Love Restored (12 page)

He laughed again despite the tension in the air. “See you soon?” he asked.

“Yeah. But, Graham? I don’t like drama. I don’t need it. So let’s try to keep that to a minimum.”

He didn’t answer that as he let her hang up, saying his goodbye quietly. She might not want drama, but he wasn’t sure he could avoid it, not with what he had to tell her. He raked his hand through his hair and tossed his phone on the couch. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to be with Blake, but the fact that he
did
feel that need told him he’d better try and make
something
work. He hadn’t felt that need for anyone since Candice, and even then…it was different.

When lights filled his front window, and the sound of a car pulling into his driveway reached him, he went to the door and opened it, hoping it was indeed Blake and not Candice again. He wasn’t sure he could deal with his ex-wife twice in one night. Hell, he couldn’t deal with her once in two years.

Blake got out of her car and moved toward him, a tentative frown on her face. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “Want to come in?”

She smiled wryly. “Yeah, I guess that would be good. I didn’t get a chance to actually come inside the first time.”

He nodded and turned to the side so she could pass him and go in first. He’d left the door open so she could walk right in if she chose. When he closed the door behind them, he once again put his hands in his pockets and studied her. She’d put on a light jacket and wore old jeans so he couldn’t see her ink, but he knew it was there. She filled out her clothes nicely, all curves with some angles that told him she could take down someone in a fight if she had to.

Or maybe that was just his thinking since he’d fucked up already that day with her.

“I’m sorry,” he said once they’d stared at each other for far too long. “I’m sorry you had to see that, and hell, I’m sorry if I made you feel like crap when my ex-wife showed up like that.”

She tilted her head, studied his face. “I don’t think you’re the one that actually made me feel like crap. In fact, I think it was just her. You never once looked like you were happy to see her. You told me to go inside so you could get her to leave. I don’t think you hid her from me either. We’re still getting to know one another. But I have to say, it was still a jolt. And since I don’t like drama…” She shrugged. “I left.”

He swallowed hard. “I get that. I do. And I’d say I don’t know why she came here, but that would be a lie. What’s not a lie is that I didn’t
expect
her to come here.”

She narrowed her eyes. “She wants to be with you again?”

He shook his head. “No, not in the slightest.” He sighed. “Candice is the type of person who can’t be alone. She just can’t do it. I don’t fault her for it. Even though it grates—when we were married and now. But that’s who she is and it’s what she needs. As I’m not that person, and don’t want to be the person she needs by her side, I pushed her away.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

He laughed, but it held no humor. “Not really, but that’s what happens when two people fall out of love and end up not liking each other. We don’t hate each other, but there’s not enough there for even a little like between us.”

“Can I ask why you split up?” She shook her head. “Or if that’s not my business, I totally get it. It’s just that she mentioned she was your
wife
and conveniently left out the ex part.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose before meeting her gaze again. “She did that out of reflex I think. I don’t know why, honestly, but I cleared it up for her, and now I want to clear it up for you. As for why we split up…” He let out a breath then let the truth spill from him. “We split up because we couldn’t go on like we were. We had a daughter, you see. Cynthia. And she died. It was sudden, and yet not so sudden all at the same time. And when she died, I couldn’t love the woman I’d married anymore, and she couldn’t love me either. They say people do that, couples that is. They say they break up and fall apart when they lose a child. I don’t know about others, but I do know that I couldn’t be with Candice after Cynthia died. We didn’t grieve the same way, and we sure as hell didn’t live the same way.” His voice broke. “And that was the problem, I guess. The fact that I lived and my baby didn’t.” Tears stung at his eyes and he blinked them away. He would weep, would cry when he needed to, but first, he had to get it all out.

Blake moved to him quickly and covered his bearded cheeks with her hands. “My God, Graham. I am so sorry. So fucking sorry.” Tears filled her eyes, surprising the hell out of him. He hadn’t thought she’d cry for him, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “I don’t know what I’d do…” She shook her head. “To lose a child, to outlive them must be one of the hardest things to ever go through. I’m so sorry, Graham.”

