Bride for Keeps

by Nicole Helm

  But Sierra had a habit of giving up on hard things she actually wanted. He hadn’t noticed it over the past few months, but there was a pattern in their year together. An art scholarship he’d urged her to apply for—she’d gotten halfway through the application then given up on it before they’d been married. She’d quit helping her sister out with a project at the florist shop where Kaitlin worked when they’d bickered too much last summer.

  He’d known all those things separately, but he’d never put them together. Doing so now was painful. Not just because he’s missed it before, but because he saw a hint of vulnerability in the woman he’d seen as strong and capable and a storm no one dare cross.

  But she needed crossing. She needed more from him.

  Because he wasn’t letting her walk away from this when he knew she loved him, when he knew she was afraid of reaching out for good things.

  They just had to find some better way to communicate these things. Some way to talk that gave her the freedom to either realize it about herself or be willing to acknowledge it or whatever it was that was holding her back.

  “I had this friend in college,” he began, trying to sound casual. “English wasn’t his first language, though he was a proficient enough speaker. Still, sometimes he’d really struggle with a word or concept. That reminds me of us sometimes. Like we’re speaking different languages.”

  “Gee, sounds like a perfect couple. We should totally stay married and keep making each other miserable!”

  It shouldn’t be funny, but he’d always found Sierra’s somewhat scathing sense of humor just that. Even in the darkest of circumstances. But the smile died slowly because she had never made him miserable. “If people never tried to understand each other, we’d be awfully isolated and lonely.”

  She scowled into her soup. “I’m familiar with those feelings,” she muttered.

  “So, maybe we should try to understand each other. Maybe we should talk about that instead of run away from it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Having hope sucked, and Sierra wanted to hurt Carter for trying to infuse it back into her. Hope only ever made people miserable. Dad had hoped he’d make enough money to be comfortable and not have to work so hard. Mom had hoped Dad wouldn’t take all the stress of trying to make ends meet on himself. Luke had hoped Dad would be kinder, gentler about his dyslexia. Kaitlin had hoped Carter would notice her and marry her.

  Maybe Mom and Dad had found a little peace with their kids out of the house, and Luke and Dad’s antagonism had cooled. Maybe Kaitlin had found a husband she loved after Sierra had married the man of her sister’s dreams. Maybe, maybe, it all worked out, but that didn’t mean hope was safe.

  First you got crushed to bits.

  She’d had her own hopes. Silly childish hopes dashed by her father’s heavy practicality and then nasty rumors and stupid middle school stuff that had followed her no matter where she went or how.

  So she’d learned to embrace it. All of it. Fling herself into the middle of all that failure.

  Until Carter had smiled at her at that party, and she’d had the blinding, idiotic belief maybe she wasn’t as much of a disaster case as she’d always considered herself. If the upstanding, honest, gorgeous Dr. Carter McArthur could look at her like she dazzled him, then, well.

  “We should talk, Sierra. Really talk. Not in five-minute snippets. Not trading smart remarks back and forth. An honest conversation. That’s why I brought you here. It isn’t so sinister, is it? To want to work out where I went wrong.”

  She took a few spoonfuls of soup, trying to let that spark of temper outweigh all the sadness inside of her. “Why and what for? It’s just done. No post-mortem or research paper on the subject needed.”

  “I don’t get why you’re acting like a conversation is some sort of attack on you,” he said, and with each word his frustration and anger started to become more prominent, which wasn’t like him at all. “I don’t understand your determination this is just over when we haven’t even tried.”

  “I tried,” she whispered, because as much as she wanted to be angry it just felt awful and devastating to admit this. He wanted all these admissions from her that only made her look weak and worthless, and no matter that she might be, she didn’t want him to see it. She couldn’t stand watching him see it.

  If he’d tried even a month ago, she might have been soft enough to give in, but she’d given him too much time and too much hope. She couldn’t jump into that old belief this part of her life would be different. Because it would lead her here, over and over again.

  “Try now,” he said, and it was almost imploring, but there was such ego there. That he could just command her to try again and she would when he’d had months upon months.

  She pushed back from the table. She could tell him no. Tell him she wasn’t doing this, but she’d been doing that for all these days since he’d finally decided she was worth fighting for.

  No, not her, because if it had been about her he would have fought before she’d delivered those papers. He was simply fighting now because the only other outcome was divorce and that would shame him. Or maybe he was only fighting now because of the baby. Either way, it wasn’t enough.

  “Where are you going?” he asked as she started down the hallway, hoping to find a bedroom or somewhere she could lock herself in a room and sleep until tomorrow.

  “Sierra.”

  She ignored him and opened the first door she came to. It was a bathroom, so she pressed on.

  “Stop.”

  She considered flipping him off, but in the end ignoring him worked better. She opened the next door and there was a giant bed with a wall made up almost entirely of windows like in the living room. Perfect. It was dark but she could see the moon. Comforting, and it was early enough she could get a good amount of sleep before the sun came back up.

