by Kari Gregg
"I was never going to be one of those girls." Her mouth thinned. "The girl who got pregnant and had to get married? I finished school. I landed a good job." Mitch nodded. "And then we knocked you up. Hell, honey, Swanson doesn't even offer health insurance. How're you going to pay the doctor? How will you cover the hospital bills?"
She stiffened, hugging her arms around herself. "I'll work it out. Women have babies without marrying the fathers every day."
"Most of them don't have a choice. You do."
"She won't need to worry about any of that crap if she chooses to get an abortion." Sammy ripped a duffel from the closet and stalked to the dresser, yanked a drawer open. "Christ, what's the use?" He jerked jeans, shirts, into the bag. Mitch's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"
Sam scooped up handfuls of socks and underwear. "You told me to get the fuck out, didn't you?"
"Sammy, don't go." Liv lifted a shaking hand to reach out to him. He ignored it. "Mitch will talk you into doing what he wants. He always does. I let him push me into whatever he wants, too." Sam grimaced. "It's like a sickness. I love him so I give him everything, no matter what it costs me. You do, too. Why should this be different?" He pulled on his shoes. "I can't—I have to go." He was leaving.
Sammy was leaving him.
Mitch released Liv, stepped toward him. "Stay. We'll talk this through."
"You mean you'll talk me into accepting the baby, you marrying Liv . . . . You'll wear me down. You'll make me want it, too." Sam shook him off. "No. Not this time." Mitch's heart seized. Fear curled in his gut. "When are you coming home?" Sam stopped in the doorway, his rigid back turned to them. "Get rid of the baby," he said. "Or I won't be."
Liv's breath caught when they heard the door close.
Mitch's eyes burned. Pain consumed him.
He pulled her into his arms, buried his face in her neck. "It's all right. He's just mad. Upset. He'll come around," he said, but who was he trying to fool? Liv? Or himself?
Sam wasn't coming home to them. Never, ever again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sammy was right.
Liv and Mitch had their blood tests taken the next day. After a few token protests, Liv married him in a simple ceremony at the courthouse Friday afternoon. They spent the weekend in their apartment, making love. Heady exhilaration flooded through him every time his eyes caught the flash of gold on her left hand. After buying the house and with a baby on the way, they couldn't afford even a simple band for him. He couldn't wear it during work hours, anyway, where it could catch on tools and cost a man his fingers. But he never tired of playing with his ring on her hand, when they were sweaty and sucking in oxygen, after the loving was done.
Both of them pretended their bed wasn't too empty.
Monday morning, Artie's face turned so red when Mitch told him that a bolt of fear stabbed Mitch in the gut. He hadn't dared talk to Artie before. His partner would have tried to stop Mitch.
"Are you sure the baby's yours?" Artie had finally gasped, pounding at his chest.
"Yes." No matter what, that baby was his.
His partner had shot a skeptical stare. "What about Sam?"
"He left." The clench of agony in his belly had become a familiar friend. "And even if . . . ." Mitch's eyes closed. He swallowed the knot in his throat. "Does the name on my birth certificate change the way you feel about me?" Artie blew out a long breath, clapped a hand to his shoulder. "No." Mitch lifted his gaze. "Then be happy for me. I'm finally going to be a daddy." His partner's mouth hardened to a tight line. "You don't have to get married to be a father, Mitch. Not these days."
Mitch's eyes pleaded. Was this it? Had he finally pushed Artie too far, pushed him away? "I love her." He grabbed the hand his partner had left on his shoulder. "And she loves me. The real me."
Artie squeezed his shoulder. "You told her?"
His breath locked in his chest. "I can make this marriage work, Dad." Artie's eyes crinkled, his mouth bending to a sad smile. "Ah, Mitch. Why do you make it so hard for people to love you?"
But Artie and Barb insisted on taking the newlyweds out for celebratory steaks that evening. "It's not every day my boy gets married." His partner winked.
"Yeah. Only four times now," Liv quipped and Mitch had laughed until his stomach hurt.
"It's not every day I find out I'm going to be a grandfather then," Artie said, wiping amused tears from his eyes. "How's that?"
