Sweet Montana Boxed Set 1-5

by Lisa Mondello

  “Why did you leave me, Julie? Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?” Hunter asked, feeling an ache in his chest that always appeared when he thought about the two of them.

  Their day had been wonderful. He hadn’t pushed anything because he didn’t want to ruin what was new and good with them, even if it was only ever going to be friendship from this point on. But he didn’t believe that was the case. He could see it in her eyes. She still loved him.

  “I had to go,” Julie said. “You know that. You know how bad things were.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. I know I did.”

  “Yes, you did. And when I found out I was pregnant…” She stopped dancing and placed her hands over her cheeks. “I was freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go to my parents. Caleb was gone in the military. And then I saw what you did and realized my fears were correct. I felt so alone.”

  “You told Katie.”

  She shook her head. “No. No one.”

  “But Caleb…”

  “Caleb found out by accident. I’m not really sure how he found out. But Katie didn’t tell him. He told me she was just as surprised as he was. I never had a chance to tell Katie what was going on. I guess I felt…”

  “Ashamed?”

  She nodded.

  “Of me?”

  “Of being wrong. Of being stupid and thinking…”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. It does matter, Julie. I loved you. Yes, I was a mess. But we could have had a life together. I would have changed.”

  “How could I know that?” she asked, turning away from him. “I was a scared eighteen-year-old girl with a boyfriend who was a drug addict. I know that hurts you when I say it.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I thought I was making the right decision.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to be there,” Hunter said. “You could have told me you were pregnant. You didn’t. You just left.”

  “I thought I was doing it because I had to. I thought I had no choice.”

  “So you went off and had an abortion on your own?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Is that what you think I did? You think I didn’t want our baby?”

  Julie spun around and started stalking away. Then she stopped and turned back. Behind the tears of pain was anger.

  “How dare you. You have no idea what I went through.”

  “You’re right. You didn’t give me a chance to know anything.”

  “You were a mess back then, Hunter. You didn’t see yourself slowly coming apart at the seams. Trip did. He told me last week that he knew he was either going to have to bury you or throw you out. And he didn’t want to do either.”

  Shock ripped through him. “Trip said that?”

  She nodded. “He cares a lot about you, Hunter. He told me because he wanted me to know how much you’ve changed. He didn’t have to tell me that. I see it. But that’s not what I was facing then. I had to come to terms with the fact that my baby’s father was a drug addict. I loved a man who was a total mess.”

  The words stung as much as if she’d slapped him. They were true, and he knew it. He deserved it. But it hurt all the same.

  “I’ve changed, Julie. I stood at the bridge that all drug addicts stand in front of and I made the choice to cross it to the other side instead of jumping in the river of death.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She shook her head as her anger evaporated. “It does,” she said quietly. “Really it does. I’m glad you got clean.”

  “Me, too. I’m just sorry you weren’t here to see it sooner. Or even let me know that you were carrying my child.”

  “How would that have changed anything? You said yourself it took you a year to get clean.”

  He paced and measured his words as pain built up inside his gut. “You said you didn’t have an abortion. Did you have the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you put our child up for adoption. I’ll never get a chance to see him. Her. What was it? Did I have a son or daughter?”

  She gave him a confused look. “It doesn’t matter. If I’d stayed here it wouldn’t have made a difference, Hunter.”

  “Of course it would have. I loved you. I got clean for you. I looked for you.”

  “You…you did?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t find you. No one could. Ask your brother. Caleb tried.”

  She sighed. “It wouldn’t have changed anything if you’d found me. We still wouldn’t have had our child. It was too late. I wanted our child. I…wanted to raise him. I was barely eighteen years old.”

  “Him? It was a boy?”

  She nodded as tears filled her eyes.

  “He was born?”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

  “And you gave him away?”

  The words tasted bitter in his mouth. He didn’t want to be angry with her about it, but he was.

  She gulped back a sob. “I found an adopted family for him. But it didn’t work out.”

  “Why? They didn’t want him?”

  “Of course, they wanted him! Why wouldn’t they want him? He was perfect.”

  Tears rolled down Julie’s cheeks as she stood ten feet away from him. He didn’t want her to run. He wanted to know the truth.

  “Tell me. What happened to our son?”

  “He died!”

  The tears streamed down Julie’s face and she doubled over as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t process what she was saying.

  “The baby died?”

  Julie wiped tears from her cheeks but they were replaced by new tears. “Don’t you see? If you had found me we still wouldn’t have had our little boy.”

  “How? What happened?”

  “I can’t go through this again.” She started pacing. “I have lived this for ten years.”

  “And for me it’s the first time. Don’t I deserve to know, Julie? Can’t I grieve with you?”

