by Nicole Helm
He rolled her over, strong and in charge as ever, the complete opposite of what he’d been the past few months. This was Carter. Her Carter.
She reached up and touched his face, allowed herself to look into those blue eyes she loved so much. They were cloudy with desire, his mouth and jaw hard, and there was a moment where she wanted to say something important. Tell him she loved him and that she needed him. Something, anything. Cement them here where things made sense.
But he moved, ruthless and knowing, making words jumble in her head. The orgasm crashed over her in a rush, and he followed on a pained groan, deep inside of her.
He dropped his forehead to hers, something he’d always done in the aftermath. That intimate touch a sign. A promise.
They could fix this. They could. She sighed contentedly. They would. None of this would have happened if things were hopeless.
But when she woke up later in the dark, she was alone in their bed. Carter was gone. His coat. His shoes. Him.
He’d left without a goodbye—not long after she’d fallen asleep if she had to guess by the fact it was only three in the morning.
She lay there for she didn’t know how long, the heavy weight of the truth finally getting through all her fears, all her love, and all her hope.
They couldn’t fix this.
*
Carter stayed away for a week. It was cowardly. He knew it, and he also knew he should be disgusted with himself for the way he’d bungled things.
He shouldn’t have slept with her. Not now. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He hadn’t been able to fully…cope yet.
She deserved a man whose world wasn’t upturned by a family secret. A man who didn’t struggle to sleep and eat because he couldn’t fathom not being what he thought he was.
It was wrong to have given in until he could find a way to fix this dark fog that had enveloped him. He needed to be at his best for her. Strong and in control and the man she’d fallen in love with, not this strange…shell.
But fixing this feeling, emerging from this darkness was eluding him, and he didn’t know how much longer he could simply…exist. But what other options were there?
Like he had for five months, he came up completely and utterly empty. Him. The man who was supposed to be smart and able to diagnose most anything couldn’t find his own solution to his own problem.
“There you are.”
He glanced up at his sister as she strode into the hospital cafeteria. Half-sister. Lina only had a few months left of her residency here, and Carter didn’t think she had plans to stick around Marietta once that was over.
He wondered if Dad had figured that out with everything else going on. Or had Lina used the diagnosis and aftermath to hide her plans? Because their father would not be happy if she left.
Her dad. Not yours.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lina demanded, fisting a hand on her hip. He’d never envied that edge of hers before, but here in this moment he did. He envied her certainty and her strength when it felt like all his had been sucked out when his father had delivered that blow.
You aren’t really a McArthur. Everything he’d spent thirty-some years trying to be. She was. Cole was. He wasn’t.
“Carter,” Lina repeated.
Carter pushed away his thoughts, looked down at his untouched dinner. “I’m…eating dinner.” Sort of.
“With your wife, you idiot. What the hell are you doing with Sierra?”
Carter didn’t look up from the cafeteria sandwich. “That isn’t any of your business.” Even the mention of Sierra made his brain shut down, leaving a numbness. His body and brain refusing to deal with the pain that ached there. A protective mechanism.
Lina huffed. “For someone who isn’t actually Dad’s blood relation, you sure do sound like him.”
He flicked a glance up at her, but that tiny glimmer of anger faded so fast he wasn’t even sure it was real beyond all the numbness.
“What is wrong with you?” she said. “That should piss you off. Sierra wanting to divorce you should scare the hell out of you.”
“She doesn’t want to divorce me,” Carter replied, without really thinking the words through. But, she couldn’t want…that. Things were bad, but she’d initiated that night last week. She wasn’t going to leave him.
She couldn’t.
“Carter. She’s been to a lawyer.”
“That isn’t true.” It couldn’t be. They’d… They’d slept together. Yes, it had been a mistake and yes, he’d walked away and stayed away for a week, but it meant she cared. She’d made vows. She was supposed to stick with him through thick and thin. That was how this worked.
“You need to talk to her, or you need to get professional help. Actually both.”
“Professional help?” He stared at his sister blindly.
“You’re depressed.”
“I’m not depressed. I’m…” Fine wasn’t the right word, but he couldn’t come up with an alternative that fit what he was feeling.
“Are you sleeping?”
“I—”
“No. Anyone can see that. Eating?”
“I eat.”
“Not enough. Are you enjoying your work, work that you’ve always enjoyed, or are you just going through the motions?”
“I…” He was sure her point was wrong, and yet he couldn’t find an adequate defense of how he was feeling, or his actions.
“You’re depressed, Carter. Talk to your wife, or talk to a therapist, or, like I said, both, but you have to talk to someone. You have to…do something. You can’t keep being this.” She made a hand motion that seemed to encompass his entire being.
Talk to someone? That didn’t change anything. His life was still upended, and talking only ever… He needed to handle this like his father did. Strong. Sure. Calm. Once it was handled, he’d be able to act. “I’m handling it.”
Lina shook her head and handed him an envelope. “Then why am I handing you divorce papers?”
Carter could only stare at the envelope.
