That thin ribbon of pain behind his eyes throbbed harder as the dread in his belly tightened.
“I didn’t go through with the in vitro. It wasn’t Jesse’s.”
The roaring in his ears was so loud that at first he wasn’t sure what she’d said, and then when the meaning sunk into his brain, Jake stared at her in shock.
And when she whispered again, when she bared her soul and a secret he wasn’t prepared to deal with, his heart shattered.
“He was ours. Jake, I lost our baby.”
Chapter 26
When Raine heard the soft knock at the door, her first thought was that Jake had come back. She tossed the pink blanket onto the floor and rolled off the sofa, hitting her hip against the coffee table. Ignoring the pain, she jumped to her feet and was nearly to the door when she realized that it wasn’t Jake.
Jake would never knock. He would walk in, and his large frame and big personality would fill up every nook and cranny in the cottage.
She slid to a stop, her bare feet cold against the wooden floor as she stared at the door, her bruised heart in her throat.
When had things become so screwed up? Was there always going to be something blocking her happiness?
A soft knock sounded again, but she was in no mood to talk to anyone, so Raine turned around, her plan to burrow back under the covers and wallow in her pain.
The look on Jake’s face when he’d learned about the baby was seared into her brain, and it was one she was never going to forget. He had stared at her for so long that the silence became unbearable, pounding into her with the strength of a hammer.
He’d glanced at the picture in her hand—the ultrasound of their child—and he’d left without another word.
The whole situation was awful, and there was more than enough hurt and blame to pass around, but the simple truth was that none of that mattered anymore. Raine had already lost so much, and she didn’t want to lose Jake, but she wasn’t sure how to fix something that was so broken.
“Raine?”
Tiredly, she wrapped her arms around herself and glanced over her shoulder. It was her mother. The woman’s timing was crap, as usual.
“Raine, I know you’re in there. Can I come in, please?”
Something in her mother’s voice sounded different, and Raine bit her lip as she slowly turned around. Gibson sniffed along the bottom of the door and barked a few times, his tail wagging crazily as if the god of dog bones stood on the other side.
“Raine?”
She opened the door and stood back so that Gloria could pass.
Her mother’s blue eyes, so like her own, widened when they took in what Raine supposed was a pretty sad sight indeed. She was still dressed in her clothes from the night before. She hadn’t brushed her hair or her teeth, and she was pretty damn sure her makeup looked as if she’d just done the
walk of shame.
She glanced at her reflection in the window and winced at the sight of her puffy eyes.
“Have you eaten anything? I could fix you a sandwich, or something else, if you like.”
Leave it to her mother to ignore the obvious and act as if nothing were wrong.
Raine shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
Her mother was quiet for a few moments, her expression unreadable. She crossed over to the Christmas tree and folded her arms across her chest as she cocked her head to the side. “It’s beautiful.”
Again silence fell between them. It was big and awkward and so very tiring.
Raine sighed, her eyes on the sofa and the pink blanket, her mind on the little blue pills in her bag. Prescription strength, they’d be good to knock her out until tomorrow, if she took enough.
“Gloria, I’m not feeling real good, so if there is a reason for your visit, can we skip all the stuff in between and just get to why you’re here?”