Page 79 of All of Him
I sat back, adjusting Jackson in my arms and looking down at him. Morgan was right; I needed to let Amanda fully in. I was confident she wouldn’t run away, but I wasn’t confident that she’d want to be more than friends after finding out.
And I couldn’t be just friends with her. Not in the end.
“Okay,” I sighed, keeping my eyes on Jackson. “I’ll do my best. But you’re wrong about something.”
“And what’s that?” she whispered.
I swallowed hard, focusing on my nephew as I let out words that I never thought I could, words I’d have to get used to saying if I wanted things to progress with Amanda. If I wanted to continue healing.
“I did love you,” I said, barely loud enough for her to hear, “just not in the way you wanted me to. I’m sorry if that hurts.”
Morgan sniffed, putting her hand on my knee and tucking her head down to force me to look at her. Reluctantly, I made eye contact, surprised by her smile.
“That’s more than I ever expected to hear.”
43
Amanda
MORGAN AND I PUTtogether some sandwiches in the kitchen, letting Noah spend some time with Jackson alone. Every time the baby giggled from the other room, Morgan’s eyes welled up with tears. I wanted to comfort her, but I also had to remind myself that she was Noah’s ex.
“Thanks for helping,” she said, grabbing some mayo from the fridge and lathering it onto slices of bread.
“No problem,” I answered, trying my best not to be awkward. “He needs some time alone with the baby.”
“Oh, the sandwiches, yeah.” Morgan stopped and looked at me, her arms crossed. “I meant, for helpinghim. He was a disaster when I left him, not for losing me, but for losing Garrett. He’s still not completely himself, but it’s day and night for sure.”
“So, he was in bad shape?”
While I knew Noah hadn’t shared everything with me, I also assumed there was nothing he wanted hidden. If there were, he wouldn’t have left me in the kitchen with Morgan for a long period of time.
“He barely ate,” she answered, sniffling. “He went to work as little as he could. He came home and slept all afternoon and night. I didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t loved me before the accident, and he sure as hellcouldn’tlove me after. And then I also had to deal with the guilt of what had happened with Garrett. I deal with it literally every day when I look at Jackson. That accident destroyed Noah Murphy.”
“Shit,” I said, looking through the doorway.
Noah was sitting cross-legged on the floor, wiggling a stuffed rabbit in Jackson’s face. The kid was cracking up, and it melted my heart. I couldn’t help but let a smile slip.
“You know,” Morgan continued, “I regret hurting Noah when I did, leaving him in the state he was, but I can’t say I regret Jackson.”
“Of course not,” I agreed, though I still hated that she’d left him while he was such a mess.
“I left him when I was about four and a half months pregnant. He had no idea, though he didn’t notice much those days. I checked in with him here and there, hoping that he’d answer texts, just to know he hadn’t offed himself. I was so scared. But I was also aware that seeing me pregnant with Garrett’s baby would make things worse. So, I hid it until I couldn’t hold it in anymore.” She paused, her eyes finding Noah briefly in the next room, then shifting to me. “Did I do the right thing by telling him?”
“Yeah,” I answered, watching Noah again through the doorway, “he needed to know.”
Morgan nodded and turned to watch Noah, smiling when Jackson squealed at the stuffed rabbit. She laughed, though she let another tear slip, then tried to pull herself together.
“I know that you weren’t together when he left Ireland,” I started. “But he just…disappeared?”
“Oh,” she answered, raising her eyebrows and turning her attention back to the bread. “I lost basically every friend I had when word got out about the pregnancy.However, I had one friend left to keep an eye on him. All I got one day was a text that said,Noah went back to the States. I learned about his parents after prodding a lot of people.”
“I’m glad you got him through those first few months,” I admitted, “despite everything.”
Morgan nodded and laid some turkey on the bread slices, as if she was trying not to pay too much attention to me.
“He was a wreck physically too,” she sighed. “God, that arm. And the cutseverywhere. He was in the hospital for a week, having that shoulder redone. I spent an hour a day patching those cuts, but he never said much. He was a zombie all the time, and he lostsomuch weight.”
“I know,” I said. “I saw pictures. Actually”—I smirked, knowing we both needed a laugh—“I saw the one of him in his underwear.”
