“I love you, Christian.” I felt her words more than heard them.
“I know,” I whispered tenderly at her skin, all of mine held in the simple acceptance of what she had said.
With my foot, I nudged the bedroom door open. Crossing the room, I gently settled her in the middle of the bed. Elizabeth looked up at me with all the torment she had been unwilling to show, her eyes open wide, the darkness in the depths revealing how deep her pain really went.
My movements were measured as I climbed down beside her. I tugged her twisted sheets over us as I turned to my side and pulled her into my arms.
There was no resistance. Her arms were crossed between us as I held her whole, my hand at the back of her head while she cried out months of misery into my chest.
I held her, supported her the way I should have, even when she’d pushed me away.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally managed to murmur. I ran my fingers through the length of her hair. “I’m so sorry for everything. For everything.”
She curled her hand into the skin at my chest, fingers anchoring deep. “Don’t leave me.”
Exhaling, I somehow managed to pull her a little closer. I would never let her go.
“Never, Elizabeth. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just waiting for you to come back to me.”
In all of this, that had been my greatest mistake, my biggest failure. Leaving her alone when she needed me most.
Another sob echoed from her mouth. “It hurts,” she whimpered.
“I know, baby, I know.”
She choked over the emotion in her chest. I held her tighter. Never again would I allow enough space for a wedge to be driven between us. I’d never sit silent. I’d no longer wait.
I whispered into her hair softly, “It is time, Elizabeth.”
I said those three words again, the ones that had continually been our ruin. I wasn’t scared saying them now. “It’s time to talk about it. To talk about her. Talk about us. You have to tell me what you’re feeling.”
Elizabeth burrowed deeper, her tears wet on my flesh. “It hurts,” she said again.
“I know. It hurts me, too, but we have to.”
Hiding only ruined us, destroyed what we had.
Slowly, she lifted her face to me, and I stared down at the woman I loved, silently encouraging her to open up to me.
She swallowed hard before her face pinched and a rush of tears streamed from the creases of her eyes. “That day, Christian.” Her lids closed as if she were trying to block the memory, or maybe she was finally allowing it in. The words were rough, pained. “Going through labor…it was torture.” She glanced at me, searching for understanding. “It felt like I was rejecting her when all I wanted to do was hang onto her. But then they brought her to me…”
She wet her lips, her attention darting away before it flitted back to search my face, agony set in every line. “All that time when I was holding her, I kept begging her to breathe. She felt so whole in my arms that I kept thinking she had to. She just had to take a breath, and everything would be okay.”
I could feel her panic, the pain as it rolled through her, as it tightened in her throat and hammered furiously in her chest.
I wanted to fix it, to fix her, to shield her, but I knew we had to face it, and facing it was going to hurt. All of it, the pain in what we’d lost and the disaster we’d created in its wake.
My arms constricted around her body. She felt so frail in my arms, so delicate. Shudders wracked through her as she trembled in my hold.
“Baby, I know it hurts, but you have to tell me. We’re never going to get past this if we don’t talk to each other.”
Her fingers burrowed into my skin, as if seeking an anchor. Her words came with a crush of sorrow, unbearable as she once again broke down.
“When they took her away, it was like reality finally hit me, and that was the moment when I realized she never would, Christian. My little girl was never going to breathe, and when they walked out the door with her, she took my ability to breathe with her.”
And I was there again, with her, seeing it through her eyes. And God, it was fucking devastating.
“I felt like I was suffocating, Christian, and I thought I was going to die. And you…you were the one who made me do it. You were the one who told me it was time.” She pinched her eyes closed. “God, this is so hard to talk about, I’ve kept it inside for so long.”
“Baby…take your time.”
She took a deep breath, blinking as she slowly shook her head. “I know now how crazy that was, Christian. I blamed you for something you couldn’t control, but it felt like you were against me, like you weren’t fighting for her the way I was. I hated you for it.”
Hearing her say it again punched me in the gut. I knew she had, but I also knew it’d come from trauma, from shock, that she’d been lost to skewed emotions because she didn’t know how to deal with the loss.
I cupped her cheek, my thumb making a pass over the apple of her cheek. “It’s okay, Elizabeth. Just tell me…I want to hear it. I need to hear it so I can understand.”
She looked up at me through watery eyes, her expression intense.
“You didn’t hold her.” Her mouth quivered as she said it. She glanced away, then brought her attention back to me. “I know what I said to you was selfish because I know you loved her. But that hurt me, and it just added to the anger I felt toward you. Every time I saw you, the pain almost knocked me from my feet. I couldn’t feel anything else but the pain and the hurt and the hate. And the pain is still there,” she emphasized, “I need you to know that I’m scared and I’m confused lying here with you, but the pain is not obscuring what I really feel for you anymore.”
Hope wound into her voice. “The last few weeks, I’ve been feeling it, little flashes of something that felt as if it were calling to me. It took me kissing Logan tonight for me to realize what it was. It was you.”
