by Chloe Walsh
He paused for a moment and then I heard him speak the words that tore through my heart with the force of a hurricane.” Kyle, she’s pregnant.”
Chapter Forty-three
Lee
I woke from an unsettled sleep to raised voices outside my room. Cam who was asleep in the chair beside me jerked awake and darted out of the room.
“Get out of my way Derek.” Oh god, no.
“All I’m saying is come back tomorrow let her sleep. She’s fucking fragile right now dude.” That was Derek’s voice of reason.
The door of my room burst open and Kyle marched in. I clenched my eyes shut and feigned sleep.
“If you upset her Kyle, I’ll kill you, I mean it,” Cam warned, “We’re gonna go grab a coffee, you better not be here when we get back.”
I heard the door close and the chair beside my bed scraped against the floor. His warm hand gripped mine. “Oh baby wake up please,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, so fucking sorry.” When his hand touched my stomach, I twisted away, pulling my hand away from his.
I opened my eyes and focused them on him. “Why are you here?” I asked coldly.
His eyebrows jolted up in surprise. “I had to see you, make sure you were okay. My battery on my phone died, I didn’t know you were here, until I got home.”
I stared at him. “I want you to leave.”
He flinched. I didn’t care. “Lee, don’t do this. You’re pregnant? Talk to me baby.”
He reached his hand out for mine, but I pulled back. “I want you to leave Kyle. I’m not ready to speak to you about my baby.”
He shifted helplessly. He looked at a loss for words. “Please don’t block me out of this Lee; I’ve been going out of my mind with worry.”
I bet he had. “You’ve been going out of your mind?” I choked, anger and tears pouring out of my soul. “Have you any idea how afraid I was last night?”
He grabbed my hand, but I pulled back. “I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t,” I warned. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” I was bawling now, big, fat, ugly tears. “I nearly died last night Kyle. While you were with Rachel, I nearly bled to death on the bathroom floor. No matter what happens, she always comes first doesn’t she? She’s your weakness Kyle.”
Tears fell from his eyes. Well good, I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to feel my pain.
“Rachel? No baby she is not my weakness. She’s my fucking punishment. You baby, you are my biggest weakness.”
I wanted him to open up to me. I needed him to tell me the truth. “Why?” I sobbed. “Tell me why you left with her last night?”
He was shaking. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left you,” he sobbed, “I needed to talk to Rachel, finish things. There are things you don’t know, things you don’t understand. I can explain everything. I’m here now.”
I balled my fists. “You’re too late,” I whispered. “You should have finished things with Rachel months ago, but you kept me your dirty little secret instead. I’m not stupid Kyle, I watched you keep our relationship hidden. There’s no apology in the world can make up for the fact that you knowingly left me sick and alone. I didn’t know until today, but yes, I am pregnant and it’s yours in case you might think otherwise. And I didn’t mean for it to happen, in case you think I tried to trick you. I know how low your opinion is of me.”
He flinched and anger carried me forward. “I might be carrying one of your babies inside of me, but do not for one moment forget that I lost another.”
He laid his head in his hands, on the bed beside me. His shoulders were shaking. My hand reached out to comfort him, but I snatched it back. I couldn’t comfort him, not now.
“Is it… Is the baby okay?” He was trembling. “Are you?” He lifted his face and looked at me.
I turned away, unable to look at the sadness in his tear filled blue eyes. I had never seen someone look so guilty. “I need to rest right now. Getting upset isn’t good for the baby.”
He stood up slowly, nodding. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand and cleared his throat. “Can I come back later?”
I shook my head. “I need some space Kyle, to get my head around everything. I need time.”
He shuddered and nodded slowly. Inhaling sharply, he bent down and kissed my forehead.
I closed my eyes. It was too painful to watch him leave.
He moved to the door and looked back. “You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
Then he was gone.
I let out a scream I had been holding in, allowing the sadness to envelope me, as I cried for my lost baby and for a man who would never love me.
Kyle
I made it to the truck before I dropped to my knees. I collapsed on the ground. My life was train wrecking before my eyes and I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.
I had finally done it. I’d ruined Lee, in more ways than I had ever imagined humanly possible.
That frightened girl in the hospital bed? I had done that. I had broken her. And this time I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t make things better for her.
I cried hard and loud. I didn’t give two shits if anyone saw me. My world was broken.
I felt an arm go around me, pulling me up. “Kyle, come on bro, get up, let’s get out of here.” I staggered to my feet. “It’s gonna be okay man,” Derek said, opening the door of my truck.
I sat in and he hopped into the driver’s seat. “I’ve destroyed her Derek.”
He turned on the engine. “No, you haven’t. She’s not broken Kyle. She’s grieving,” he patted my knee. “And so are you man.”
I didn’t deserve his sympathy. “How can I be grieving for something I didn’t know I had?”
Derek sighed. “Just because you didn’t know you had it, doesn’t mean you didn’t want it and don’t miss it now that it’s been taken away from you.”
