True to You (A Love Happens Novel Book 3)

by Jodi Watters

  “If you leave again, then…” Voice trembling, mind overcome with grief and unraveling, Olivia came completely undone. “Then I’ll leave, too. And I won’t come back.”

  “You’re gonna leave me?” he asked, incredulous. “You’re gonna walk away from our marriage because of my job? Because I’m doing what I’ve always done? I’m contractually obligated, Liv.”

  Dropping her chin, she caught a glimpse of the empty bassinet, sitting at the foot of their empty marriage bed. Then looked deep within herself, to the hollowness inside. No baby. No husband. Just a dark, unfulfilled void.

  And Olivia did something she never thought she could do. She let go of Asher Coleson.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” he fired back, the admonishment reverberating against the walls. “The government doesn’t take kindly to desertion.”

  “Neither does your wife.”

  “You’ve been through a lot. You’re not thinking straight. Hormones and pain pills and—” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “—every fucking thing else. I spoke to your doctor. He said you need time to heal. To recover. But eventually, you’ll be back to yourself. We can try again.”

  “Yeah, Ash. That’s my problem. My hormones are outta whack. Go shoot some guns and blow some shit up for a few more months and once you decide to meander on home, I’ll be back to myself again. I’ll be Olivia, pre-dead-baby days.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. And I won’t try again. I’ll never get pregnant again.”

  “The doctor said you could. He said—”

  “I don’t give a shit what a doctor said!” She pointed to her stomach, one week postpartum. “This was the baby I wanted. I don’t want a replacement.”

  “For fuck’s sake, I’m not talking about a replacement. Give me a little credit, will you? And stop saying things you’ll regret. A few months down the road, you’ll be ready.”

  “Try me,” she dared, turning her back to him. “Never again.”

  He heaved a sigh, his frustration evident, but when she peeked at him, he was looking at his watch.

  “I have to go. I’ll call you from the plane, okay? We’ll work this out. I’ll put in for some leave. Take a few weeks to—” His gaze snagged on the bassinet, guilt crossing his face. He swallowed before looking back at her. “—to regroup. We’ll lie on a beach in Mexico and drown ourselves in tequila. I’ll fix you. I’ll make you better. We’ll be us again, okay?”

  Hands wrapped around her middle, she stood ramrod straight and stared out the window, waiting.

  Waiting for her husband to stay or go.

  Waiting for the razor-sharp pain to kill her.

  Waiting for someone to remove the bassinet before she hurled it six stories to the marina below, undecided whether she’d let go of the precious item or plummet to a concrete death along with it.

  But the only sound that followed Ash’s master plan to fix her was the click of the front door closing behind him.

  It could have been minutes or hours before she moved a muscle, the sky darkening and the water turning inky black as she stared out the window, the ocean view slowly changing, morphing into the haunted reflection of a broken woman Olivia had never met before.

  The twinkling of bells sounded endlessly from the nightstand, cheerful and condescending, the cell phone ringing over and over until the battery gave out. Until her knees gave out and she collapsed, Rosa ushering in and using superhuman strength to get her into bed.

  “Breathe, mija. In and out. Do it again. Good girl.” A cold compress was laid against her forehead, then a mother’s kiss to her sunken cheek. “He’ll be back. He loves you greatly, but he grieves, too, and he cannot do that while in witness of others. His pride won’t allow him.”

  Refusing the sedative Rosa held to her mouth, she curled into a ball, enjoying the painful tug in her lower body. A cool sheet settled over her, tucked tight to her chin, and the lamp clicked off. Rubbing her back in small circles, Rosa recited a litany of prayers in soft, rapid Spanish, repeating several before humming a song meant to put her to sleep.

  A sweet lullaby her child would never hear.

  Caring, arthritic hands turned the compress over. “A woman becomes a mother the moment she learns she is pregnant. A man does not become a father until the moment he sees his baby. My mijo must mourn the loss of his child, but also the loss of his wife as he knew her. This is a difficult task. He is not a man used to losing.”

