Shaking her head in confusion, she said, “But you just read that entire pregnancy book.”
“Ten years with tutors is the only thing that got me through that goddamned book. I’ll never love books, Sophie. Never.” His expression grew even grimmer. “You were right, back in the doctor’s office, when you called me an idiot.”
“Oh my God, Jake. No. I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t.”
More than ever before, she needed to be able to think clearly to convince him that she loved him. Especially now that she knew she’d said the absolutely worst thing she could have said to Jake.
“I was scared and stunned that day in the doctor’s office when I said that horrible thing,” she tried to explain, “but I could never think that you were-”
“Sure you could. Because it’s true.” He looked more fierce—and bleak—than she’d ever seen him. “Don’t you see why I worked so hard to hide it from you?”
Pain shot through Sophie at the fact that he hadn’t trusted her with something that mattered so much, that he’d gone out of his way to make sure she didn’t know something so important about him. She had to put her arms around herself to try to keep herself from crying out at it.
And yet, despite her pain, wasn’t it true that she’d been too wrapped up in her accidental pregnancy, in hopes and dreams and her fears that Jake would never love her back the way she loved him, to uncover Jake’s long-held secret?
Now she was finally able to put it all together. The fact that he didn’t have any books in his house, no magazines or newspapers either. All those months they’d met to work out various details about the wedding, he’d never written anything down. He always just stored the information in his head, even things she knew she’d forget if she didn’t take notes. That time they’d been talking about his pubs over breakfast, when the conversation had turned to her love of books and she’d asked him about his favorite book, hadn’t he immediately pulled away from her? Not to mention the strange way he’d reacted when she asked him if wanted to read one of the books at story time, the flash of terror in his eyes lingering long enough that she’d almost asked him if something was wrong.
“I love you,” she whispered. “You should have told me. You should have trusted me.”
She thought she saw him wince at the word trust, but then his features blurred before her.
“You keep telling me you’ve loved me all this time, but you’ve loved a goddamned fantasy. Not the man I really am. Take a look at me, princess. Take a good long look.”
Sophie tried to focus on Jake’s face, wished she could get the words out to tell him it wasn’t true and that she did see him for exactly who he was, the good and the bad. And she loved all of him. Unconditionally.
“I do know who you really are,” she said, barely able to pitch her voice above a whisper.
“Really? You know me?” He snarled each word at her. “Did you know my father was a drunk and the thing he liked best when he was drunk was to beat me black and blue? Did you know that one day it was so bad I grabbed a knife and made him bleed? Did you know that when he finally drank himself to death I didn’t care, didn’t shed even one goddamned tear for him?”
She tried to open her mouth to tell him the reason she didn’t know any of those things was because, for all his courage, for all his incredible strength, he hadn’t taken the risk of sharing his life with her and trusting her to love him anyway…but she couldn’t get her brain to send out the right messages to her lips.
“We both know you can’t love a man like me. I was never going to be a father for a reason. I shouldn’t be one, shouldn’t pass these screwed-up genetics on to a couple of innocent kids. But you couldn’t leave me alone, could you? You couldn’t just let me love you from a distance forever and keep you safe from me.”
Forever? Had he just said he’d loved her from a distance all this time and that he’d love her forever?
“I should have never tried to convince you I was worth marrying. Or that I could hack being a father to two kids. We both know you’re all better off without me.”
Wanting so badly to give him comfort, to wrap her arms around him and convince him to stay, she forced herself up off the bed as she said, “Please don’t go. I love you.”
But instead of her words of love making everything better, his expression only darkened further.
“No,” he said in a horribly dark voice that sent shudders through her, “you don’t love me. You only love a fantasy that doesn’t exist. A fantasy that will never exist.”
He turned away from her to walk out of the room—to leave—and, somehow she found the strength to reach for him. But just before she could make contact with his retreating back, the ground swayed, and pain shattered her midsection.
Everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-three
Jake paced the hospital waiting room.
Please, God. Please take care of Sophie. Please give her back to me so that I can spend the rest of my life making everything up to her.
He’d given up on prayers as a young boy when they hadn’t stopped him from being hit, or filled his stomach when there was nothing to eat. It had been up to him to save himself. To work for the money for food. To spend as much time as he could in safe places, like the Sullivans’ house. To build a multimillion-dollar business from scratch.