  She stopped pacing and weighed his words. Then she took a deep breath. “I hated you for a long time, Hunter. I hated you for being such a mess and forcing me to leave for the sake of our child. I thought I was doing the right thing. How could I raise a child when I could hardly take care of myself? And you? When I found out just how bad things were, there was no way you could have been a good father. You know that’s true.”

  “What happened, Julie? Tell me. It’s okay. You can tell me.”

  She shook her head. “It’ll never be okay, Hunter. I thought I’d made myself numb just to move on. But it still feels like yesterday. I can still feel the weight of him in my arms.”

  Hunter’s whole body shook as he took a step forward. She didn’t move, so he took another step.

  “Come here. Sit with me on the grass.”

  He led her to a grassy area and they both sat down. He waited for her to stop sobbing.

  “I went into labor,” she said, already looking rung out from crying. “I had dreaded it for months not because I was afraid of going through labor but because I knew it would be the end of my time with him. Every day while I was pregnant I loved having that little boy growing inside me. I wanted him. But I knew I couldn’t keep him.”

  She sniffed back a few tears and he reached out and held her hand.

  “You have no idea how guilty I felt, Hunter.”

  “For wanting him?”

  “Because I blamed myself. There I was in labor, crying and dreading every moment of it because I knew it was the end. I was going to have to hand him over to strangers. I wouldn’t see him anymore.

  “The adoptive family had wanted them to take the baby away as soon as he was born, but I wanted to see him. I’d insisted. I wanted to see if he looked like you or me. I wanted to hold him. But the adoptive parents were there and it made it uncomfortable because I was so miserable and they were so happy. And I hated that they were happy. I wanted th
em to go away. With every push, I wanted to keep him safe in my womb. But when he was born, he wasn’t breathing.”

  Hunter watched Julie’s face as she relayed the horror of what she’d experienced. Alone. He held her hand wishing to God he’d been there with her then so she wouldn’t have had to deal with it on her own.

  “The doctor and nurses worked hard. The adoptive parents were crying by the bassinet and had each other to hold. I had no one. You have no idea what it was like when they told me he was gone. I wanted to hold him. I cried, but I felt numb. Then the adoptive parents wanted to hold my baby. But the nurses asked them to leave. They got so upset. They refused. It was awful. But the adoption hadn’t gone through so they were forced to leave.

  “Then everyone left and I was alone with him. I don’t know what was worse. Failing or being alone. I know they blamed me. I could hear them in the hallway yelling. They wanted a perfect baby. And he was perfect. But he was gone. I spent years wondering if my feelings for not wanting to let him go caused his death.”

  “That’s not true. You have to know that.”

  “Yes. Now. It took me five years of therapy to accept that I didn’t cause his death. It was a freak thing. But I still blamed myself.”

  “I wish I’d been there for you. I would have wanted to be there for you.”

  “I got a few precious hours to hold him and look at him. Afterwards, when everything was done, I got a letter in the mail suing me for the cost of my medical expenses and some living expenses they’d offered while I was pregnant and couldn’t work. The couple who were supposed to adopt the baby wanted to be reimbursed. It was like our baby was a financial transaction. Even though the adoption agency said they couldn’t do that, it caused me a lot of stress on top of the grief. I lost it. Dr. Matthews said I had a nervous breakdown. The walls just crumbled.”

  Hunter shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t know how you could have blamed yourself.”

  “It’s grief. I tortured myself. I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t face Caleb or my parents. I couldn’t face anyone or even talk about him. It took a long time for me to work through everything, but I guess I have. As best as anyone can.”

  She looked so fragile and he wanted to hold her in his arms and cradle her until the pain of it all went away. He wanted to find the right words to comfort her but he still felt so shaken by everything she’d confessed.

  Their baby had died. He’d never had a chance to see his son.

  Tears filled his eyes. “What did you name him? Or did they…”

  She shook her head. “Like I said, the adoption never went through. It was… A little bit of a struggle because they wanted to bury him. I had no money to do it. But they hadn’t adopted him. It caused a lot of friction at a time when I didn’t need that type of pressure. I mean, I was getting over the loss of the baby and they pretended like I shouldn’t be grieving as much as they were because I was going to give him away. Some of the things they’d said were hateful. But they were grieving in their own way, too, I guess.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you grieve? Even if he had been healthy when he was born, you would’ve grieved.”

  “In the end I was able to bury him. It took a long time to pay for it. Of course, the funeral was small. Just a local chaplain and me. I buried him. He has your name.”

  “Williams?”

  “Hunter Williams. That was the name of our son.”

  “I don’t understand, Julie. I know you needed time to deal with everything that happened, but it took so long for you to come home.”

  “Everyone grieves different. I grieved for you, and I grieved for our baby. And then that grief turned to anger.”

  “Towards me?”

  “Yes. And me. For not being stronger.”

  She got up from the ground and brushed the grass from her dress. He got up with her but didn’t bother looking at his jeans.