He snorted but not at her words. “I guess this doesn’t fall under the no drama category you needed us to be placed in.”

“I’m a bitch for even thinking there can be no drama in a relationship. You have people, you have drama. But this? It’s not drama, Graham. It’s heartache. Tragedy. Something you
never
should have gone through. And I’m sorry about that. So fucking sorry.” She looked into his eyes. “Will you tell me about her?”

He let out a shaky breath. “Cynthia was everything. So light, bright, and just…everything. She made me and the brothers do tea parties, ink and all. And we sure as hell enjoyed them, even if we lied about it.”

Blake blinked away her tears, and he leaned into her touch. “I can almost imagine the four of you all bearded and tatted up with dainty teacups in your hands.”

He smiled. “Yeah, we did it. And it was a hell of an amazing thing.” He let out another breath. “When she was five, she fell in the backyard. Something all kids do, and I didn’t think much of it. I gave her a princess bandage for her cut and kissed it better. But it didn’t get better. The bruise got bigger and didn’t heal.”

“Oh, Graham,” Blake whispered.

“She had leukemia. I won’t go into the details of it, even though I can name the seven-word-long type she had. It was the rare form, the kind that surprised even the doctors because they’d almost never dealt with it. We started chemo right away. I watched as they put poison in my baby’s veins because they told me it was the only way to keep her with us.” He let the tears fall freely this time. “And when she began to fade, she was the one who kept smiling when I couldn’t. And when Candice started to break because she thought she wasn’t strong enough, it was our
daughter
who said it was okay to cry.”

Blake kissed his chin, and he kept speaking through the tears. “She only lasted four months in chemo before it was too much. We didn’t have time, Blake. There was never enough time.” He wiped his face, pulling her away from him to do so. She put her hands on his chest, her gaze still on his even if he wasn’t really seeing, not then. “She died in my arms while Candice wept in the chair beside the hospital bed. We’d been taking turns holding our daughter because Cynthia couldn’t sleep without our touch. The pain was too bad, you see. But she died in my arms, a smile on her face because I’d been telling her a story about a princess and a dragon.”

He closed his eyes, the memories hitting him hard, like shrapnel to the chest. “Candice and I buried her, then buried our marriage shortly after. So you see, I’m going to have drama, Blake, that’s a given, but I’m not the man I was with my ex-wife, and I’m never going to be again. If you can deal with the man I am now, even if I don’t know who that is, then I’m here. If not, then I understand.”

She didn’t speak for a while, but tears ran down her cheeks in sheets. When she went to her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his, he sighed.

“I’m here, Graham. For however long we are who we are. And I’m so damned sorry.” She licked her lips. “So damned sorry.”

He held her close to him, her ear on his chest, and his heart slowed from the race it had been running to the steady beat he relied on. He didn’t know what was to come, but he knew he’d already faced the worst of his life. He might never find the happiness he’d once had, but maybe, just maybe, he’d find peace he could live with.

Today was going to be a long day. Blake pressed her hands against her lower back and stretched backwards, trying to get out all the kinks. She hadn’t been working that long today in the chair, but she’d been up most of the night stressing over what had happened with Graham.

And what
hadn’t
happened with Graham.

Her heart hurt for him, simply ached. She couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling right now or how he’d felt since his daughter had died. Bile filled her throat at the thought of losing Rowan at that age, at
any
age. She didn’t know how Graham had survived, knowing he would never see his daughter again, never hold her in his arms and tell her he loved her.

He’d lost his wife soon after, but he didn’t seem as messed up about that. After all, Candace still breathed, still moved, still
lived
. And Cynthia had been too sick for the medicine to ravage her body in its attempt to heal.

