Unbreakable: A Salvation Society Novel

by Georgia Coffman

  “No, no, no,” he whispers, his face pale.

  I wipe a stray tear from my cheek, my body going numb.

  His mouth hangs open as the other pieces of our past appear to fall into place for him like water fills every crevice. “That’s why you married him.”

  I gulp, squeezing my eyes closed. “You disappeared, and Dave was there, confessing his love for me. Apologizing for being an ass. Wanting to marry me and provide support. A home for us.”

  Aiden curses under his breath, tugging at the ends of his hair.

  “He found out about the baby and assumed it was his.” I choke on a sob as I urge myself to get the words out, pushing through the weight of this moment as best I can, but it’s difficult. The truth makes my tongue feel like it’s grown three times in size, and my stomach churns as I relive those painful days. “He proposed before I could gather my wits enough to explain it wasn’t. I tried, but I… I was too…”

  My voice trails off, and my vision blurs as I’m taken back to those few months, when everything was so uncertain.

  “I broke up with you for a reason.” I shake my head, walking away from him. “I can’t be with someone who makes my decisions for me. Who laughs at my dreams, no matter how ridiculous they might sound. I want support. Someone who roots for me.”

  “Sage, please.”

  I instinctively cringe at his use of my real name. I’ve gotten so used to Aiden’s nickname for me that I miss it.

  I miss him.

  “I can be the man for you. I’ll change. I’ll be better, and we can dream together.” Dave gently grips my shoulder and turns me to face him. “Sage, I’m so sorry. I’ve been such a fucking idiot, and I don’t deserve you. But you’re having our baby.”

  I pause.

  Oh God—he thinks the baby is his.

  He doesn’t know I was with Aiden after Dave and I broke up. During his frantic pleas to win me back, he doesn’t do the math and realize that this baby can’t be his.

  I have to tell him.

  “The baby is not ours.” I rub my temples, my voice strained, and steel myself to finally end our relationship. He’ll never forgive me once he learns the truth. “It’s mine and—”

  “You can’t take it away from me. It’s mine too. Why not let us be a family?” He squeezes my hands in his, desperation in his eyes. He loves this baby already, and it does something weird to my chest. “I’ll provide for us. I already accepted a job—I start in two weeks. Salary and benefits for all three of us. You can move back home with me and finish your degree online or something. We can figure it out… together.”

  The more he talks, the more relief floods me.

  The future he paints is what I want—stability. A loving home.

  Can I really do this?

  My mother has abandoned me. Naomi and I haven’t been close for years. No one else can help me.

  Dave places his hand on my stomach. I haven’t started showing yet, but underneath, a baby is growing.

  A baby to hold and love and cherish.

  A baby that’s part of Aiden and me that I’ll forever have, even though he doesn’t want us.

  “I lost her.” The tears stream down my face, and Aiden pales again. “I lost her after one hundred twenty-six days of holding her in my womb and close to my heart. For those few months, I had a special kind of peace filling me because I had a new life inside me. One you and I created, and the loss of her…” I hiccup. “It broke my heart… my whole soul… in ways I never imagined.”

  Aiden’s chest heaves, and the silence around us thickens with grief, but anger still lingers. The room closes in on us as his breaths pick up, and his eyes grow dark.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice is low.

  Accusatory.

  He’s grappling with this the only way he knows how—growing livid and placing blame. I know him well enough to expect as much, but it still stings that he’s talking to me like I did something wrong when I’m hurting too.

  Some days are as painful as the day I lost her, and he wasn’t there to help me through it.

  “You should’ve told me.” He takes a measured step forward, his voice rising. “I could’ve been there for you. Done right by you, and—fuck.” He dips his head, leaning his hands on his knees, then stands, his face red.

  “I called you. I emailed. I went to your house,” I say, understanding he’s upset, but I refuse to let him take it out on me.

  Because I’m angry at him too.

  “I called you many times. What was I supposed to do? Leave a voicemail to let you know you’re going to be a father?” I raise my voice to match his and grip his arm to stop him from pacing. “You never answered, and you never called me back. You didn’t just go to Europe for a few weeks—you walked out of my fucking life when it was falling apart!”

  My outburst visibly rattles him, but he composes himself, shrugging out of my hold.

  “You can get mad at me all you want, Aiden, but you’re to blame for this.” I point between us, my voice trembling as my outrage surpasses his. “I shouldn’t have married Dave out of desperation—it’s a mistake I have to live with, but I accept it. I made that choice because I thought it was my best option at the time. Now, it’s your turn to realize you’re a fucking coward.”

  He stares back at me, and his expression is unreadable for the most part, except for the pain. Pain is always visible. There’s no mask for it because it eats at you from the inside out until you burst.

  And Aiden and me? We exploded in a mix of confessions and regret.

  Of love and resentment.

  Because even through my bitterness, there’s a layer of love for him that I’m realizing I’ll never rid my heart of.

  My apartment is quieter than it usually is when Naomi works late like she is tonight. As we continue blinking at each other, the silence stretches between us in eerie waves until Aiden finally speaks up.

