by Nalini Singh
Abe said nothing, but he was listening. She could tell. When he was sober, Abe had always been good at listening, and today she couldn't stop the words from tumbling out. She needed to speak about Aaron; Jeremy, when they'd been together, hadn't had the patience to understand her grief.
No, that wasn't totally fair. He'd been excited to greet his son, in that she wasn't mistaken--he'd been determined to name their child Jeremy Vance Junior for one, a fact on which they'd still been in discussion--and he'd grieved when that son was born without life. But he'd also shut that part of their life away behind an iron door, refusing to talk about Aaron when Sarah wanted so much to talk about their little boy.
Maybe it had been his way of dealing with the loss, but later, when her own grief continued to haunt her, he'd told her they could always have another one. As if Aaron was replaceable, like a broken washer or car.
Aaron was Aaron. Her firstborn. Sarah would always remember the tiny, perfect body the nurse had put into her arms. She'd been a kind woman, that nurse, had treated Sarah's baby with respect, touching him as gently as if he were a living, breathing child. "I sat with Aaron in my arms for hours, memorized every inch of him."
And Jeremy, for all his faults, had made sure no one interrupted her precious time with her son.
"He was so beautiful, Abe." The grief that never seemed to grow any softer thickened her voice again. "I wish you could've seen him." What a foolish thing to say to the man who'd once been her husband but who had never voluntarily wanted to give her a child. She'd asked so many times after the miscarriage, but Abe had always said no.
"Did you take any photos?"
Surprised by the question, she nonetheless scrambled for her purse, wiping away her tears at the same time. No one aside from Lola ever asked to see pictures of her baby--as if he hadn't existed. But he had. He'd been a gorgeous, perfect little boy with honey-brown skin and long, long lashes. "Yes, there was a volunteer photographer," she said, pulling out the photos she kept always in her wallet.
"The nurse called him after asking me." The elderly man was retired, but he came in whenever a parent or parents lost a baby to stillbirth or neonatal complications and wanted a tangible memory of their child; in his faded blue eyes, Sarah had seen a father who'd once held his own silent baby. "Here."
Abe brought the car to a stop near a grassy shoulder, and it was only then that she realized they'd entered the peaceful green of the cemetery. "Let me see," he said, holding out his hand before she could become angry again at the fact her baby was here, under the cold earth.
She passed over the photos of her baby, her own gaze greedy on the images that were all she had of the son for whom she'd decorated a nursery, a son she'd dreamed of taking to school and playing with in the park. "He looks like he's sleeping, doesn't he?" Such a sweet, peaceful face.
"Yes." Abe touched his finger to the image as if stroking her baby's cheek. "How did you even carry him? He looks like a linebacker."
Sarah laughed through her tears. "God, he used to kick so hard." It was why she still found it so difficult to understand why he hadn't made it. "They said he had defects in his organs, that he never formed right... but he looks perfect to me." Would always be her strong Baby Boots.
"Definitely an Aaron," Abe said, his hands careful with the prints and his eyes taking in the details she pointed out. "Playing football and getting all the girls. And maybe even being a little preppy. Just enough to have that bad-boy-pretending-to-be-good vibe that girls love."
Sarah laughed again, so happy to hear her son's name on someone else's lips, hear an acknowledgement that Aaron had been born even if he'd never lived. Putting the photos away with care when Abe returned them, she took a deep breath, then directed him to the place where the babies lay, sleeping under the sheltering wings of a guardian angel.
She'd come here first thing this morning. Of course she had. She might not like seeing her child here, but she would never leave him alone. "Hey, baby boy," she said, kneeling down to the lush green grass and straightening the furry blue-and-yellow dinosaur she'd gotten to keep him company. She didn't leave flowers. Babies didn't care about flowers. They liked toys and colorful balloons.
Sarah had brought him bright orange ones this morning, gently anchored the strings in the ground beside the small headstone. They bobbed in the breeze as Sarah sat and talked to her baby as she did at least once every week. Abe sat beside her, a big, quiet, patient presence. It was getting dark by the time she rose to her feet.