“Sierra came here wanting to give them to you herself, but she… Anyway, she asked me to do it. And I agreed so I could try and talk some sense into you.”
“I’m having the worst year of my life and she wants to divorce me?” Divorce. It was hard to make his mouth even move to say that word, because that word conjured up images of a life without Sierra and…
Haven’t you been living a life without Sierra?
“Do you think about anyone but yourself?” Lina asked disgustedly, tossing the envelope next to his tray and onto the table. “Have you given even five seconds of thought to anyone who’s also affected by all this, or is it only about poor Carter?”
This time the spark of anger lit and stayed. “I have been busting my ass to take care of Mom. I have been—”
“Hiding,” Lina finished firmly, looking down at him with such contempt. His little sister who was forever trying to one-up him, and he hadn’t even had to try to make it impossible.
Except she’s his and you’re not.
“You’ve been an ass and a coward, and maybe some of that would be forgivable if you cared about anyone but yourself, but I guess I’ve been wrong all this time. You are just like Dad, biology or no. Nurture versus nature, right?”
And with that, his sister turned on a heel and stormed out of the cafeteria, leaving quite a few eyeballs trained on him.
A spectacle.
Not a McArthur.
Divorce.
Whatever anger had ignited at Lina’s accusation of selfishness evaporated in an instant. He looked at the envelope and tried to picture his life without Sierra in it. Even these past few months when everything had been an awful void, she’d been there. Some little sparkle of hope that a day might come when it didn’t feel like his whole life was falling in on him. She was his hope. The thing that kept all the going through the motions worth it.
At some point he’d wrap his brain around this. He’d
feel normal again. Life would… It wouldn’t stay this way. It couldn’t. At some point it’d click again. They just had to be patient and wait for that to happen.
So, no. He refused to accept it. They were not getting divorced.
Now he just had to figure out how to make sure of it.
Chapter Two
March 2016
Sierra lay on an air mattress in a cramped room in her sister’s apartment where she’d been staying for far too long. It wasn’t right to put Kaitlin out like this, not for these three weeks since Sierra had packed a bag and walked out of her home with Carter. She wondered if he’d even noticed.
Regardless, she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of seeing him while she’d been getting divorce papers drawn up. She hadn’t been able to hand him the divorce papers, even if it made her a coward. And even though it had been two weeks since Lina said she’d given them to him, she hadn’t heard a peep from him and the papers had not been filed.
She’d have to face him. She knew she’d have to face him, but every day she woke up in this tiny room that was already decorated for the little girl her sister would have any day now. She woke up and her head felt like it was full of cotton. She was exhausted and achy and sure she was coming down with some weird flu that never fully hit.
She blew out a breath and looked at the changing table where she’d set her rings last night. She’d tried to sleep without them. It had been fitful, and even this morning she desperately wanted to put them back on.
Desperately wanted to go home and find Carter and say she didn’t mean it. She’d sit quietly in the corner and never say anything just so long as they were together.
Not that he’d filed the damn papers, which meant if she really wanted to she could walk back into their house and pretend like the past three weeks apart didn’t exist.
The fact she could do that made everything harder. There was only so long she could wait. Once Kaitlin had the baby, Sierra was on her own. Which inevitably meant moving in with her parents, which…
God, she was tired of being their little failure.
A knock sounded on the door and Sierra forced herself out of bed to open it. She had to brace herself against the doorframe as a wave of dizziness came over her.
“You okay?” Kaitlin asked, eyebrows drawn together in concern.
Sierra managed a nod. “Just a little light-headed, I guess.”
Kaitlin’s concern didn’t disappear from her face, but she smiled. “I made some breakfast. You probably need to eat.”
“I should be making you breakfast,” Sierra said, feeling utterly awful for taking advantage of her pregnant sister like this.
Kaitlin waved it away as she walked, well, in fairness, waddled to the tiny kitchen. “I’m uncomfortable and need to move. I’m restless and it’s too cold to be wandering the streets—at least that’s what my husband tells me.”
“Where is Beckett?” Sierra asked, shooing Kaitlin out of the way so she could at least serve breakfast even if she hadn’t made it.
“Went in to the shop early. He’s got the next few days off for the impending arrival.” Kaitlin patted her large, rounded belly. “So today he’s trying to finish up a few projects.” She awkwardly lowered herself to a chair.
Sierra got out two plates and tried to ignore the panic at the thought of Beckett being on vacation from work and Kaitlin having her baby and the fact the only place Sierra had to go was her parents’ house.
Because she had no job and no skills and hadn’t even tried to do anything except survive the crushing weight of failure and pain of losing Carter.
“I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here so long,” Sierra managed to croak. Because what would she have done if Kaitlin hadn’t offered her this little respite? If Kaitlin hadn’t offered some semblance of friendship, which was something they hadn’t had since probably elementary school if even then.
“It’s been nice. I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but it’s been nice to…be friends. And really you’ve been indispensable around here. Helping me with baby stuff, and the whole getting up out of chairs things. If you hadn’t been here I would have been stuck on the couch day in and day out waiting for Beckett to come home.”