Liv had paled, but her smile barely wobbled. "Better." After dinner, they drove to the new house. Mitch walked Artie and Barb through the place, pointed out the quick repairs he'd make now and outlined the renovations he planned for the next several months. Barb, in a gesture of tacit approval that rocked Mitch to his core, unearthed a bottle of sparkling cider and Dixie cups from the suitcase masquerading as her purse. "It's non-alcoholic, sweetie, so you can drink it, too," Barb told an equally stunned Liv.
Barb poured and Artie toasted their happiness in the gutted shell of their new kitchen.
Mitch had choked down the stupid juice, then hugged both of his parents and when their arms had widened to include Liv, Mitch thought maybe he was the luckiest bastard who had ever walked the earth.
But the night wasn't over. When Mitch left Liv inside, where it was warmer, to walk Artie and Barb out to the car, his partner slid a plain white envelope from his coat pocket. "A wedding present."
"I've been married four times." Mitch quirked an eyebrow. "I think you can safely stop giving gifts after three."
His partner shoved the envelope at him. "Don't say no." When Mitch looked inside, he found a check covering his closing costs—to the penny. His eyes burned. His throat clogged. "Dad—"
Artie pulled him in for a fierce hug. His broad, calloused hand thumped Mitch's back. "I know. We love you, too."
"I don't know what to say," Mitch said, voice tight, hugging him back.
"You don't have to say anything." Artie eased away. His stare jerked to the house, where Liv waited inside. "Talk to her, son. Tell her." Dread shivered up his spine. He crushed the envelope in a nervous fist. "I will. As soon as things settle down. The house, the baby, getting married—"
"You'll always find a reason." Artie smiled, shook his head. "Talk to her now. Tonight. Liv's tough. She can take it. Don't let it fester inside you anymore." But he didn't talk to Liv that night.
Or the long days after, when he began moving their stuff to the house. He cleared the storage locker Sammy rented for him first, his stomach roiling when he'd paid the final bill in the office. Liv spent her evenings packing boxes. Mitch spent his days hauling them to the house.
They spent their nights escaping the pain of Sammy's loss with sex. Mitch licked her pussy. He fucked her ass. He pumped her cunt full of cum, but no matter how many orgasms he wrung out of Liv or she from him or how exhausted they fell to their bed, sated and sweaty, a piece of them was missing.
Sam.
He'd come for his clothes. When Mitch had returned from a hard day of work at the new house, he'd found Liv, sobbing, at the empty space in their closet where Sammy's suits had hung that morning. He'd held her, kissed her, made love to her in the damn closet, but it hadn't helped. The ball of hurt that had lodged in his stomach didn't ease. He spotted the same flare of pain in her eyes every time her fingers touched the things Sam hadn't collected yet—his artsy-fartsy cooking gadgets, one of his books, the bottle of shampoo he'd left in their shower.
Sometimes, Mitch wanted to talk about it. Maybe if he and Liv shared the hurt churning inside them, admitted how much they missed him, maybe they'd finally work past it.
But they didn't talk anymore.
Not really.
She'd taken his name. His baby grew in her belly. Her body took his cock any time he wanted, any way he wanted, and physically, she made greedy demands of him as well. Together, they set the date to move into the house, planned their future. Her heart had never felt so far away.
Mitch was lost.
He didn't k
now what to do, how to make this right.
In the end, he simply packed up Sammy's things. He kept the boxes in the back of his truck for days, searching for the courage to take them to Sam at work, but he couldn't face it. Couldn't face him. He finally dumped them in a corner of the basement of the new house.
He and Livvy shut up their apartment, the only home they'd shared with Sammy, and hoped the new house would bring fewer reminders of all they'd lost. They moved in.
* * * * *
Mitch wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his forearm, then yanked hard on the ratchet. Fucking furnace. Damned thing needed replaced, just like everything else in this monstrosity of a house, but he'd hoped to get one last winter out of it. The furnace guy thought the machine might —maybe— hold together with a little spit and glue.
Apparently not.