"Good night, Baby Boots," she whispered before bending to press a kiss to Aaron's headstone. "I hope you're making mischief up in heaven." That was the only way she could bear this--if she believed that her baby's spirit had flown away and this gravestone was only a place for the living to grieve. He wasn't here any longer.
"Good night, Aaron."
Abe's words made her lower lip quiver. "Thank you," she said through the rawness inside her. "For treating him as if he existed."
Abe put his arm around her shoulders. "He did."
She didn't shrug off his hold, instead soaking in his warmth, his strength. "Were you okay last year? On the anniversary of Tessie's passing?" It had always been the worst time for him, and when the date had rolled around, she'd worried, watched the tabloids, only breathing a sigh of relief when she saw no mention of Abe indulging in self-destructive behavior.
"I hung out with the guys," he told her now, "stayed the night at David's place." He stroked his thumb over her bare upper arm as he said, "I take her balloons too. She always loved chasing them."
It was the first time he'd ever shared anything about how he mourned for his sister. "You visit her often?" Sarah knew Tessie had been laid to rest in Abe's hometown of Chicago.
Less than a year later, Diane and Abe had buried Abe's father beside her, the physically fit man dying of a sudden heart attack. "A broken heart," Diane had said to Sarah one day. "These Bellamy men, when they love, they go all in. And my poor Gregory, he couldn't survive losing his baby girl. It was the helplessness that got to him--not being able to fight her dragons for her, slay them."
Like father, like son, Sarah had thought at the time, already starting to understand that Abe, too, was haunted by how helpless he'd been made by the disease that had taken his sister's life.
"Whenever I'm in the city," Abe said now. "Mostly I only go to support my mom. I carry Dad and Tessie here." He touched his heart, right on the spot where he bore a tattoo of a tiny wood sprite peeking out through long reeds. Such a delicate tattoo for this big, tough man, but Sarah knew it was his favorite.
"The wood sprite tattoo," she said, "it's in memory of your sister, isn't it?"
To her surprise, Abe shook his head. "No, it's not in memory. It is a memory--Tessie's the one who chose the design," he told her. "While she was in hospital that last month, I used to read to her and I asked her what my next tattoo should be." A smile in his voice. "She never blabbed about my tats to our folks. They didn't know back then, thought I was the most clean-cut rocker on the planet."
Sarah held her breath, not wanting to break the moment, not wanting to lose this instant when Abe was trusting her with a piece of himself. It was far too late for them... but it still mattered that he would.
"So Tessie picks up the fairy book I'd been reading to her and says, 'This one.'" He laughed. "I got it that week--she saw it before..." His smile faded, his hands fisting at his sides. "It fucking sucks that assholes get to live and Tessie and Aaron didn't. That my dad didn't."
The blunt words were so what Sarah felt that hearing them unexpectedly eased her grief. "Yes, it does."
Beside her, Abe closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and seemed to consciously force himself to unclench his hands.
Sarah felt her eyes widen.
He'd never focused on control that way when they'd been together; he'd worn his fury at the world on his skin. She'd been able to feel it shoving to escape at every moment, had worried constantly what would trigger
it. It had never been directed at her, not until that last night, so she hadn't worried for herself but for him, what it was doing to him.
This man... he released another breath before opening his eyes. And when he turned to her, despite the grief and anger that still lived in him, he was the Abe she'd seen only rarely during their marriage: the gifted musician who felt deeply but who was at peace with himself.
"I'll drive you home."
She started a little at the deep sound of his voice; she'd become so lost in trying to come to grips with the change in him. "My car's still at the arboretum."
"I'll have a driver pick it up," Abe said as they walked back to his SUV, "drive it back for you." He helped her into the vehicle.
Sarah went to argue, realized she really shouldn't be driving. She was too exhausted from the emotional storm that had just passed. "All right. Thank you."
Not saying anything in return, Abe drove them to her house in a silence that slowly became filled with a thousand whispers of memory. Sarah had always loved being in the passenger seat of Abe's car, had been so proud to be his wife, to have the right to sit beside him.