I didn’t feel shit comparison to Lee. She should have Derek’s sympathy not me. “I don’t deserve to feel sad, if I had been there…” I started, but he interrupted me,
“No dude, there was no hope. This would have always been the outcome. The baby could not have survived in the tube. Lee is lucky to be alive. It’s a fucking miracle it didn’t kill her.” I shuddered, blocking the thought from my mind. “But the one positive thing is that she’s still pregnant,” Derek looked at me seriously. “This could be it for her man, they removed her tube. Makes it harder for the future…”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Shit.”
Derek smirked sideways. “Are you finished displaying your wonderful comprehension of the English language? Because I wanna know the plan.”
Plan? “What plan?”
Derek sighed in disgust. “The plan where you find a way to fix this dinosaur sized pile of shit you’ve buried yourself under.”
I couldn’t think straight. My mind focused on the fact that Lee was pregnant. She was alive and carrying a baby, my baby inside her. “Got any ideas?” I asked.
I didn’t care what I’d have to do. I was going to get her back. And when I did, I was never going to let her slip away from me again.
######The End. ######
Extract from Fall To Pieces (Broken #)
Chapter One
Lee
I had a decision to make. I had many to make actually. The first and possibly most important one I had already made when I placed that phone call last night. I was now hoping it was a decision that wouldn’t come back to bite me in the butt. I rubbed the skin covering my swollen stomach and smiled. I’d been through hell and back in the past five weeks, but I’d survived and most importantly so had the child growing in my womb.
“You got everything you need Lee?”
I smiled, it was a weak one but it was all I could muster given the circumstances. “Yes,” I replied, zipping closed my duffel bag.
Mike Henderson stood in the doorway of my hospital room, tall, handsome and intimidating as hell, but offering me an escape; a t
emporary exit to this messed up life I had slipped into. When I’d phoned him last night asking for a favor, it wasn’t to hurt his brother or upset my friends. I’d just needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t bias and wouldn’t judge me on my poor decisions.
It hurt to think of the reasons why I was standing in a hospital room. Losing the baby and losing Kyle all in the same night was something I didn’t like to think about, couldn’t think about. It had been over five weeks since that night. The night my life and everything in it fell to pieces. I’d found out I was pregnant and then I wasn’t, and then pregnant again all in a matter of hours. Twins, the doctor had said. One had died, one survived. And the man I loved, the man I trusted more than anyone in this world had betrayed me.
For the sake of my sanity I locked away those feelings and thoughts in a box in the darkest part of my mind, the same box I kept the memories of my father’s beatings, and the petrified feeling that had engulfed me the night of my highschool prom when Perry Franklin had tried to rape me.
Pretense was now my coping mechanism for carrying on, for surviving one day at a time. So for the past thirty five or so days while I healed from the surgery and the medical team monitored my pregnancy I’d closed off my feelings and tried to adjust to my new life.
I’d gotten a nasty infection after the surgery which had delayed my discharge, which had been a personal relief. Well, the infection was gross and that had sucked, but the relief of having an extra few weeks before I’d to face my roommates-one roommate in particular- had sweetened the deal.
Dr. Ashcroft warned me of the different complications, and infections the baby was vulnerable to because of my intrusive surgery, but was delighted with how I was progressing. The baby was perfect, developing exactly as he should be.
I had been offered to join a therapeutic group for teenagers who were struggling to adapt to motherhood, but I declined. I was grieving the baby I lost, not struggling to adapt to the one I had inside of me. This sense of despair would pass. I just needed to give it time. Not talk. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to move forward. I thought that was a pretty mature response to the U-turn my life had taken. I was allowed to be sad. No one was going to tell me I wasn’t.
So much had changed; so many incidences and bad choices pushed me towards my decision to call Mike to collect me on my discharge day. I hadn’t told my roommates Derek Porter or Camryn Frey I was coming home today. I didn’t think my pride could take their pity, and I knew they would tell Kyle. They’d kinda have to, considering the four of us shared a house-Kyles house. It was bad enough I would be returning to his house, I didn’t want an audience when I walked through that door with my tail between my legs, so last night when Cam came to see me I’d told her I had tests all day today so there was no need to visit.
All three of them had classes on Friday, which gave me a few hours before I had to face them. If I had any other option, I would run as fast and as far from that house as I could. But I was broke, and going home to my father was not something I could even begin to contemplate.
He was recovering from a lifetime of alcohol abuse, and the thought of arriving home pregnant wasn’t something that filled me with warm, fuzzy feelings. I had a pretty strong feeling that my pregnancy would derail daddy’s sobriety, not to mention my fear of what he would do to me.
I was just going to have to save up as much money as I could before the baby was born so I could get my own place.
Cam was my best friend and I knew it should be her bringing me home; she was the one who had sat with me day in, day out since I’d been hospitalized, but I just couldn’t face her. She wouldn’t understand my calling Mike; in fact she would probably be furious.
I understood why. Mike and Kyle were brothers, a lieu estranged ones. Mike had played his part in the whole charade, but the difference was-and it was an important one- that Mike hadn’t lied, hadn’t hurt me, couldn’t hurt me. Not like Kyle had or could.
