LITMIR.BIZ

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my bared body, I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.

      “Come here, you’re cold,” he murmured. He gathered my resistant body into the shelter of his arms and lifted me, carrying me to my leather chair and sat down. I lay my head back down on his chest, listening to the reassuring, steady thump of his heartbeat against my ear.

      “Sheena, baby…you’re not going to have to go through anything else with me. I’m a changed man—I’m not the same guy you married ten years ago. We were so young, damn baby, we were kids! I didn’t know anything about being a man, much less a husband…or father,” he said, forcing my body closer into the warm hard muscles of his chest.

      The admission tore into me. I wished we could have avoided all mention of the baby, and for him to bring it up now, after the extreme eroticism of our lovemaking had left me shaken, my body not yet recovered from what he’d done to me…my emotions were all over the place.

      I felt like raw meat, exposed and completely undone.

      “Don’t—please don’t go there. I can’t—” I wrenched myself away from the warmth of his embrace, knowing that if I stayed there much longer, I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed to do. And what I needed to do was end this now, before it went any further.

      “Fuck, yes! Yes, we are going there. Not going there is part of the reason we couldn’t make it in the first damn place, Sheena. Not going there is the reason you left me, didn’t help me…”

      I spun around so hard, my head almost separated from my shoulders. “Shit, I didn’t help you, Mack? Are you serious? God! Please don’t tell me you’re serious!” With angry precise movements, I picked up my blouse and shoved my arms through the sleeves, tears blinding my eyes.

      He leapt up from where he was sitting and grabbed me, pulling my face close to his, forcing my head to snap up and look him in the eyes. “Yes, I know, I was scum, I wasn’t there for you. You’ve told me that a million times, and if you weren’t telling me, it was either your mama or your grandmother letting me know what a complete failure I was. That you would be better off without me.”

      “Wha…what are you talking about? What do my mother and grandmother have to do with this? Mack? Mack!” He turned and walked away, leaving my arms to dangle at my sides.

      He glanced back over at me.

      “Yeah, sex has always been a good thing between us, Sheena. But it wasn’t the only good thing. No matter what your family thought, I have always loved you. I probably always will.” My heart wept at his words.

      There was a wealth of silence before I spoke, and my heart ached at emotion crossing his suddenly gaunt-looking face.

      “Mack…I didn’t know. What happened?”

      He turned away from me and walked toward the window, staring out at the sound booth.

      “After we lost the baby—” His voice cracked. He stopped and cleared his throat before he continued. “After we lost the baby, I was lost, Sheena…just like you. But I knew I had to be strong for you, for us. You completely withdrew from me, you couldn’t even look at me,” he said, and he was right.

      I remembered how hard it was for me to look at him, seeing his bright blue eyes, wondering if the baby would have inherited them or my brown eyes, if he or she would have had his stubborn chin, his loving nature…

      “You couldn’t stand to even look at me,” he repeated, turning to face me and I knew he saw the truth of what he said reflected in my face.

      “I couldn’t. I was in such a dark place that I—”

      “I know.”

      He slowly walked toward me and I reached for him. We clutched one another, no words needed.

      “You know your family never did like me, always thought I was bad news for you, didn’t like us together. Your grandmother never wanted you with that ‘poor white boy.’” He laughed with no real humor.

      “Grandma is old school, Mack. Her generation saw things differently. Besides, she never thought anyone was good enough for me. It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d been the darkest brother on the planet, nobody would have been good enough,” I said and Mack snorted.

      I felt his hand caress the top of my hair, smoothing over my short curls.

      “A month after you miscarried, your grandmother came to visit me at the shop one afternoon,” he began, referring to the garage he’d worked at full-time at night as he’d attended college during the day.

      “Yes…” I encouraged him to continue when he hesitated.

      He sighed and guided me back to the chair and sat down, before pulling me down to sit on him. After he’d comfortably arranged us he wrapped his arms around me and inhaled a deep breath.

      “She told me you were miserable, that without the baby there was no need for us to stay together, that our marriage had nothing to keep it together,” he continued. “When she made the suggestion for me to leave you alone, that a life as a mechanic’s wife wasn’t something your family wanted for you, that you had too much potential for that, I knew she was right. But you were my wife and I loved you. Yes, we married young because you were pregnant, but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to marry you, Sheena. I thought we could make it. I thought you felt the same way I did.”

      “I did. That’s why it devastated me when you left,” I cried out, the cry wrenched from that place inside of me I kept buried. The pain of him leaving was still raw, unhealed. But if I didn’t tell him now how I felt, we…I…could never heal. I could never move ahead with my life.

      “I kept the pain of you leaving me layered deep with self-avowals and mantras I’d learned in graduate school, refusing to give you, or anyone else control over my life, my feelings, my emotions ever again.” I took a deep, steadying breath and forged ahead.

      “When you left it took me a long time to get it together, but I did. I took a long hard look at what I wanted in life. I decided it was time for me to take control, and that I wouldn’t allow you, or anyone else, to make me doubt myself or who I was. I wouldn’t get so caught up in someone else that I lost sight of who I was.”

      “Sheena—”

      “No, I need to say this Mack. None of those mantras did a bit of good. When your heart is wounded and the one person you need to help you heal doesn’t care enough to stick around when you need them the most, it’s a painful lesson.”

      “I didn’t want to leave you. I did it because I thought it was what you wanted—”

      “Did you bother to ask me? Or did you just go along with what my family wanted, go by what they were telling you?” I demanded and struggled against his hold, pulling away from him and sitting up in his lap.

      “No, damn it, I didn’t! And even had I, what would you have done? What would have been your response? Could you have gotten past the pain of the miscarriage to accept me, to fight for me?” Mack was just as affected as I was, his chest heaving, the look in his eyes angry and accusing.

      “I—” I stopped.

      What would I have done? Would I have accepted him, reached out for him, when he needed me, too? Or had I been so young, filled with so much pain that I wouldn’t have been able to give him the reassuring words he’d needed at the time.

      I laid my head back down on his chest. When I felt his fingers stroke my hair I relaxed.

      “I don’t know,” I whispered.

      For long moments we stayed in that position, my arms loosely holding him, his hands playing in my hair.

      “As angry as I was, and as badly as I wanted to keep us together, I think I understand what your grandmother was trying to tell me. I didn’t want to hear it, thought I could give you everything you needed, but what you needed was time. Time to heal without me there, a constant reminder of what might have been

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