Not because he was a rock star. Because he was Abe, talented and incredible.
He still drove as easily and as confidently as he'd always done, as if LA traffic wasn't a serious nightmare--and he got her home in far better time than she would've made herself.
"I should've stopped, picked up takeout," he said as she pushed the button on her key-fob remote to open the gate, then the garage. "You must be starving."
Sarah shook her head. "I'm fine."
"Sarah." Parking in the empty garage, Abe turned to her, tipped up her chin. "I know what grief can do to a person, and you've clearly already lost weight. You gotta eat, sweetheart. Come on, I'll make you my famous omelet."
She laughed, and it was a startling thing to have her lips curve up instead of down, to feel the knot in her chest begin to loosen. "You make terrible omelets." The last time he'd made her one during a silly, fun weekend when he'd stayed home the entire time, it was only half-cooked and she'd had to pick out pieces of shell.
It was one of her happiest memories of their marriage--seeing Abe grin as he banged pots and pans and declared himself her personal chef for the weekend.
"It's the thought that counts." His grin hit her hard as they got out of the SUV, reality colliding with memory.
She lowered the garage door, and then for the first time since she'd run out of the music room on the anniversary of Tessie's death, she invited Abe into her home.
CHAPTER 6
TENSION SIMMERED IN THE AIR BETWEEN THEM, but it wasn't like it had been at the music festival. Then it had felt as if she stood precariously balanced on a razor-thin tightrope, her heart braced for further hurt from this man who'd always meant too much to her. But Abe hadn't hurt her. He'd apologized... and the look in his eyes, it had shaken her.
You're still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
Today... today he was her Abe. The big-hearted man who'd envelop her in his arms and make her feel tiny and petite and protected. All things she'd never been. That Abe had drowned himself in drugs and alcohol and rage until she'd thought him forever lost. But here he was in her kitchen, making her a terrible omelet while she let Flossie in and gave her a treat to chew on. Afterward, she put on some toast, then dug out a package of ham Molly had bought for her.
The fiancee of Schoolboy Choir's lead singer had insisted on restocking Sarah's pantry before allowing her to move back home, Sarah having stayed with Fox and Molly until her bruise faded and the locks were changed at her place so Jeremy couldn't corner her after she returned.
All of Abe's bandmates, as well as the women who loved them, had done so much for her after the shock of Jeremy's punch left her a trembling wreck, but none more so than Molly. Sarah was still a little bewildered by the other woman's kindness, but she couldn't argue it hadn't been genuine.
"Molly's not going to survive in Hollywood if she keeps being so nice," she said to Abe as she put the ham on a chopping board.
Abe went with her abrupt and--to him--probably inexplicable choice of topic. "Don't worry--Moll's got an excellent bullshit detector," he told her. "Developed it with all the crap she went through as a teenager."
"What?" Sarah asked before shaking her head. "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked. She deserves her privacy." Especially after her compassionate gentleness toward Sarah, the sheer friendly warmth with which she'd welcomed Sarah into her home.
Abe's eyebrows drew together, that silver piercing of his making her want to tug at it, play with it. He hadn't had any piercings while they'd been together, just those tattoos she'd loved exploring with her fingertips and her lips while he lay lazily relaxed in bed.
Heat kissing her cheeks at the vivid memory that suddenly flashed into her mind, of his big body sprawled naked on white sheets, she glanced away just as he said, "Molly's history was splashed all over the tabloids after that bottom-feeding creep taped her and Fox in their hotel bedroom. You didn't see?"
Chopping up the ham, Sarah pressed her lips into a tight line at the idea of the awful violation. At least she hadn't helped fuel the media frenzy. After the divorce, she'd given up even glancing at the tabloids in an effort to avoid any and all mentions of Schoolboy Choir. The only time she'd broken the self-protective rule was on the anniversary of Tessie's death last year.
