Unforgettable

by Ann Christopher

  “Yes,” she said, even though his jeering voice felt like a pitchfork hurled through her torso.

  Ugly laugh from Daniel.

  “By all means, please tell me how aborting our baby helped us, Kitten?”

  Chapter 15

  There it finally was. The elephant in their relationship. Two tons’ worth.

  Amazing that they’d avoided it for this long. On the other hand, their every interaction was laced with barbs and spikes, so maybe they hadn’t.

  “I had an abortion.” She locked her knees in place to keep them from wobbling like a newborn lamb’s. A complete breakdown might well be in her immediate future, but he didn’t need to know that. “It was my right. My choice.”

  His features hardened. “Tomato, to-MAH-toh. Would’ve been nice if I had a say, is all I’m saying.”

  “A say?”

  “A say.”

  “Seems to me you said it all when I told you I was pregnant and you turned green,” she said.

  “I was shocked. We always used condoms. I thought I was being careful.”

  “Oh. You were shocked. Pardon me.”

  A rumble of pending danger vibrated in his throat, but she wasn’t about to keep the mockery out of her voice.

  “And wasn’t that you saying it all when you said you needed time to think, then dropped off the grid for two days?”

  “No. That was me kicking my own ass for not protecting you any better than that.”

  “It was an accident!”

  “That was me trying to figure out how I could support you and a kid when the ink was barely dry on my degree and I didn’t have a job yet.”

  “Nobody asked you to support me. I can support myself.”

  “I am a man! I’m my father’s son! I know what he expects from me! No wife or kid of mine is going to struggle to—”

  “Wife? Please. You didn’t really want to marry me.”

  Bloody murder flashed in his eyes.

  “So my proposal was, what? An elaborate practical joke?”

  “We were babies ourselves, Daniel. We’d barely graduated. I would never marry someone if we weren’t ready. Not just because of a baby—”

  “Just...” Once again, his throat strained to get the words out. “Just because of a baby? Did you just say that?”

  “You didn’t even have a job, Daniel. Don’t act like you wanted to get married at the age of twenty-two.”

  “You’ll never know what I wanted to do, will you? You were so busy making unilateral decisions that you never gave me a real chance. You never believed in me, did you? You never had one second’s worth of faith in me!”

  What? Where was this coming from?

  “That’s not true, Daniel. I loved you—”

  The L-word seemed to set him off. He took an aggressive step forward, the better to point two fingers at her face. “This is what I’m talking about! The bullshit stops tonight!”

  “I’m not bullshitting you!”

  For one horrific second he looked angry enough to hit her. “Why not own it, Kitten? That’s the thing that really gets me. Why not just admit that you did it because your career was way more important to you than that baby or I ever were?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t give me the wide-eyed innocent routine. Why not just admit that your precious music was the number one thing in your life? Just say it. You’ll feel better and then we can both move on with our lives. You wanted to join the symphony. You wanted to be a famous cellist and travel the world. Every other consideration was secondary. So you made damn sure you took care of your little problem before it interfered with your audition, didn’t you? You couldn’t get to the clinic fast enough. It didn’t matter what I wanted. Just admit it.”

  The outrageous injustice of this accusation choked the air out of her lungs. “Admit what? That we were too young and immature to even think about being parents? And what right did we have to bring a kid into the world when we didn’t have two cents to rub together?”

  “People do it all the time, precious.”

  “How was I going to make a living without joining the symphony? You think I should have become a high school music tutor for forty-five dollars an hour? That’ll cover health insurance, all right.” She laughed bitterly. “And what was your plan, Mister I want to take care of this family? Were you going to take your fresh degree and work at your father’s vineyard when the two of you couldn’t even spend ten minutes in a room together without trying to kill each other? You think I’d want you in a job that would make you that miserable?”

  “No. That’s why I took those two days to approach a couple of the other vineyards in the valley. And guess what? One of them hired my ass! For respectable money.”

  This news stopped her heart, working like reverse defibrillator paddles. She paused, frowning and cocking her head because she couldn’t have heard him properly.

  “You... what?”

  “There’s more, Kitten. I found us a little two-bedroom apartment in a duplex. Guess what the rent was? Actually, don’t. That’s a trick question. There was no rent. At least not for the first year. The owner and I worked out a barter situation. He needed a building manager who had skills with a toolbox and a green thumb to fix up the yard. We needed an apartment for our little family. I thought we did, anyway. Guess I was wrong.”

  Zoya pressed a hand to her pounding forehead and then to her belly, resisting the urge to vomit. “We never discussed...You never told me any of this.”

  “Isn’t that the point I’m making? You never gave me a chance, did you? While I was scrambling to get my shit together and make the kind of home that you deserved, you were busy setting up your appointment to put your feet up in the stirrups and take care of it another way. Weren’t you? I tried to discuss this with you. I bought you the best ring I could afford. Remember that?”

  She turned her face away, because she did remember. Every single detail about the moment he dropped to one knee and asked her to be his wife. The glow on his face and passionate light in his eyes. The fervor in his voice. The pretty aquamarine, bright as the sky on a perfect summer’s day, when he opened the little box to show her.