  Adding a blanket over the sheet, Rosa sighed wearily, the religious woman’s faith tested beyond measure. “Breathe, Olivia, in and out. Now rest. Sleep is the best medicine.”

  Olivia laid alone in the quiet hush of darkness, tears leaking down to soak the sheet as she clutched her vacant stomach, dawn breaking before merciful sleep could come.

  In the stuttered wake of her shallow sobs, she heard the echoes of his absence. It was a harsh reminder that she’d married a ghost, a man who disappeared into the night without a trace, leaving behind the scrape of razor burn on her skin and the lash of abandonment on her heart.

  Three words.

  There were three words in the English language that when spoken together, had the ability to transcend time and place. You would forever remember exactly where you were when you heard them, even on your deathbed. Three single, simple words strung together.

  Her father staring into a stained coffee mug, biting his quivering lip as the worry line etched between his brows grew deeper. Your mom left.

  Ash’s mouth roaming her body, his eyes burning sapphire flames as he professed his innermost feelings with wet, wicked kisses. I love you. All the way.

  The paddle from an ultrasound sliding over her bare, still flat tummy, the chilly gel coating her skin no match for the warmth invading her heart. It’s a girl.

  Olivia guessed that in her thirty-some years alive, her three-word sentences hadn’t been much different than anybody else’s. A mix of wonderful and wounding, she clung to the happy three-word memories and persevered through the others, living to fight another day.

  Three simple, otherwise innocent, words.

  And none held the mighty power to break her, to sweep her legs and take her down, making her question heaven, hell, and everything in between, more than three words spoken to her by a nurse on a sunny spring morning in Southern California.

  Face draining of color, she was a woman—and a mother—whose sole purpose in life was to aid the helpless and heal the sick, and who never signed up to say three horrible, devastating, life-changing words to another mother.

  No fetal heartbeat.

  Olivia had cupped her enormous belly with trembling hands as the nurse pushed the monitor back and hustled out of the room, stopping to squeeze her arm and fake a smile. “This equipment can be buggy. Let me get the doctor.”

  But the doctor—and the alarming number of medical professionals crowding into the room behind him—didn’t have those three magic words Olivia held her breath and prayed to hear.

  All is well. Gracie is fine. Prepare for delivery.

  Instead, he’d repeated the nurse’s words with a stoic, but sorrowful face, offering no rhyme or reason as to why her child was suddenly, permanently still. Why her body had betrayed her. Why her world had gone from vibrant technicolor to desolate gray, all in the time it took to say three words.

  No fetal heartbeat.

  Birds chirped in a tree outside the examination room window. Sparrows, maybe. Or purple finches. Olivia felt the ridiculous need to know what species of bird dared sing their song to her.

  Didn’t they know? This was no time for singing. Her baby was dead.

  The room was cold and she shivered, unable to stop the violent tremors. All she wore was a thin medical gown and a doubled-over cotton blanket that smelled like moth balls. It didn’t smell like the tiny clothes she’d washed and hung on miniature pink hangers.

  What would she do with all tho
se clothes? There was a nursery decorated in pink military camouflage and nobody to sleep in the Cadillac of cribs. Her baby was dead.

  How would she ever tell her husband? The Superman of men, who was faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. Who could do anything and everything better than Clark Kent himself, except hide his worry over being a first-time, long-distance father. His baby was dead.

  Say her name.

  Say she mattered.

  Say we mattered.

  “I know her name. I gave it to her.” Ash’s guttural voice broke through her haze of memories. “And since we’re hurling insults, did you forget that?”

  Olivia didn’t answer him. The lump in her throat wouldn’t allow it.

  “Her name was Grace.” Anguish laced his words, the emotion shocking her. “My daughter’s name was Grace, and she died almost four years ago, and I’m still mad as fucking hell about it. And while I’m at it, I’m pissed at you, too.”

  Sliding to the living room floor, he leaned back against the wall and stretched his long legs out, a hand propped on a raised knee. Looking hunky in worn-out jeans and nothing else. Looking wrecked.

  As wrecked as she felt.

  Angry too, as he added, “Is that what you wanted from me?”

