"Absolutely Not."

Chapter 14: Blame

(13 months prior)

I could still feel the cold cushion underneath me as I lay in bed, recalling the doctor's instruments invading my personal space, their words haunting me alongside those fresh memories of grief.

"Here are your options..." their voice trailed away when another sob shook my entire frame, tight arms wrapping around... emptiness. Where I'd held carried life unknowingly for two months, now there was nothing but the cramps the kind nurses warned me about.

I didn't want it. Not without him.

Not in this new country where I didn't know anyone.

Alina hardly counted seeing that she was still a stranger, though, she probably wouldn't have minded accepting the title of an adopted grandmother.

I hadn't hesitated in my decision when my options were given, and it swarmed my whole system with an indescribable and heavy horde of guilt. First Simon, and now this. A collection of what happened in Manchester, now to survive in the past. There was no hope of happiness in a future where I couldn't share what we'd created together. What was the point?

My throat, too sore and raw from constant crying, gladly drank any of the teas Alina brought to me but eating felt impossible. Patient and warm, it was everything that I didn't deserve after experiencing now three losses, two of which filled me to the brim with such remorse, that it weighed me down further into the mattress so the springs could hold me there for as long as I'd let them.

I didn't eat much when Alina comforted me with light meals and teas that assisted with replenishing what I'd lost. Dandelion brews for the iron, peppermint for the nausea, and lavender to help me sleep. She opened her arms to catch my tears, and her words eventually transformed from soft nudges to get me to shower to fully pushing me to do something with my life.

A month she'd given me to cope, not asking what the hell had happened to put me through this hell. She never asked why I had decided what I did, who the father was, or if I was going back. All that mattered was that what was done was final, and we could look forward to a better future.

Alina had been the one to find me a distraction, worried about my financial status with the traveling and moving. Putting in a word for me at a nearby school that desperately needed a native-English speaker, I was offered an interview the following day, and I started the next week.

The first day was terrible. Not in the sense that my students treated me with disrespect, quite the opposite, they were just... children. My lower stomach ached with what I had forfeited, a fulfillment that I didn't think I'd ever be able to experience as that person for me didn't exist anymore, and I almost quit that day.

Alina persuaded me to give it a chance, and those children became almost like my own. Without creating too strong of a connection with them, nervous that they'd be taken from me just like everyone else, they unknowingly served as a distraction from the plagues running rampant in my head, a cure.

(present day)

Had I not run like I had, life might have been a little different. Maybe I wouldn't be standing across from Simon, empty-handed and broken, and the news of my decision wouldn't be clenching our fists.

"What the fuck did you just say?" He demanded, confusion and staggering bewilderment widening his eyes. We now were stuck in our spots, feet cemented right where neither of us wanted to be, it seemed.

Did he regret approaching me now? Did I shock him enough for him to not speak to me anymore?

I couldn't help but snap back, "I said my period was fucking late, Simon."

"And then what?" He raised his voice to match mine, brow furrowing in frustration. "And then what happened, Kelsey?"

I knew that the tightness in my chest no longer originated from driving myself to an overworked state but from admission, having not ever predicted that this conversation would happen. That he could forever live in the dark and not worry about what could have been like I'd been hung up on for the past year.

The words stumbled out through my reluctance, "I couldn't do it. You were dead- I thought you were dead, and I couldn't go through with... it."

"I need you to tell me what exactly you did. Outright. I don't want to assume. What couldn't you go through?"

I hadn't admitted it for over a year, and I didn't think I needed to aside for medical records. Surprised it hadn't yet with a medical exam that would eventually come about, he was the second person who now knew one of my darkest secrets aside from the ones who operated the procedure and Aline, of course.

It felt like razors across my tongue as the tacit conversation cleared into a crystal-clear field. "I had an abortion, Simon," I choked out. "You were dead, and I was alone!"

Both of his hands rubbed out the tension in his face, and I was glad to get some sort of reprieve from the broken expression he wore. The one that I caused.

Silence invaded the space between us, and I let the tears sting my eyes as I watched him pace a couple of steps before turning to face me again. "I want to be angry with you."

"Be angry, th-"

"I'm not done. Just shut up for a second."

I bit my tongue, stanching the flow of words threatening to spill. My teeth were now a dam, and my throat was bursting with streams of both explanations and challenges.

"If you- if I-" the words couldn't come out for him, his own emotions getting the best of him. "Fuck, Kelsey. If you hadn't thought of me as dead, would it have resulted in the same decision?"

Releasing a bit of the tension accumulating in my mouth, I replied without hesitation, "No. It was a two-person commitment, and I didn't have my second person."

His brown eyes finally finished piercing into me, and I felt like I could breathe with a bit more ease again. However, my own eyes avoided the way darkness cast heavy shadows across his conflicted face as he looked down at the ground.

After a few moments of deliberating how he wanted to react, his silent consultation making me anxious, he replied with a low voice, "You ran. I know I said I didn't blame you for running, I still don't, but god damn it. You didn't bother to come back and confirm that I was truly dead?"

A sharp inhale rushed through my nose. "And how do I expect for me to do that? My name was probably blacklisted and would have put a target on my back," My jaw clenched as my temper tried to rise again. "I couldn't risk two lives over the uncertainty of your death. I lost both of you back-to-back, and you think I don't feel guilty about it? You think it felt good to have made that decision?"

"We could have protected you – I could have protected you," he barked out his response, his anger increasing as I felt his gaze excavating holes into my avoiding face. "The both of you."

A sarcastic chuckle vibrated through my chest, the annoyance creating a dark glimmer in my hazel eyes. "How do you expect me to have come back? Anywhere I needed to go, I had to show my passport. I barely made it to Russia in one piece, and you were still healing."

Even without looking at him, I could sense his brow furrowing, his shoulders tensing up. "Look at me when we're speaking about this. This is not something we can avoid now." When I did, hesitantly, he continued, "You ran all the way to Russia. If you had gone back to base, we wouldn't be here right now."

"Now you're blaming me," I stated plainly.

"We'd be something a lot more than what we were, Kelsey, if you hadn't run."