  Oh, she remembered.

  The memories crowded inside her, filling her up until her lungs had no room to breathe and hot tears stung her eyes.

  She blinked, swiping them away with the back of her hand.

  “Ringing a bell, is it?” he jeered. “Don’t act like you didn’t shut me down. Don’t deny that you told me you didn’t want a baby and I was too immature to be a father. Don’t pretend that none of that shit happened, Kitten.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want a baby. I said I wasn’t ready for one.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  Oh, God.

  Now she felt faint.

  She slowly made her way to the sofa, where she collapsed, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She took several deep breaths, enough for the burning sorrow in her chest and throat to give way to sudden exhaustion, and the exhaustion to give way to numbness.

  Eventually she lifted her head again, but there was no way she could meet his gaze as he loomed over her.

  “It never would have worked, Daniel,” she said tiredly.

  “Why can’t you just admit it? You didn’t want it to work!” His fury reverberated through the room like cannon fire. “Because you never loved me like you said you did, and you damn sure never had any faith in me!”

  Why did he keep refusing to understand? What magic combination of words would convince him that she’d done the right thing?

  “You would have resented me and the baby! You wanted to start your own career, too! You didn’t want to be saddled with—”

  “Maybe I didn’t consider it being saddled, Zoya! Maybe I considered it the best thing that could have happened to me! I love kids! How many summers did I spend lifeguarding at the pool and teaching swimming lessons because I like being around little kids? Did any
of that ever cross your mind?”

  “I thought I was doing the best thing for both of us. It was the week after graduation. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing with our futures.”

  “Where was the harm in waiting for a few days? Huh? Why not give me the courtesy of a meaningful discussion about our future before doing something irrevocable?”

  “Because,” she said helplessly.

  “Because why?”

  “Because I never wanted to see resentment in your eyes—”

  “Good plan. Instead I’ve spent the last fourteen years hating you.”

  Yeah, she could see that. But she’d done enough withering from his disdain. “I’m not going to apologize. My intentions were good—”

  “Your intentions? Do you realize we could have had a thirteen-year-old right now?”

  “Or we could be divorced! You’re so busy weaving this fantasy, did you ever think that it might not have worked out?”

  “Forget the whole marriage thing. We could have had a little girl that looked like my niece, Ella! We could have named her Caroline after my sister! We could be going to soccer games and building science projects and watching movies curled up on the couch—”

  “You’ve spun out a whole fantasy, but how could we have sacrificed all our work and dreams for a child we weren’t ready for, Daniel?”

  “How could we be any worse off than we are now? Will you explain that to me?”

  Zoya ducked her head and swiped her teary eyes again.

  “We could have had a chance. But instead you ripped that baby out of your body and you ripped my heart out of my chest when you did it!”

  “I wanted you to be free! I wanted you to have all your dreams!”

  “Maybe you were my dream!”

  “I thought it was the right thing. I wanted us both to be happy.”

  “Wow.” He looked to the ceiling with a derisive snort. “Ironic. See how you’re doing that? Acting like you did it to protect me when we both know you did it to punish me for being upset when you first told me, and for needing a little time?”

  The P-word added insult to grave injury.

  “Punish you?” God, was that her voice, shaking like that? “What? Like joining the Air Force and leaving town for fourteen years without a good-bye or a backward glance? Punish like that?”

  “What was I supposed to do when you made it painfully clear how little I meant to you?”

  “How little you meant to me?” She gaped at him. “How about staying here so we could work things out?”

  “I couldn’t stand to look at you, Kitten.”

  “How about being there for me during the worst time in my life? How about going to the clinic with me? You were so busy taking the time you needed to get your head on straight, did you ever think about what I needed? Do you know how scared I was? Do you think it was an easy decision for me?”

  “Yeah, actually.” He stared her dead in the face. “I think you never gave it a second thought.”

  Her palm itched to slap the steely line of his jaw for that.

  “Let me assure you,” she said, her voice and body trembling, “that it was not an easy decision. I died a little bit. And I died a little bit more when you left town.”

  “Well, you recovered just fine when you toured with your precious symphony.”

  “No, I didn’t! My music left me when you did!”

  “Poor Kitten,” he said, sounding bored. “Quite the martyr, aren’t you?”

  Emotion clogged her throat for several long seconds, forcing her to slow down.

  “I did the best I could. I faked it for two years, but then I couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t want to play. I didn’t want to look at my cello, because it reminded me too much of you and the way you used to watch me when I practiced. So I left the symphony before they could fire me, which they were probably going to do because my heart wasn’t in it. And when my father got sick, I sold the cello because it was that or declare bankruptcy to cover his medical bills. Do you get that?”

  He stared at her, some of his defiance wavering.

  “My baby was gone. My music was gone. My father almost died. And where were you when I needed you for all of that? Gone.” She snapped her fingers. “Without a word. Even though you promised me that you would love me no matter what. That you would love me until you died. Remember that? Since we’re remembering things tonight?”

  He stepped closer, reaching out a hand. “Zoya—”

  “So you are not the only one around here with pain! You are not the only one who’s angry!”

