So I just fucking asked, “Did you really not know I was pregnant?”

I watched him glance at me with alarm. Or maybe it was surprise. But it was something.

“I’m not going to kill you or anything if you did. Nothing will change between you and Mo. I just want to know,” I told him, knowing it was the truth. “You’re here now. Your relationship with her is what matters to me, but… I don’t want to wonder about it. I just want to know the truth.” I squeezed my shins and tried to give him a smile that felt pretty damn grimace-like. “I won’t get any madder than I’ve already been. Promise. I don’t think I could ever get that mad again, anyway.”

All right. Maybe I didn’t need to throw that last part in, but it was the fucking truth. I couldn’t get any more pissed off than I’d been back then.

He should be so fucking lucky he hadn’t seen me there at the end.

Jonah took a long and steady breath that made me feel better instantly. In my experience, the people who were the most passionate when accused were always the biggest lying sacks of shit. Another slow smile that wasn’t all happiness and joy crossed over his mouth. It was a bittersweet expression.

Actually, no, I realized after a second. There was no sweetness in it. It was pained.

“What’s that saying?” Jonah asked gently, taking hold of our girl’s foot in his big hand and swallowing it up with those long fingers. “I cross my… heart? Is that it? I cross my heart, Lenny.” He lifted his head and looked right into my eyes with that heartbreaking face. “I didn’t know. Not until I got here and you told me. I had no clue.”

I watched his face. I watched his face so damn carefully….

“I would have been here in a wheelchair if I had known,” he claimed, steadily, quietly. “On crutches. On my hands and knees, I would have been here.”

It was a lot harder than I would have assumed to process that thought. If I had known you were having my baby, I would have come. But if I hadn’t known, I still would have waited because you weren’t important enough. God, when the hell had I become this person?

This has nothing to do with you, I reminded myself, even if it was uncomfortable.

Even if it hurt. Just a little. Stung more than hurt, I’d say. And even that idea had me shifting on the step, from one butt cheek to the other. But I could focus on the positive part of what he was trying to say.

He would have been around for her, at least. And that was what mattered. What would always matter.

How he felt about me was the last thing I needed to keep carrying around so close to my heart. It needed to be somewhere around my damn colon for me to hate him passively, and that’s what I’d agreed with myself on. That I wouldn’t hold on to it. I wouldn’t.

“I got your first messages,” Jonah continued. “I told you. I saved them. Even the angry ones.”

The ugly feeling made my stomach churn. “Look, I just wanted to know if you were being honest about knowing or not. I don’t need to know what—”

The hand that wasn’t holding Mo’s foot reached out, cool fingertips touching the top of my hand over my shins. “No offense, love, but I don’t care whether you want to know or not. I know I said I wouldn’t bring it up, but I can’t do that. I don’t want you thinking for any longer than you already have that I left because of you.”

That fucking ugly feeling in my stomach churned again, crawling up my esophagus and wanting this conversation to be over with. “Jonah—”

The Asshole shook his head. “No, Lenny, you have to hear me out. Please.” His hand closed over the top of mine, and I didn’t move it. I wasn’t retreating. That wasn’t me. “It’s no excuse, I know, but I was in a crap state of mind then.” He winced. “I shut myself off from everyone. Everything, really. My family. My mates. My team. Physios. Everyone.”

His hand squeezed over mine, but I couldn’t move it.

“You.”

Me. He remembered he’d left me hanging. How about that?

Jonah kept going. “It was stupid and reckless, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my bloody life. I thought my life was over. All the work, the sacrifices….” The fingers over mine jerked so slightly I thought I might have imagined it.

But I didn’t.

And I still didn’t move my hand away.

“I had to get away, even from myself. I stopped listening to the voice mails altogether. The calls never stopped, you understand. I deleted them at first but stopped doing that too. I was tired of the calls to see how I was doing, to tell me how sorry they were. I thought… I thought it was over,” he explained softly. “I slipped one night getting off the recliner, and I broke my phone out of frustration.

“I’m ashamed that it all got to me—the people ruling me out from coming back, saying I was done because it was my second Achilles injury. I couldn’t bear to read it. To hear it. That’s when I stopped checking my emails, because of all the messages too, and I hadn’t seen them. Not since then. Not until you told me about your emails. I’ve read them all now. It took me a bit to get the right password.”

Now, almost a year later.

“I stopped getting online around then too. The media….” He trailed off.

I squeezed my shins again, his own hand staying exactly where it was over mine.

I had never… I had never been so down over an injury that I had felt like my life was over. But I had seen so many of my friends go through that. The grief. Because that was what it was. Grief over losing your identity. Or at least at the idea of losing it. At the overwhelming possibility of it.

The anger. The bone-deep sadness. Some people never got over it, and I should know. I had seen that happen to a lot of people I had known who went from being competitive athletes one second, to losing it all in another. I had known after my first surgery, that I ran the risk of hurting myself so badly that the next time might be my last. That each injury and surgery took me one step closer to losing it all. So I was mentally prepared to a certain extent.

But most people weren’t.

And not everyone could accept that something they had worked for their entire lives might be gone in the blink of an eye.

“Thinking I was done, Lenny… not of my own choice… it hurt. That… that anger and grief….” I blinked at how he’d picked that one word out of so many others he might have used. “I had to talk to someone about it, understand? It made me make heaps of decisions I regret now. The biggest being that I was so lost in thinking my life was over then, that I made it that way. I lost all my endorsements. Nearly lost my agent if it hadn’t been for my grandmother calling to give him updates. I was almost dropped by my team for what I did.

“I didn’t have the nerve to get back to you or anyone. And later, once I was back, once I knew I still had footy, I had to wait to come here. To find you again. You blocked me on everything, and I doubted you’d communicate with me unless I came,” he finished on an exhale, his hand moving over mine, molding itself over mine even more. “To apologize and explain that what I did was my fault and had nothing to do with you.”

I stared at the step beneath my feet, and then I swallowed as hard as I ever had, trying my hardest to ignore the warm skin on me.