by Lexi Whitlow
“I can’t...”
I can’t. I can’t. I lost the first one. The doctor said after it happened once, it could happen again.
The words stick in my throat, and I feel hot tears streaming down my cheeks. I’ve given up my anger, my grief, and all the ideas I had about a life in this little town. But this is the one thing I can’t give up.
“Don’t say anything now.” He kisses me again. “But I’m ready. Now, or any damn time.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Three Years, Three Months Ago
Penn Station
By five in the afternoon, I develop a good enough lie that my wife believes me and heads to the damn station by herself. The bus leaves at seven, and I told her I’d be there at the very last minute.
I considered telling her I didn’t want to be with her, that I didn’t love her, that I wanted my life here more than I wanted one with her.
But when I looked at her face today, excited and nervous and exuberant all at once as she packed her frayed green scrubs, I knew I couldn’t do it. What’s more, I knew she wouldn’t go without me.
So here I am, sitting a safe distance from her stop at Penn Station, another anonymous man with a black hoodie pulled up over his head. My heart is heavier than it has ever been, and somehow I feel more alive than I ever have—but it’s because of the pain, pervasive, like it’s pounding through me.
What kind of man marries a woman just to break her heart? Just to watch her walk away?
Throat tight, fists clenched, I fight whatever the hell is happening in my mind and the bullshit it’s doing to my body at the same time. For a few seconds, it feels like I might heat up and explode from the inside, like one of those people you hear about who spontaneously combusts.
Jonathan Ash has never felt like this.
And never over a woman.
An old man passes by my bench, his arm so close it nearly brushes the fabric of my hoodie. He turns and looks at me, catching my eye, laugh lines crinkling up as he smiles.
“Waiting for someone?” He asks, voice raspy.
“No,” I grunt. “Just waiting.”
“That’s too bad,” he says and turns to walk away, leaning into his cane.
“Why’s that?”
He turns back to me and shrugs his shoulders very slightly. “Life is better when you have someone worth waiting for.”
The old man wanders off, leaving me with that bit of ridiculous crap advice that sounds like it came off the back of an inspirational coffee cup.
“Wait—” I shout after him, but he can’t hear me and walks off to the trains.
When I turn, I see Summer, wearing her green dress and a pair of sandals. I hadn’t even realized it was warm today. I pull my hoodie tighter over my head and watch her, trying to fight the rage swirling inside. At first, she looks calm, maybe even excited. I can’t help but think what an excellent doctor she’ll be, who she’ll become. Maybe Bianca was right—it’ll all be better without me. I shift uncomfortably, and a pain strikes me in my chest, like my lungs and heart are constricting together all at once.
At 6:45, right on cue, I see my cousin Damian catch her by the arm. He’s even bigger than I am—and he looks like he works for the mafia, which isn’t a coincidence because he most certainly does. Summer reels back and drops her suitcase, nearly falling over the bench behind her.
I can’t hear the fucker, but I think he’s saying the lines he’s supposed to say. Summer tries to fling herself away from him, but he keeps her grip on his arm.
If you can’t say something yourself, send your bigger, uglier cousin to do your work for you, you miserable fucking asshole. You didn’t even need to marry her—and there she is—the only fucking good thing that ever happened to you—leaving.
I watch as Summer’s demeanor changes. Instead of pulling away, she clutches Damian’s arms like she can’t stand anymore, and she starts crying. I’ve never been good at reading lips, but I can almost hear what she shouts across the station.
“I’m an idiot. I’m such a fucking idiot!” She screams the last part and stomps hard, narrowly missing Damian’s foot.
Damian looks like a deer in the headlights. He’s not exactly the type to comfort a woman. But I give him one thing—he stands there like I told him to, and then he walks Summer to her bus and watches her get on.
I watch her get on too. Cullen’s deal—written and signed by a lawyer, per Bianca’s wishes, said I had to stay away until her program was complete. However long she decides to stay.
I crack my knuckles and watch the bus depart.
“I love you, Summer,” I say. “And I’m not signing any goddamn divorce papers.”
Present Day
Summer wakes up in the morning, totally fucking frantic, like there’s an emergency at the hospital and she can’t possibly get there in time. It’s the only time I’ve seen her act like this, but I check her phone, and it’s free of notifications. But she keeps pacing back and forth in front of the bedroom door, wearing one of her long night-shirts and near tears. I hop up and pull on my clothes, heart pounding.
We’d gone to bed like normal. She was happy.
Wasn’t she?
The only thing that was different was what I said, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Shit, you fucking idiot.
I run out into the living room—or what passes for a living room in my shitty condo—and catch her when she’s passing by. “Summer—” I start.
She nearly freaks out when I touch her, but then she calms down and lets me lead her back to the sofa. She sits as far away from me as she can, then curls up in a ball and pulls a blanket over her feet.
“I’ll just wait,” I say. “You can tell me what’s going on in your brain when you get your shit together.”
It takes her a good goddamn long while of breathing and calming down, but then she finally talks. “I had a dream,” she says.
“Okay. Whatever it is, it wasn’t real.”
