If Forever Comes

by A. L. Jackson

  The sharpest shot of possessiveness rattled me straight to the core, deep enough to cut into the compulsory resignation that had spurred me to pack my things and walk out of Elizabeth’s house.

  He pulled from the curb and out into the swarm of merging and exiting cars. He caught the severity of my gaze as I followed his departure. There wasn’t a god-damned thing I could do to stop myself from staring him down.

  Because it slammed me—the realization that just because Elizabeth couldn’t stomach the sight of me didn’t mean she might not one day want someone else.

  My hands curled into the tightest fists, and I buried them in the pockets of my slacks, struggling to hang onto my last ounce of sanity because I knew I was about five seconds from losing my fucking mind.

  I just wasn’t rational when it came to her.

  She was mine.

  She’d always been.

  And I was going to make sure she always was.

  Mid-January, Eight Months Earlier

  Distorted, late afternoon light diffused through the small, glazed window, tossing muted beams of sunlight across Elizabeth’s alcove bathroom. They struck the floor in slanted rays and lit up the dense motes that floated, suspended in the air. The walls felt as if they were closing in, and it was quiet. So damned quiet.

  I paced the floor. My footsteps echoed back my impatience. What else was I supposed to do?

  These had to be the longest three minutes of my life.

  I raked two restless hands though my hair. My fingers dug into my skin and scraped along my scalp. Gripping the back of my neck, I turned my face to the ceiling and exhaled, hoping to release some of the pent-up pressure I couldn’t seem to expel from my body.

  God, I couldn’t take this.

  “Would you stop? You’re making me nervous.” Elizabeth fidgeted from her spot where she was propped up against the bathroom counter. She glanced at me askew. The tiniest of smiles played at her mouth. It tugged at those places inside me that only existed with her, simply because in her, they’d been created.

  One side of my mouth lifted in a soft curl of affection. Her blonde hair was piled in a messy twist on her head, and a misshapen sweatshirt fell off one shoulder, the perfect partner to the pair of thin, black leggings she wore. Standing there, she looked so much like the eighteen-year-old girl I’d first met rather than the twenty-seven-year-old woman she was.

  God, she was a vision, perfection in my eyes.

  It was her expression that loosened that ball of anxiety knotting me tight. She looked up at me in anticipation, with trust and hope and the same excitement that was just about to fry my nerves.

  I drew in a calming breath.

  She was late. Just one day. But that didn’t matter. I think both of us already knew. We could feel our lives teetering on the cusp of change. The only thing left now was begging that little stick to put to rest the uncertainty, to give us its promise, to tell us that this was really happening.

  Elizabeth stretched out her hand and silently beckoned me to her. That smile she wore on her beautiful face grew a little, nervously fluttering around the edges.

  How could any one woman affect me this way? How could her touch both burn me and soothe me in the same simple stroke?

  A smile teetered at my mouth as I slipped up in front of her. I gently wound her in my arms, and she laid her head on my chest. Little tremors rolled the length of her body.

  “You’re shaking,” I murmured, running my fingers through her hair, hoping to calm her.

  She edged back a fraction. Between us, she placed both hands flat across her belly. She looked up at me from beneath her lashes, her eyes all alight and alive.

  “I’m not shaking.” Her voice dropped low, and she whispered her awe. “It’s butterflies.”

  A sharp exhale escaped through my nose. There was no fear hiding below the surface of her words, no remnants of distrust spinning though her spirit. Nothing here threatened to take us back to that day. This…this was the way it should have been, how I should have been, standing there supporting the one who meant everything.

  I ran my thumb across the sharp angle of her cheekbone. “Butterflies, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she answered, chancing a hopeful grin. Warmth gleamed in her soft brown eyes.

  Somehow Elizabeth managed to undo me a little more.

  “Does that mean you already know what that test is going to say?” And I thought I did, too, thought I could feel it. Maybe I’d convinced myself into believing something just because I wanted it so badly. I didn’t know. But damn, if I didn’t ever want this.

  Things were crazy with the wedding plans. It was hard to believe we’d gotten home from New York less than a month ago. We’d announced to Elizabeth’s family our plans, that we were actually setting a date.

  June seventh.

  God, it seemed impossible to fathom that things were finally as they should be.

  Just five short months and Elizabeth would be mine, completely.

  Natalie and Elizabeth’s sisters had immediately set to work on wedding plans, fretting over this day that, in my eyes, couldn’t be anything less than perfect simply because Elizabeth would become my wife.

  It didn’t matter the place or the food or what everyone would wear.

  All that mattered were the vows we were going to make.

  Our lives had transformed so drastically in such a short period of time. We hadn’t been trying for this, but thought we’d just let it take its course. I mean, things were already chaotic, a disorganized mayhem, both of our houses on the market as we searched for a home to fill with love and the memories of our lives, plus the constant wedding plans we were running around organizing. But it was a welcomed mayhem.

  I had a feeling it was about to get worse.

  Seeming to get lost in thought, Elizabeth let her attention travel to the far wall. A few seconds later, she turned the force of it back on me.

