“Will you tell me what happened with your ex-girlfriend?”

He seemed caught off guard by my sudden question. He stopped moving his hand through my hair and scooted up. I did the same.

He nodded and exhaled.

“A few years ago, I was probably at my worst in terms of my state of mind. My mother had just died, and I was depressed. Mallory and I had a really good relationship for the first few years. She was there for me throughout my mother’s last days, and I loved her. You know? I really did.”

I tried to curb my jealousy. “You said you met her in school?”

“Yeah. We met during my first year of grad school at UCLA. We were both business majors, but she was in her final year. Mallory is two years older than me, actually.”

“Did you live with her?”

“We moved in together the last couple of years. She moved into my house.”

I took a deep breath in, readying to hear something that might upset me, although I had absolutely zero clue what it might be.

He swallowed. “Soon after my mother died, Mallory got pregnant.”

And there it was. My stomach felt like it had been stabbed.

“Oh my God.” I reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“I know.” He let out a long, slow breath. “So, when she told me…I wasn’t happy about it. It was just too much at the time. I wanted to be happy about it, but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel ready to be a father, and my depression made everything worse.”

I braced myself for the rest of the story. Does he have a child out there somewhere? Was the baby put up for adoption? Different theories kept running through my mind.

“I made no secret of the fact that I wasn’t ready for a baby, that I was freaked out. I couldn’t hide that, as much as I tried to want it.”

“Was she happy about it?”

“That’s the thing—she was. Mallory always wanted to be a mother. So even though it wasn’t the right time, she accepted it and was pretty excited about it.” He stared off for a moment. “I wanted to share that excitement. I told myself I would grow to accept it, but I was cold and distant. I was scared. It sucked because I couldn’t be the person she deserved. I started going out more, drinking—anything to avoid the fact that I was going to have this huge responsibility. I was an ass. I look back at that time now, the person I was, and I hate myself.”

Unable to wait any longer, I asked, “What happened with the baby?”

He hesitated. “She was fourteen weeks along when we lost it.”

My heart sank. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

“You’d think I would’ve felt relief after all the stressing out I’d done, but it was just the opposite. I felt devastated, and so guilty, like my unhappiness had somehow caused the miscarriage.”

I squeezed his hand with both of mine. “No, Ryder. Please don’t tell me you blamed yourself.”

“I absolutely did.” He shook his head. “I felt like I had wished it away.”

I knew the pain was still fresh, and that made me really sad for him. “It’s completely normal for you to have reacted the way you did. Believe me, I indirectly understand, because I remember how I felt after my mother died, when it first hit me that Ollie was my responsibility. Having a child is a huge life change. You would’ve eventually gotten used to the idea. But it takes time, a lot more than a few months.”

“I guess I understand that a little more now, but at the time I just saw myself as a bad person—and so did Mallory. We fell into a bad place after that, one we couldn’t come back from.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “She blamed you?”

“Not entirely, but she’d say things like ‘Are you happy now?’ or ‘Admit it, you’re relieved’. That killed me. That killed me so much. I never would’ve wished for the miscarriage.”

I closed my eyes to fend off tears. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d been carrying so much guilt over this.

“The thing is, I wasn’t relieved. I’d committed to giving fatherhood a hundred-percent effort. I just never had a chance to prove myself.” He paused. “She had to have a D and C, and they somehow were able to determine that it had been a boy. That was fucking painful to know. But she wanted to know the gender.”

My heart broke as I imagined the little boy who never was, one who looked just like Ryder, with his eyes and smile. That choked my heart.

“So, you couldn’t come back from it—the loss. You and she…”

“No. We couldn’t. She resented me—hated me at times. And I distanced myself even more after that. We eventually broke up.”

“You never fell out of love with her, though.” I braced myself for his answer.