  She stepped inside and then moved to close the door, but Carter slapped his hand on it to keep it from closing. His eyes glittered with fury and his mouth was a sharp, painful slash on that usually calm face.

  It was so strange to see him furious she could only stare at him. Part of her wanted to reach out and touch him to see if it was real.

  “Damn it, Sierra,” he growled. “You will listen to me. You will answer me. I deserve that much.”

  Deserve. That word infuriated her right back. “For what?”

  “My God.” He let his hand fall from the door and raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe love?”

  “Fine. Fine.” He wasn’t going to let this go. Stubborn man. She often didn’t recognize it because he didn’t dress it up in stomping displays, but he was stubborn. Sometimes even more than her. “Fine, you want me to try now. Now?” She whirled away from him and stalked toward the window, wishing she could find something to hold on to. Something to keep her focused and from blurting out all the pain inside of her.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I spent months having you look through me.” God, that hurt to say, to admit. To tell him she’d seen how little she meant, to watch him see how much it had hurt her. “And that was after you kept this giant secret from me.” She tried to straighten her shoulders, firm her expression, but tears started to fall and her voice croaked. “No matter what I did, you were a blank wall. I tried through all of that while I didn’t matter to you. You’re ready to try something like six months too late, Carter.”

  “I was… I know I didn’t treat you right.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “I am sorry, but I was… I wasn’t myself.”

  She whirled away from his touch, happy to have some anger to infuse this bone-crushing sadness. “That’s it? You weren’t yourself. You’re sorry.”

  “I can’t go back and change it.”

  “No. You can’t. And I won’t go back and change my mind about divorce.”

  “Because I was going through a rough time and didn’t pay attention to you?”

  She closed her eyes against the stab of pain. T
hat right there was exactly what she’d been afraid of. That he’d belittle what she felt. Act like she was the problem for needing more from him.

  And maybe she was.

  “I want to go to bed, Carter.”

  “We are not done discussing this. If this is all it is—”

  “All right.” If she couldn’t run away, she’d just have to get mean. “You want to discuss things. Let’s talk about how your father told you he wasn’t actually your father and you let me walk into a family meeting to get ambushed by that information.” She forced herself to look at him even though there were tears on her cheeks.

  He did that thing she’d always hated, even when she’d been so besotted with him she overlooked everything. He got very stiff, and his expression went blank. He sort of raised his chin as if he were a king surveying his manor.

  It was a very Dr. McArthur look.

  “Is that what this is really about? That meeting?”

  “So, to be clear, in your version of a conversation, I ask a question and you counter with one of your own?”

  He pressed his lips together, some frustration slipping through that cool McArthur detachment he’d surrounded himself with. Good. She wanted to frustrate him. She wanted to make him mad—even madder than he’d been when she’d ignored him.

  She wanted him so furious he’d realize it wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t worth it.

  “I couldn’t…” Something closer to confusion drew his eyebrows together. “It wasn’t you, Sierra. I couldn’t tell anyone. I still haven’t…”

  “Still haven’t what?” she demanded when he just stuttered and looked so miserable she wanted to cross to him.

  “I haven’t said it. Those words. Not…to anyone.”

  “What words?”

  “I am not…” He took a deep breath, raked his fingers through his hair one more time, and when he spoke his voice was little more than a whisper. “I am not Gerald McArthur’s son.”

  *

  Carter had said it once, drunk as a skunk, alone in his house. To say it here, in this cabin, in front of Sierra…

  It was horrible. Painful. He felt like crying, and he wasn’t drunk this time so there was no good excuse for the stinging in his eyes.

  But there was something else too. A load lifted off his shoulders. A certain soaring…

  Freedom.

  “I am not Gerald McArthur’s son,” he repeated. Stronger this time. “I am not a McArthur.”

  He glanced over at her, where she stood staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. Because Cole’s words about showing the cracks were revolving around in his head.

  Nothing he was doing was getting through to her. Not telling her he loved her, not remembering why they’d fallen for each other or revisiting old memories. Not even that kiss by the river.

  But she was looking at him right now as he said the hardest words he’d ever had to say. Watching him as he felt like he was falling apart from the inside out.

  She wasn’t walking away or saying anything terrible to him. She was standing there, as if waiting for more.

  It scared him to his soul, the thought of letting it all out, but he knew this little stunt he’d pulled in getting her here meant everything was now or never. Five minutes wasn’t going to last past this. This really was his last chance to get through to her.

  And if it failed, he at least got to blame Cole for bad advice.

  “You know how much I looked up to my father.”

  “Your father’s an ass.”

  Maybe Carter shouldn’t have been, but he was surprised at her vehemence. He’d known her feelings about his family, but she tended to not voice it. He’d always thought that was considerate of her since he had a complicated but necessary relationship with them.

  “We should have dealt with that.”

  “What? Your father being an ass?”

  “Yes. I shouldn’t have ignored it. I shouldn’t have ignored the way they treated you and you shouldn’t have told me it didn’t matter when it did.”

  “It didn’t matter,” she said fiercely.

  But he… He just didn’t believe her. “What else have you lied to me about?”