  “I didn’t think this would happen so fast. I’m not sure why, but I thought we’d have to work for it. But this…” Earnestly she pressed her hands more firmly to her stomach. “This blessing…I’ve been pretty sure of it for the last week. I just…know.”

  I cupped her cheek. My attention flitted over every line and curve of the face forever burned in my mind. “I can’t wait to do this with you.”

  She smiled up at me. A faint blush tinted her cheeks and tears glistened in her eyes. “I really hope we’re not getting ahead of ourselves.”

  Longing rushed from her in waves. Each one crashed into me, as if some unconscious part of her were begging me to make this real.

  I wanted so badly to give it to her.

  “If not today, then we will celebrate it on another. But we will do this together, Elizabeth.”

  She nodded against my palm and brought hers up to cover mine. She wrapped her fingers around mine. “Thank you for being here, Christian. For sharing this moment with me…whatever direction it goes.”

  On the counter, the timer dinged.

  I lay my cheek against hers, let her warmth surround me. My hold was secure. I was there for her one way or another. Even if this didn’t turn out the way we wanted it, we’d deal with it.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  She blinked. “So ready.”

  Her message was clear, rang in my ears and in my heart, a promise that every question of my devotion to her had been erased from her mind.

  She clung to me as we turned our faces to the test sitting beside us on the bathroom counter.

  I felt her lose her breath, and I wound my arms around her a little tighter to hold her up as her legs weakened beneath her.

  Two pink lines.

  This time, there was no question she was shaking. She trembled in my arms. “Christian,” fell as a breath from her mouth, bled into the room as wonder and awe.

  Two pink lines.

  There was no greater joy than what I felt in this moment. It just didn’t exist. Nothing else could compare.

  S
he was crying as I knelt on the floor in front of her. I wrapped my hands around her waist, buried my face in her stomach where our child grew. Where a new life had begun.

  I was overcome.

  Elizabeth gentled her fingers through my hair. I tipped my head back so I could look at her. I slipped my hands to the outside of her waist in the same second she took my face in her hands.

  “We’re going to have a baby, Christian,” she said.

  Saying it aloud seemed to rip something open inside of her. She choked over a cry that spoke of so many things—shock and relief and joy, crushing the vestiges of disbelief that had lingered in these walls.

  “A baby,” she whispered again through a fervent sob. “Oh my God, Christian… I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling right now. How happy I am. I didn’t think I’d ever get to have this again. I’d accepted that it was only ever going to be me and Lizzie.” Passion poured from her mouth, her spirit seeking understanding in mine. “I…I…” She stumbled over her thoughts, wet her lips as she looked at me through bleary eyes. “You know, you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted this with…the only one I’d ever give this to. Thank you for finding me, for loving me, for filling up the void in my life…for giving me this.”

  “God, Elizabeth…”

  How could I respond to that when I’d been the one to leave that void in the first place? But I knew…knew I was the only one who fit in that void, because it was Elizabeth that perfectly filled mine, too. “Nothing in this world could make me happier than this,” I urged.

  Unchecked tears streamed down her face, and she took me by the hands and held them flat at her stomach.

  I swallowed over the lump wedged at the base of my throat, my hands burning into her flat stomach that would soon grow round.

  In the fading light of the room, we held our child.

  My mind raced with images of what was taking hold in the deepest places of Elizabeth’s body.

  Was this a boy or girl?

  I wondered if again the child would take after me the way Lizzie did? Maybe have a tiny cleft like the one Lizzie wore on her chin and the same shock of black hair on her head? Would he watch the world through intuitive, blue eyes, just like Lizzie?

  Or would she be a small Elizabeth, would her eyes be warm and brown, would blonde curls frame her face, would her heart go on in unending innocence, kindness, and compassion?

  Or would this child defy the imaginable?

  “I’m so happy, Elizabeth,” I whispered at her stomach, hoping that maybe this child could sense the devotion flooding from us, the love we had already found ourselves in.

  I’d forever regret not being there for Lizzie. Even though my spirit had recognized her the second I saw her, the truth was, I’d only known my little girl for a matter of months. But somehow, somewhere in the bleakness of that time, she had still made her mark on my heart. Through time and space, she’d managed to touch me. She had stirred something in me that I never wholly understood until the moment I first saw her.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that this child already had, too.

  A smile washed the entirety of Elizabeth’s face, those same images I’d been thinking of before so obviously playing behind her eyes.

  Then she offered a soggy grin. “Lizzie is going to be the best big sister. I can’t wait to tell her.”

  “I can’t imagine a better big sister.” I smiled up at her, running my hands up her stomach then wrapping them firmly around her waist. I tugged her a little, rocked her forward.

  Her hands fell to my shoulders for support and a tiny giggle of surprise rolled from her mouth. She raked her bottom lip between her teeth.

  God, she was always pushing me to the edge of sanity, driving me a little mad because only this girl could stir these impossible things in me, wind me up and tie me from the inside out. In the same pass of her hand, she managed to put me at the greatest ease.