Since Blake was alone in her piercing room, she let the tears fall once more, her shoulders shaking. Now she knew a little bit of why Graham was the way he was, why he growled and grumbled and always seemed a bit dark, a bit secretive. He’d had to become that way when he’d lost his light. She wondered what kind of person he’d been before the tragedy, what kind of father he’d been. Of course, even daring to think that, she knew it would be too much. He’d been put through hell, and had made it through the other side, but what kind of man had come out of the ashes?

She was with him now, even if she didn’t know the precise label to put on them. With him enough to remember his taste and know that one day soon, she’d know the feel of him, learn every inch of him. Yet she was afraid of what would happen if they went too far. She wasn’t in a position to give herself to a man in any way other than bodily. She had to protect her daughter, and couldn’t do that with her mind in the clouds and her life split in two.

And she wasn’t sure Graham wanted more than just a quick lay anyway. She might have been okay with that; might have even desired that, but now it was all a little sticky. She knew too much about him and his past, yet it didn’t seem enough. That scared her more than she thought it would. As for her? He didn’t really know anything about her, and that was something she’d worked hard to accomplish. It was second nature by now to hide her past, to hide the fact that she had a child. But as Maya had warned her, she needed to tell Graham before it was too late.

Blake just needed to be sure it would be safe, would be worth it, to reveal her secrets. The danger that lurked from what would happen if the wrong people knew where she was, where her daughter was, would never fade.

But she hadn’t told Graham the night before about her daughter as Maya had warned. She honestly hadn’t felt like it was the right time, though now she knew why Maya had been so adamant. How could she tell the man who had lost his daughter that she had a daughter the same age as Cynthia would have been? What would that have done to him right then? Yes, it was going to hurt regardless, going to burn no matter what, but telling him when he was most vulnerable hadn’t been the right time.

Yet she wasn’t sure there would ever be a right time.

And that was why she was such a freaking idiot.

Blake wiped her tears and washed her hands, splashing cold water on her face afterward to try and hide the fact that she’d been crying. Maya had taken one look at her that morning and asked what had happened after Blake had left Maya’s house, but Blake hadn’t answered. Her eyes might be puffy, her cheeks still a bit pink, but she’d get through the rest of the day and figure out how to tell Graham about Rowan.

When had her life gotten so complicated?

It didn’t make any sense. One minute, she was in love with her high school sweetheart, breaking the rules, and trying to further ruin her already-not-so-perfect life; the next, she was pregnant and dealing with a man who hated her. Take another breath, and she was enabling a drug addict because she hadn’t known what else to do, hadn’t known how to fix him, though she’d tried.

And when her daughter came, she’d become the woman she should have been at the start. And the man she’d thought she loved had died because he hadn’t been able to hold on.

Now she had to hide her daughter from those who wanted to pin that death on her, and was falling for another man who harbored a pain in his soul she knew she would never be able to balm.

Blake let out a breath and rolled her shoulders back. Time to push those thoughts out of her mind, if only for the day, and get back to work. She couldn’t keep a roof over her daughter’s head if she spent the whole day crying in the back room.

When she walked out of her small piercing room, Derek gave her a long look before going back to work on his client’s sleeve. The problem with making new friends was that they started to feel like they knew you and understood the emotions you wore. She couldn’t tell them about her past, though; it wouldn’t be safe for Rowan. And she couldn’t talk about Graham’s words either because they weren’t hers to share. And while Maya might know the facts, Blake had a feeling Graham had been more open with her than others regarding how it felt to not have his daughter in his life anymore.

So rather than share what
she
felt, she hid it behind the ice that was her shield and tried to go back to work. She had two piercing clients coming in shortly, and of course, she’d take on any walk-ins with small projects if they came in. As it was a weekend and Rowan was with Mrs. Gonzales for the day before going to a birthday party sleepover, Blake needed to work her ass off to keep her mind on not so important things rather than the ones that could hurt.

When she made it to the front to check out the schedule, the bell above the door rang and she looked up.