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And hers were swimming with emotions she’d struggled to keep locked in for years. “It’s painful for me, Andrew.”
    “You wanted the baby.” The breath he released hurt his chest. He’d never spoken of the baby before, not out loud. “I could see it in your face when you told me you were pregnant. It scared the hell out of me.”
    “I was too young to know what I wanted.” Then she closed her eyes because it was a lie. “Yes, yes, I wanted the baby. I had this idiotic fantasy that I’d tell you, and you’d be happy and just sweep me up. Then we’d . . . Well, that’s as far as it went. But you didn’t want me.”
    His mouth was dry as dust, his gut raw. He knew one drink would smooth it all away. Cursing himself for thinking of that at such a time, he snagged one of the bottles off the counter and gulped down soda that seemed sickly and sweet. “I cared about you.”
    “You didn’t love me, Andrew. I was just a girl you got lucky with on the beach one night.”
    He slammed the bottle down again. “It wasn’t like that. Goddamn it, you know it wasn’t like that.”
    “It was exactly like that,” she said evenly. “I was in love with you, Andrew, and I knew when I lay down on the blanket with you that you weren’t in love with me. I didn’t care. I didn’t expect anything. Andrew Jones of Jones Point and Annie McLean from the waterfront? I was young, but I wasn’t stupid.”
    “I would have married you.”
    “Would you?” Her voice went chilly. “Your offer didn’t even hit lukewarm.”
    “I know it.” And that was something that had eaten away at him slowly, a nibble at a time, for fifteen years. “I didn’t give you what you needed that day. I didn’t know how. If I had, you might have made a different choice.”
    “If I’d taken you up on it, you would have hated me. When you offered, part of you already did.” She moved her shoulders, picked up her own Coke. “And looking back, I can’t blame you. I’d have ruined your life.” The bottle froze halfway to her lips as he stepped toward her. The hot glint of fury in his eyes had her bracing against the counter. He snatched the bottle out of her hand, set it down, then took a hard grip on her shoulders.
    “I don’t know how it would have been—and that’s something I’ve asked myself more than once over the years. But I know how it was. Maybe I wasn’t in love with you, I don’t know. But making love with you mattered to me.” And that, he realized, was something else he’d never said aloud, something neither one of them had faced. “However badly I handled things afterward, that night mattered. And damn it, Annie, damn it,” he added, giving her a brisk shake, “you might have made my life.”
    “I was never right for you,” she said in a furious whisper.
    “How the hell do you know? We never had a chance to find out. You tell me you’re pregnant, and before I can absorb it, you had an abortion.”
    “I never had an abortion.”
    “You made a mistake,” he said, tossing the words she’d once heaved at him back in her face. “And you fixed it. I would have taken care of you, both of you.” Pain, long and shallowly buried, cracked through the surface in pummeling fists. “I would have done my best for you.” His fingers tightened on her arms. “But it wasn’t good enough. Okay, it was your decision, your body, your choice. But goddamn it, it was a part of me too.”
    She’d lifted her hands to push him away and now curled them into his shirt. His face was sheet-pale under the bruises, his eyes burning dark. The ache around her heart was for both of them now. “Andrew, I didn’t have an abortion. I lost the baby. I told you, I had a miscarriage.”
    Something flickered deep in his eyes. His grip relaxed on her shoulders, and he stepped back. “You lost it?”
    “I told you, when it happened.”
    “I always thought—I assumed you’d. . .” He turned away, walked to the window. Without thinking he yanked it open, and resting his palms on the sill, dragged in air. “I thought you told me that to make it easier on both of us. I figured that you hadn’t trusted me enough to stand by you, to take care of you and the baby.”
    “I wouldn’t have done that without telling you.”
    “You avoided me for a long time afterward. We never talked about it, never seemed to be able to talk about it. I knew you wanted the baby, and I thought—all this time—I thought that you’d terminated the