Torn [SHAWN MENDES]

~21~

Shawn was relieved that she was willing to hear him out. He wasn't entirely sure what direction this conversation would take, but he needed to be honest and open with Taryn.

And himself.

She stood up before he had a chance to start. "I'm going to grab my coffee. I left it inside since I was holding Piper. Do you need a refill?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Could you bring out her diaper bag in case she gets hungry?"

"Sure thing. Be right back." Taryn went inside and stood at the counter for a minute as she gathered her thoughts. What did he want to talk about? He'd already apologized, so why delve deeper into the past? She was probably crazy to agree to a discussion, but she felt she owed it to him to let him say his piece.

She picked up her mug of lukewarm coffee with one hand and the black Prada diaper bag with the other. "I bet Yasmin picked this out," she thought as she proceeded out to the stone patio where she found Shawn singing a lullaby to Piper. She watched for a few seconds, entranced by the pure love between a father and child.

"Is she tired?" she whispered when he was done with the sweet song.

"Maybe. She didn't sleep for long in the car."

The trip to Toronto had gone better than expected, but it was still hard on Piper. A three hour time zone difference was nothing to him, but to her it was an eternity. It wasn't worth trying to get her on a new schedule since they'd be leaving in a few days, and she'd have to readjust in California.

"We don't have to talk," Taryn said as she took her seat. "I'd hate for her to be disturbed."

Shawn chuckled. "Piper is an expert at sleeping through almost anything."

"Mariah was saying that Gregor wakes up constantly. You're so lucky."

A wave of sadness washed over him as he heard her last sentence. Their inside joke used to be that they were lucky to have found each other and that it wasn't coincidental that they met at a place called The Good Luck Lounge. It killed him that their luck eventually ran out.

"I took her to the zoo recently and a train whistle didn't even wake her." Thinking of this day made him a little less sad.

She immediately pictured the images from the article that she'd looked at in a moment of weakness. "I saw photos of that outing, actually."

"You follow me?" he asked, surprised by this revelation. The last time he checked, she didn't.

"Not anymore, but it popped up when I went to search something."

Shawn's feelings were hurt by this. "I still follow you, but you rarely post anything."

"Social media isn't my thing," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I let Mina run the accounts for Ford's and the other bars."

"Yet you're on enough that you felt the need to unfollow me."

Taryn scowled at him. "What does it matter? Why do you even care?"

"It feels so...I don't know...final."

"We're divorced, Shawn! It doesn't get much more final than that!" Her exasperation was clear.

He stared out at the pretty back yard. There wasn't a lot of landscaping, but there were a few small flower beds and some nice bushes. It was nothing like his place in California which had palm trees and fancy flowers he couldn't pronounce the names of, but if given a choice, he preferred hers. It was more like the yard he'd grown up with and the one they bought together. He'd driven by that house on his way here and wanted so badly to go inside it to have the feeling of really being home again.

After taking a deep breath, he said, "In a way, that connects to what I wanted to talk about. I'm not sure where to start, though."

"You mentioned having regrets. That seems like a logical place to begin."

Shawn looked down at his daughter. She wouldn't understand his words, but he still felt bad about having this conversation in front of her. "I do have regrets. I obviously don't wish I could change everything, because then I wouldn't have Piper, but at the same time, I often think about how this should have been with you. I have what I want, but I don't have everything I want. That probably doesn't make sense."

For a split second, Taryn was sure that her heart had stopped beating. What the hell was he saying?

"Shit. I shouldn't have said all that," he muttered under his breath.

"I don't even understand what you just said. What exactly do you regret?"

Piper laid back in his arms sleepily and he watched her for a few moments before responding. "I regret pushing you so hard to keep trying for a baby. Each loss hurt you and damaged our marriage. It was selfish of me to force you to endure that."

She shook her head. "You didn't force anything. I wanted a baby, too. Yes, you pushed, and that wasn't what I needed at the time, but if we were meant to stay together, we would have worked through it."

"And that's my biggest regret," he said so softly that she had to strain to hear him. "I regret giving up on us. We could have made it work."

Taryn stood up and turned her back to him so that he couldn't see the array of emotions on her face. She was confused, shocked, angry, and oddly pleased all at once. "Stop. You can't say that."

"Why? I've been holding this in for years and I need to tell someone. You're the only person who can possibly understand."

She spun around. "You are married and you have a baby! I am engaged! What happened between us is in the past and that's where it belongs!"

"You don't have any regrets?" he asked.

She almost laughed at his question. Her regrets had her sitting on Amber's couch every other week. They gave her horrible dreams that made her relive every mistake. They haunted her more than any of the traumatic things she'd experienced when she was younger. "Of course I do, but what good does it do to dwell on them? Nothing can be changed, and like you said, you have the baby you always wanted, so ultimately it all worked out for you."

"But did it work out for you?"

She was on the verge of snapping. "I'm engaged to the kindest, most attentive and considerate man on earth, so yes, I'd say it's worked out!"

Piper furrowed her brow in her sleep and started to move in her daddy's arms. They both waited for her to drift back into a peaceful sleep.

"Do you love him?" Shawn asked.

"Would I be marrying him if I didn't?" she spat back, irritated by the implication that she was settling.

"I love Yasmin, too, but it's not the same as what we had. It kills me to admit that, but it's the truth!"

Pointing to the door, Taryn said firmly, "You need to leave before you say another word. This is not a conversation we should be having!"

"Or maybe it's the conversation we should have had before we signed the divorce papers!"

There was a time when she fantasized about Shawn returning and saying something like this. Now that he was doing it, it felt so wrong. "There weren't other people involved at that point. I'm not going to hurt Jules. You've already said things that would destroy your wife if she heard them! Go home, Shawn. Go home and forget about me."

"That's my fucking point!" he blurted out loudly, causing Piper to whimper. He stood up and rocked her in his arms. "I can't forget you!"