“It was real.” She says it with deadly certainty. “I’ve been dreaming it over and over in the past week, and tonight was the worst yet because—because you couldn’t leave well enough alone.” She spits the last words out at me, but then she takes another breath. “I’m sorry. We just got back together—”
“Tell me the dream.”
When she looks at me, her eyes are puffy and red, like she hasn’t slept at all. “It’s always the same. I’m in a hospital in Damascus, and I’m alone.”
“Damascus—” Shit. Summer was in Syria after she left, and then she vaporized out of there so fast it was like she was never there at all—no explanation, and no information on where she went after that for five months.
“And the doctor is coming in. I’m bleeding and I can’t stop. They tell me that there was a baby with a heartbeat, but she’s gone.”
“She?”
“And then the doctor tells me it would be dangerous for me to try to get pregnant again.” She pronounces her words slowly, and her hands are active and fidgety like they are every time she’s nervous.
“It was a dream. Just a dream, Summer.” Because of the way her voice sounds I know that’s not quite true, but there’s nothing else I can really say.
“It wasn’t. It was real. Not quite like that, but... I can’t get pregnant.”
“How do they know that?” I knit my eyebrows together.
“Ash, do you hear what I’m telling you? I can’t get pregnant. I can’t sustain a pregnancy. Screw the fact that we’re fucking broke. I mean, forget that, right!” Her voice is wracked with the grief she’s been hiding all this time.
“Doctors aren’t always right,” I say. I try to take her hand, but she pulls it away.
“Ash, I was pregnant when I left.”
It feels like the walls are crashing down around me, like the world is melting away and I’m back at that bus stop, watching her go.
“You weren’t,” I whisper.
“I didn’t know.” She pulls away
further and puts a pillow over her knees. “I had no idea. I’ve always had endometriosis, and my old doctor said I’d probably have a lot of trouble getting pregnant because of that.”
She looks up at me, and I nod, like I’m taking all of this in—like I could possibly understand it or get it in any real way. Like my heart’s not about to explode, because nothing she’s about to say could possibly be good.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t think I could—and then I did. I was.” Her voice is quieter now, like she almost can’t bear to say any of it. But the words come out quick and steady. I give her credit for being able to get any of it out, because I couldn’t speak that clearly right now if someone held a gun to my head and told me to string two sentences together. My heart is pounding out of my chest.
She takes a deep breath. “I lost it. It had a heartbeat, but I had so much scar tissue—I lost it. I had surgery in Damascus, and then I transferred to the Ukraine. And I put it behind me.” Her voice breaks at the end, but then she clears her throat and wipes away her tears. “That’s why we can’t—I can’t.” She sighs and keeps wiping away tears, but they keep coming.
I go to her and pull her into my arms, but she tries to push me away. “I should have been there,” I tell her. I kiss her on the top of the head, and she pushes hard against me.
“Stop it, Ash. You made a decision—and I didn’t tell you. You couldn’t have been there.” Again, she struggles against me, but I don’t let her go.
“I had every plan to go, Summer. Cullen made me stay.”
“You didn’t,” she mutters. “You left me there. You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I watched you get on that bus. I had Damian make sure you were safe. And I paid Cullen off and came to North Carolina a month after that. I knew you’d be back—”
“No. No, you weren’t there. Bianca told me you kept working for Cullen, that you went to Jersey.”
“I didn’t. I watched you. And I let you go.”
“Why?” Her voice cracks, and she starts crying again, but this time she folds into me and holds on to my arms.
“You were better without me.”
“I wasn’t. I was so alone. Losing a baby is the loneliest thing in the world.” My shirt is wet with her tears.
I remember that feeling in the pit of the chest, the one I sat with when I watched Damian walk Summer onto the bus, when she left New York for good. And I watched her go—to a fate far lonelier and more painful than any I could have imagined. I hated myself so much for letting her out of my sight, and that hate comes raging through me all at once again, far worse than I’ve ever felt it before.
“I fucked up, Summer. But I did it for you. I swear I did it for you.” My throat constricts like it did that day, but this time, I let tears come to my eyes. I hold Summer, and I my tears fall. “I love you so much. Please, please stay.”
I hold her close, and we’re both quiet for a long time. I close my eyes and feel her breath evening out, her body relaxing. She wipes her eyes again and looks up at me.
“Why wouldn’t I stay?”
I laugh even though everything inside of me still hurts. “Well, I am amazing. I understand your decision.”
“What about—”
“A kid? Well, aren’t you a doctor? There are things you can do, right? Fertility things?” She bites her lip and laughs, maybe a little morbidly. “And we can adopt. I don’t care.”
“Those kinds of things, they take years. And money we don’t have.”
I shrug and kiss her on the top of her head. “Life is better when you have someone worth waiting for.”
She lets that sink in. And I think it might be somewhat better advice than you’d find on the side of a coffee cup.
“Why did Cullen make you stay, Ash?” Her voice changes, and my stomach drops. I was hoping we’d come to that at a different time. “What did he have hanging over you?”