  Olivia looked away, her quick temper spent, replaced by guilt and harsh reality. Seeing him immersed in a pain she knew all too well didn’t feel as good as she’d anticipated.

  “Yes. It helps to know I’m not the only one.”

  He smirked, disgusted. “You’re not the only one. You’d like to think you are, but you’re not. She was my baby, too.”

  Wearing only his delicious smelling T-shirt, she sat in a corner of the sofa hugging a toss pillow, bare legs tucked under her. Ten feet of plush carpeting and the death of their child separated them, the truth in his words undeniable.

  “I’m sorry I forced the issue. That was a shit fit four years in the making.” Smiling weakly, she felt oddly relieved.

  The tragedy that preceded the end of their marriage was a festering wound. Ash putting voice to their daughter’s existence was a healing balm, in and of itself.

  “I’ve been practicing what I would say during that confrontation for four years,” she added. “Had some real zingers in my back pocket. I forgot most of them in the heat of the moment.”

  “You got in a few good ones,” he muttered, running a hand along his chin as if she’d landed an uppercut, shrugging off her apology. “Not your fault I’m not in touch with my feelings.”

  “Feelings suck.”

  He choked out a laugh. “That they do. Feel like I’m right back to that day again. Unable to fix my broken family. Six hours until I have to go back to The Unit and act as if my heart wasn’t just ripped out.”

  His rawness cut Olivia to the core and spurred an admission of her own.

  “I was too wrapped up in my own grief to notice yours. I was trying to get by, one breath to the next. Trying not to die one minute, desperately wanting to the next. We should’ve had this conversation a long time ago.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” His hand sliced through the air, voice commanding. “We’re having it now. We’re hashing it all out tonight, once and for all. Everything’s on the table. The baby, The Unit, all of it. And the fucking vineyard, too. We’re gonna talk it out, we’re gonna feel the feelings, and you and I are gonna come to terms with each other. And then we’re gonna start fresh.”

  Start fresh. With a man who’d walked away when she’d needed him the most. “Do you think we can? Do you really think we can start over with all this baggage?”

  “I do, Liv.” His sincere eyes held hers. “Because there’s love here. Real love. Was from the beginning and always will be. And because as awful as losing my child was, do you know what was worse? Losing my wife.”

  “My pride wants to remind you how many times I lost my husband, but I don’t have any fight left in me.”

  He leaned back, thumping his head against the wall as if to punish himself, conceding her point. Staring at him, she realized the filter of hate and resentment clouding her vision had started to clear, showing her the man she’d fallen in fast, hard love with.

  “Brutal honesty?” she asked, desperate to go back in time. To regain their powerful, once unbreakable connection.

  His nostalgic half smile was an olive branch.

  “I lost her, too. Me, I mean. Don’t know how it happened so fast, but before I knew it, she was gone.” Olivia picked at the fringe on the pillow, admitting what only she and Marie knew to be true. “Buried first in medication, then depression. Then deep, dark, wonderful anger. I’m just now finding her again.”

  “That’s understandable, Liv. I understood.” He shook his head. “Could’ve done without the whole, move-out-and-never-come-back thing. But I understood why. I didn’t give you much reason to stick around.”

  “God, I’m sick of feeling sorry for myself.” She blinked back tears. “I’m sick of being mad. I’m sick of avoiding playgrounds and the diaper aisle at the grocery store. I’m sick of feeling jealous when I see a woman pushing a stroller. And then mad. Just more and more mad.”

  “You have a right. You’ve been through hell.”

  The thickness in her throat intensified. “For a while it made me feel better. The anger. The hate. It helped me get through the day. If I stayed busy blaming you for what happened, and then hating you for deserting me, I wasn’t overwhelmed with loss. With unanswered questions.” She listed them. “Why did she die? How did she die? What did I do wrong? What didn’t I do right? Why weren’t you as devastated as I was? It nearly drove me insane.” Rolling her lips inward, she looked down. And confessed again. “For the first year, I think it actually did.”

