Page 149 of Buck ’Em Cowgirl

Her breath hitched, and a fresh wave of tears welled up in her eyes.

“I know,” she whispered, so soft I barely caught it. “I know he did.”

“What happened at the hospital?”

Fable inhaled sharply. Her voice was quiet, almost clinical, like she was forcing herself to detach from the memory to get the words out.

“When I fell . . . there was too much damage. The impact caused placental abruption, and I hemorrhaged before they even got me to the hospital. They tried everything, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. My uterus . . . it tore.”

My stomach twisted, my jaw clenching.

“They had to do an emergency hysterectomy,” she murmured. “There was no choice. If they didn’t, I would’ve died.”

I sucked in a slow breath, my chest tight, my throat thick with all the emotions coursing through me.

“I lost everything that night,” she whispered, her eyes distant, as if she wasn’t here in this kitchen anymore but back in that sterile, fluorescent-lit hospital room.

“He didn’t even come,” she continued, her voice cracking. “He called the ambulance. He told them where I was. But he didn’t ride with me. He didn’t wait. He didn’t—” She swallowed hard. “He sent me alone.”

My stomach twisted. “Harleigh?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know her then. It was before we started working together.”

I swallowed. “No one was there for you?”

Her lips parted, her breath shaky, her head moving in a small, broken shake. “I woke up alone.”

She broke.

Tears spilled down her face, her chest heaving.

I shifted instinctively, pulling my chair closer, my free hand moving to cup her jaw, my thumb brushing away the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.

“That’s what he meant,” I uttered.

She nodded, more tears slipping free.

“I can’t have kids,” she whispered. “For so long, he told me that no man would love me because I was broken. That I wasn’t a real woman. That a woman’s job was to bear children, to build a family—and I couldn’t . . . I can’t do that.”

Her body trembled, but I didn’t let go.

55

Fable

The words were out there. No keeping them deep inside, where they’d lived for years, festering like an old wound that never fully healed.

I was exposed.

I hated it.

Sitting across from him, holding his hand like it was some kind of anchor, I felt like I was splitting open in real-time. Every part of me that I’d tried to patch together was unraveling.

I had never said it like this before. Never let the words settle in the air long enough to make them real.

I can’t have kids.

The word made my stomach twist, made my hands itch with the desperate need to be clean, to scrub away the feeling crawling over my skin. I had fought so hard not to let Mike’s words define me, not to let them sink into my bones, but the truth was, they had.