wait, I thought he was with her before that.”
“He was, but he came back here after you were asleep because they’d decided to take a chill. Apparently, that’s off now.”
“Why’d they decide to chill?”
“He told her he doesn’t do relationships, and she decided it was too risky for her to spend time with someone who’d drawn that line in the sand.”
Carmen drinks the Cuban coffee that Abuela says will put hair on her chest. “So what changed?”
“He was honest with her about why he doesn’t get involved.”
“And why is that?”
“If I tell you, you have to swear it stays between us. It’s important to Wyatt that this not be something everyone knows.”
“Okay…”
“Promise me, Carmen.”
“I promise.”
“No one—not even Maria or your grandmothers.”
“I get what ‘no one’ means, Jason.”
She already sounds pissed, and that’s the last thing I need. “When Wyatt was seventeen, he had a heart transplant.”
“Oh. Wow. He’s okay, though, right?”
“He’s done great for seventeen years.”
“Why do I hear a ‘but’ in there?”
I put my coffee cup on the table and lean forward, elbows resting on my knees. “Because he’s six years past the average life expectancy for heart transplant patients.”