  “I was devastated, but I couldn’t show it. It would interfere with work. The Unit trains us to be robots. Don’t feel emotion, don’t show emotion, and sure as shit don’t make a decision based on emotion. That gets people killed. And there’s no reason why. It just happened. I all but waterboarded the doctor trying to get those answers myself. All I got was statistics.”

  “I know.” She pressed her palm to her forehead, closing her eyes briefly. “I’ve heard them, too. I’ve researched it, read about other couple’s experiences, even joined a support group, and I’ve gotten nowhere. One in two hundred pregnancies end in stillbirth. Most occur without any identifiable risk factors or warning signs. Up to sixty percent are unexplained. None of it makes the pain go away.”

  “It’s an unknown we have to learn to live with.”

  She stewed on that arduous fact, inhaling the masculine scent clinging to his shirt. “You said, we’re in this together. That day, the night you came home, you said, we’re in this together. But that wasn’t true. I was alone. Before, during, and after, I was alone.” Looking at him, she patted her chest, voice shaking. “I needed to talk about it. I needed you to talk about it. I need that now. I can’t go through life with this silence. I need to tell you what happened to me. To her.”

  “We are in this together. I felt that way, Liv. I just—” He shrugged mile-wide shoulders, defeat in his voice. “I thought the words would be good enough until I could make it back home again. Until I could manage some time off. It wasn’t bullshit. It’s how I felt then and how I feel now.”

  “It wasn’t good enough. Not even close.”

  “I know. I left because I had to, not because I wanted to. My hands were tied.”

  “Didn’t even skim the surface,” she added, ignoring his cop-out.

  “You’re right.” He accepted her retort without excuses.

  “I am right.” And why wasn’t he putting up the protest she’d expected? It weakened her resolve.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said, voice faint, as if hearing the heinous events of that day could possibly be as hard as living them.

  “Are you sure? Because it doesn’t have a happy ending,” she quipped, joking her way through the pain. “Spoiler alert, it’s
a real tearjerker.”

  “Talk to me, Livvy. You’re right. I need to hear it.”

  Wrapping her arms around the pillow, she huddled inward, gathering strength.

  “It was a Friday. I overslept, and when I finally woke up, I sat straight up in bed. I knew something was wrong. It took me a minute to realize I wasn’t feeling her move. Macy had stayed over, and she broke a land-speed record rushing to the doctor’s office. By the time we got there, Rosa was already waiting for us. She had warm muffins in her purse and a rosary in her hand.” Half laughing, she looked at him in amazement. “To this day, I have no idea how she got there so fast.”

  His mouth quirked. “Probably made Marshall call for a helicopter.”

  They shared a smile, delaying the inevitable. Biting her lip, she tasted metal, but continued.

  “They weren’t worried. I was just a new mother with pre-delivery jitters. The nurse joked that, if this was my second baby, I’d be grateful the soccer game in my tummy was rained out, so I could enjoy the extra sleep. She pushed me from the lobby to the examination room in a wheelchair because I was a patient. After the ultrasound confirmed there was no heartbeat, I had to walk into the doctor’s personal office to discuss the next step. She didn’t push me in a wheelchair then. I was no longer a patient. I was a victim. I wanted to wait for you, but the doctor insisted I deliver right away. My blood pressure was elevated, and his focus wasn’t on the baby anymore, but on me. I didn’t care. I wanted to lie down and die right there.”

  “That would’ve killed me for sure, Liv. They could’ve buried us together.”

  “When they sent me to the hospital, I had to leave through a side door. They said it was so I wouldn’t have to see the pregnant women in the waiting room, but I—” Her breath hitched. “I knew that wasn’t why. It was so they wouldn’t see me. I would scare them.”

  “Jesus,” he whispered, blowing out a deep breath.

  “Macy was so mad about that, she told them she was hiring a lawyer on my behalf and suing them for mental anguish. She also said they must not know who I was married to or they wouldn’t treat me like that, and they’d be lucky there wasn’t a dirty bomb planted underneath the building before sundown. They threatened to have her arrested for domestic terrorism, and she threatened a bad Yelp review in addition to her lawsuit.”