It wasn’t true, but it was sweet of Kaitlin to say so. They’d never been particularly close, but if Sierra had gotten anything out of this shitty few weeks it was a new camaraderie with her sister. Kaitlin wasn’t as hard as she used to be, happily married and about to pop, and Sierra knew she’d changed herself too. Matured in some ways. Or at least was in the process of maturing.
“Still no word from Carter?” Kaitlin asked carefully.
“No. He’s waiting me out.” He probably knew. That she didn’t want to lose him. That she was a coward. Probably thought he could ignore the papers and live in this horrible space of nothingness forever. Well, she wouldn’t let that happen. No. She needed to find her courage. She needed to find her spark again. “He probably doesn’t think I’ll fight dirty.” But maybe it was time.
“Surely he knows you better than that.” Kaitlin smiled, though it was immediately interrupted by a wince.
“You okay?” Sierra asked, not envious of anything her sister was going through physically, even if she’d been pestering Carter about starting a family before the whole…implosion had happened. The reality of pregnancy in front of her made the prospect of a chubby baby to cuddle a little less appealing.
Besides, that wish had been mostly wanting something to bind them together, and wasn’t that warped? Sure, she wanted to be a mother, and so much of that had come from wanting to see Carter as a father because she thought he’d be such a good one.
Apparently she’d been wrong. About everything.
“Just starting to get a contraction here or there. The doctor said not to get excited until they’re more regular, but God I hope this is the beginning. I want to walk normally again.”
Sierra turned to face the stove where Kaitlin had placed a pan of perfectly baked cinnamon rolls. Sierra should be happy and excited for her sister. Eager to meet her niece. But all she could think about was the fact she was about to be evicted.
Sierra shook her head and plated two rolls for each of them. She turned to put them on the table, but something in the smell hit her all wrong. She wrinkled her nose as a wave of nausea hit her. She wished this damn flu thing would just go away already.
She put Kaitlin’s plate in front of her, and sat down with her own, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of eating it.
“I know you like cinnamon rolls. What’s with the pained face?”
Sierra shook her head. “Oh just this same thing. Some weird bug I guess. Maybe I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.”
Kaitlin nodded, but she kept staring at Sierra with a speculative look on her face. “I have a weird question to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s just, maybe because I’ve got pregnancy on the brain but light-headedness, nausea, exhaustion…everything you’ve been having the past few weeks. I know it could be the stress and emotional upheaval of everything with Carter, but those can all be signs of pregnancy too.”
Sierra laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“Are you sure you couldn’t be pregnant?”
Sierra started to laugh again, because you had to have sex to get pregnant, but then her laugh died. There had been that night. No protection and she’d stopped renewing the prescription for her birth control pills in the five months of hell because it had felt like a cruel joke to bother.
Pregnant.
“So, it’s possible?”
Those words hung in the air and Sierra couldn’t truly wrap her brain around the actual reality of it. Possible seemed to echo in her head, over and over again.
“Shit,” Kaitlin said on a gasp, pressing her hand to the side of her rounded stomach.
“What? Another contraction?”
“No.” Kaitlin blew out a breath, and then sucked one in. “Well, yes
, but I think… I think my water just broke.”
*
Carter had taken a few days off from the hospital. He’d ignored his mother’s phone calls. He’d holed himself up in his house to finalize his plans. He was good with plans, with schedules, with figuring out all the steps to get what he wanted.
However, the goal of staying married, wasn’t so easy as passing the MCAT or getting the right residency match. Those had steps to follow, books to read on the subject. It wasn’t foolproof science, but it was close.
There was nothing about Sierra or relationships that was foolproof science. Or had any steps to follow that made any sense to him.
Occasionally over the course of trying to figure out how to fix this mess, he’d wondered if it was worth it. If divorce was the answer. It was what Sierra wanted, and didn’t he want her to be happy most of all?
But he thought of his life without Sierra in it, and even though it didn’t make any sense, even though he was stable and methodical and laser focused and she was mercurial and spontaneous and pure fun, he loved her. With everything he had. He’d married her—this whirlwind of vivacious life—even knowing his parents disapproved, even knowing just about everyone thought it was a joke. He’d done this one rebellious, spontaneous thing in his whole life because he’d had to. There had been no other way, no other choice. She was a magnet and every particle of his being was drawn to her.
He just didn’t know what to do with it all, how to show love or care. He’d never seen it in action, not really. He knew bedside manner, though it wasn’t his best quality. He knew how to pick the right words when it came to tell someone they needed to see a specialist, or be admitted, or even that the future looked stark.
He didn’t know how to explain love, to put into words this big, horrible thing inside him. It was too messy. Too unpredictable.
He looked down at his desk. It was a mess of papers—mostly computer printouts of his calendar, though there were a few lists. Apology gifts. Second honeymoon ideas. A grand anniversary gesture.
He hated grand gestures and attention, but Sierra didn’t.