  “You didn’t even give me a chance to be the man for you. You picked him—you always did. But if I would’ve known about the baby, maybe…” His voice is laced with sadness. He clears his throat, then says, “I might’ve been a coward to leave, but you were in love with him. With your history. Your fucking high school prom and living in the past and—”

  The sting of my palm against his cheek echoes between us.

  My bottom lip quivers as I brush past him. When I reach the door, I take one last look at him.

  As he rubs his cheek, his eyes are distant. Empty. Sullen.

  The way I feel.

  With no other words—with only crushing disappointment coursing through me—I throw open the door. “Get out.”

  He stands still for a moment, his posture deflated.

  Anguished.

  And when he finally walks out, he takes more broken pieces of me with him.

  As I drag my feet to my room, my body aching, there’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that there’s nothing left of me.

  And it terrifies me.

  All because Aiden Baxter cracked open my heart once again with one simple gaze—and I let him crawl inside.

  But I’m done.

  He finally knows the truth and chooses to blame me, but I’m done letting him disappoint me.

  As I move to my bed and pull the covers over me, I stare at the ceiling.

  The minutes tick by.

  The shadows of the city outside my window float above me.

  I know Aiden—he’s in shock with this news. But even if he doesn’t come around, if he doesn’t come to terms with his role in our past, I make a vow to myself to stand tall.

  Strong.

  Like a tree… rooted… that even a hurricane can’t whisk away…

  Never again can I let myself crumble because of him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AIDEN

  For the next week, my head is a mess, as if I’m constantly hungover. She thinks I abandoned her in her time of need, when I didn’t even know.

  I didn’t know ab
out her and Dave until it was too fucking late to do anything about it, and all this time, I’ve resented her because of it. That I’d lost my chance.

  But a baby? My baby?

  A baby girl.

  How do I wrap my mind around that?

  It makes sense. What Dave said all those years ago. The memory has been on constant repeat.

  “We’re happy.” Dave runs his hand over his head, and his wedding band shines under the sunlight. He’s grinning like a fool in love, which he is, and I’m left feeling hollow. Every word falling from his mouth is a stab to my chest. “Sage and me, we’re really happy. We’re going to be a family.”

  His voice becomes muffled as blood rushes to my ears.

  The red in my vision.

  I try to force a smile as I clap him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, man.”

  Last I heard, he’d moved back to his hometown, so I didn’t expect to run into him here, our old college campus. We haven’t talked since his grandfather’s funeral, and from the sounds of it—from the fact that he hasn’t kicked me in the balls—Sage never told him she and I slept together.

  I brush past him, ready to finish packing up my condo.

  I have a long drive ahead of me.

  One that will take me far away from this place—from Dave and Sage.

  She married him.

  “Everything all right?” Dave stops me.

  With my back to him, my emotions in my throat, I nod. “I need to get going. I’d like to get most of my drive out of the way before dark.”

  “Smart.”

  I’m not. If I was smart, I wouldn’t have left. I wouldn’t have gone to Europe in a fit of rage. Sage wouldn’t have married Dave because I was going to win her over. I wouldn’t have given her up.

  But now I have to.

  “Don’t be a stranger, brother. We missed you the last few months. You disappeared and—” He shuffles behind me, then says, “Oh wait, Sage is calling.”

  I turn to find him with the phone up to his ear, on the other end of which is Sage.

  My Jersey.

  My heart lurches at the sound of her name. At the fact she’s so close, yet… I lost her.

  I fucking lost her.

  “Ready?” Westin says, clapping me on the back.

  “Let’s do this. Where’s Jared?”

  We both turn in every direction and find him by the snack table, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  “Good thing he and I won’t be in the video.” I shake my head.

  “He’s an animal.”

  Jared makes his way over. “You guys talking about me?”

  “I know you’re not in the shot, but lose the beanie and wipe the crumbs off your pants, will you?” Westin points to his thigh.

  “Oops.” Jared grabs a napkin. “Hey, before we start, I just wanted to thank you guys again for letting me tag along. Jenson fucking Ross, man.”

  Jenson Ross enters from a side door of the independent studio, a tray of coffees in his hands. “Good morning, guys. My friend Ralph picked up some coffees, for which I was going to take credit for, but nah, he does too much around here.” We chuckle with him and each accept a cup, thanking him in the process.

  “Thanks again for having us too.” Westin raises his cup, and Jared and I do the same.

  Taylor waves from the corner.

  When she arrived, I searched behind her for Sage.

  I held my breath, preparing to see her, but she’s not here, even though she’s been by Taylor’s side—our side—through it all. It would make sense if this was one of the smaller interviews we’ve done—even Taylor doesn’t attend those—but this one is particularly important.

  And Sage isn’t here.

  It pisses me off further. She can’t even be in the same room as me now? She’s the one who held out on me.

  She’s the one who was happy with someone else.

  When I wanted to make her mine.

  I didn’t stand a chance, and I find out years later the truth of it all.

