by Nicole Helm
She used every last ounce of energy to keep the tears from spilling over. “You don’t know everything, Carter.”
He met her gaze then, and it wasn’t anything she recognized. “No, I don’t,” he said gravely. “You’re saying if I care about you that I should make this easy, and I’m saying if you care about me, you’ll give me a month. Five minutes out of your day for a month. That’s it.”
“Why should we prolong the inevitable?”
“Are you so certain? There’s not an ounce of doubt that you might regret this at some point?”
She wanted to tell him she was that certain. Maybe he even loved her the way she loved him, but the love they had for each other wasn’t enough to make a life together work. Their lives didn’t work together, regardless of love.
“Shouldn’t we be sure?” he asked, his hand closing over hers and giving it a squeeze. “If for nothing else, for the sake of the baby,” he whispered, as if he knew her parents were probably eavesdropping but wouldn’t hear that.
She pulled her hand away, placing both of them in her lap. He was mixing it all up and she should be stronger than this, but part of her wanted… Well, she wanted him to find a way to convince her otherwise.
She couldn’t think it was going to happen, but maybe she could hope. “Fine. Your five minutes starts now.”
Oh, she was going to regret this.
*
He’d expected her to agree, but he hadn’t expected her to jump right into it. He wasn’t quite prepared, but he couldn’t let her see that. He had to seem certain and sure of everything so she believed him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, because she didn’t look 100 percent. She was more put together than she had been the other day, but she seemed…off.
“Gross,” she said emphatically. Because Sierra was brash and not backing off and not worried about what she was supposed to say.
Maybe that’s what drew him to her. That she had an independence to her that he’d never be able to emulate, but was attracted to nonetheless.
But the clock was ticking and he had to figure out the answer. The fix. Five minutes even for thirty days wasn’t much, but it gave him till their anniversary to find the answer to why she wanted to leave.
And then he could fix it. Maybe he’d fail a few days along the way. Maybe it’d be hard and more of a challenge than he was used to, but Cole had been right. It was either stumble a little but keep trying, or lose her.
He wasn’t ready to lose her. Even if she pulled her hand away from him like they were strangers or enemies instead of man and wife.
He cleared his throat, willing himself to focus. “Who’s your doctor?”
“No. I’m not having you McArthur your way into that.”
He wanted to argue, even opened his mouth to lecture her about privacy laws and this and that, but what was the point? Making her mad was not the point. “All right.” He thought about her hand under his and the glimmer of hope that he’d hold on to this entire thirty days…assuming it took that long. “Why are you still wearing your rings?”
She inhaled loudly, then looked down beneath the table, presumably at her hands in her lap. “I take them off sometimes, but I guess they start to feel like a limb. Something is missing when I take them off.” She looked back up, fixing him with a rebellious glare. “That doesn’t mean anything. I’ll get used to having them off eventually. It’s habit, not symbolic.”
“Okay,” he said carefully. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to her, but it meant something to him. He looked at his ring on his finger. A simple gold band. “I remember when you put this ring on my finger,” he said, more to himself than to her. It was visceral. The happiness he’d felt when they’d slid their rings onto each other’s fingers in front of their friends and family. He hadn’t cared at all that his parents didn’t approve or that hers questioned the timing. He hadn’t cared about anything except her being his. “I remember our vows.”
Sierra rolled her eyes. “Vows, like promises, are apparently meant to be broken.”
“I haven’t broken mine,” he replied, trying to keep his temper from lighting.
“Haven’t you?” she retorted.
“I loved you. I was there for you.”
“There for me? No, Carter. You were there for you, and you were there for your mother.” She stood, her chair scraping loudly at the jerking, violent movement. “You were always happy to be there for everyone, but you never once—”
It was his turn to stand violently. “I love you. I supported you. I gave you a very nice life and we were together. What more did you want?”
She shook her head, and it pained him that tears shimmered in her eyes, but he didn’t understand why all the blame was being heaped on his shoulders when he didn’t see things the way she did. At all apparently.
“I’m not going to have a screaming match with you. I’m not going down this pointless road of blame and memories. We don’t work, Carter. I had to accept that. Now you do.”
“You always do this,” he said, realizing it so much in the moment he couldn’t even make his tone sound less accusatory. “Any conflict and you say you’re not going to do it. You shut down and walk away.”
“I shut down? How can we even get to the conflict? You haven’t engaged with me in months. Months.” She fisted her hand on her heart and if he wasn’t so damn angry he might have kept his mouth shut. Instead, he did what he almost never did. Made a nasty, sarcastic remark.
“The baby you’re carrying seems to say otherwise.”
She paled, her hand going to her stomach. Some kind of hurt flashed in her eyes before she blinked it away and lifted her arm. “Get out,” she ordered, pointing to the door.
“Sierra.” He took a step toward her, but she turned her back to him.
“You had your five minutes. Now go.”
“This was different. We never fight. We never yell. Not at each other. Not like this.”
“Why would anyone want this?” she asked, and she didn’t even wait for his reply or anything else before she walked away, down a hallway.
