by Kent, Julia
“I guess so.”
The seagulls returned, circling over the water in front of us. She seemed content to just sit without talking, but my anxiety rose. I wanted this bad part over, so we could get back to where we’d been.
“Corabelle, I’m sorry you found out about — the other girls, the paid girls, the way you did. I should have told you.”
She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “That would have been an awkward conversation.”
“It was past, so I left it in the past. But I should have known they’d write me eventually. It’s their business.”
“A business,” she repeated, and I realized I was screwing up.
“I’ll change my number. They won’t bother me anymore. I don’t want them anymore. I want you.”
Her dark eyes watched me with measured calm. “You sure about that? You sure there isn’t something I could do or say to change your mind?”
“No way.” I gave up on resisting and moved closer, putting my arm around her shoulders.
She closed her eyes a moment. “I got arrested in New Mexico. That’s why I left school.”
A wave of shock coursed through me, but I kept my voice steady. “What happened?”
“I hit my professor. She was pregnant.”
Damn. I squeezed her shoulders. Had she been jealous? Bitter? Regret washed away the shock. I should have been there. “Did they expel you?”
“No. I had a really good relationship with the university since I worked in the main office. They let me leave quietly.”
I wanted to ask her why she’d done it, but just held on to her. She would say what she needed to say.
Corabelle looked out over the water. “She was smoking a joint behind a building on campus. I knocked it out of her mouth.”
Now this made sense. “You were protecting her baby.”
“Yes, but —” She silenced, her eyes following the flight of the gulls.
I waited, flirting with the idea of bringing up the line in the sand again. But that speech was self-serving. I didn’t want to tell her my past, but clearly she needed to tell me hers.
“I blew up because I felt like I knew the consequences of smoking pot. People say — doctors say — it’s not related, but it’s hard to separate what you’ve done with the end result when you know you shouldn’t have done it.”
My arm loosened its grip on her shoulders. “Are you saying you smoked pot? With Finn?” I washed cold. When? How? I knew her so well. It wasn’t possible.
“Katie thought it would help me on the SAT. I had no idea I was pregnant.”
I felt Jenny’s eyes on me. I kept my arm on Corabelle, trying to hold in my disbelief, my shock, my anger. I kept my voice even and steady. “So you were doing drugs while you carried my baby.”
She was shaking so hard now that I could feel the movement through her coat. I withdrew my arm. “You never told me you were smoking pot. I thought we shared everything back then.”
Something sparked in her, an electric charge so palpable that I could almost feel it flash through her body. “You know what, this is never going to work.” She stood up. “We’re both way more fucked up than we knew.”
I scrambled up after her. “Obviously. You never told me any of this. Not even when he was in the hospital. Did you at least tell the doctors? Maybe they could have done something!”
“They were never going to do anything!” Corabelle’s voice raised to a shriek, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jenny heading for us.
“You don’t know that!” I dragged my hands through my hair. “Thank God I can’t have kids anymore. This is way too fucked up.”
Her face bloomed red. “What are you talking about?”
Now I had her attention. I loomed over her, my fury peaking so hard I could barely see her through the haze. “I had a vasectomy. So no more of my kids can get fucked up.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Jenny pushed at me, trying to put space between me and Corabelle, but I didn’t budge.
“Why did you do that?” Corabelle’s doll features contorted into something so tragic, it almost made me calm down, but hell no. She’d fucked up big time. The biggest way possible.
My fists clenched. “Because I always thought it was my fault Finn died. Because I would have been a crappy father, just like mine was. Because I signed to shut off the machines — lied even, to sign to shut them off, since we weren’t married.”
Jenny gave up on trying to move me and clutched Corabelle instead. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.
But I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. Hell, all this guilt and I wasn’t the one guilty. “All these years I’ve been fucked up over this, and it was always YOU.” My body leaned toward her, and suddenly my father flashed before me, the same pose, and now Corabelle was the young version of me, cowed, bending down to escape.
Corabelle sank back into the sand like a paper lantern collapsing. Jenny let go of her and whirled around to me. “That’s enough, Gavin. Stop it now!” Her voice was a shriek. She snatched at my arm and dragged with everything she had. This time I let her take me away. I had to back off this. I had to regroup. But this was way beyond what I expected to hear from Corabelle.
Smaller birds scattered from an abandoned picnic as Jenny jerked me along the shore. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. “She’s trying to come clean! What happened to your unconditional love and acceptance, asshole?”
“Our kid is dead,” I said, feeling the freeze come off my words.
“She didn’t kill it,” Jenny said. “Every doctor said it was not related.”
“Then why the hell is she bringing it up?” I ran my hands through my hair and glanced down the beach. Corabelle was still huddled in the sand, rocking back and forth. I’d never seen her like that. Instantly, I wanted to go back and gather her up, hold her close, kiss it away. Damn it.
“She needed to get it out. It’s what’s kept her so screwed up for so long. This was the only way to fix things. The only way she could actually be with you.”
