He Left Me Pregnant at Her Funeral, Now His Son Needs Him novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: The Reason

He did not turn on the lights in his bedroom except one lamp, low, by the window.

I stood in the middle of the carpet in my coat.

Vaughn sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees.

"At the funeral," he said, "before you found me in the lot, Kendra pulled me aside in the church hall."

"She told me her mother was going to the hospital board. And the nursing licensing office."

"For what?"

"For you. She said her mother meant to take your career, your name, everything, because you were the one alive."

My coat was suddenly heavy.

"She said she could talk her mother down," Vaughn said. "But only if I cut you off that day. Completely. If her mother saw us together once more, there'd be no stopping her."

"So you told me I was dead to you."

"I wanted it to sound true. I wanted her mother to hear that it was true."

"And the lawyer?"

"Kendra's idea. A record of distance, she said. So no one could say we were still in touch."

He looked up.

"I was wrong. I believed her. I thought if I was cruel enough, you'd be left alone."

"They fired me anyway."

"I know. I thought she'd failed."

I took off my coat and let it fall.

"I believed something else," I said. "For five years. That you never loved me. That I was where you went to get away from Ansley."

"Geneva."

"Four months of her calling, and you slept beside me, and I thought, I'm only the quiet place he hides."

He stood.

"You were the first thing in four years that I picked on my own," he said. "I had left her before I ever saw you."

"The night we met, I came into your emergency room at three in the morning because my foreman had cut his hand."

"I remember."

"You were arguing with a surgeon about a chart, and winning. I knew I was in trouble, and I stayed until your shift ended."

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