The thermostat had stuck somewhere in the mid-nineties and Mitch couldn't get the son of a bitch to shut off. Even with the back door and windows propped wide, Liv had melted into a pregnant puddle in the kitchen. Mitch was sweating his balls off. Considering how poorly insulated the house was, he already flinched at opening their first heating bill. They could make it through winter with space heaters. But first, he had to turn the beast of a machine off.
Hot, frustrated, Mitch gave up on the rust-encrusted bolt and used the ratchet to beat on the damn thing.
The machinery whined.
Mitch's eyes popped.
Okay then.
He lifted his arm—
"Beating on the outside casing won't help."
Mitch's head whipped around at that warm, familiar, faintly amused voice. Sam grinned at him from the foot of the basement stairs, sexy as ever in his standard work uniform of suit and tie. Mitch froze. Profound joy kicked his heart to a gallop, followed immediately by rage, an anger so acute that his breath locked in his chest. He would kick Sam's ass for showing up here.
He'd hug him. Kiss him. Beg him to stay.
But then, he'd kick his ass for leaving in the first place.
"What?"
Sam shrugged out of his suit jacket as he walked toward him, draping the jacket over a pile of junk before rolling the sleeves of his shirt up his sinewy forearms. "The furnace is tougher than you are, Mitch. Here, give that to me before you hurt yourself." He pried the ratchet from his fist and dropped it into Mitch's toolbox, selecting a wrench instead. Sam bent over the mechanical guts of the furnace, fitting the tool to a rusty bolt.
The bolt loosened. "Be easier to turn it off at the breaker box," Sam said. Mitch decided to rip Sam's head off after he fixed the heating system. "I couldn't find the right circuit. None of them are labeled yet."
"It'll probably be the first one after the Master switch." Sam made quick work of the other bolts and slid the panel free. "Look for a double-circuit." Mitch knew construction, how to build with his hands. Mechanical crap had never interested him, but Sam looked like he knew what he was doing so he marched to the breaker box, opened it. Just as Sam said, the first breaker after the Master was a double-circuit. "Got it."
Sam frowned at the furnace. He returned the wrench to the toolbox and selected a screwdriver. "Trip it and leave it off." He glanced up, lips curved at the corners. "I'd rather not electrocute myself."
Mitch tripped the breaker.
The furnace died.
When Mitch rejoined him, Sam crouched over the furnace. "You're lucky you didn't burn the place down." He pointed at a bundle of wires, some of the casing freshly gnawed. Wire gleamed. "Rats. Get your exterminator back in here and don't touch that circuit again. You'll live longer."
But now that the furnace was dead, Mitch lost interest in the albatross of a house.
"Why did you come back, Sam? What do you want?"
Sam blew out a long breath. "We need to talk."
* * * * *
In Mitch's experience, camping in a new rehab project was tolerable only with a bathroom that worked and a semi-functional kitchen. Probably the only thing not wrong with the house was the plumbing so Mitch had focused on the kitchen prior to moving in. The amenities were basic, but the room was enormous, clean. They'd sectioned off part of it for temporary living quarters. When Mitch climbed the stairs from the furnace room in the basement, Liv had curled onto the air mattress that served as their bed, her features pale and tight with tension.
Mitch dropped down beside her, shifted her head into his lap so he could run his fingers through her hair, rub her shoulders. Comfort her any way that he could and take comfort from her as well. "Sit. Talk," he told Sam. Mitch's stomach knotted when Sammy pulled over a chair instead of joining them on the bed.
Sam sat, his body stiff and uncomfortable. "I'm sorry I reacted the way I did. About the baby."
Liv trembled against Mitch.
Sam's jaw clenched. "I knew the risk, what could happen. Hell, Mitch and I pushed hard about refusing to wear a condom." His lips twisted to a bitter smile.
"Maybe I was too dazzled by the sex to think through the repercussions, but I knew what I was doing. I have no one except myself to blame."
Liv pressed her face into his belly, but not before Mitch saw tears glistening in her eyes. "Nobody's blaming you, Sammy. There's nothing to be blamed for. Liv and I would've gotten married at some point, anyway. Probably sooner rather than later because we both want kids and neither one of us is getting any younger. We're ready to raise this baby. We want to."
"I know that it doesn't bother you whose baby it is," Sam said, holding up his hand when Mitch's mouth opened to argue, "whether it's yours or mine."