“Seeing that tonight…it killed me, Elizabeth. It made me insane with jealousy.” I rolled her on her back and I propped myself up, hovering over her. My fingers crawled out to splay wide across her chest, and I pressed my hand over her heart as I stared down at the brown eyes that searched me through our misery. “Because I already knew that, Elizabeth. I already knew you belonged to me just like I belong to you.” I dropped my gaze to the empty spot near her head. I tried to rein in the depth of the rage that jealousy had evoked in me. Then I sealed my eyes on hers. “You hurt me, Elizabeth. I’m not going to lie and tell you it’s okay, because it’s not. You are my life, but you have to make the decision you’re going to live it with me, even when that life brings hardships we don’t want to face.”
Grief twisted her face, but I continued.
“And I’ll never be able to express to you how sorry I am that I pushed you to let her go. It was stupid, but I thought I was protecting you and that you were just harming yourself by continuing to hang onto her all that time. I should have let you make the decision when you were ready.”
Hesitant fingers fluttered along my chest. Sadness deepened the lines on her face. She fisted her hand as if she had to work up to what she wanted to say. Her voice came quiet, ragged in its admission.
“But that’s the thing, Christian, I would never have been ready to let her go. And I think you knew that. You know me. Know me the way no one else does, in a way no one else ever will. I blamed you for what you were never responsible for. I couldn’t even look at you because you represented everything I had wanted, all of my hopes, my hopes for this little girl and for our marriage. In one day it was shattered.”
She slipped her hand up my neck, cupped my jaw, her eyes burning into mine.
“I’m scared that when you and I are together, I’m so happy. It feels like every time I give myself to you, I’m hit with the worst kind of devastation. I’m scared of what you make me feel. It’s so intense that sometimes it’s overwhelming. But tonight, with Logan…” Frantically she gathered my hand, arched her back so she c
ould place my palm over her heart. “No one can touch this but you. My heart, it belongs to you just like every other part of me does. All of it…all of me. I’m yours.”
And I was reeling, staggered by the depth of her words. By what they meant.
“I love you, Elizabeth. Nothing can change that.”
“I’m so sorry it took someone else touching me to make me realize that, to knock me back into reality. If I’d have just held on a little longer, I would have seen, Christian. I’ve felt a change in me, a glimmer of light when I was so lost in the darkness. I know it would have lit on you.”
I brushed my lips over hers, the softest pass, an embrace.
She wound her arms around my neck and buried her face in my neck. “I’m never going to get over her.”
I ragged sigh left me, because I grasped the truth of her words. They were my truth, too.
“No one expects you to get over her, Elizabeth. Neither of us will ever completely heal from it. We lost our child. That is something we’re going to have to deal with forever. It’s never going to stop hurting, but it will get better, and we have to live through it together.”
We had to believe that our little girl was safe, free, that she wasn’t alone or feeling any of this pain we bore for her.
Elizabeth cried, hugging me tighter.
I ran my hand through her hair, whispered at her head. “People don’t always get to love like this, Elizabeth. Not the way we do. It’s a gift.”
I shifted so I could look down at her. “Please don’t ever let it go.”
Elizabeth ~ Seven Months Later
A gentle breeze blew across the rising swell. Ocean waves tumbled in, crashing as they broke on the shore. Rays of sunlight slanted between gaps in the thin layer of clouds hanging in the late afternoon sky. My bare feet sank into the dampened sand, a feeling I had loved since I was a little girl.
Peace settled over me like the warmest embrace.
He stood on our beach just off in the distance. Locks of black hair beat at his forehead as wind gusted in. His face was still all sharp angles, his jaw strong, those lips still pouty and full.
But his eyes. They were aware, knowing and kind.
My heart stuttered as a roll of nervous energy hastened through me.
Yes, Christian Davison still managed to steal my breath. It was no different than ten years ago when he’d first walked through those cafe doors and changed the direction of my life.
I guess I should have known it then, the way he’d made me feel as if he’d knocked something loose inside of me, unleashed something I didn’t know existed.
Lizzie peeked back at me. Her long black hair was all tied up in an elegant twist. It was beautiful and made her look much too old, but she insisted that she have her hair done like mine. She was almost seven, but today, as she paused and looked back at me with a meaningful smile, her mouth so soft and her blue eyes softer, I knew my little girl fully grasped what this day meant to us.
At the end of the sandy path, she veered off to the left and took her spot.
Our guests all stood and turned to face me. There were few, just two short rows of chairs situated on each side. This was the way Christian and I wanted it.
The wedding we’d missed almost a year ago was supposed to take place in a large church overflowing with all the people we knew—friends, family, and acquaintances.
Today there were only those closest to us, those who really understood what we’d gone through to make it here today.
On the left, my sister, Sarah, was surrounded by her husband and two children. Carrie, my youngest sister, smiled at me from within the mix. And my mom, she was there, her expression so kind, so gentle in the backdrop of the rough woman who had worked her entire life to take care of us. There were just a couple others, my aunt and a few cousins.
I looked to the right. Christian’s aunt, a woman I had only met this week, stood there beaming, flanked by her husband who had his arm around her waist. They’d said they wouldn’t have missed this, not for the world.
