Undying Love

by Nelle L'Amour

  This was my fourth visit to Dr. Moore’s fertility clinic since Allee’s passing. The first took place upon my return from Paris. I learned that Allee had left me custody of her frozen eggs soon after we’d gotten married. It made me wonder if Allee had foreseen her destiny, and that in leaving me her eggs, she was asking me to perpetuate her life in some way. They were mine to do whatever I wanted. Dr. Moore, a warm, ruggedly handsome man in his early forties, spent an hour with me, discussing the options, including the viability of fertilizing them with my sperm.

  Though sensitive to my grief-stricken state, Dr. Moore was honest with me. It was risky. The success rate of fertilizing frozen eggs wasn’t high, but the good news was that it was doable, and babies born from this process had no risk for increased birth defects. I just had to prepare myself for the consequences: was I ready to be a single father if the procedure worked, and would I be able to deal with disappointment if it failed? Even though Allee had harvested many eggs that had been frozen in batches, allowing the option of trying again, Dr. Moore warned me that, for some people, the grief that followed failure was too much to bear. He told me to go home and think things over and to make another appointment with him when I had come to a decision.

  I had been an utter zombie since Allee’s death. I forgot to eat; I didn’t want to wake up in the morning; I didn’t want to leave my loft or see a soul. The only thing that helped me was my writing. Within my own written words, I found myself reliving my life with her. Her breathtaking face, that raspy voice, the memories of us filled my head every waking moment of the day. Even when I slept, I dreamt of her. Of us. And of our baby. I never knew if it was a boy or girl. I saw only a beautiful face. A rosy-cheeked, tiny face that resembled Allee’s with twinkling espresso eyes and a tuft of ebony hair.

  I decided to go forward with the procedure, blocking out the additional grief that might ensue if it didn’t work. I owed it to her to try; I owed it to us. One month later, I met with Dr. Moore again to tell him my decision.

  “Have you arranged for a surrogate?” he asked.

  My heart skipped a beat. I hadn’t given that much thought. When Dr. Moore told me that the process of securing a surrogate could take from six months to a year, I asked him if there was any alternative. For my own survival, I needed to go through the procedure as soon as possible. He told me that he could he freeze any resulting embryos while I searched for a surrogate and mentally readied myself for fatherhood. To my relief, the pregnancy success rate with frozen embryos was approximately the same as non-frozen embryos.

  Two weeks later, I was back at Dr. Moore’s clinic. A batch of Allee’s eggs had been thawed. A bittersweet smile spread across my face when one of his nurses told me that they were of superior “A” quality. “Magnificent!” she exclaimed. Just like my Allee.

  The smiley, buxom woman escorted me down a hallway, lined with adorable photos of “success story” babies, to a small, sterile room. Besides a sink and disinfectant, there was a rack of plastic cups and test-tubes labeled “Lubricant” as well as a rack of men’s magazines, featuring seductive, big-breasted, naked models on the covers. There was also a flat screen TV.

  “You may want to read one of these to help you,” said the nurse with a wink. “Or watch the DVD.”

  I didn’t need a porn magazine or video to help me jerk off. Closing my eyes, I wrapped my as-instructed, washed hand around my scrubbed cock, sliding it up and down with single-minded intensity; it swelled and stiffened quickly. All I had to do was think of my Allee. “Come for me, Madewell,” I heard her rasp as my hard, thick organ exploded. I watched as my release trickled into the plastic cup I was holding in my other hand. Tears of relief and remorse snaked down my face. Sealing the cup with a lid, I slumped back down the hall and handed it to the nurse. She grinned ear to ear when she saw my specimen.

  The next day I got a phone call from Dr. Moore’s office—good news, three out of the five eggs thawed had fertilized. Now, it was just a waiting game. Two days later I got another call from a nurse in his office, asking me to come by in the afternoon. Dr. Moore wanted to speak with me. Every muscle in my body tensed. The memory of rushing to Dr. Goulding’s office to receive Allee’s prognosis flashed in and out of my head. My stomach clenching, I braced myself for bad news as I sat in the waiting room of the fertility clinic.

