Page 69 of A Heart to Find
“No? Did you plan on me finding out at all? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve had plenty of opportunity to slip that teeny detail of your life in during one of the many conversations we’ve had. And you chose not to. Why is that, Jared?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to tell you. To share everything with you.”
“I shared my deepest, darkest pain with you. And you couldn’t even share with me what I assume is the happiest thing in your life?”
“I want to share with you. I’ll tell you everything now. I started to back there. Remember, I said I had something I wanted to tell you…”
Tears filled her eyes, and the sorrow on her face stabbed him in the gut.
“You should have shared with me long ago. Before I got attached to the idea of loving you.”
He reached for her hand, but she jerked it away.
“Keira, please.”
“Please what? Please brush under the rug the fact that you withheld some pretty huge info from me? Or pretend it doesn’t hurt that you told me when we were together before that you didn’t see yourself as a family man? That you didn’t want kids? That you weren’t sure you wanted marriage? Hearing you have a sister-in-law when you’re an only child… I can’t tell you how that tears me up, Jared.” A sob tore past her tightly controlled words. “I can’t tell you how much it hurts to know for sure that it was just me you didn’t see yourself marrying. Me you didn’t want kids with. Me you couldn’t trust with the knowledge that you had a child of your own. A child.”
“You have it wrong.” Desperation dried his mouth, making the words stick. He had to get this right, and yet he was so unprepared for this conversation. “You’re the reason I ended up getting married and having a kid.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.”
She stepped around him. He put out an arm to stop her, but she growled, “Don’t touch me.”
He followed her, needing to explain.
“Years after you and I broke up, I realized I wanted what we had. I was too cowardly to show up on your doorstep, and I didn’t want to risk hurting you all over again when I figured you had probably moved on. I became best friends with someone I met while backpacking in Thailand, and we commiserated over being bad at relationships. She knew all about you and tried to convince me to go back and try with you again. Eventually—years later—we decided that since we were such good friends, marriage made sense. Turns out it didn’t. She knew I could never love her—or anyone, probably—the way I loved you. But we got a great kid out of the deal, so we figured it wasn’t a total loss.”
She continued to walk in silence, the only sound punctuating their discussion the crunching of the snow beneath their feet and the whirring hum of the wind as it blew away his chances of happiness.
“I had it in my head that I wasn’t going to talk about my daughter until I knew the matchmaking service had worked. I didn’t want to use her as a bargaining chip.”
The words sounded ridiculous to his own ears. Who was he when he made that decision?
“You think I would have set everything aside and latched onto you so I could have your daughter?”
Her voice was deadly calm, and scared him a little.
“Of course not. That was my plan before I knew I matched with you. For whatever reason, a lot of women I’ve met lately have had a thing about me being a single dad. I can’t explain it. But I wanted someone to want me before wanting to help me raise my cute kid.”
She hmmphed and walked faster.
“Then it was all my own cowardice. I wanted to work it into the conversation, but I didn’t want you to run away before I had time to prove myself to you. I’ve always known you’d be an amazing mother, and Hailey would be lucky to have you in her life. But after hearing everything you’d already been through, I wanted to make sure our relationship would work out before making you feel bad for my motherless child.”
A long silence stood between them.
“Why is she motherless?”
“Her mom passed away six months ago. Elizabeth—Hailey’s mom—is the one who arranged for me to come to the island. She got everything booked the week before she died. She knew I wanted to find a love like the one you and I shared. She’s probably laughing her head off seeing that we ended up here together.”
“She made the plans six months ago?”
“Yeah. She knew I’d need time to mourn her before jumping in. Our marriage wasn’t happy in the conventional sense. We planned to divorce and go back to being just best friends when we realized we were in it for the wrong reasons, but then she got sick. I couldn’t leave her then.”
In a small voice, Keira said, “I made plans to come here six months ago, too. Right after my grandparents died.”
“And you were seeing someone at the time.”
“I was, but only casually. I told you that. Nothing serious like marriage and a child. For crying out loud, the only reason we kept our weekly dinner dates was so we’d have someone to dine out with.”