My attention traveled to the front row and settled on Claire. A wistful smile lifted one side of her trembling mouth. Our eyes met. Hers were glassy and red. She was already crying, twisting a handkerchief in her fingers. She mouthed, “Thank you.”
Emotion expanded my chest, filled it so full, it made it difficult to breathe. But the loss of this breath was not pain as it used to be. This was joy.
It was I who owed her thanks, the one who I would be grateful to for the rest of my life for her son.
My attention was drawn to him. This beautiful man who stood there, staring at me, waiting for me, as if I were his life.
I knew I was, just as assuredly as he was mine.
Never again would I run from him.
The cellist shifted, the strings striking with the song we had chosen for this day. It wound with the wind, crashed with the waves, a soft love song that rose to a beautiful crescendo that called me home.
My steps were slow as I began to walk toward the man who had loved me through my darkest hour, my stride deliberate as my bare feet sank into the sand. The flowing gown swished around my ankles, the back brushing the ground.
Maybe my steps were slow. Maybe it was because I was relishing each one, like each represented an obstacle we’d had to climb, the trials we’d had to overcome. Maybe each one was a triumph, each a celebration.
Even though each step was measured, in reality, I was running toward him.
Running toward my forever.
Because I realized I didn’t have one without Christian.
He was my all.
I stopped a foot from him. He smiled that smile, that stomach-flipping, heart-lurching, earth-shattering smile.
The one that was only for me.
Softly he tilted his head to the side, so many words spoken in his expressive eyes, his love and his devotion, his hopes and his dreams. He cupped my jaw and ran his thumb along my cheek. “You beautiful girl,” he whispered into the wind.
I covered his hand with mine, pressed it closer as I closed my eyes.
And I cherished.
I cherished this man.
My eyes fluttered open and I caught Matthew’s expression from where he stood behind Christian, standing up as his Best Man. What else would he be? He’d stood beside me, beside us for so long. He was our best friend, our family. His kind brown eyes swam in a soft affection, in a relief and a joy of something he’d wished for me for so many years. He’d always told me he just wanted me to be happy.
And I truly was.
Christian slipped his hand from my cheek to my neck, his palm warm against my cool skin as he dragged it down the expanse of my bare shoulder, over my elbow, all the way to my hand.
Chills flashed across my skin, his touch igniting deep within me. No longer was it unknown. This need I knew well. It was something only found in him, a safety and a charge of desire.
He knotted our fingers together as we turned to face the minister who stood in front of the simple floral arbor.
Natalie stepped forward, kissed my cheek as she took my bouquet. My Matron of Honor stepped back behind Lizzie. Her smile was wide, as if she were fighting a grin, uncontained delight rising in her as she looked at Christian and me, as we began a new leg of the journey we’d started so many years ago.
And with my family surrounding me, the people who’d seen me through so much, I promised my life to Christian.
Our vows were simple.
I will stand by you forever.
We already knew what that meant, that there would be difficulties we would face, that there would be sorrow. But there would also be joy.
And I was going to live every day of those with Christian.
The minister pronounced us husband and wife. Christian turned to me, and for a few moments, we just stood there looking at each other. This beautiful man who had touched me, who’d changed me and shaped the person I had become.
His hold was gentle as he reached out an
d took my face between his hands, his fingers splayed wide as he tilted my face up to meet his penetrating gaze.
The wind gusted around us, the smell of the ocean riding on the cool, spring breeze. Errant strands of my hair blew all around us, whipping at our skin and stirring up our spirits.
Blue eyes blazed as they looked down on me. For a flash, his hold tightened, and in it, he made another promise.
I will never let you go.
Then his mouth descended on mine, his hands on my face and his grip on my soul. This kiss was slow, maddening, fire and ice, always too much and never enough. My fingers found their way into the jacket of his tux as he bent me back. Passion ripped through us before we tripped into this consuming joy. And then he was grinning at my mouth, and I was laughing and crying as I wrapped my arms around his head. He pulled me off my feet and into his arms, spinning me around.
“I love you, Elizabeth Davison.”
I leaned back so I could see his face. “I love you, Christian. Forever.”
Lizzie giggled, rushed to our side as Christian set me back on my feet. He hoisted her up in his arms. Today, she didn’t seem to complain, but just grinned as she wrapped herself around his neck, Christian’s grip firm around my waist.
I stood there swaying in the arms of my little family. Cheers rose up from the small gathering, those who were there because they loved us, because they wished the best for our lives, as they showered us with their blessings, supported our hopes and these undying dreams.
And I was happy. Intensely. Wholly.
Giggles rolled up my throat as I buried my fingers in Christian’s hair. I lifted my face to the mirrored ceiling, his mouth at my neck. He had me pressed up against the elevator wall as it lifted and sped toward the top floor of the hotel.
“Mmm…you smell so good.” A brush of his mouth, a nip of his teeth.
I moaned as I tightened my hold.
A groan rumbled in his chest, and he kissed along my collarbone.
The elevator dinged and the doors parted. Christian’s head shot up, just as fast as the smirk shot to his face. He grabbed my hand, hauling me behind him as he fumbled for the keycard, as if he couldn’t make it to our room fast enough.
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