  “This is hard for me, Hunter,” she said. “People say to just get over it. How do you do that? How do you get over losing a child? I never had the chance to see him grow. But I had thought that he would grow up in a loving home. And maybe one day he’d come find me.”

  “I should have been there for you.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered, Hunter. Our son died. If you were there he probably would have still died. And then what would have happened? Would you have still continued to get yourself clean? You were as fragile as I was back then. People don’t change overnight. I’m not the girl I was back then and you’re not the man you were. We’ve both changed. Back then, neither one of us would’ve been able to raise him. But no one got that chance.”

  “You held him?”

  Tears were streaming down her face again. Somehow he thought when she finally told him the truth she would be relieved. He’d be relieved. But he felt awful in ways he hadn’t thought possible. And by the look of Julie, she was no better.

  “I can’t talk about this anymore, Hunter. You know what happened and that will have to be enough.”

  She started walking away toward the field where they’d parked the truck.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?” he asked, looking at her with confusion as she grabbed her purse and the stuffed animal he’d won her at the fair from the ground where she’d dropped them when he’d started dancing with her.

  His cell phone rang but he ignored it.

  “That’s probably the same rancher who’s been calling you all afternoon,” Julie said, changing the subject.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do. This is your life. I know what it’s like to build yourself up out of despair. My despair may been different than yours, but it still despair.”

  Tears filled his eyes. “This may be old despair for you, Julie. But for me it’s in the present. Our son didn’t die nine years ago. He died today.”

  The phone rang again.

  “Just answer the damn phone, Hunter!”

  “Why? So you could run away again?”

  Sweet Montana Secrets: Chapter Eight

  Julie couldn’t say any more. She started toward the field where they’d parked the truck. Hell, she’d walk back home if she had to instead of waiting for Hunter. There had to be someone in town that she knew who’d be able to drop her off at Caleb’s apartment.

  She raced through the grass, trying to get her bearings. She’d driven to the festival before. She’d lived in Sweet for years when she was younger. And for some reason she didn’t know which way to go. The walls were closing in on her again and she had no idea what to do or how to make them stop.

  She felt Hunter’s hand on her arm and she swung around not caring if he saw the tears.

  “Please, just take be home. Just let me be alone.”

  She wanted him to take her in his arms and make the hurt go away. She’d wanted that so many times over the years and now Hunter was right there. And she couldn’t do it. She’d gotten so used to running because it was easier.

  “Okay,” he said softly “But I’m not letting this go. I’m not losing you all over again when I’ve just found you.”

  They’d walked in silence to the truck. Julie had a feeling that Hunter was about as rung out with emotion as she was.

  He knew. That was a step. But seeing the pain in his expression and the tears in his eyes when she’d told him their son had died brought it all back. She was eighteen again and her heart was shattered.

  As soon as she got back to the apartment, she grabbed a box and started throwing her things into it. She emptied the clothes hamper and started sorting her clothes out from Caleb’s. She didn’t hear him walk into the bedroom until he spoke.

  “What are you doing?” Caleb asked. The confused look on his face matched how she felt.

  What was she supposed to tell him? She didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t go back to Margaret’s house. Margaret was gone and Edmund had told her that they were going to put the house up for sale. They had a buyer already lin
ed up.

  But Julie had all the money she had saved from working at the casino. She could find somewhere else to go. Somewhere where she didn’t feel the pain and she didn’t have to see Hunter’s heartbreak over their son.

  “Julie?”

  She stood up straight and ignored all the clothes she’d spread out on the bed after she’d taken them out of the hamper. She’d wash them later when she knew where she was going.

  “Packing.”

  Caleb looked at her skeptically. “I can see that,” he said, taking off his police hat.

  She’d forgotten that he had a morning shift and was going with Katie to the festival later in the day. He’d probably come home to change before going to pick up Katie.

  “Why? I thought you were going to keep this apartment when I moved in with Katie.”

  She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I thought you two hadn’t decided when that was going to be?”

  “Stop changing the subject. What are you doing?”

  She picked up a turtleneck and began to fold it, but then it flopped around in a way that she couldn’t get neat and tidy. Nothing was neat and tidy in her life. She finally threw it back on the bed in the big pile of dirty clothes that were a mess. She’d shove it all into a bag and deal with it later.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked in frustration. “I’m packing. I’m leaving.”

  He shook his head. “You’re running away.”

  She threw her hands up in exasperation. “So what if I am. I’m a big girl. I can decide where I want to be.”

  “Anywhere you go, you’ll still be haunted by the things that you’re running away from.”

  “Have you and Dr. Matthews been talking about me?”

  He frowned.

  “My therapist,” she said, answering his frown. “I came back for one reason, Caleb. Little by little I was making steps until you found me at the casino. I wasn’t ready yet. I was getting there, but I wasn’t ready. And now I’m here and I’ve told Hunter everything, and it’s all blown up in my face.”