My Heart Lingers (A Hearts of Misty Mesa Story): BWWM Interracial Romance by Brandi Boddie Page B

corner of her eye. “I hate to say it, but at the time, I didn’t want to be pregnant. I was certain my life would be over.”
    Cole took her hand. “What you felt was normal. Please go on.” He stroked her hair. “How did the abortion rumors get started?”
    Kyra swallowed a lump in her throat. This was the hardest part. She tried to steady her voice. “About a week after you left, I lost the baby. It happened fast, but it was painful. I thought I was dying. That’s how my mother found out. She suffered a miscarriage before she became pregnant with me. She knew what was happening.” A couple tears trickled down. Cole wiped them before she could. She smiled thankfully at him through blurred vision. “Another three weeks passed, then two months. People figured since I wasn’t showing, I must have done something to terminate the pregnancy. My high school reputation led them to think the worst of me.”
    “Kyra, I’m so sorry you had to go through that without me. If I had known, I would have been there for you. We would have faced it together.”
    “I can see you would now, but at the time, I felt so much pain and guilt. I believed it was my punishment for not wanting the baby.”
    “You carried guilt with you all this time? Kyra, there was no reason to.” He cupped the side of her face and wiped another tear. “You couldn’t help what happened.”
     
    “That’s what the doctor told me when my mother took me to see her. She said things can happen in the early stages of pregnancy. So much has to line up correctly, and most of it is beyond our control.”
    “The doctor was right.”
    “Yes, but it still didn’t help with how I felt. I couldn’t just get over it and move on. I don’t think I ever will. I’ll always carry the memory of our child with me.” Kyra looked up and saw the moisture in Cole’s eyes.
    “I will, too,” he said. “We suffered a loss. It doesn’t matter how long ago it happened.”
    Kyra studied the tears forming in his eyes. “I never thought I’d be saying this to you. I thought I blew my chance to tell you ten years ago.”
    “I tried to reach you after I left home. You closed your email account and my letters were always returned to me unopened. When I called your house, your father said you left town, but he wouldn’t tell me where.”
    “My parents didn’t know where I was. I ran away to Dallas in the fall of that year. I didn’t speak to my parents for months, and when I did, I never gave them any information they could use to find me. I made it clear I had no intention of ever stepping foot in Misty Mesa again. Of course, we know how well I kept that promise.”
    Cole planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’m glad you were eventually able to talk to your parents again and come home.”
    Kyra reached for her water. “I should’ve talked to someone, maybe gotten grief counseling, but I thought I was strong enough to handle it by myself. If it weren’t for female friends I met in college and law school who went through the same thing, I think I would’ve fallen apart.”
    “I now understand why you left the ranch the other day after I showed you the letter from my mother. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I believed it was what you needed to see because you told me before how you thought my parents disliked you. Please forgive me, Kyra.”
    She nodded. “Don’t think any more about it. I should’ve said something to you then instead of running off. I’m sorry. Old habits die hard.”
    “I’m not done asking for your forgiveness.”
    She blinked through her tears and gazed at him, confused. “What else is there? You didn’t know I was pregnant until after I lost the baby.”
    “Yes, but even though I tried to reach you for two years after the fact, I chose to believe the abortion rumors because they were all I had to go on.”
    He looked for her for two years after she left, even though he was thousands of miles away. Kyra considered how their lives would have