Carter let out a slow breath. That was…something. Something new. No, it wasn’t any fun, and no it wasn’t the stuff good marriages were made from: blame and anger and nasty comments.
But it was different. Something like that trying hard Cole had been talking about. Which maybe meant it was the right step.
Someone cleared their throat and Carter looked up to see a furious-looking Mr. Shuller and a blank-expressioned Mrs. Shuller.
“Don’t come back here. You understand me?” Mr. Shuller said gruffly.
Carter managed his professionally blank doctor smile. “Yes, sir.” He walked through the small living room and to the front door, letting himself out as he stepped into the cold winter air.
He tugged his gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on just as the front door squeaked open. He looked back expecting to see Sierra, hoping to chase that strange feeling the fight had given him.
Instead, Mrs. Shuller stood there without a coat on, hugging herself against the cold. “Maybe I could have Sierra meet you somewhere for your five minutes tomorrow?”
Carter raised his eyebrows. Clearly Mrs. Shuller had been listening. “You listened?” Had she heard about the baby?
Mrs. Shuller looked a little abashed at that. “I happened to overhear a few things. Not everything.”
It didn’t answer his question, exactly, but it didn’t matter. Everyone would know eventually. “And…” He tried to wrap his head around what she was offering. “You’re going to help me?”
“No, I’m going to help my daughter,” Mrs. Shuller said firmly. “I don’t know about fixing your marriage, Carter. I’m not sure I ever had much belief in that. But I think you two should discuss why it’s ending.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He wanted her belief and her support, anyone’s really, but he’d settle for her help. “If you could have her meet me at Java at noon?”
; Mrs. Shuller nodded. “She’ll be there.”
Chapter Five
“Mom. Seriously. I am not in the mood for…anything.”
“It’ll do you some good to get out and walk around. I promise.”
Sierra doubted it. She’d rather wallow. All her determinations from yesterday were gone after the fight she’d had with Carter. She just wanted to mope.
They never fought. It was all she could think about. She and Carter never fought. It was one of the things she loved about him. She could go off the handle and yell and stomp and he’d calmly, placidly take it. He’d smile or give her a hug. Not give anger and frustration right back.
It twisted everything up. It made her hurt to watch him get angry or defensive or think he was right and she was wrong. It brought up childhood memories of watching Dad and Luke fight bitterly. The feeling was the same—twisted up and uncomfortable, wishing the conflict would just go away. She’d learned to run away from that. When Dad had been mad at her as a teenager, she snuck out. Partied. Anything to keep her mind off conflict.
Why on earth was Carter giving her conflict now? When they should just walk away from each other and be done with it? Love didn’t matter when your life wasn’t working, and how could love exist when you were yelling at each other?
Sierra hated this. Mostly because she couldn’t control Carter’s reaction. She couldn’t make him not care. She couldn’t make him walk away.
Why was that when he’d been, at best, a robot for months? When he’d made her feel like he’d finally figured out what a horrible match she was for him? Now all of a sudden he wanted to understand it and fight for it?
She didn’t know how to make sense of this, and what’s more, she didn’t want to. Better to end it, even if that was running away. Fresh starts would be better. For both of them.
She sighed and looked out the window as Mom parked a little ways off from Java Café. The prospect of walking into the little café, seeing people she knew, seeing people Carter knew—
“Mom. Really. I can’t.”
Mom put the car in park and looked over at her. “Okay. You stay put, I’ll go grab us some sandwiches, okay? Maybe even grab some to take over to Kaitlin and Beckett. I need my Ellie fix. What do you think?”
“Yeah, okay.” Even though thinking about babies was a little daunting, it was better than thinking about her feelings and all the conflict inside her.
Mom smiled and got out of the car and walked across the street to Java. Sierra hunched in her seat and looked at her lap. But that only occupied her for so long and eventually her gaze drifted out the windshield. Above the squat brick buildings that lined Main, Copper Mountain stood looking stately and important against the impossibly blue winter sky.
As a teenager the sight had filled her with dread. Like that mountain was always glaring imperiously down at her. Like God, very much displeased with her decisions.
Now it looked like any other mountain. Neither evil nor benevolent. Just rock and time.
When the driver’s side door opened Sierra tried to fix a smile on her face as she glanced over at her mother. Except it wasn’t her mother sliding into the driver’s seat so soon after disappearing inside.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
Carter didn’t blink, flinch or act like this was completely inappropriate. “Our five minutes,” he replied as if this was some plan she’d agreed to.
“No.”
“It was a deal, and your mother agreed to stay inside for precisely five minutes, so we really should start talking.”
“It was not a deal, or if it was, I changed my mind.”
“But I didn’t.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “And you’re all that matters?”
“Of course not,” he replied easily and sensibly. A Carter she recognized, down to the way his blue eyes seemed to match the sky. “But if it takes two to start a marriage, it should be the agreement of two to end it.”
“Actually, I think that’s generally not how that works.”
“Regardless. All I’m asking is five minutes today. Is that really so much of your day?”