  “Is your wife trying to have a baby?” asked the attractive redhead sitting next to me. A chill crept down my spine; I was taken aback. Before my mouth could move, the nurse who had collected my sperm stepped into the waiting room. My already rapid heartbeat accelerated.

  A wide smile spread across her face. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or put on. “Follow me, Mr. Madewell. Dr. Moore would like to talk to you in his office.”

  My hair stood on edge. This was definitely the beginning of bad news. I hesitantly rose from the comfortable couch and trailed behind the nurse down the hallway, passing the jerk-off room. My heart was thudding. Three doors down, she dropped me off in Dr. Moore’s office, a cozy room filled with medical degrees, reference books, and family photos. He was seated behind his large desk.

  “Make yourself comfortable, Ryan,” he said as I nervously sunk into one of the armchairs facing him.

  “I have something to show you,” he continued, handing me a photo from a folder on his impeccably neat and organized desk.

  With jittery fingers, I examined the black and white photo. Before me was the image of a quarter-size cluster of intersecting round shapes; it resembled a small blooming flower that a child might draw.

  “What is this?” I asked, still peering at it.

  “That’s an embryo.”

  I gasped. Holy shit! It worked! One of my sperm fell in love with one of Allee’s eggs and fertilized it. Just like I had with her…love at first sight!

  “Ryan, there are actually three altogether. The chances of having Allee’s child are excellent.” He handed me another photo displaying all three embryos.

  My vision stayed fixed on the burgeoning life forms. I was in awe. Three miracles!

  The words of Allee’s farewell letter danced in my head. “Madewell… you have so much to live for…”

  Now, I did. Tears I’d been holding back leaked out of the corners of my eyes.

  Allee Adair Madewell, I’m looking up…

  ~THE END~

  Dear Readers~

  You’re probably sobbing. I know because I wept, too, as I wrote Undying Love and every time I reread it. While I originally didn’t intend to write a sequel, one needed to be told. Ryan and Allee deserved more. In the sequel coming soon, Ryan gets his happily ever after and the spirit of Allee lives on! Willow’s story is as moving and as special as Allee’s. It will leave you yet again in tears. But tears of joy and a big smile. I promise!

  Here is an excerpt from the sequel: Endless Love.

  Love~ Nelle

  SNEAK PEEK

  ONE

  Willow

  I bawled until there were no more tears to shed. The last page of the book was soaked. Ready to fall apart like me. I slammed the book closed and gazed at the cover. A beautiful young couple in love. But in her dark, soulful eyes, I could now see death. Yes, Allee Adair knew she was going to die. That was her destiny. But the love she felt for Ryan Madewell would never die.

  I had experienced my own Undying Love. When I was sixteen, a cab hit my mother, Belinda. Instant death upon impact. I’ll never forget the day I came home from school, and my father sat me down at one of the tables in his deli. It was the very one I was sitting at today.

  “What would you say if I told you Mom is dead?” he asked stoically.

  Confusion sent a chill deep through me. “What do you mean, Pops?”

  And then he told me. The tears just poured and poured. Enough to make brine in a barrel of pickles. I never got to tell her “I love you.” Those words, during my tumultuous teenage years, always stayed prisoners in my heart, though often they wanted to escape. Now it was too late. I never got
to say goodbye. But love, according to Allee Adair, meant never having to say that word.

  Pops and I went on with life without mom. His deli, Mel’s Famous, was kind of a landmark on New York’s Lower East Side, and regular customers kept him busy. As for me, I threw myself into my dancing at Julliard. An aspiring ballerina, my dancing kept the pain away. My father was concerned about my obsessive-compulsive behavior and made me see a shrink. Dr. Jules Goodman saved my life.

  Dr. Goodman was now saving my life again. I was on sabbatical from The Latvia Ballet Company. A prima ballerina, I had collapsed on stage while performing Sleeping Beauty in Vienna. The in-house doctor said I was exhausted and malnourished. That’s what my dad was told. What he didn’t know was that I was suffering from another disease. A broken heart. Only Dr. Goodman knew what brought me almost to utter destruction. Physical and emotional. The real extent of the damage. For now, as I healed, that secret needed to stay between us.

