He’d given up on prayers as a young boy when they hadn’t stopped him from being hit, or filled his stomach when there was nothing to eat. It had been up to him to save himself. To work for the money for food. To spend as much time as he could in safe places, like the Sullivans’ house. To build a multimillion-dollar business from scratch.

But all his hard, bullheaded work, his stubborn drive to succeed, couldn’t help Sophie now.

He should have noticed how pale she was when she woke up, that she hadn’t been moving quite right, but he’d been too busy yelling at her. Too busy pretending he knew everything, just like he always had.

A frantic call to 9-1-1 had brought the paramedics to her apartment within minutes, but it hadn’t been nearly soon enough. Bile rose in his throat at the memory of the blood between her thighs.

He’d held tightly to her hand in the back of the ambulance while giving the paramedics every bit of information he could about her pregnancy, about her schedule the past week, anything that could have led up to this horrible event. He hadn’t spared himself, had confessed everything, the too-frequent sex and even yelling at her just moments before she collapsed.

He hoped a part of her knew he was there with her. That he’d never leave her side as long as she wanted him there. And that he was sorry for every single thing he’d ever done to hurt her.

She should have looked small, fragile, on the gurney, but even with dried tear tracks across her cheeks, and such pale white skin, she held him spellbound. Nothing could ever take away Sophie’s serene strength. Her beauty was more than skin deep, was more than the way her eyes and nose and mouth were shaped, was more than the curves and contours of her body.

Her beauty was in her bravery. Her intelligence. Her nonjudgmental curiosity about life.

And, most of all, the size of her heart.

He nearly lost it when the nurses wouldn’t bend the rules. He wasn’t her husband and not only would they not let him go back to her, they also wouldn’t tell him a damn thing about how she was doing. But he knew he needed to let them, let the doctors help Sophie.

It was the only reason he could have possibly let her go.

As soon as she was wheeled into the back, Jake took his cell phone out of his pocket with shaking hands and called Zach to let him know Sophie had fainted, that she might have miscarried. It wasn’t long before Zach pushed through the doors, his mother and Lori a step behind him.

“Is she okay?” Jake had never seen Zach look this off-balance before, every last ounce of cocky gone.

“I don’t know. I’m not fam—” His voice broke on the word he might have used if only he’d been able to prove to Sophie that he could be a good husband and father, rather than screwing everything up. “They won’t tell me anything.”

Zach and Mary immediately went to speak with the receptionist, but Lori remained with him.

Sophie’s twin reached out to grab his hand and before she could say a word, he was confessing everything about the morning’s argument, the way pain had crossed her twin’s face before she’d fallen into his arms. And then, the horrible bleeding...

Lori squeezed his hand, tight enough that he had to look at her. “My sister’s tough, Jake. So much tougher than anyone knows.”

Why wasn’t Lori tearing him apart?

“Go find out what’s going on,” he told her in a gruff voice, knowing he didn’t deserve to be pouring out his guts all over her.

But Lori didn’t let go of him. Just like her twin, she was one of the only people who didn’t jump at his unilateral orders.

“Sophie always believed in you. No matter what you did, what you said, none of it made any difference. My sister wasn’t ever going to change her mind about loving you.”

“She was wrong. I’m not good for her.” He’d wanted so badly to prove to her that he could be. No one had ever failed so badly. “This proves it.”

“You’re here aren’t you?”

“I was yelling at her,” he told her again as something warm moved down his cheek. At first he didn’t know what it was, because he hadn’t cried since he was a kid. Not since that last beating when he’d grabbed the knife. “She wouldn’t have fainted if I hadn’t—”

“Seriously? You think she’s in here because you were yelling at her? I yell at her all the time.”

“She deserves a guy who can give her a perfect life. No yelling. No bossing her around. No crazy hours at work. No screwy past.”

“Don’t use this not-being-good-enough-for-her crap as an excuse to leave her hanging this time.” Lori Sullivan was fierce. “If you’re going to step up to the plate, step all the way up, Jake.”

With that, she strode away to find out what her mother and brother were learning from the receptionist, leaving Jake to reel.

“It’s really sad, isn’t it?” A couple of young hospital residents were walking past him to the coffee machine against the wall. Jake was certain one of them was the nurse who had taken Sophie into the back. “Man, this job is a bummer when people lose their babies like that.”

“I know. I never know what to say.”

The young woman shook her head. “I don’t think there was anything we could have said to make this better for her. Not when it all happened so suddenly, and especially now that she can never have kids.”

* * *

Sophie felt a warm caress on her cheek and would have smiled if she could. Jake was here. Everything would be better now.

“I love you so much. And I’m so sorry. So damn sorry.”

She finally managed to open her heavy eyelids and saw that Jake's cheeks were wet, droplets clinging to his eyelashes. His sorrow, the fear in his eyes, held her speechless. Along with the way he was looking at her.

With pure love.

“I wanted those kids, you know how bad I wanted them. But you’re everything. Everything. It doesn’t matter if we can never have kids. All I need is you. If you’ll have me. If you’ll trust me and let me trust you from here on out.”

Finally, her tongue came unstuck. “Jake?”

She tried to sit up to put her arms around him, but the sharp bite of pain had her gasping instead. Jake’s arms came around her, holding her so gently, as if she were broken. The pain medication they’d given her made her feel heavy, fuzzy. But she needed to tell him.

“I heard the nurses talking outside.” Every word he spoke was wracked with deep pain. And loss. But still he stroked her hair as if he were afraid she’d break apart any second. “I should have been here with you when they told you about the miscarriage.”