Page 21 of SEAL of Valor

Embarrassment heats my cheeks, and tears burn in my eyes. Mrs. Knox knows, which is why she’d stared at me that way. Same thing with Anastasia. Why couldn’t anyone have had the decency to warn me?

Why didn’t my mom tell me?

I push to my feet to head into the bathroom. Gripping both sides of the sink, I try to calm my racing heart. They all knew, and no one told me.

Not one, “Hey, by the way, your ex-husband works out at the ranch your mom owns.”

Then again, no one else knows we were married for those brief, wonderful two days.

It had been annulled before the ink on our marriage license was even dry.

Images slam into me, one after the other.

The courthouse in Charleston.

A white sundress.

His flannel shirt and dark jeans.

Two rings he made with wire from the ranch.

I suck in a ragged breath, barely able to breathe as the rest of that nightmarish week floods my memory. Bitter loss that poisoned what was between us, causing irreparable damage to our relationship.

God, please help me.

Tears stream down my cheeks.

I’d tried to be there for him after he lost his sister. I held him as he cried, listened as he raged.

And I know it’s selfish, but when I needed him to see past the mask I wore, he’d been so caught up in his own tidal wave that I was left to drown in mine. Of course, now that I’m an adult, I know it wasn’t really his fault.

How could he know I was breaking if I didn’t let him see?

The day after tomorrow will be nineteen years since we lost a baby we’d never get to meet. The result of one night, when neither one of us thought through what could happen. Ironically, I’d only pushed us to that point because a girl I considered my friend told me, if I didn’t, I would lose him.

Something I realized way too late was not true. Weston never pushed me into anything. He was patient, kind, and loving. He would have waited until we’d said ‘I do’ and not thought twice about it.

I was young and naïve, though, leading me to panic and confide in someone I shouldn’t have. She’d convinced me that he was pulling away, and that the only way to save it was to go to bed with him. She convinced me that if I didn’t, I’d lose him for good.

So I did.

I pushed him.

Even when he told me he wasn’t sure we were ready.

I assured him we were.

And then everything fell apart.

I sink to my knees, then sit back against the wall, the pain hitting me like an arrow to the heart. It doesn’t matter that it’s been nearly two decades. It doesn’t matter that I’d only been a couple of weeks along.

The loss is still so heavy. So potent.

Especially because it was followed by losing the man I loved, too.

To this day, I’m still not sure how everything remained a secret in this small town. But I am so beyond grateful that it did. Pretending I was fine was the only way I knew to survive, so that’s exactly what I did.

Lord, I can’t do this. I can’t go through this again.