"It's mine," Mitch said, his voice tight with the fury balling his stomach. "You don't want it. That makes it mine."
"I want a DNA test to establish paternity as soon as it's born." Sam's eyes glinted blue steel. "That's non-negotiable."
When Liv made a wild, hurt sound against his belly, Mitch held her close. "What in the hell for?" he snarled. "You told her to get an abortion, remember? You took off."
"If the baby is yours, Mitch, we need never see one another again." Mitch's stomach pitched. God, it hurt. What in the hell had happened to them?
Mitch didn't even recognize the hard young man who stared at him now. The determined, resolute angle of his jaw? That, he knew, but he'd never, ever, seen the cold glitter in Sam's eyes. "And if the baby's yours?"
"I'll pay child support, of course." Sam's beautiful mouth thinned to a grim line.
"I may want to"—his lip curled in disgust—"see it. I suppose I'll have to see it, but we'll let the lawyers work that out."
Mitch's eyes snapped shut.
Lawyers.
Shit.
Had it come to this?
"You didn't want the baby. You still don't."
"No, I don't. My vote's still for an abortion, but I know neither one of you will allow that so . . . ." He rolled his eyes, blew out a breath. "When Liv realized I'd moved in with you, when we first tried to work things out between the three of us, you asked her a question. Maybe the most important question. I never forgot it." Mitch's brow furrowed.
"You asked her what she could live with." Sam's mouth curved into a sad, bitter smile. "I've been doing a lot of thinking. This is what I can live with."
"You're never coming home," Liv whispered against Mitch's stomach. Mitch threaded his fingers through her hair.
Sam shook his head. "I can't stop you from having this baby, but I can't live without knowing if it's mine. And if it's mine . . . I hate that fucking thing, but I can't live with abandoning it, either."
Liv flinched, curling in on herself in his lap.
Mitch's hand shook. "I won't let your hatred poison the baby we made together." Sam's eyes glittered with pain. "Do you think I want that? Do you think it's not eating me alive?" He jerked to his feet, walked to the sink to stare out the back window.
"If I can't keep it under wraps, I'll stay away. I promise I won't make this more awkward or painful than necessary, but if it's mine, I'll want pictu
res, report cards—I can't just walk away." He turned, leaned against the counter. "I can't live with that."
"All right." Mitch swallowed the agony choking his throat. "We'll work something out."
When Liv tensed, groaned, Sam's blue eyes abruptly narrowed on her. "Jesus H. Christ."
Mitch stiffened, his stare returning to Liv. "What?"
Sam darted toward them, scooping her rigid body from Mitch's lap. "What the fuck are you doing?" Mitch snarled, yanking her back.
"Go start the truck." Sam's hands shoved her hair from her face. "How long have you been hurting?"
Fat tears slipped from Liv's eyes. "A little while, but I'm okay. I'm not spotting or anything. It's probably just the fish I had at lunch."
Mitch's heart stopped.
Just stopped.
Concern lit Sammy's blue eyes, the first glimpse of any genuine warmth since he'd arrived. "Honey, you're bleeding."
Pain sliced Mitch open, left him raw and reeling.
The baby.
She was losing his baby.
"Go get the truck, Mitch. She needs a hospital."
Mitch fought the numb fear that paralyzed him, tore Liv from Sam's arms and into his own. "Go. I'll carry her."
She moaned when he lifted her. "Mitch?"
He kissed the crown of her head, following Sam out the door. "It's all right, baby. Everything's going to be fine."
But he knew it wouldn't be.
* * * * *
Liv miscarried before they reached the emergency room. The doctor ordered an ultrasound, but his grim face didn't offer much hope. Two dozen lifetimes seemed to pass before the nurses rolled her out. Liv's bleeding had escalated by then, though. So they knew.
An ob-gyn on call performed the D & C that night.
Head hung low, body shaking, Mitch had sat in one of the cold, hard chairs in the waiting room.
Sam's hand clasped his shoulder. "It sounds hard to believe coming from me, but I'm sorry, Mitch. Truly sorry. I didn't want the baby, but I know how much you did. How much it meant to both of you."