  “I don’t—”

  She was in no mood for explanations or excuses.

  “You think I hurt you?” Hysterical laughter mixed with her tears, making her voice so thick she barely recognized it as her own. “You turned your back on me! You walked out on me! I thought we needed a cooling-off period, but you’d already left town! How do you think I felt when I went to your apartment a couple days later and all your furniture was gone? And the only reason I knew what happened to you was that the landlord was there having the carpets cleaned for the next tenant, and he told me you’d run off to the Air Force? Do you know how humiliated I was? How hurt? Do you have any idea?”

  Daniel stared at her with his unfathomable expression, two bright patches of color highlighting the harsh planes of his cheeks.

  “Maybe I was stupid. I know I was naive. But I really thought we’d work things out. Isn’t that funny?” Her burst of laughter was tinged with hysteria. “I really thought we’d have a couple years of the long-distance thing, while I toured with the orchestra and you found a vineyard to work at, and then, I don’t know, I figured we’d move somewhere together. Maybe you’d get a great job in the wine country in France. They’ve got lots of great orchestras in Europe, right? In my stupid little twenty-two-year-old mind, it was all going to work out and we’d get married one day. How funny is that?”

  Without warning, something shifted in his expression, and he looked stricken. Actually had the gall to reach for her, as though her tears moved him.

  “Zoya—”

  “But you ghosted me, didn’t you? I turned my back on you for two seconds, to give you space, and you disappeared out of my life for fourteen years! You didn’t say good-bye. You didn’t call me. You didn’t e-mail me. Not once. You have the nerve to be angry at me because I was smart enough to know that we were too immature for a kid? Does it strike you as at all ironic that you proved your immaturity with your little hotheaded running away routine? Don’t you think that a more mature person would have stopped to think, ‘hmm, maybe I should call her and check in. Maybe my actions have consequences. Maybe I hurt her a little by walking out on her when we’ve been everything to each other for the last couple years. Maybe Zoya deserves a final conversation, if nothing else.’”

  He turned away, scrubbing his hands over the top of his head.

  She thought she saw the glimmer of tears, not that it mattered.

  “And you think you’re the injured party?” Another burst of hysterical laughter made her sound certifiable. She didn’t care in the slightest. “Let me assure you. You have done more than your share of damage to me. As far as I’m concerned? The scales are balanced. My debt is paid. In full.”

  Chapter 16

  “Zoya? Zoya! Over here!”

  Zoya frowned as she stepped inside Java Nectar the next morning for coffee with her younger cousin, Sofia. It was way too early for that much enthusiasm—oh, God, now Sofia was waving one of those manicured hands at her—and good cheer.

  Unraveling her scarf, she headed to the window-side table where Sofia sat, gave her a quick kiss and dropped into a chair.

  Sofia was already going full-speed ahead. “Check out my nails, Zee. I’m getting pretty good at these reverse French tips, if I do say so myself. And I like the blue and white color combo. Anyway, guess what? Ethan finally told me he loved me at the wedding!”

  “What?” Zoya perked up. The women had disc
ussed this point of concern the other day at the wedding, right before Daniel showed up and sidetracked all conversation. “Sof, that’s awesome! I’m so thrilled for you! Look at you. You’re glowing.”

  Sofia made a show of flipping her wavy hair (sans weaves and pieces these days) over her shoulder. “Yes, yes, I know. Ethan makes me glow.”

  They both laughed.

  Sofia took a sip of her coffee and leaned in. “So now you know everything about me and my personal life. Well, other than Ethan gave me two orgasms this morning. That’s the real secret to great skin, by the way.”

  “Sof!” Zoya smacked her forehead, trying to unsee this image.

  “Now you know everything about me and my personal life. So I want to hear what’s going on with you and Mr. Sexy. And don’t try to blow me off like you did before.”

  Zoya helplessly shook her head and wondered where to begin. After the big blowup yesterday, followed by a sleepless and miserable night, she was no closer to understanding much, if anything, about her relationship with Daniel.

  “Daniel and I…”

  “Yeeeesssss?”

  “We’re really angry at each other. There’s a lot of hard feelings. We haven’t exactly moved on.”

  “So you’ve seen him since the wedding?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Zoya couldn’t smother a wry grin as she thought about the various ways they’d had sex in the last few days. “I’ve seen him.”

  “And you’ve talked?”

  “If by talking you mean, ‘Right there! Harder, baby! Yes, yes!,’ then yes, we’ve talked.”

  A couple of nearby women glanced around with interest, making Zoya feel like Sally in the deli scene from When Harry Met Sally.

  “Oh, my God!” Sofia grinned, looking ecstatically scandalized. “You loose woman! How was it?”

  “You’ve had sex with a Harper man,” Zoya said darkly. “Why would you ask me such a stupid question?”

  “Lucky bitch.”

  “I know.”

  “I seriously think Daniel is the hottest of the brothers. I told Ethan I’m leaving him for Daniel.”

  “Please don’t do that. Fratricide is a crime. Much as I’d occasionally like to kill Daniel myself, I’d hate to see Ethan do hard time for it.”