“Maybe it’s best if we discuss that some other time, Summer.”
“I think it’s best if we discuss it now.” She shifts away from me and raises an arched eyebrow. If her face wasn’t puffy as hell, she’d look like she does on any day—calculating, intelligent, and frankly curious.
“Bianca worked out a deal with Cullen. You’d leave New York, I wouldn’t follow you when you left the country and—you’d be provided for.”
She nods like it makes sense. “Okay. I get that part. Bianca is my biological mom, so...”
I pull back from her in confusion. “Shit—you know that?”
“I’m not stupid. My mom—Linda—she has the same thing I do. Endometriosis. I don’t think she could have kids. And her husband died the year before I was born.” She looks small when she says it, another bit of pain she’s had to live with—another hurt I didn’t know about. “Bianca doesn’t know I know. But I know. But still, it doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t have any money.”
“Cullen’s the one with money, Summer.”
Her eyes grow wide as saucers when she looks at me. “Jesus Christ. No—”
“When he’s gone, you get half of everything he has.”
“What happens to the rest?”
“It’s Bianca’s.”
She claps her hand over her mouth and runs to the kitchen sink, dry heaving and then clutching the counter, knuckles utterly white. I run over to her and catch her as she’s about to fall.
“Got any more secrets to share, Ash?” Her voice is still hoarse from crying, and she nearly croaks out the words.
“I’m fresh out.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?” She holds onto me for support.
I grin. “It’s in the letters I sent you. The ones you didn’t read. I made sure you couldn’t divorce me for withholding information.” I shrug. “When I figured out you hadn’t read them—by that time, it didn’t seem like my story to tell. Not one I’d readily offer up, because it’s full of fucked up batshit craziness.”
“Christ.”
“Do me a favor, Sunshine?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell anyone I told you. That asshole is still alive somewhere, and I’m reasonably sure he’d find his way to North Carolina and slit my throat.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Three Years, Two Months Ago
It’s five o’clock in the morning, Syria time. I’m awake, and I should be getting up for my shift in the medical tent, but I have jet lag, and my body aches like I’ve been awake for days, the pain centering in the tip of my shoulder, just where the blade meets the arm. The pain pulses and radiates, extending down my left side and into the pit of my abdomen, creating a perfect circle of agony.
The pulled muscle—or whatever the hell it is—just adds insult to injury. I spent last night awake, on and off, dreaming about Ash. I tried calling him, dialing him again and again from my phone, but he never picked up. The last call mechanically informed me that his number had been disconnected.
Gone. Almost like it never happened—the wedding, the honeymoon, the plan to leave together. It’s like none of it was ever real.
I turn over onto my left side and cry out from the pain. A full body cramp makes its way up from my leg to my shoulder, so I turn the other way instead. Lying on my right side, the feeling lessens, and I can close my eyes again, even though my teeth and fists are clenched tight. Like any good doctor in the field, I can work my way through the pain and wake up in time for a stiff coffee and some early morning appointments. There are people who need me more than I need to lie here.
Still, I don’t move my legs. It’s my third morning here. The first morning, the feeling was barely noticeable, just a low cramping in my side, poking at me on and off. The shoulder pain started just last night, and that’s the real bitch in all of this.
It seems like a physical manifestation of my guilt and regret, my fucking idiocy.
I belong here.
I am a doctor.
There is only this job, this place, and the
burning ache, like a shot of lightning, wrapping its circle around my body, around my consciousness, taking over my thoughts.
I drift in and out of conscious thought, thinking of Ash’s crooked face and the heat of his body, the way he made me do things I never thought I’d do, the thrall he kept me in.
I’m free now. If I could only get free of my shoulder, float away from my body.
I absently wonder if it was the bus ride, or the sleepless nights spent at my mother’s empty inn, or the crying on the flight into Cairo that did it.
There’s a voice calling me from far away, one I barely recognize, and I can’t open my eyes. They feel heavy and hot. I have a sharp memory of my mother pressing a cool washcloth to my eyes when I was trying to fall asleep as a very young girl. Her hair was strawberry blond, like mine is now. I remember reaching up to touch it, twirling it between my fingers. She told me she was coming back very soon, and her smile looked sad. But it’s a silly memory. It isn’t right. My mother has red hair. I smile anyway and think of the washcloth against my head, delicate fingers smoothing down my brow.
It’s so good to be loved, better than anything else I know.
I choke out a sob and raise up my hands like I’m reaching for someone. Someone is calling me, but it’s not my name.
“Dr. Ash, we need you in the medical—”
“Collington,” I say, but it feels like there’s cotton jammed in my throat, and I can’t manage the squeak out the word. “Collington,” I try again, attempting to move my heavy muscles so I can get out of bed. My legs stick where they are, and I realize my arms are still raised. I put them down heavily and open my eyes. The room is spinning, and I’m dizzy, even though I’m still lying down. It’s the very tip of my shoulder that hurts, like someone has a chisel and they’re hammering it down between the bones.
The woman calling my name touches my arm, and I shudder, trying to pull away. Her cool hand goes to my forehead and then my cheek.