Page 60 of Forbidden Pregnancy
“I can split the driving if that’s what you mean.”
Michael chuckles. “No, Myra. It’s not.”
His thumb runs over my lips slowly, forcing my gaze up to meet his. Michael’s expression softens.
“I know why you left.”
Those five words hit me hard. I should have known he was acting strangely. Then again, Michael does his best to conceal his emotions from me as much as possible. It’snotreally possible to know how he feels, especially if he doesn’t want me to.
Without my consent, my body starts shaking. I never planned on telling Michael. Not out of fear as much as out of shame. Twelve years ago, I genuinely believed he would save me. I loved him and I thought he loved me.
Waking up alone, battered, bruised, forced to recover alone with an earworm from my assailants –This is a message from the Corsini family. Keep your dirty skin away from our people.
“If I had known,” Michael says, staring at me with so much intensity, that I grow rigid where I stand, expectant and concerned about Michael’s next words. I can’t tell if he’s angry with me, if he sees this as an additional betrayal. But my observations change as his skin flushes. The redness spreads and his eyes change. “I would have done something.”
His voice chokes and his grasp on my cheeks gets so tight that even Michael realizes he might hurt me, so his hands drop to my shoulder. He is stern. Serious.
“I understand why you didn’t tell me.”
My throat tightens. I can’t form words. The entire world seems to be spinning around me except for Michael. He draws me against his chest but he doesn’t stop talking.
“I promise, Myra… I will spend the rest of my life hunting down whoever hurt you and when I find out who it is, they willdie.”
A tear prickles at the corner of Michael’s eyes.
“When you left twelve years ago, I blamed you. But it was my fault all along.”
“It wasn’t.”
Michael keeps me against his chest. I can hear his heart racing nervously. He touches the top of my head, spreading warmth through my body. I can feel his love when he holds me and when he touches me. I don’t want to deny it anymore.
Love wasn’t what kept me away from Michael. I had to stop myself from loving him actively. I had to stop myself from caring for him. I had to push myself and beat myself up just to keep myself alive.
“I love you, Myra,” he says. “And if I had known, we could have had twelve years together that we lost…”
His voice catches again and Michael’s emotions are so strong that they become mine. Tears pierce the corner of my eyes. Right now, it feels like those years blurred past, but as Michael holds me, I feel the weight of it all. I’m almost forty years old now – and heisforty years old.
Old enough that we understand what it means to have a life together and to have lost one. I assumed that what happened between me and Micahel was just how God meant for everything to play out, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less that we spent over a decade mired in misunderstanding.
The thick fog between us cleared a little with the truth and I sniffle quietly while trying to hold it all together against Michael’s chest.
“I love you too,” I whisper back, my voice just as choked up as Michael’s.
“Will you trust me when we get back home?” Michael asks. I look up at him with confusion. There are still tears in his eyes. He won’t let them fall. His glass eye is such a clear, beautiful match to his other one that for a moment, I think I’m looking at the young man I fell in love with. That I shouldn’t have ever loved.
“I always trusted you.”
That part is true. I had to be beaten nearly half to death to lose my trust in Michael. It hurts to look at him right now and see his disappointment. He feels like he doesn’t deserve that trust because of what he heard. But I don’t know how to fix this for us. I don’t feel like it can. Twelve years ago, Michael’s family attacked and tried to kill me for the color of my skin.
All this happenedbeforeI got pregnant. Before I became a legitimate threat to the purity of their precious bloodline.
He sighs and I can tell this weight won’t leave him easily. For me, it’s all so far in the past and deeply buried in a way I don’t want to dredge up again. I had all the therapy I needed. I learnedhow to sleep at night. I learned how to trust again. Tristan might have been a bum ass mistake, but at one point he represented growth and my ability to trust men again.
Michael doesn’t have therapy and I can’t imagine him believing that such a thing would work, so I have to worry about how he’ll handle something like this. Hopefully not with too much gambling. His crash out over the last Colorado Avalanche game made me far too aware of hockey teams and the significance of a parlay.
“Michael… If you need to talk about this… we can.”
He scowls, darkening up the fair features on his masculine face. He won’t talk about this. I can tell.
