Page 71 of Still Yours
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
“I couldn’t. I could barely process what she was saying. And then it all came out. I told her about my pregnancy, sobbing that I needed her, that she couldn’t go, she couldn’t die, she couldn’t leave me.” I swipe my sleeve across my eyes. It comes back darkened and damp. “You say you’re selfish and shitty. What does that make me?”
“Achild,” he says vehemently. Stone palms my cheek, pulling me to face him. His thumb strokes my bottom lip. “A scared child who found herself in serious trouble and had no idea what to do. One who needed her mom.”
“I did need her,” I sob. “I needed her so much. I still do.”
“I know.” Stone shushes me, pulling me into his arms and keeping me there. I bury my face in his shoulder, inhaling the man he is while trying to remind myself of the boy he was.
“I thought of a thousand ways to tell you that night, but I was terrified of what your answer would be.”
Stone’s neck moves against my head as he tries to look down at me. “What do you mean?”
“If I told you about my mom and that I had to stay and that I…” I take a deep breath “… that I needed you to stay with me, you’d say no. You’d get on the train, anyway.”
Stone grips my shoulders and pulls us apart. He keeps his hands where they are—gentle, firm—but his eyes boil. “You’re serious? You think I would do that?”
“I know you would.” To lessen the sting, I graze his stubbled cheek with my palm. “You did.”
“Ididnot.I didn’t know what you were going through or what you needed from me, so I got on that goddamned train. Had you given me a clue, I would’ve?—”
“Would’ve what?”
Stone’s expression washes out as my eyes fill with fresh tears.
“I texted you when I lost my mom,” I say. “I called you and got no answer. I told you I’d…” An audible crack sounds in my ears as my heart breaks open wider. “But that was a few years after you left. What about when I sent news about the miscarriage? I never heard from you then, either.”
Stone shakes his head, disbelieving. “You didn’t talk to me for months. I wasn’t just going to pick up the phone when I saw your number. I was mad at you, Noa. Angry, so angry, because you’d left me on that platform without so much as a goodbye.”
“You ignored me,” I repeat, my voice a tremulous hiss.
“Noa—” He tries to stop my arms from reeling toward him, but then seems to give up, allowing the punches and slaps to hit his chest, shoulders, and face.
When I rise onto the seat, when I rear over him with tears and snot and a pounding, blood-filled face, he lets his arms go slack and opens himself up to my physical rage.
“No!” I scream. “You don’t get to do that! Just accept my anger like this. I wantemotionfrom you, Stone! I want you to be upset! I lost her. I lost my mother. Lost you. Everyone left.Fuckingeveryone I cared about left me. And I had nothing. No one. You’re a dick. An asshole. I hate you. I fuckinghateyou for doing this to me.”
His eyes sheen over. No tears fall. He wouldn’t let them. But he won’t break my stare. My nose touches his as I turn feral in his lap, releasing the pent-up horror and agony that’s laced my veins since the moment I was told my little girl didn’t have a heartbeat anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps through my sobs.
I hear him, but I don’t. I’m so wrapped up in the turmoil I’ve unleashed that I’m blind and deaf to reason.
“I just want it to stop,” I sob. “The pain, it’s…”
Stone pulls me into him, curling me against his chest, my knees bumping up against my chest as he cradles my body. Heholds on so tight it hurts to breathe, but I have trouble breathing, anyway.
The weight of his arms, the strength of him as he rocks me back and forth, somehow grounds me enough to swallow the keening coming out of my throat and stem the flow of tears. Not completely, but enough that I can hear my stuttering breaths and notice the pounding of his heart against my arm.
“You’re right,” he says above my head, his voice barely above a decibel. “I convinced myself you didn’t think I was good enough. It never occurred to me you’d be going through something worse than figuring out how to be eighteen and a parent. And I promise to do better. I promise not to leave.” He moves until his lips are against my hair. “I promise to stay this time, Lavender.”
I close my eyes against the pain of his vow, pulling my lips in to stop myself from uttering the truth.
I don’t believe you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Noa
