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Her voice shook; so did her body. ‘Without a single word.’
‘Eleanor—’
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hear your explanations now. They don’t matter.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath and forced herself to sound calm. To feel it. ‘It’s ten years ago, Jace. Ten years. It really is time we both moved on.’
He was silent, and when she looked at him she saw how drawn and tired and sad he looked. Well, too bad. She hardened her heart, because she didn’t want to feel sorry for him. She didn’t want to feel anything; it hurt too much. ‘If only I’d known,’ he murmured, and she shook her head.
‘Don’t.’ She didn’t want him to open up the painful possibilities of what if, if only… No, they were too dangerous. Too hard even to think about now. ‘And it doesn’t even matter anyway,’ she continued, her voice sharp. ‘You didn’t trust me enough to tell me any of this, or give either of us a chance to explain. That’s what this was really about.’
Jace’s brows snapped together, his body tensing, and Eleanor knew he was poised to argue. Again. She couldn’t take any more, didn’t have the energy for another round. ‘Go get tested or whatever it is you need to do,’ she told him. ‘Satisfy your own curiosity. You don’t need to tell me about it.’ She paused, her voice sharpening again in spite of her best efforts to sound reasonable. ‘I know who the father was.’
Jace stared at Ellie’s hard face, derision in every line, her eyes dark with scorn. He felt a scalding sense of shame rush through him. This hard, polished woman, this glossy professional who lifted her chin and dared him to feel sympathy or compassion or dreaded pity, was a product of his own judgment. His own failure.
If he’d stayed with Ellie… if he’d seen her through the miscarriage… would she be a different woman? Would she have stayed the same?
It was a pointless question. As Eleanor herself had said, this was all ten years too late. They’d both moved on. They’d both changed. He certainly wasn’t the same foolish boy who’d let himself be besotted, who had eagerly fallen in love because the experience had been so intoxicating, so vital, so different from what he’d known.
Who had a heart to be broken.
No, he wasn’t that same man. He’d changed, hardened, and so had Ellie. Eleanor. They were different people now, and the only thing they had in common was loss.
The loss of their baby. A sudden, new grief threatened to swamp him, and to his shock he felt the sting of tears in his eyes, the ache in the back of his throat. He forced the feeling down, refusing to give into such an emotion. He never cried. In the fifteen or so years since his life had changed for ever—or at least until now—he’d developed a foolproof way of dealing with his father’s disappointment. He never acted as if he cared. Whether it was a flat, emotionless response, or a carefree, laughing one, either way he kept his heart off-limits. He remained detached. He had, until Eleanor. Somehow Eleanor had slipped through the defences he’d erected—that charming, laughing exterior—and found the man underneath. He wondered if she even knew how much she’d affected him.
And how had he affected her? In a sudden, painful burst of insight he pictured her in his apartment building, twenty years old and pregnant, realising he’d gone. He’d abandoned her utterly, and she’d been innocent.
Innocent.
He’d never, for a moment or even a second, considered that the child—their child—might have been his. This infertility was so much a part of him, a weight that had been shackled to him for so long, he’d never considered existing without it. He’d never even hoped for such a possibility.
And yet now for it to be given to him, and taken away, virtually in the same breath was too much to consider. To accept. He was left speechless, his mind spinning in dizzying circles, his heart thudding as if he’d just finished a sprint.
He didn’t know what to think. To feel. And he was afraid—yes, afraid—to open up the floodgates of his own heart and mind to all the possibilities, all the realisations, all the regret and guilt and hope and fear. They would consume him; he would have nothing left. Nothing he could count on or control. He couldn’t do that. Not yet, maybe not ever.
He needed to get this situation back under control, Jace knew, and there was only one way to do that.
‘So,’ Jace said, and was glad to hear how even his voice sounded. ‘Let’s talk about this party.’
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