  “What?” she replied, outrage written all over her face and in her fists clenching. But he couldn’t be worried about offending her when it was so true. “I am not lying.”

  “What else have you said didn’t matter or was fine when it clearly wasn’t? My family. My silence. What else?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just… You’re just making things up now.”

  He moved then, because it downright infuriated him she could lie like that. Right to his face. Not just now, but for this whole time. Lied and told him everything was fine when it wasn’t.

  Maybe he should have known. He could cop to that. But she shouldn’t have lied. They were both wrong here, and they both had to fight to fix it. He’d go first, but he needed her to come with him.

  She backed away from him as he walked toward her. She kept stepping backward right up until she hit the wall with a little oof. But he didn’t stop. He walked until they were leg to leg, looking down at her wide, uncertain eyes.

  “What. Else?” His teeth and fists were clenched because he didn’t want to yell. He didn’t want to scare her. But he wanted…something.

  “Go away,” she said, giving him an ineffective shove—both because it was barely even a nudge and because he was so locked in place likely nothing would knock him over.

  “Tell me what else you lied to me about.”

  “I didn’t lie. Sometimes… Sometimes a person keeps things to themselves out of self-preservation, Carter. And it doesn’t have anything to do with you, so knock it off.”

  “Nothing to do with me? Like learning my father wasn’t my father had nothing to do with you?” he asked, impressed when his voice sounded so deadly calm. Steely and sure.

  Like Dad.

  “Stop poking at this. Stop… Just stop.”

  He considered it, because he didn’t want to sound or feel like Gerald. He didn’t want her to be upset, especially when she was carrying their baby. He also didn’t want to back down.

  But there had to be a way to find some gentleness to exist even in all this anger.

  He inhaled and exhaled and forced himself to unclench his hands. Forced himself to focus on her, not what he was feeling. He needed to let some of his own emotions go so he had room to absorb hers.

  She was breathing rapidly, and her eyes kept darting anywhere but to him. She wasn’t angry, or not only angry. She was scared. And he didn’t think it was of him exactly. It was this talking that got her so panicked. He didn’t understand it, and in the past he might have hinted around that. Or he might have ignored it.

  Clearly, he’d made a mistake there. No more. “What are you so afraid of? Why can’t we talk about this?”

  She just looked at him, her mouth opening and then closing.

  “Sierra. Just tell me. Tell me. We have to let this go. No matter what happens, divorce or not, we have to let some of this go.”

  “I wanted a baby!” she yelled at him, more tears falling from her eyes and just about doing him in. “I didn’t want to go get a job or wait or anything. I just wanted to have a baby with you.” She yelled it all, though it cracked at the end.

  That hurt. Really hurt because a part of him had wondered, but when she’d agreed with him that she should find something for herself first, he’d let that wonder go. He’d been certain she’d agreed because she wanted to agree.

  “Honey, why didn’t you tell me?” His own voice cracked on the question even though she had sort of gotten what she wanted—they were going to have a baby in a few months. Still, that she’d kept that to herself, agreed with him when she hadn’t wanted to… He reached out but she slapped his hand away and maneuvered off the wall.

  “Tell you? So you could explain to me that I was wrong? So you could tell me all the rational, good reasons
we should wait?”

  “Well, that’s a discussion, isn’t it? I assume if you agree that you agree, not that you’re just pawning me off so you don’t have to have a discussion.”

  “It wouldn’t have been a discussion!”

  “Sierra—”

  “You’re the smart one. The employed one. You’re always right. You make the decisions. That’s our life. I wasn’t about to ruin the status quo.”

  Except, this went back to the running-away thing. Because sometimes she did fight him, tell him he was wrong or that just because he was the ‘smart’ one didn’t mean he got to decide everything.

  But she lied and she ran away when things mattered. It was a step to realize it, to identify it.

  But he had no idea where to go from here.

  Chapter Ten

  Why was this happening? Why had she said any of that? She should have ignored him. She’d yelled at him. Horrible things she’d wanted to keep to herself forever. Like him wanting to wait to have a baby had planted an awful fear inside of her, and how everything about the following months had made it grow.

  She’d never wanted him to know all that, but he wouldn’t back off or down and now she was crying in front of him and it changed nothing.

  Nothing.

  “Can’t you just leave me alone?” Alone to cry and hurt and give in to all this without him seeing it.

  “It seems as though we’ve done a little bit too much of that.”

  It somehow hurt more because it was true. There had been too much alone and too many silences, but it was too late. You didn’t fix silences because you couldn’t go back and talk instead. They existed forever. They were a symptom of something else.

  She tried to calm her shaky breath, the tears overflowing. She had to be strong somehow. Because if she gave in to more of this she wouldn’t just have a failed marriage, she’d have to remember this horrible, horrible moment for the rest of her life.

  “If you won’t leave, I’ll leave,” she managed to say, though she didn’t think it sounded as strong out loud as she’d hoped it would. But it didn’t matter. She moved for the door, certain, certain, Carter wouldn’t follow.