Mike didn’t own any piece of my heart and I knew I could trust him. He was on my side. He had said as much when he arrived at the hospital to visit me after my admission. I had screamed at him when he showed up two days after I had the operation that removed my fallopian tube, and my dead baby inside it, told him to leave, but he didn’t.
Unlike Kyle, Mike had stayed, and he took everything I threw at him- and I had thrown a lot. I had a lot of dark moments in the first two weeks; fear, doubt, anger, injustice were all potent emotions that had been swirling inside me at the start. When those feelings had lifted, a cloud of sadness took place. But Mike had stuck around on my worst days. And then he kept coming back. He told me he was sorry he didn’t tell me he and Kyle were brothers, that the guilt was eating him. He said he wished he’d warned me from the start about Rachel, but to be fair he hadn’t known I was involved with Kyle until I was so deeply devoted, that even I had to admit I probably wouldn’t have believed him.
Mike hadn’t known about Rachel’s trickery and had been horrified over the lies Rachel had spun Kyle. I had been too. It wasn’t every day you met a girl who went to the extremes of faking a pregnancy, and hysterectomy to secure a man for money. God I hated that bitch. Rachel Grayson would forever be on my shit list.
I’d accepted Mike’s apology because he was my friend. He’d been my friend before I was ever involved with his brother. I accepted his comfort and friendship because I needed it. I needed one person in my life that was solely there for me.
A tiny part of my conscience protested that I was using Mike. As good as Cam was to me, and as nice as Derek was they were Kyle’s friends, and dragging them into the middle of this was unfair. Mike was mine and not Kyles. I needed him right now.
“You sure? Have you got some papers you need to sign?” Mike asked looking rather uncomfortable but at least he was trying. I didn’t doubt his intentions. I was pregnant with his brother’s child, which was hardly a turn on. And I’d be damned if I was going to go crawling back to Kyle for help. The guy practically owned my life as it stood. I lived in his house, worked at his hotel, and had a small, but dominant part of him growing inside of me.
“I just have to wait for the nurse to return with the papers.” I replied tugging an overstretched t-shirt down over my thighs. It was embarrassing as hell that my jeans didn’t tie. I’d been wearing pajamas for the past month and didn’t notice how much extra weight I’d put on. But my clothes had.
Earlier when I was tying my jeans I had a ‘fat moment’ when they only zipped half way. They were catching on my butt and my widely spreading hips. And if my hips weren’t big enough before; they now seemed to be two inches on the wrong side of curvy. The swell of my belly was prominent now, but it looked like I’d gained a few pounds of fat than the look of being almost five months pregnant. Five months. I still found it crazy to believe that I had sailed through more than three months of pregnancy without knowing. It was unsettling.
There was a knock on the door and I grimaced when the nurse rolled a wheelchair into my room. “You ready for this Lee?” She asked chirpily.
I zipped up my suitcase and smiled. I wasn’t anywhere close to being ready for this, but I slapped on my brightest smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Secretly I was petrified. The thought of facing Kyle, and the possibility of seeing Rachel again made it hard to keep my breathing even. I didn’t want to face him; our last conversation had ended badly. But I had nowhere else to go, and not enough money in the bank to last me longer than a week or two in a motel. As for returning to work, the idea made me light headed. I couldn’t escape him.
“This is so cool Lee. Do you think maybe they’ll let you keep this?” Mike asked plopping himself into the chair and wheeling around the room. It was hospital policy to leave in a wheelchair, completely unnecessary, but unavoidable.
“Why? Are you planning on needing one sometime in the future?” I asked amused at the excitement on Mike’s face. Men…
“You will need one, and a surgeon to remove my foo
t from your intestine if you don’t get up and let your girlfriend sit down,” said the unfamiliar nurse who was a leaning against the door along with another lady I didn’t recognize. I blushed, and Mike jumped up from the chair, rolling his hand lavishly in front of him gesturing me to sit.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” I muttered as I sat down quickly. Ignoring my correction, the nurse introduced the lady with her as one of the hospital administrators- a short frazzled looking blonde called Lizzie with an alarming amount of paperwork in her hands. My palms trickled with sweat at the sight of all those forms she was clutching.
I had no freaking clue how I was going to be able to pay for over a month’s worth of hospital bills. I was wondering if they had a payment plan when Lizzie handed me two sheets of paper from the bundle.
“Now Miss Bennett all I need from you is a couple of signatures. If you could sign under the patient signature line here and here, you’ll be good to go,” she said dropping a pen on top of the rather intimidating forms in my lap.
I looked at her confused for a moment and back at the papers. “What about my bill? Do you have a payment plan I could take on?” I asked scrawling my signature under the printed version on one page and then the other.
“No need. Your bill has been paid in advance.”
I shook my head. “No, you must be confused. I didn’t make an advanced payment. I don’t have a credit card.” Lizzie was confusing me with another patient, but the puzzled look on her face indicated that she thought I was the confused one.
“No, there is no confusion Miss Bennett,” she mused flicking through her paperwork. “Yes, your bill has been covered in full by a Mr. Carter.”
She handed me a form, and there it was, Kyle’s signature and credit card details. My heart fluttered in my chest a little as reality hit me; he’d gone behind my back again.