  As the guys enter the room, Taylor, Jared, and I stand behind the glass. I cross my arms, trying to focus on what I know will be a turning point for us.

  Westin’s got this.

  We can do this.

  “We’re happy. Sage and me, we’re really happy.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed to the past before I ram my fist through a wall, then open them to my future.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SAGE

  I can’t sleep.

  Every night, I toss and turn, and each time I close my eyes, I see him.

  And her.

  The baby girl I never met. The one I never got to cradle against my chest.

  She haunts me, breaking me all over again.

  Sighing, I lean over my bathroom counter and blend more concealer under my eyes to hide the dark circles there. I have to put on a brave face for work. For my future.

  For me.

  I haven’t spoken to Aiden since he was here almost two weeks ago. Since he finally learned the truth about me and what happened all those years ago.

  The secret I carried around like the weight of a thousand pounds on my heart. The one that still plagues me.

  Thankfully, Taylor didn’t ask me to go with them to their interview with Jenson Ross. She needed me to stay in the office to work on our other accounts and a pitch for a new one we’re after. I was more than happy to stay away.

  But tonight… tonight I can’t escape his hazel eyes with dark amber flecks in them like dust, quietly tainting his expression.

  “What’re you up to tonight?” Naomi asks as I stroll through the living room, adjusting the belt of my high-waisted dress pants. “You’re wearing heels?”

  I check my feet like I forgot what I was wearing. “I’m going out with Taylor and the guys from Jock Stock for a celebratory dinner.”

  “Oh?” She quirks her eyebrow.

  “Yes, but it’s a business dinner. No big deal.”

  “If you say so.” Judging by her flat tone, she doesn’t believe me, and I don’t blame her—I’m not very convincing. That, and she knows about my miscarriage. About it being Aiden’s baby. About the real reason I married Dave and why our wedding was so rushed.

  Naomi found me crying on my bedroom floor a few nights ago, and I couldn’t keep it from her anymore. We spent long hours going over every detail. All the things I remember. That I lied so much in my past, especially to Dave. I couldn’t even tell him the truth about how far along in my pregnancy I was, so he wouldn’t figure it out on his own.

  I had no plan for the future. What I would tell Dave down the line—I knew I couldn’t lie to him forever. But I was too terrified of everything, so I took it one day, one step, at a time.

  Naomi and I talked about how I feel now. What Aiden said and did once I told him.

  It was a relief to tell her. She didn’t seem to know what to say other than to apologize and wish she’d been there for me, and she squeezed my hand and listened.

  Sometimes, it’s enough to unload our burdens on a friend.

  “I’ll probably be home late,” I say as I grab my keys off the counter.

  “I’ll feed myself, don’t you worry.”

  I walk to the door in a daze and barely miss her attempt at a joke.

  “Hey, are you okay?” she asks as I turn the doorknob.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’ve been off since the other night. Like me when I work a twelve-hour shift.”

  “I’m fine.” I give her the most reassuring smile I can muster. “Thanks, Naomi.”

  I yank the door open and head out, straightening my posture as I walk to the elevators. My ankle rolls when I step off. Damn heels.

  I wanted to dress up. To look nice for the guys’ accomplishments.

  Their interview with Jenson Ross went well—really well.

  Westin was funny, relatable, and professional. He was knowledgeable and confident, like he lives and breathes sports and their product.

 
Which he does.

  They all do at their company.

  They work hard like I did when I opened my business. People say if you’re doing something you love, that you’ll never work a day in your life. I discovered firsthand that I don’t agree. Because the business was mine, I worked even harder in order to make it successful.

  Dave took a lot of my creative drive away over the course of our relationship, so my business was a much-needed outlet to stretch my proverbial imaginative fingers. He complained about all the hours I spent at work, but he hardly pushed it because he knew it’s what made me happy. What made me want to stay in town, and he didn’t want me getting any ideas of leaving. He wanted us to stay there, in the confines of our small town, because he liked it there. He felt secure and enjoyed knowing everyone.

  He insisted it was the best place to raise a family, and at one point, I agreed. I loved living there.

  It’s where I grew up. Where I learned to ride a bike. Received a good education and met wonderful people.

  But Dave’s clutches around me made me hate it, long before we ever spoke of divorce and I left.

  He wasn’t always bad—rough around the edges, sure—but after he found out that the baby was Aiden’s, he never got over it.

  He drank heavily. Cursed and yelled at me. It’s what led to the grocery store fiasco.

  All his bad qualities were amplified after he learned the truth—that I’d slept with Aiden—but a baby? Dave lost it when he overheard me talking with my friend, confessing the whole story to her when I thought Dave was working late.

  But he was home, eavesdropping from the hall.

  It was the last straw.

  I was only able to get him to sign the divorce papers through sheer luck that he was so angry with me when I stopped by; he simply signed to make me leave.

  I find a seat on the train to cross the river and wrap my arms around my midsection as nausea settles in.

  I made a mess of my life. No matter how much I resent Dave for his attitude and constant manipulation, I’m guilty too. I married him under false pretenses.