by Jodi Watters
The memory was so ridiculous, it brought a grin to her lips.
“Dirty bombs are bush-league,” he said casually. “I have better options at my disposal.”
Raising her knees, she pulled the large T-shirt over her bare legs and wrapped her arms around them, needing his warmth any way she could get it.
“You already know what horror came next. At my follow-up appointment, Dr. Merrill told me he had a lengthy and rather intimidating conversation with you. He said his receptionist had to call security.”
“I’d like to hear it from you. If you wanna tell me,” he murmured, when she hesitated. “And I never threatened his life, just his limbs.”
Her short laugh was watery. Only Ash would classify a vow to rip someone’s head off and shove it up their ass a non-life-threatening injury.
“I don’t remember much after that. Once I got to the hospital, it was all sort of a pain-filled blur. They wheeled me into a delivery room, doctors and nurses I’d never met before hovering over me, masks covering all but their eyes. They pitied me, I could see it. This poor woman giving birth, with no baby to show for it and no husband to speak of. I watched them whisper to each other as if I couldn’t hear. Words like soldier and overseas, and disposal and cremation buzzed around me. Sentences like active fetal expulsion floated in the air. A resident came in and said, ‘Oh, she’s an IUD case,’ like I was a science experiment.”
IUD meant Intra-Uterine death. She’d looked it up afterward.
“I wanted to scream at them to shut up, but I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have the energy. The nurses had to remind me. It just felt so surreal, like it couldn’t possibly be happening to me. And even though Rosa was on one side and Macy on the other, coaching and crying along with me, I felt alone. A dozen medical personnel were in the room, and still, I felt so alone.”
“Jesus,” he repeated, cupping a hand over his head. “Why the fuck would they make you endure such a thing? Why the fuck would I? That’s straight-up torture.”
“They didn’t give me a choice. Rosa was frantic, trying to reach your superiors. Macy kept getting your play phone’s voice mail. I wanted to wait, but Dr. Merrill said it was too risky. Nobody knew how long it would take you to arrive. He said all the natural mechanisms employed by the body to enable birth start regressing once a fetus is no longer viable. The longer he waited, the harder the birth would be for me, and a C-section is more dangerous physically and would affect future deliveries. They weren’t thinking about my mental state or your geographical location. They just wanted her out.”
Ash’s voice was steely. “I’m gonna find Dr. Merrill and put him in some physical danger. Once I’m done, he’ll regret not choosing beauty school over medical school. Our conversation entailed him laying out a bullshit line of medical mumbo jumbo and giving me a brochure titled, What to do after Stillbirth. I consider myself a fairly intelligent guy, but I had no goddamn idea what to do, and that brochure wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.”
“He never gave me a brochure. Maybe it would’ve helped.” Her grin was ironic. “Maybe it would’ve said, don’t contemplate jumping off the roof of your high-rise condo, or don’t eat your body weight in chocolate. It could’ve said, don’t wash down your Prozac with a bottle of chardonnay, or don’t leave your husband until you’ve had time to process this.”
His smile was sad.
“You wanna know what it really said? There were two things that stood out. One,” he said, holding up a finger, “you won’t know what to say or do, and even if you did, it probably won’t help, so the best option is to just be there for her.” He turned that finger toward himself. “That was an epic fail.”
She barked out a laugh. “I can’t disagree. What was the other thing?”
“Your marriage may not survive.” He tipped his head back, banging it against the wall again. “It said, your marriage may not survive this. And you know what, Liv? I didn’t believe it. I read that warning and thought to myself, ‘No way. No way in hell will that happen to us.’”
“But it did.”
“I’m hoping it didn’t,” he countered. “I’m still hoping it didn’t.”
“After four years, you still have hope?” Even after she’d left him, abandoning their marriage in much the same way she’d accused him of doing.
“It’s all I have.”
She nodded, staring at her wedding ring, twisting it around and around. Minutes passed while he stared at her, waiting patiently for the rest of the story.
“I held her.” Unable to look at him, her gaze flickered to the windows, black beyond the glass. “She was born at eight minutes to midnight, and they let me hold her for an hour. They had her swaddled in a white blanket and she looked—” Her voice caught on a shudder. “She looked beautiful. Fully developed, all her parts in place, all fingers and toes, and a head of soft dark hair. And ruby red lips,” she added, tapping her mouth. “Macy said she would’ve grown into one of those lucky women who never needed lipstick, and what a damn shame it was. I remember smiling at that, and it hurt. It actually hurt my whole body. Rosa had the chaplain come in and perform a blessing over her. It felt right to do that. I thought you would’ve wanted that, too.”
He made a sound that could’ve been a sob. Olivia didn’t look. “When he asked me if I wanted to join him in prayer, I told him God and I weren’t on speaking terms.”
Ash was blurry when she lifted her head, but even through tears, she could see his face twisted in pain. “That little chin dimple you have? She had it, too.”
Quick to his feet, he dug his fingers into his eyes, flashing her a stop sign when she reached for him. “Ash? I’m sorry. Are you—”
“I’m fine.” He slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.
And that’s when it occurred to her. Rosa was right.
