by Lilly Atlas
Well then life dealt them the worst hand possible.
It was at that moment, staring at each other with so much unsaid, so much grief, sorrow, guilt, and uncertainty standing between them, that the curtain slid open. A scowling Roxie stood rigid with her arms folded over her chest and Brett’s arm slung over her shoulders.
He wore a shit-eating grin and his eyes twinkled with his typical mirth. If history was telling, Brett probably spent the last fifteen minutes working poor Roxie into a frenzy. There were some serious sparks between those two. Derek could never figure out why they hadn’t ever hooked up. Instead of letting those sparks ignite into passion, they chose to burn each other with snarky remarks and insults.
It had to be some kind of long, drawn-out foreplay. Waste of time if you asked him, but to each his own.
“You know, man, if you’d just told me how much of a problem you had with the butterfly tattoo, I’d have cancelled my date. You didn’t have to go and get shot to keep me from the lovely Jessica.”
Derek grunted. “It wasn’t a date and you damn well know it.”
“Huh?” Lyss looked between the two men with a raised eyebrow. “What did we miss?”
“Sounds like Brett was on his way to a sleazy booty call when Der got shot. Surprise, surprise,” Roxie said, her voice rife with disgust.
“Jealous, honey? You know if you ask real nice I just might throw you a—”
“Okay, Brett, we all get it. You’re a stud. Now, leave Rox alone.” Lyss had crossed the room and now stood with her arm around a frowning Roxie’s shoulders. The stiffness in her posture relaxed when their friends joined them, like she needed some kind of buffer to feel comfortable around him.
That couldn’t be a good sign.
They stayed and shot the shit for about forty-five minutes. Most of that time was him recounting the robbery for Lyss and Roxie. Where Roxie was fascinated with the story and rapid fired questions at him, Lyss drew in on herself the longer the story went on.
Maybe he shouldn’t have described it in such detail. She’d had quite the scare that night. He tried to put himself in her shoes and it wasn’t exactly a fun place to be. Had he heard Lyss was shot and didn’t have any further information he’d have gone out of his fucking mind. He’d have torn the city apart to get to her and make sure she was okay.
After a while, Nancy returned to prepare him to be transported from the ER to a room for the rest of the night. He’d convinced Alyssa to go home and get some sleep. Brett lived a stone’s throw from the hospital and offered to pick Derek up at discharge and drive him out to their home in Arlington.
Roxie and Brett begged out saying they’d give Lyss and Derek a few moments alone.
Great. A few more moments of awkward.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you at the house tomorrow then.”
It hurt. It physically hurt to see the aloofness in his normally warm and loving wife. He had no one to blame but himself for that one. But he planned to take the first steps toward mending the damage the second he stepped foot into his house.
“I’ll be there. We’ll talk,” he said.
She held his gaze for a moment before flicking her attention to his shoulder. Then in a move he wasn’t expecting, she rushed forward and gave him a gentle hug while planting a soft kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for being okay,” she whispered against his ear. Then she stepped back and gave him another of those sad smiles before slipping around the curtain.
Alone with nothing to distract himself, two things happened. First, the pain in both the base of his skill and his shoulder screamed to life and made him groan out loud. And second, his mind went straight to thoughts of his troubles with Lyss.
Lyss said something to the therapist the other day. Something he hadn’t understood at the time, but it was beginning to make sense now. She’d said life was moving forward whether they wanted it to or not. Whether they were lost in the past or not.
The world kept turning, the sun rose three hundred and sixty-five times per year, he aged, new clients discovered his business, and his wife was possibly pregnant.
Life moving forward.
There was a strange feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. Almost a flutter of, dare he say…excitement? Just a day ago he wouldn’t have thought it possible, but seeing Alyssa burst in there tonight all disheveled and in a tizzy, potentially carrying his child, he didn’t feel the abject panic that he had the other night.
Derek wasn’t overly religious. He’d seen enough evil in the world to make him question the notion of a benevolent God. The jury was still out on whether or not he believed in an afterlife, but for some reason, he could almost feel Katie nudging him back into life.
Maybe that’s what this was, whether a false alarm or a true pregnancy, maybe it was Katie’s way of stepping in and giving him the push he needed. Because let’s face it, he wasn’t going to abandon Alyssa if she was having his child. Hell, he’d never leave her anyway, but they were stuck. They needed something to jolt the life back into their relationship.
“This your doing, Katie bug?” he whispered into the quiet room.
There wasn’t an answer of course, but a sense of peace settled over him. That was answer enough.
Life moving forward.
Chapter Twenty-One
Alyssa wiped invisible dust off the perfectly clean coffee table in her family room for the tenth time that morning. It was either that or vacuum again, and the idea of dragging the bulky machine down from her bedroom only to run it over a carpet she’d vacuumed just an hour ago wasn’t very appealing.
“Argh!” She gripped her hair in frustration. She had to chill out. It was Derek, for crying out loud. He wouldn’t give a flying fig if there was dust on the shelves or dirt in the carpet.
It was time to put down the duster and relax until Derek came home, which should be in the next half hour or so.