Shit.
“She hurt just as much as you over that baby, probably more. So get back there and fix this.” Jenny grabbed my face and made me look into her eyes. “I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass if she ends up with you. I don’t think you’re that great. But it’s what she wants. And I’m helping her get what she wants.”
Corabelle wanted me back. Or she had. I’d told her about the vasectomy now. We were done with secrets. I shook off Jenny’s hands and we turned back to Corabelle. She was gone.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Oh my God,” Jenny said and pointed at the water.
Corabelle was heading out to sea.
Chapter 42: Corabelle
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Tina said in the car yesterday, about that moment after she slashed her wrists and realized she might die.
Yes, this is the right thing. I can be with my baby and no one can take him away again.
When I stood up, I felt no hesitation whatsoever. I walked straight into the waves, shivering against the chill as the water covered my feet, soaking through my suede boots, and rising up beyond my shins, then my knees.
I stepped off a shelf, and now the water was at my waist. My coat soaked through and became heavier, pulling me down. I held my breath in my most familiar way, still walking, picturing Finn in his little isolette, the disks on his chest and the ventilator going into his mouth. An oscillator, I remembered suddenly. They’d put him on the oscillator at the end, when he had too many apnea episodes. That’s when he stopped moving around, medically paralyzed. Lost. When they decided not to operate. Because he couldn’t breathe.
I wouldn’t breathe either.
The water crossed my neck and I saw the familiar spots fill my vision. I thought I heard Gavin’s voice, but maybe it was Finn’s. Maybe where he was now, he could talk, no tube in his throat. He’d never cried. I’d never heard his voice. But he’
d sound like his dad.
Gavin had taken away all our choices. No more babies. No more babies with me. Life without Gavin hadn’t worked. Life without Finn wasn’t worth it.
My lungs began to heave, but I was already under by then. I tried to relax into the darkness, like I had in the bathtub, but the water wasn’t warm, freezing cold instead, and the chill kept forcing me to gasp. I bobbed to the surface, and my body took a breath. Damn it. It wouldn’t work. I couldn’t do it.
I turned in the water, fighting against the coat. Jenny was on the shore, her mouth open, screaming. Gavin was nowhere, gone now, gone for good. I held my breath and exhaled, sinking below the surface of the water. Maybe it would work this time.
My boots touched bottom and I stood at the foot of the world, descending into hell, except everything was so cold. My lungs began to burn, throbbing with the need for air. I found another small bit to exhale, and relaxed into it. I began to curve in upon myself, drawing up my knees like a fetus, like Finn. I would get to see Finn.
The earth shifted around me, cradling my body in its watery embrace. I moved through the waves, one with the ocean, and now I felt no pain whatsoever.
Until a bright light seared through my eyelids. Air shocked my senses and I was brutally cold. “Help me get her out!” a voice said, and I realized it was Gavin. I tried to open my eyes, but they didn’t obey. My lungs hurt, pain beyond any measure I had known. My head clunked against something hard, and now my body heaved upward. Strong arms turned me on my side and I felt an eruption within me, the ocean spewing from my chest and out my mouth and nose.
“Call 911 just in case,” Gavin said.
“I already did.”
I began to recognize my various body parts, hair on my face, layered with sand. My cheek, gritty and half buried. My bare feet, painfully cold. My entire midsection quaked, heavy with the coat.
“She’s breathing now,” Gavin said.
I opened my eyes, but the light blasted through my head and I had to close them again.
“Corabelle?” Gavin’s voice made me think of some other time, some other memory. He was ten years old and his face was pressed against my window screen.
I crawled out of bed and walked over, my sleepiness dissolving at the distress I could hear.
“Corabelle?” he asked again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Can I come in here?”
I glanced back at my open door and hurried across the room to close it. When I came back, he’d pried the screen off.
“Did something happen?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but when his face turned, the moonlight revealed a red welt across his cheek. I laid my palm against it. “What did he do?”
“I deserved it. I forgot to close the garage. The dog got out and dug up Mom’s flowers.” He pressed his hand over mine. “I got away from him.”
“We should tell somebody,” I said. “He shouldn’t do that.”
“Just let me stay here,” he said. “He won’t come for me over here.”
I led him over to my bed and we sat down. “Did he hit your sister?”
Gavin shook his head. “He says it’s wrong to hit a girl.”
I gathered him in my arms and put my head on his shoulder. “I want you to live with me.”
“Me too,” he said.
“Promise me we’ll do that. Live together.”
He squeezed me. “We will. I promise.”
The sand had gotten in my teeth, making my mouth taste like dirt. I tried to spit it out.
“I think she’s okay,” Gavin said.
“EMS is coming,” Jenny said.
Something moved under my head, soft and warm. I tried opening my eyes again and this time they accepted the sun. I saw nothing but green. Jenny’s coat.