Even knights on white horses could bleed. They just preferred to do it alone.
It was a full ten minutes before the bedroom door opened. When it did, the look of warning on his face dared her to question his breakdown.
If he’d even had one. There was no sign of tears.
He might see his humanity as weakness, but Olivia saw it as beautiful. Real. A common bond that molded them together in the midst of mutual suffering, rather than exposing their inherent differences, thereby ripping them apart.
The armor shielding her heart from further demise cracked completely. Then crumbled. Disintegrating to dust. Oh, she was still tender and aching, no doubt, but she also felt strong enough to let him in again. This man she’d tried so hard to stop loving. This man where she’d placed all blame.
It was time to forgive. To beg forgiveness.
After grabbing a bottle of beer and a glass of Merlot, Ash sat next to her on the sofa, wrapping her cold hand in his warm, capable grip. He’d thrown a shirt over his glorious chest, and other than threadbare jeans, wore nothing but his wedding band and the faded forearm tattoo she’d yet to explore.
Still clad in the black T-shirt she’d peeled off him only a couple hours earlier, Olivia squeezed his hand and smiled, the quiet aftermath of their heavy conversation comfortable.
“Where were you that day? The day I gave birth?”
His open expression closed. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Were you here? In the U.S., I mean?” That was her worst fear, that he’d been in the country, but still not come.
He hedged, but ultimately answered. “No. Africa.”
“Like, Africa, the continent? Lion King, Africa?”
He snorted. “Like, warlord, Africa. Fucking far, far away Africa. And don’t ask me for more than that. I can’t give it to you.”
She didn’t push, knowing he’d already said too much. During deployment, his location on any given day was much like everything else connected to The Unit. Classified. There were high-ranking government officials not privy to the information. He could be performing an enhanced interrogation in the condo three doors down,
and Liv would never know it.
Letting vulnerability get the best of her, she asked him the one question that kept her up at night. “After I left, why didn’t you come and get me?”
Angling his chin, he looked at her, stunned. “I did.”
“I mean before that awful confrontation on the patio,” she clarified, the incident so ugly, she’d done her best to repress it. “Why did you wait so long?”
“I was back less than a month after she died, Liv. They gave me two weeks, and I came home, desperate to see you. To talk to you because you wouldn’t answer your phone. You were gone.” His lips twisted, the dark scowl adding to his rakish appeal. “Didn’t take much detective work to track you down.”
She thought back to that wretched time, entire blocks missing. “I don’t remember.”
“I was there every day. I went to that fucking vineyard and waited, for two weeks straight. Day and night, I sat by your bed, in a house I couldn’t stand to be in, and waited. For you to wake up from a drugged-out haze and look at me. Reach for me. Come home with me.” His tone was defeated. “I waited, praying even sinners like me were worthy of second chances. I wasn’t.”
“I… I had no idea. They had me sedated most of time. I couldn’t sleep otherwise.” She couldn’t function otherwise. “I wasn’t coping very well.”
Olivia had a foggy recollection of him at her bedside, but she’d chalked it up to hallucinations. Her dreams—more like nightmares than anything—had been filled with awful images of death and despair.
Her baby, with dark hair and ruby lips, but no eyes. Only black, cavernous sockets.
Her husband, laughing in first-class, his wedding ring absent as he bent a brunette over the lavatory sink.
A pregnant woman pointing at her, accusing her of carrying a virus that killed babies, then crossing to the other side of the street.
“When I made it back a few months later, you weren’t yourself then, either,” he added, “but you were lucid. And well aware of your surroundings, too. That was the day on the patio. The day you told me you never wanted to see me again.”
A confrontation so final, she wished it was a figment of her medicated imagination. It wasn’t.
Wearing a ratty bathrobe and oversized sunglasses, she’d stood in the same spot where they’d met, staring at the rose garden. Olivia didn’t see the beauty of flowers in full bloom, but only the small section of churned earth surrounded by lavender roses, their cloying scent pungent in the humid air.
Ash coming up behind her, battle ready. “How could you do this to us? How could you move out and come here to live, of all fucking places? He’s tearing us apart, Liv. He’s wanted to from day one, and now he’s done it. You’re exactly where he wants you. Under his thumb. How soon do you think it’ll be before he has you in his bed?”
Weary and weak, Olivia hadn’t engaged, so he’d tried negotiating. “I love you, Liv. You’re my wife. You belong with me. Your loyalty lies with me. If you don’t come home, right now, then I won’t come back again. I won’t chase you down and beg every time I’m in town.”
Forcing her hand was his last option. “Olivia, goddamn it, get your shit and let’s go. I’ve had enough of this. You’re coming home with me right this fucking minute, even if I have to carry you to the fucking car. I’m not playing around.”
But in her nightmare—the one she lived in every day—he’d betrayed her, much the way her body had betrayed her, taking the one thing she loved more than him… his baby.
Lashing out, she’d said every hurtful thing she could think of, knowing he would leave again anyway. In fact, wanting him to. Olivia just wanted to be alone.
Alone and in pain and in the rose garden.