She looked away. It wasn’t. She just didn’t want to keep feeling this awful. She wanted to move on. To be done. She didn’t want to fight or rehash or give him the opportunity to convince her into another mistake.
Everyone said they were a mistake. They always had. Why shouldn’t everyone be right?
“I don’t want to fight,” Sierra said, looking straight ahead. Facing down Copper Mountain. It suddenly felt like that old disapproving presence again.
“I thought it was interesting,” Carter said, and she’d call it his doctor voice. Detached and inherently practical. Like he was dissecting a frog and telling her about it. “I’ve never really fought before. I always strive to be the better person. I figured I was supposed to be.”
There were a few silent seconds and Sierra told herself not to look at him, but her eyes apparently didn’t get the brain’s message. He sat there, staring at the steering wheel with his eyebrows drawn together. He looked…sad, and it hurt.
“There were a lot of supposed tos,” he murmured.
“I was very much a not supposed to.” They’d been stupid to ever think Carter McArthur would survive a not supposed to. That wasn’t his fault. She knew he’d married her because he’d wanted to, and maybe he even still loved her, but she’d been stupid to think she could change him when it came to his family. She’d been stupid to think she’d be just as important to him when she’d always been so much…less.
“I never regretted my one not supposed to.”
She wanted to tell him it wasn’t about regrets, but she knew her voice would be little more than a croak. And she’d cry if she said anything more than that. She didn’t want to cry in front of him and show that weakness he already suspected about her.
But Carter reached through the space between them, his fingers brushing across her jaw before he cupped her cheek with his hand. She wanted to lean in to that. His hand was big and warm and she’d always found comfort in him. He’d always been the one person in the world who could calm the storm inside of her.
But he’d calmed it so much she didn’t even know who she was anymore. She couldn’t dwell in that when she was going to have a son or daughter to raise next year. She had to find the storm. Navigate it. Harness it. She had to find some strength and certainty.
It could never exist in the McArthurs’ world, and he might not be a McArthur by blood, but that was still his world by deed. It was still where he belonged. What he loved. If he loved her too, it was in a smaller way.
She was the not supposed to that didn’t fit.
Though it felt like a cracking inside her chest, she flinched away from his touch and leaned against her door. “Don’t.” She shook her head, trying to shake away that slow uncurling warmth inside of her.
“If you still feel something when I touch you—”
“It isn’t about…” Sierra closed her eyes. “I don’t want to feel this way. Any of these things. I don’t want to argue with you about them. I just want to be left alone.”
“We’ll have to deal with each other when the baby comes.”
“And we will.” She opened her eyes, focused on that strength and will inside of her. She had to trust it. Grow it. “With a divorce between us,” she said certainly, because that divorce felt like a shield from all this feeling. If she could keep it up, if she could separate herself from him, she wouldn’t feel all these ugly things.
He sighed and leaned back in the chair. Mom tapped on the window and Sierra could see the apologetic smile on her face.
She tried to work up anger that her mother had conspired with him, but as Carter opened the door and got out all Sierra felt was that hollow feeling expanding, the darkness inside of her enveloping just about everything.
“What time tomorrow?” Carter asked, his deep, confident voice cutting throug
h some of the dark.
She couldn’t possibly take more. “I’m not doing this tomorrow.”
“I’ll come by around noon then?” But he said this to her mother, not to her. The jackass.
“I won’t be available,” Sierra said loudly even as Mom nodded and patted him on the arm.
Mom slid into the seat and Sierra glared at her, feeling peevish and fifteen and not caring because at least it was somewhere for her frustration to go. “I can’t believe you.”
“I know you don’t like it, but until you talk it through, nothing is solved.”
“We’re not staying together. I’m sure of it. So, there’s nothing to solve.”
“Not staying together is fine. If that’s your decision, Sierra, that’s more than fine. Your father and I will support you in whatever way we can. But you have to know why you’re making the decision first, or you’re going to have a lot of regrets.”
Sierra wanted to retort that she knew exactly why she was making the decision, but finding words for all that knowledge seemed impossible.
*
Carter stood on Jess’s stoop, waiting impatiently for the genius duo to answer the door. When Cole did, his eyebrows rose in surprise.
“It’s not working,” Carter said flatly.
“What’s not working?”
“Where’s Jess?” Carter demanded, looking over Cole’s shoulder.
“She’s at work.” Cole shifted to let Carter in. Carter didn’t particularly want to go inside the old house. It had been his grandfather’s when they’d been kids and Carter had never felt comfortable in it. It had been the only place in his entire life where Cole had been the favorite.
For years he’d convinced himself that wasn’t why he didn’t like it. He was better than petty jealousy, but standing in the kitchen now—decorated with Jess’s feminine touch—he realized that’s all it had been.
Petty jealousy.
“What’s not working?” Cole asked, and Carter had to admit it was weird seeing his brother like a…man. Cole had taken off at eighteen and spent most of the next ten years far away from Marietta. Carter still thought of him as that surly teenager.