So, with chilling out in mind, Alyssa sank onto the plush couch, propped her bare feet on the coffee table she’d just re-dusted, and rested her head back. Sleep had been elusive, and she’d spent what little of the night remained after the hospital staring at the ceiling and planning what she wanted to say to Derek.
This reunion was going to go one of two ways. Either they were going to agree to come together, work toward fixing their issues, or it could potentially be the end of her marriage. She groaned as her stomach rolled with nausea. It was her worst nightmare, but as she’d heard time and time again, the death of a child so frequently led to the death of the marriage. It was just so damn difficult for two people who handled such a devastating emotional event in different ways to remain together. That sorrow remained between them forever growing and festering until the wound was gangrenous. And what happened to a non-healing infected limb?
It was amputated.
She did not want to be amputated from Derek’s life.
But what if being with her meant continued suffering? What if he couldn’t find a way to both be with her and learn to live with the anguish of Katie’s death? Because that’s how they had to deal with it. They’d never get past it, or move on from it. It was just learning to live with the reality of that horrific loss.
But for many, that didn’t happen, if what she read was true. Add to it his misplaced guilt, and maybe being with her was just too damn painful for him.
In that case, she would let him go.
Despite what it would do to her, how it would completely destroy what remained of her already battered heart. She loved him that much and would do anything for him no matter the cost.
The thought made her physically ill. When she thought of a future without him, nothing came. Just blankness. He was so vital to her existence, and before Katie’s illness she’d have said the same about her role in his life.
But she would do what she must to ensure Derek had a chance at happiness.
She blew out a breath and let her eyes drift closed. A few minutes of rest would do wonders for her raw nerves. The sleepless
night sure hadn’t helped anything.
“Lyss? Alyssa? Baby, wake up.”
“What? Huh?” Alyssa dropped her feet and shot straight up as her heart pounded out of her chest. “Derek? Oh crap. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep for more than a few minutes. What time is it? When did you get back? How’s your shoulder? Can I—”
Derek chuckled and plopped onto the couch to the left of her, his uninjured shoulder butting up against her. “Calm down, Lyss. That’s some serious rambling. I just walked in. My shoulder is fine, and I’m glad you’re sleeping. I’m guessing you didn’t get much last night.”
“Maybe about ten minutes,” she said as she flopped against the back of the couch. She turned her head and found Derek gazing at her, a mixture of heat and sadness in his eyes. “I can’t do this anymore. This thing where we tiptoe around each other like we’ve forgotten who we are, so I’m just going to rip of the Band-Aid and tell you what I obsessed about all night. Really for the past few months, but I think I figured it out in my head last night.”
With a nod, Derek linked his fingers with hers and held tight. “Okay.”
It took a moment to gather the strength to speak, and after a hard swallow she said words she never could have imagined would cross her lips. “I do not want to be what keeps you from finding peace and happiness again in life.”
The look of shock that crossed his face was almost comical despite the heaviness of the situation. When he opened his mouth, she held up her hand. “Just let me say it all, okay?”
He nodded, but the tick in his jaw told her he wasn’t happy about it.
“Looking at me has to be a constant reminder of what we lost. Of whatever guilt—although totally misguided—that you’re feeling. And now I’ve dropped the bomb of a possible pregnancy when the idea of it is terrifying. I want to give…” She almost couldn’t say the words. “I want to give you an out,” she said, stronger this time.
“Lyss,” he said, shaking his head. His voice was so weighed down with pain.
“If you need to be away from me, either temporarily or permanently, I’ll understand. Knowing you stayed with me and let yourself be eaten alive by guilt and pain would be so much worse than knowing you left, but were able to live a life with some contentment again.” She choked out the last words and swiped at the tears that wouldn’t remain in her eyes with an almost violent smack.
Inside, her stomach twisted and turned until she felt the knots would never come undone and her heart ached with an unfathomable pain. She had to sink her teeth into her bottom lip to keep her mouth from opening and screaming how it was all a lie and begging him to stay with her.
But she couldn’t do that to the man she loved. Couldn’t condemn him to a life of heartache.
“Jesus, Lyss.” He dropped her hand and bent forward, elbows on his knees. Instead of speaking right away, he linked his hands behind his head and she would have sworn she heard a small sniff. After what felt like an hour, but was probably only ten seconds, he lifted his head and she was shocked to her core to see a sheen of wetness in his eyes.
“Living one more second away from you is the last fucking thing I want, Lyss.”
Oh thank God.
Relief hit her so hard she felt weak and drained.
“I’m never going to be without you again, Lyss. Can I say a few things now?” He faced her, grabbed one of her hands, and brought the palm to his lips.
She leaned forward as his lips brushed her skin and rested her forehead on his uninjured shoulder. “Yes,” she whispered. “Go ahead.”
Warmth spread through her just from the innocent contact of her head on him and her hand in his. The road moving forward wouldn’t be easy, but at least she didn’t have to do it alone.