"I heard bits and pieces, but that was all." It had been difficult to totally avoid the news since radio, TV, everyone had covered it. Though Sarah hadn't known Molly then, she'd felt sick for the other woman and Fox, so much so that she'd shut down anyone who'd tried to talk to her about the video. As far as she was concerned, the screaming interest and attention only encouraged other disturbed individuals to emulate that kind of behavior.
Fame was fame to some, regardless if it equaled jail time.
"Yeah, well, the media dug up her past, so it's not a secret," Abe said. "I don't think Molly would mind if I told you--especially since I think she's a badass for being who she is despite it all." He gave her a quick precis of the other woman's past.
"She's tougher than she looks," Sarah said afterward, deeply impressed by what Molly had survived as a teenager, and by how she'd held on to her core of kindness rather than giving in to bitterness and anger.
Flipping out the first omelet, Abe poured in the second one. Sarah dropped the chopped up ham into it before it could set. "You need more than eggs," she said when he raised an eyebrow. "There's lots of ham, and I'll cut some cheese, too, for sandwiches." Abe was a big guy and it was all muscle.
When they'd made love, she'd felt deliciously overwhelmed.
Face flushing at her second inappropriate thought of the evening, she moved away from the stove and prepared the sandwich fixings. She had everything on the table by the time Abe flipped out the second omelet. She hadn't thought she'd be hungry today, the grief having hit her brutally hard this month for no reason but that some months--some days--were just tougher than others. However, one bite of the omelet and her stomach made itself felt. "No shell," she said to him with a smile.
His grin devastated her all over again, reminding her of who they'd once been together, those precious times untouched by drugs or alcohol or Abe's inner rage. It still hurt inside to know it had all been a mirage, a romantic fantasy she'd spun in her mind in her desperate hunger to be loved, to be wanted.
"Here." She put together a sandwich for him after finishing her omelet. He'd already demolished his own as well as another sandwich. "Wait, I have that mustard you always liked." Getting up, she dug around in the pantry until she found it. "That should keep you going for a couple of hours at least."
"You think you're joking, but I'll probably be hungry again by ten." He shrugged. "I get one of those services to bring me meals that I can stick in the fridge and raid at night. Lean meat, vegetables, that kind of stuff."
Sarah stared at him. "Hollow leg?" He'd been haphazard about food when
she'd known him.
"I've been working out more." He bit into the sandwich, chewed and swallowed before adding, "Helps keep me focused and away from all the bullshit."
All the bullshit, Sarah thought, was code for alcohol and drugs. "Good." She'd hated what he was doing to himself. "Not that you need to be any more ripped." Abe had always been fit, despite his addictions, but from what she could tell, he was now carved out of granite.
A smile that held more than a hint of male satisfaction, white teeth flashing across the handsome face she'd fallen for at first glance. But his face alone would've never captured her interest and held it. It had been the electricity between them, the vivid, visceral connection that made it feel as if he'd been made for her, she for him.
Looking back, she could see that their raw compulsion toward one another hadn't been the firmest foundation for a relationship. But she'd had so much love to give, had thought she could make it enough. And Abe... he was so solid, so big and strong and confident that he'd seemed able to handle her need, to be the rock on which she could stand.
"Hey." He reached out, tapped her cheek. "Where'd you go?"
She gave him a rueful smile. "It's been a day." The anniversary rolled around every month like clockwork, and every month she ended up curled in a corner, sobbing out her heart. Perhaps because she had to keep her grief contained the rest of the time--people didn't think she had a right to mourn. After all, her baby had never lived.
No, that was unfair. It hadn't been "people," but Jeremy. He simply couldn't understand why she didn't just get over it.
That bastard was now out of her life... and she wasn't rocking in a corner tonight. "Thank you," she said to Abe as they stood to clean up the table.
His expression was suddenly difficult to read. "You--" Running a hand over his head, he held her gaze. "Anything you need, Sarah."
The potency of the connection was too much, a taut string vibrating in the air between them.
Breaking it, she said, "Even your keyboards?"
He groaned. "Why the fuck did you want those keyboards anyway?" he asked as he filled the dishwasher while she started the coffee. "It was the weirdest thing you asked for in the divorce."