A Valentine Kiss. Christy McKellen
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what going to the amphitheatre meant. Why hadn’t she realised this earlier, she thought in panic, when she could have done something about it? Before she had suggested it, for heaven’s sake!
‘Are you coming?’ Jordan asked her, and she exhaled shakily, forced her legs to move and her mouth to respond.
‘Yes...yes, I am.’
* * *
‘This is great,’ Jordan said when he saw the white marquee that covered the amphitheatre. The edges were pinned down between the trees that surrounded the area, and it had done its job for the most part, he noted. Though water ran down the steps, the seats and the stage were still dry, along with most of the ground. It would do for their event, he thought.
‘Whose idea was it to do this? It was smart.’
He took the steps as he asked the question, and was about halfway down when he realised Mila hadn’t answered him. Nor could he hear her following. When he turned back to look up at her his heart raced at her expression. Her face was white—and so was the hand that clung to the railing that ran down the middle of the stairs. He could see her chest heave—in, out...in, out—and his first instinct was to run to her side and make sure that she was okay.
But somewhere at the back of his mind he realised what was happening, and a picture of her at the bottom of the stairs at their old house, lying deadly still, flashed through his mind.
This is what you left behind, a voice told him, and a ball of grief and guilt drop in his stomach.
Careful to keep his expression blank, even as his heart thrummed, he walked up to her and slid an arm around her waist. She didn’t look at him, and he could feel her resistance, so he waited until her hand finally gripped the back of his jacket. Slowly they made their way down to the bottom of the stairs, and with each step the ball of emotion grew inside him.
‘Thank you,’ she said through tight lips when they got to the bottom, but he could hear the shakiness in her voice—felt it in her body before she stepped back from him.
‘Since the accident?’ he asked.
She lifted her eyes briefly, and then lowered them again as she straightened her shoulders. ‘Yeah. It’s not impossible to do. It just takes longer.’
He didn’t know what to say. How could he say anything at all? he wondered with disgust. He knew the loss of their son had hurt them both—Jordan lived with it every day, no matter where he was. Every moment of his life since that day still held glimpses of what it would have been like if his son had been alive—images of them as a family in the home where he and Mila used to live crushed his heart each time.
But the reality was that he wasn’t a father. And, yes, he had complicated emotions about it—dashed hopes, a broken heart—but his body was fine. Though his heart pained, he could go down a flight of stairs without thinking about the fall that had led to a placental abruption and a premature baby who couldn’t survive outside the womb. His mind, though still dimmed by grief, wasn’t addled by a fear of stairs.
Seeing Mila’s reality, seeing the effect losing their baby had had on her, gutted him. The shame and guilt he already felt about the loss of their child pierced him. And the anger—the tension Jordan felt at the fact that Mila hadn’t turned to him—flamed inside him.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She slanted a look at him. ‘About...?’
She was giving him a chance to back down, he thought briefly, but he wouldn’t do it.
‘About the stairs. Is there anything else you’re still struggling with?’
‘That isn’t your business any more, Jordan,’ she replied easily, though he could tell that the conversation was anything but easy for her.
‘You’re my wife, Mila.’ It didn’t matter to him that they had both signed divorce papers and had only found out they were still married the previous day. ‘I have a right to know.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said tersely. ‘You gave up that right when you walked out. When you sent me divorce papers. When you didn’t come home.’ There was a brief pause. ‘I’m your wife in name only.’
‘You asked me to leave.’
‘You should have known you needed to stay!’ she shot back, and hissed out a breath.
His eyes widened at the show of temper and his heart quickened at the sight of her cheeks flushed with anger. She still took his breath away, he thought vaguely, and then his mind focused on her words.
‘Is that what you really wanted?’ he asked softly.
She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t want to talk about this, Jordan. What’s done is done.’
‘Clearly it isn’t done. Tell me,’ he begged. It had suddenly become imperative for him to know what he had walked away from. And whether she had wanted him to walk away at all.
‘You made a choice to leave, Jordan.’
She looked up at him, her eyes piercing him with their fire. It wasn’t a description he would have used of her before. And perhaps before he wouldn’t have found it quite as alluring. But it suited her, he thought.
‘We all have to live with the decisions we made then. For now, we need to focus on getting this event done.’
His jaw clenched and tension flowed through his body with his blood. She made it seem as though he had left easily—as though he had wanted to leave.
‘I left because you asked me to. Why are you punishing me for it?’
She watched him steadily, and for a brief moment, he thought he saw her soften. But it was gone before he was sure, and then she answered him in a low voice.
‘You’re fooling yourself if you think you left because I asked you to.’ She stopped, as though considering her words, and then continued, ‘You left because you couldn’t handle my grief.’
He felt his blood drain. ‘Did my father tell you that?’
Mila frowned. ‘Why would you think that?’
Because that was exactly what his father had accused him of in one of their last conversations before he’d left, Jordan thought in shock. After Jordan had told Greg he was leaving—that Mila had asked him to and that he was going to Johannesburg to focus on getting their research institute started—his father had accused him of leaving because Mila’s suffering had reminded Jordan of his mother’s suffering. And that that meant Jordan was in the same position that his father had been in.
He had ignored the words when his father had said them—had believed the two situations had nothing in common—and had refused to think about it afterwards. But hearing those words come from Mila now brought the memory into sharp focus. But, just as he had then, Jordan shut down his thoughts and feelings about it.
‘Do you think your contact would actually be able to make a customised marquee?’
He saw her blink, saw her adjust to his abrupt change in topic. She opened her mouth and closed it again, and then answered.
‘Yes, I think he would.’
Her voice was polite. No, he thought, controlled.
‘I think the more appropriate question would be if he’d be able to do it in such a short period of time.’
She took her phone out and started typing, changing the tone of their conversation. The tension was still there though, he realised, noting the stiff movement of her fingers.
‘If he is able to do it we’ll have solved one of the major problems of this event.’
‘I’m sure the others won’t be quite as bad,’ he said, and walked up the steps to the stage.
He needed space from her, even though she was standing a far enough distance away that her proximity