Alyssa’s words had been like a smack in the face. If he hadn’t been sitting right next to her listening as they left her mouth, Derek never would have believed what she was saying. She didn’t want to live without him, of that he was one hundred percent certain, yet she was willing to forego her own happiness to give him what she thought he needed.
Good thing she was so fucking far from knowing what he needed in that moment. Because there was only one thing he needed then and only one thing he’d need for the rest of his damn life.
And that was her.
Lyss.
His beautiful, selfless, loving wife.
He gently nudged her off his shoulder and looked straight into her ocean-blue eyes. Suddenly it all seemed easier. Natural. Like he couldn’t wait to get the words out of his mouth. Words that would help mend the fissures in their relationship.
“Being with you the past few times, touching you, tasting you, being inside you, was exactly what I needed to remind me of what I was missing. And pretending to be someone else gave me the freedom to enjoy it, enjoy you, without the heavy baggage of the past couple years sitting between us.”
“It was the same for me, Der. I wanted so many times over the past year to try to get us back to where we were, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there with so much sadness between us. It was like there was a giant fissure between us and neither of us could find a way over or around it. You could practically taste the grief in our house, it was so thick.”
“It was a good idea. Getting Maggie involved, trying her crazy plan.”
“Well,” she said as she squeezed his hand, “it seems like it was working until the end of the second…uh…encounter. Then it all went downhill, and you left. What happened?”
Derek tucked a wayward piece of hair behind her ear, leaving his hand cupped around the back of her neck. “Everything I’d been suppressing for so long came flooding in. You were there with me, all beautiful and satisfied and open to me. More than just physically. And I just realized how close I came to losing everything. I felt guilty, like I’d failed our marriage. From there it all just spiraled.” He shrugged.
“Spiraled into what? Because you pushed me away instead of pulling me in.”
“Yeah.” Baring his soul sucked. “Being a protector, being proactive, attacking problems…it’s what I was trained to do for so many years that it’s now ingrained in me. It’s in my blood. Who I am and all that shit. None of it stopped when I left the SEALS. It just changed. Now, instead of protecting and fighting for my country, I did that for my business, my friends, and most importantly for you, Lyss. And then Katie.”
Would it ever get easier to say her name?
“There wasn’t a damn thing we could have done beyond what we tried to save her. And the same could happen to you and I’d be just as powerless. It fucked with my head. Had me thinking I couldn’t take care of you in other ways. Couldn’t protect you. Which had me thinking you’d be better off without me.”
“Derek, that’s not—”
He lifted her soft hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. Her eyes went liquid. Two pools of deep blue he’d gladly drown in. “I know, baby. It’s not true. It doesn’t even really make sense. I was just in a bad head space. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself because it’s wrong either way. Then you told me your birth control might have failed, and I went into full-on panic mode. I freaked out and walked away. And now you think I want out of our marriage. God, Lyss. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Before he had a chance to say anything further, a firm but delicate hand covered his mouth. Did it make him a prick that his first instinct was to slide his tongue through the slit between her fingers and watch her eyes grow hazy with desire?
Maybe a little.
Thankfully, he’d honed enough self-control over the years to avoid the temptation.
Just barely.
“Stop,” she said, a sympathetic smile tilting her lips. “Just stop. Whatever it is you feel the need to apologize for, whatever you think you screwed up, it’s forgiven. What I learned from the past few weeks is that there isn’t a script for handling something like our daughter d-dying.”
An invisible fist squeezed his heart at Lyss’s fumble. Seeing her strugg
le through the emotions was even worse than being in pain himself.
“You’re here now. And I’m here now. That’s what matters.” She sniffed, and tears leaked from her eyes. “I was so afraid it was over.”
And therein lay his guilt. That he allowed her to feel that way. That he made her feel that way because he was too fucked up to handle things properly.
“And I know that’s what you feel bad about. But don’t. Please. I’m asking you to let go of the guilt. We have enough legitimate hurt and sorrow to deal with. We don’t need to create any more.”
Her eyes were watery with faint purple smudges under them. A memento from the previous sleepless night. When they were done, he was going to make sure she slept for a week. After he got his fill of her, of course.
Her words touched somewhere deep in him, putting a bandage over the bleeding wound that had been festering for too long. He couldn’t wait any longer. With the hand wrapped around the back of her neck, he hauled her against him, kissing her with all the love and gratitude he felt.
And it was a fuckload.
She stiffened for a nanosecond then melted against him.
Before releasing her, he whispered against her ear. “I’m the luckiest bastard out there.”
She gave him a small smile, but the tears were gone, replaced with heat and promise.
They talked for what had to be hours. Lyss really opened up about her internal war between wanting to be a mother again and the deep-seated fear of something happening to any children they might have. If there was some way he could ease her mind, guarantee any children they had would live long happy lives, he’d do it in a heartbeat.
Pay any amount of money.
Break any laws necessary.
Sacrifice any body part.
But as they found out the very hard way, life didn’t work like that. There were no guarantees.
They’d both agreed to continue their sessions with Maggie. Neither was under the illusion that this talk today would erase two years of distance and drifting. But it was an enormous step in the right direction and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Derek felt some peace in his soul.