“Corabelle? Can you say something?” Jenny’s face was inches from mine, black mascara streaking down her cheeks.
“You look terrible,” I said.
She managed to laugh and cry at the same time. “You look worse.” She glanced behind me.
“Was it Gavin?” I asked.
She nodded.
I shifted onto my back. Gavin leaned over me, water dripping off his face. “You scared me there for a minute.”
“Just for a minute?”
He smiled, but his eyes were still full of fear. “If a minute lasts sixty-seven years.”
“I think I’m going to need some help,” I said. “Real help.”
He closed his hands over mine. “We’ll get it for you. We’ll figure this out.”
We. He still said we.
Footsteps approached at a run. “Is this her?” a loud voice asked.
“She’s conscious now,” Gavin said.
“How long was she in?”
“A few minutes.”
Two men lifted me onto a stretcher, forcing me to let go of Gavin’s hand.
“Do you know her?” one of the medics asked.
Gavin looked down at me. “She’s the mother of my son.”
“Then you can come with us.”
One of the medics flashed a light in my eyes. “Can you tell us your name, miss?”
“Corabelle,” I said.
The medic nodded at the other, and suddenly I was moving. Jenny held her coat, rooted to the sand, growing smaller as we rushed down the beach. Gavin kept up.
We got to the ambulance, and the medics paused while one opened the door. Something fluttered next to my head, and I turned to it. A monarch butterfly fought against the wind, sailing forward, then getting pushed back again. The next gale sent it straight into Gavin’s chest.
Gavin stared down at the butterfly, flapping against his wet jacket.
“It’s Finn, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Has to be.”
The butterfly paused for another moment, showing off its black and orange wings, then flew back into the wind. The medics lifted me into the ambulance and started peeling off my coat. “Blankets behind you,” one said to Gavin. “You might want to get your coat off too.”
He took my temperature. “You’re very lucky. Not everybody who gets sucked into the Pacific wearing something like this comes back out breathing. People don’t realize how a coat can weigh you down. How did you end up in there?”
I glanced up at Gavin and decided not to answer. I could tell a social worker, or not. Take the doctor’s mental health clinic referral, or not. Those were decisions for another time. Gavin had said we’d figure it out. We’d saved each other time and time again. I had faith that whenever one of us needed rescue, the other would always be there.
THE END
~*´♥`*~
I wrote Forever Innocent as a standalone book, but readers asked if I would let Gavin and Corabelle’s story continue. So I have now released a conclusion to their story called Forever Loved. While more difficulties face them, I think the ending will feel more complete to those who want to see this pair work through their past.
The Forever Series then moves on to Tina’s story in Forever Sheltered.
Click to see all Deanna’s books.
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EXCLUSIVE Bonus Content by Deanna
Early this year, I was asked to write for One Page Love Story. My submission was limited to very few words. I chose a scene that is only briefly mentioned in Forever Innocent — that life-changing few minutes when Corabelle and Gavin realize they will have a baby as teenagers.
In this bundle, I have expanded the scene so that it gets the love and attention such a moment deserves.
It is exclusive to this collection, and cannot be found anywhere else.
~*´`*~
Gavin
I’d never seen Corabelle quite like this, knees wide on the toilet seat, parts of her as exposed as she’d ever let them be. Shyness was long gone. Unnecessary. Secondary to the emotion at hand.
I knew a teen boy would be expected to think about t
he visual, the girl. But my eyes were fixed on the plastic stick and its clear window, a plus or minus that would change our future.
The spongy end bounced when her pee hit it. Corabelle frowned in concentration. The instructions said to hold it there for fifteen seconds. I counted steadily out loud, realizing for the first time that fifteen seconds might actually qualify for eternity.
When I fell silent, she handed the stick to me and I capped the yellow end. She got shy then, closing her legs, bracing her head on her hands. “How long do we have to wait?” she asked.
“Three minutes,” I said. “Then it has a result.”
“Turn around.”
I did as she asked without saying a thing about how it was kinda late now, until she flushed the toilet.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. Basic instructions seemed easiest. We had been grateful for the simple numbered steps in the pamphlet that came with the test. It kept our mind off the complicated part of figuring out how to handle what we were going through.
“Do you want me to look at it first, or you look first?” I asked her.
“We’ll look together.”
I moved to the sink and set the test far enough away that neither of us could steal a glance. Corabelle stared out the frosted blocks of glass in the window as though she could see through them and out into our future.
“Got my SAT results,” she said.
“Really? You didn’t say anything.”
She shrugged. “This test is probably more important.”
Nothing had ever been more important than her SAT before. But I understood what she meant. It was true.
“You’re on that birth control shot. I’m sure it’s nothing.” I’d said this a thousand times since she started feeling funny. We’d done research and knew she wouldn’t bleed like normal on the shot. You were supposed to just have faith that it was working.
We’d lost faith.
“It’s probably time.” She turned back to me, her dark hair falling around her shoulders. “I think I want you to look first.”