Chapter 900
Yet he kept waiting. He just wanted to wait.
Right before Noreen’s car drove by, he had a violent coughing fit. Having just recovered from a severe illness, his immune system was practically non-existent.
When the headlights swept over him, his dark world finally lit up. It ignited a spark of hope in his chest. His eyes locked onto the car. Watched it pass. Watched it stop. And finally, saw the silhouette that brought him peace.
Noreen hadn’t expected Seth to be waiting for her. And she certainly hadn’t expected him to look like such a wreck. He looked like he had stood through a torrential downpour, his hair messy and plastered to his forehead. The cuffs of his pale grey jacket were stained with mottled red, glaringly obvious even in the dark. It looked like dried blood.
Seeing the red, Noreen’s heart jumped, and she blurted out, “Are you hurt?”
Seth wanted to say yes, to make her heart ache for him, to make her care. But the truth slipped out instead.
“No,” his voice was so hoarse it sounded like sandpaper. “It’s someone else’s blood.”
The tension drained out of Noreen. “It’s late. Go back and get some rest. I’ll have my driver take you.”
She turned to signal the driver, but Seth reached out and grabbed her sleeve.
Noreen paused, looking down at him. He looked up at her, raw heartache swelling in his eyes. “It hurt, didn’t it?”
“What?” Noreen frowned.
“When you lost the baby… it hurt a lot, didn’t it?”
He had just witnessed a pregnant woman hovering on the brink of death. He felt the pure terror of feeling life drain away. Even though it wasn’t Noreen, it terrified him to his core. His grip on her sleeve tightened, as if he were clinging to a lifeline.
Noreen froze. After a long silence, she replied, “Of course it hurt.”
Especially since she was suffering from both internal bleeding and a miscarriage. Double the agony. She had been curled up in blinding pain, struggling just to breathe. The doctors said she was inches away from dying. Just a hair’s breadth.
“I’m sorry…”
The more casually she brushed it off, the more Seth was crushed by guilt. His body
shook uncontrollably, all color draining from his lips.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
But no matter how many thousands
of times he apologized, it would
never erase a fraction of the agony she endured. That was a past even Noreen refused to revisit. That baby…. might have been her only
chance to be a mother. And it was
gone. Gone forever.
Noreen tried to pull her arm back, forcing herself to stay rational. “It’s in the past.”
“It’s not.”
For him, he could never move past it.
Seth slipped down, collapsing onto the wet pavement. Right in front of the woman
he loved the most, admitting his sins, begging for absolution.
“It was my fault. I was arrogant and stupid. I thought you didn’t love me, so I intentionally ran hot and cold. I’m sorry.”
“If I had known you had feelings for me, I swear I never would have hurt you like that.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
He pressed his forehead against the back of her soft, warm hand, his voice laced with pure desperation “Noreen, please. Can you… love me one more time? Let me spend the rest of my life making up for the path I caused you.”