After Ash’s thunderous tantrum that included a brief, but loud ruckus behind the closed doors of Marshall’s office, he’d squealed away in a blaze of anger, the Jeep leaving skid marks on the cobblestone driveway. Months later, Olivia had those stones replaced. She couldn’t bear witness to his exit any longer.
Evidence that he’d not left willingly this time.
Clutching his hand now, she laid her head on his broad shoulder, his body a pillar as shame washed over her. Regret was like acid in her belly, eating away from the inside out.
“I told you I hated you.” She remembered her words, said in a grief-stricken fog. “That I would never forgive you for leaving me to endure that alone. That I never wanted to see you again because her face looked like your face.”
It was a dramatic statement—not to mention terribly cruel—but impossible. Their baby’s features were just like every other newborn’s. As yet indecipherable. Except for that tiny chin dimple.
“Add in the part about filing for divorce, and that sums it up, yeah. But it was a bit more colorful. I know truck drivers who don’t swear so prolifically.” She felt him grimace. “Got your point across.”
“Not really sure I meant all that.” She twirled an index finger near her ear. “I was a little cuckoo at the time.” And bluffing about filing.
“You think?” His retort didn’t necessitate an answer.
She drew a lazy pattern on his jean-clad thigh. “No wonder.”
“No wonder, what?”
“No wonder you stayed away. No wonder you didn’t try to contact me. No wonder you moved on.”
“No,” he shot back, jostling them as he faced her, grabbing her glass before the wine spilled. “That’s where you’re wrong, Liv. There’s no moving on, ever. There’s nobody else for me, ever. It will always be you.”
The love song in her heart rose as the hate chant in her head faded. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“Really? Because for the last four years, you’ve wanted to string me up by my balls and electrocute me with a heavy-duty car battery.”
Her smile was wide. “I’m not gonna say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it.”
“Yeah?” His tone was cautiously optimistic. “Why not?”
“I like your balls. Can’t a girl like a guy’s balls without having to explain herself?” She laughed, lightening the mood, but his raised brow demanded more. “I sorta have a thing for you, and it won’t go away. You set the bar. No other man will ever measure up. Some think they can. One or two wanna try. But it doesn’t matter what they do or how well they do it. They can’t be you.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is our history. Baggage.”
“All couples have that. We’ll work through it.”
“We’re strangers. We’re different people now.”
“Strangers, no. Different people, maybe. But we’re getting to know each other again, and the connection is still as strong. That’s what this summer’s about.”
The man had a convincing answer for everything.
“This summer’s also about sex. You need to talk less and put out more.”
“Shouldn’t that be my line? Instead, I’m the one holding out for something more meaningful. I don’t recognize myself anymore. This gets any worse, Carrie’s gonna ask me to drink chamomile tea and journal with her.”
“I’d pay good money to read your journal, and I’m scared, okay?” She blurted it out before she lost her courage. “I’m scared I’ll fall in love with you again. If I ever fell out, because I might be in deeper now than before. And I’m scared there’s no future for us, just like there wasn’t six years ago. You walked into my life and turned it upside down. Suddenly, the center of my world wasn’t me anymore, it was you. I loved you so much, and you walked away from me every time. All the time, including when I needed you most. I’m scared you’re gonna do it again.”
Grabbing her hands, he steadied her with sure blue eyes. “I’m not leaving. I won’t ever leave you again. Short trips for Scorpio only, and I control when I go, not somebody who outranks me. You’ll always know where I am and when I’m coming home.”
“But you made a choice that wasn’t us, and that decisio
n comes with consequences. Our child died, I nearly died, and you weren’t here. I only had Macy and Rosa to count on. And Marshall.”
“Marshall? Really?” Disgust laced his words as he stood. “I’m sure he had a plan all mapped out for you, too. Happy to help you get away from the ungrateful son who dared to turn his back on a field of meaningless fruit. He’s using you.”
“He’s not who you make him out to be. When Macy and I moved here, we were making minimum wage, living off microwave popcorn and Diet Coke. We slept on air mattresses in a studio apartment. I needed a good job. Hell, I needed a miracle. An angel. Marshall was my angel.”
“He’s not an angel, Liv. He’s the devil in disguise.”
His use of the word devil, a term of endearment used to describe Ash many times, wasn’t lost on her. Diablo con ojos azules. A blue-eyed devil. A boyhood nickname just as applicable to the grown man.
“Everything I have is because of Marshall. He hired an unqualified Southern girl who’s only skills were determination and bullshitting. I owe him my loyalty. Everything I have is because of him.”
“Do you owe him your life? Your love? Because he’s in some kind of delusional love with you, darlin’.” He spoke the endearment like she was dull. “Has been since the day I met you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Probably since the day he met you,” he added, as if she hadn’t spoken. “When you weren’t even fucking legal drinking age. I know for certain he was in love with you the day I married you.”
“Now you’ve lost your mind. I know the number for a good therapist.”
“He told me he was, so turn your crazy meter around and point it at him. He’s off the goddamn charts. He also told me one day you’d leave me for him. Taunted me with it. Threw it in my face.” He wore a path in the carpet. “And you know what? He was right. You did.”