He Comforted Their Child While I Recovered Alone Chapter 06

He Comforted Their Child While I Recovered Alone Chapter 06

Three days after I left, I still hadn’t come back.

Grayson started going to every place I might show up.

The coffee shop I always went to. The rehab center. Even the kids’ store at the mall.

No one had seen me anywhere.

Finally, he went to the hospital where I’d had my surgeries.

The nurse pulled up my chart and asked him, “And what’s your relationship to Adeline Whitmore?”

Grayson paused.

“Her husband.”

The nurse glanced up at him.

“Oh. So she does have a husband.”

That one throwaway line drained the color right out of his face.

The nurse told him that on the day of my third surgery, I’d sat alone in the hallway for four hours.

The consent form needed a family signature, so I’d called, over and over.

Until the third time the OR staff came to push things along, and I’d finally said, quiet, “Don’t wait. I’ll sign it

myself.”

After the anesthesia wore off, I’d shaken with pain all night.

When I wanted water and couldn’t reach the cup, I’d tried dragging myself down the bed rail and ended up on

the floor.

It was the woman in the next bed who heard the noise and helped me back up.

“She kept making excuses for you two the whole time she was awake,” the nurse said, sighing.

Grayson looked down at the date on my chart.

That was the day he’d stood outside the delivery room for Piper for thirteen hours.

When Beckett was born, he’d held him and felt, for the first time, the wild joy of being a father.

His phone had buzzed in his pocket more times than he could count.

Piper had gripped his sleeve, crying, begging him not to leave.

He’d said, “Okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

So he’d put his phone on silent.

Later, when he saw my missed calls, all he’d sent back was: [It’s just surgery. There are doctors there. Stop

feeling so sorry for yourself.]

I’d replied: [Okay.]

After that, I never called him before another surgery again.

Grayson used to take that “okay” as me being mature about it.

Only now did he understand.

That had been the first time I gave up asking him for help.

The nurse pulled a worn, dog-eared sheet of paper out of the file.

“She actually had a chance at one more corrective surgery.”

“But it needed at least six months of recovery care afterward, and she said there was no one home who had

the time, so she kept putting it off.”

“Six months ago, she came back in to ask about it again. She said she wanted to try going overseas instead.”

Grayson finally understood. My leaving hadn’t been some overnight decision.

I’d been looking for a way out for years, one unanswered phone call at a time.

On the drive home, for the first time, he really sat with the last five years.

Back then, his love for me hadn’t been entirely fake.

After the crash, he’d sat by my hospital bed. He’d held me and cried while I fell apart.

But every time he saw me struggling to walk on that ruined leg, it dragged him back to that betrayal.

Back to the baby Piper was carrying.

Back to how, to protect Piper and that baby, he’d agreed to help my parents lie to me.

Every scar on my body was evidence of exactly how low he’d sunk.

He couldn’t face that. So little by little, he’d dressed his guilt up as duty.

And dressed up Piper leaning on him as love.

Overseas, Piper would look up at him and wait for him to make every decision. Beckett would reach up and call him Daddy.

There was no empty nursery there. No leg of mine shaking with pain.

There, he could pretend he wasn’t the husband who’d betrayed his wife. He could tell himself he was just a

good man protecting another woman and her son.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know I’d been wronged.

It was that every single time, he’d chosen the side that let him feel better about himself.