  She was what made me complete. She was what made me right.

  “How’d we get this lucky, Elizabeth?”

  She touched my face and slowly shook her head. “I have no idea…but I’m not going to let it go.”

  Two Weeks Later

  Elizabeth was on her knees on the bathroom floor. For what had to have been the tenth time in the last thirty minutes, she vomited. Her entire body trembled and shook as she purged the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She squeezed her eyes shut, her back arching as she lifted up higher on her knees and gasped for a breath.

  I swept back the hair matted to her forehead, lifted it from her neck that was drenched with sweat.

  God, this was complete torture. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so helpless in my life. All I wanted was to fix her, to make her better, to take it away.

  And I couldn’t do a goddamned thing.

  She gulped for air before she lurched forward and heaved again. This time, nothing came up. An indistinct whine fumbled from her mouth as her muscles clenched and strained, and she gripped the edge of the toilet as her body fought to expel something that just wasn’t there.

  With a heavy sigh, I placed a kiss to her temple. “Hold on a second.”

  Harshly she nodded, and I climbed to my feet. Grabbing a washcloth from the linen closet, I ran it under cool water and wrung it out. My footsteps were subdued as I shuffled back to her.

  I knelt down beside her. “Here,” I whispered, wishing to find anything that would soothe her, even in the slightest way.

  She felt miserable, and it caused me physical pain to see it.

  That pain contorted my face with sympathy when I hooked my index finger under her chin and drew her face toward me.

  Shit.

  She looked awful…and beautiful.

  How was that even possible?

  I swept the cloth over the moisture gathered on her brow. Elizabeth whimpered, and her eyes fell closed as she allowed me to take care of her. I dabbed the cloth gently at the chapped skin of her lips.

  “I hate that you’re going through this,” I murmured as I flipped the cloth around and ran it over the back of her neck.

  For a moment she sagged, a moment’s reprieve, before another roll of nausea hit her. She pitched forward. She strained, every muscle in her body stretched thin, her stomach constricting as she gagged. Nothing came up except for the agonized moan that tore from her throat. A stream of tears slicked down her face, cries she couldn’t contain.

  I brushed the bangs from her face and placed a supporting hand at the base of her head. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She swallowed hard. Her voice was all raspy, like maybe it was hard just to speak. “Just don’t leave me.”

  A smile fluttered at my mouth, and my thumb caressed the soft skin of her cheek. “I’m not going anywhere, baby.”

  I’d barely left her side in two days. I’d stood, or rather knelt beside her, when the effects of the pregnancy had suddenly taken hold. It’d seemed almost a shock because, two nights ago, we’d gone to sleep with her feeling completely fine—feeling good was what she’d said—and it wasn’t four hours later that she’d jumped out of bed in the early hours of the morning. Shocked from sleep and gripped by fear, I fumbled out of the tangled sheets and rushed into the bathroom where I found her on the floor, her body sick with the strain the child growing within her caused.

  In the last two days, it hadn’t let up.

  Honestly, it scared me, watching her suffer this way. In the few minutes I’d found to sneak away, I’d been on my phone, researching if this was normal, and if it was, what we could do about it.

  Of course, there was no shortage of suggestions, a mess of folklore and superstition that I wasn’t about to test out on my future wife. Dotted in between were the few remedies that possibly seemed legitimate.

  But basically, we had to wait it out.

  She frowned. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  I felt one form in return. “How am I looking at you?”

  She almost smiled. “Like if I
throw up one more time, you might have a meltdown.”

  I chuckled lightly. “That obvious, huh?”

  This time, she managed a smile, and she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “It’s really not as bad this time, Christian,” she mumbled in what I could only assume was supposed to be some kind of reassurance.

  It did nothing to allay my concern, only inflamed the residual guilt that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Seeing her like this brought so much to light, uncovered all those things that I’d never borne witness to, things buried in the unknowns of Elizabeth’s life when I’d been absent.

  Yeah, I had a vague sense of what she’d gone through. She’d described it, but when a person isn’t there to witness suffering, it’s hard to comprehend it. But to cause her to quit school, I knew it had to have been bad. That knowledge had been a huge blow to me, struck me deep and beat me down. I mean, God, I’d left her alone to go through all of that by herself.

  The truth was, though, I really didn’t know what she’d suffered. I just had no clue.

  Now I was getting the idea.

  Elizabeth’s eyes went wide, and she jerked back to the toilet. Her knees dug into the floor as she held herself up. She strained and moaned and begged for something to give.

  My heart hurt a little more.

  God, this was awful.

  But not for a second did Elizabeth complain. She just took it in stride, attributed it to something her body required of her in return for the child it protected.

  I would never cease to be amazed by her.

  “I’m going to run downstairs to get you some water. Will you be okay while I’m gone?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  “Do you need anything else? Crackers or something?”

  So maybe crackers were about the only thing I’d seen on my search that I’d be inclined to suggest Elizabeth put in her body. I wasn’t willing to take the chance—not on her or the baby.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  I hesitated.

  “Honestly, Christian…I’ve been through this before.”