I looked up, meeting Crosby’s stare and refusing to look away. “You want to know why I was so scared of the Abbots fighting me? It’s because I’ve been through it before. They drowned me in endless legal filings and attempted gag orders. Anything so their son wouldn’t have a kid and a teenage mother hanging over his head.”

Crosby’s jaw was granite. I’d never seen such intensity in those light brown eyes before. “Did they win?”

“They didn’t have to.” Tears gathered behind my eyes, burning to get free. “I lost my little girl at sixteen weeks.”

“Kenna…”

Crosby reached out, tried to take my hand, but I couldn’t handle his touch just then. I pushed myself farther back against the side of the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest, a wall of flesh and bone. “I’d gone to college with Caelyn and Bell. Thought I could get one semester in before I had to leave. No one but the two of them even knew I was pregnant at school. But one night, I woke up with my stomach cramping so badly, I knew something was wrong. I could feel something wet and sticky between my thighs, but I didn’t want to believe that it could be blood. That I could be losing my little girl.”

My fingers dug into my calves as I pulled my legs even tighter against my chest. “It’s all kind of a blur after that. The girls got me to the hospital, but it was too late. She was gone, and I was hemorrhaging. I almost died. In the months after, there were days that I wished I had.”

“Don’t say that.” Crosby’s eyes flared with a mix of pain and anger.

“It’s my truth. You can’t change it. I’m so damn glad I pushed through, but it doesn’t change that some days, I lay in bed wishing I could just cease to exist. It destroyed something in me, Crosby. I’ll never be the same. I don’t want to be. My baby took a piece of me with her, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“God, Kenna. I’m so sorry.”

He moved quickly then, too fast for me to fend off his comfort. In a matter of seconds, he had me lifted onto his lap as he cradled me. My first instinct was to fight it, to scramble to my feet and move away. This pain had always been mine. I’d never talked about it after those sessions with a therapist Harriet had forced me to see. But the warmth of Crosby’s body, the comfort of his arms, they called to something deep inside me, and I found I didn’t want to fight the solace of his hold. I wanted to sink into him and never come up for air.