  Being back home in New York, living with my dad, was good for me. Afraid of losing the other great love of his life, he took care of me, feeding me lots of homemade chicken soup—the soup that made Mel’s Famous famous. Slowly, I put back on the weight I had lost, even though I was still very thin by most standards. It felt good to be in comfy shoes and jeans although I was aching to put on a leotard and my toe shoes. To dance for him.

  Gustav had been my cocaine. I could never get enough of him. He would be showing me how he wanted my leg to extend, and before I knew it, my legs were extended around him and we’d be fucking our brains out. It was like that. We would fuck anywhere, anytime we could. Between acts. During intermission. In my dressing room. Behind the curtain. On the stage floor after the lights had gone off. He knew how to arouse me like no other man could. Orgasms pirouetted throughout my body. One after another after another.

  But now, Gustav was back with his wife Marguerite. He couldn’t leave her. She was worth 1.5 billion dollars; the lifestyle and connections she afforded him could not be passed up. Despite his indiscretions, she always took him back. His beauty and sexuality were irresistible. I knew that for a fact. I hated him. Hated her more. But hated myself the most for letting myself believe that he loved me.

  Don’t go there.

  “What’s the matter, babykins?”

  The warm voice stopped me before I could descend into darkness. I looked up. My father. In his perpetually stained, floor-length deli apron over his ill-fitting baggy pants and Mel’s Famous t-shirt. There was alarm in his husky voice and his warm chocolate brown eyes. His bushy brows furrowed.

  “Oh, Pops! I just read the saddest book ever.” I showed him the cover.

  My burly father smiled a smile of relief, and wiped away my tears with the edge of his apron. “The author’s a regular; he comes here from time to time.”

  Ryan Madewell? “Really?” My tears subsided. “Do you think he’d be willing to sign my book next time he comes in?”

  My father’s smile broadened. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  “And, Pops, it doesn’t hurt to lose weight.”

  Ryan Madewell showed up at my father’s deli exactly one week later. I recognized him immediately because I had spent the whole week Googling him.

  With a laid back style, he strode up to the well-stocked deli case, deciding what he wanted to order for takeout. He was wearing tight faded jeans, a creamy cotton tee and a baby blue cable knit sweater wrapped over his shoulders. God, he was gorgeous. Tousled sandy hair, misty blue eyes, a slight six-o’clock shadow over his movie-star handsome face, and a six foot-plus buff body that screamed, “I work out.” In his Google images, he was gorgeous too. Just not this heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

  I was minding the store while my father was at the bank making a deposit. Almost three in the afternoon, it wasn’t very busy. In fact, he was the sole customer.

  My eyes and body followed him while he lingered in front of the meat counter. Finally, he said, “I’ll have my regular—a pastrami sandwich to go with a side of slaw.”

  “Would you like it hot?” I asked, my eyes meeting his.

  There was a short stretch of silence before he said anything. “Yeah, I like it hot.”

  His soft, raspy voice was so damn sexy. I swear, my temperature rose ten degrees.

  “What kind of bread?”

  “Rye, please.”

  Rye bread for Ry-an. I wondered what it would feel like to be sandwiched between him and a yummy mattress. Oh God. This guy was making my mind travel to places it hadn’t been for a long time.

  I prepared the sandwich for him. I was good at this, having made deli sandwiches ever since I could remember. I picked prime, fat-free pieces of meat, microwaved them, and then piled them high between two slices of fresh rye.

  “Would you like mustard?”

  “Mayo, please.”

  I squirted mayonnaise from a pointed plastic tube onto the sandwich meat, imagining it was cum. Huh! What was I thinking?

  “That looks delicious,” he said.

  So do you.

  I wrapped up the sandwich with the slaw and threw it into a paper bag.

  “Would you like anything else?” I managed.

  “A cream soda would be great.”

  Yes, a cream soda. I craved one too—personally delivered by his cock. My core was heating up and tingles spread between my legs. Stop it, Willow! Unable to compose myself, I pulled a soda bottle out from the cooler.

  “I’ll have that now, please,” he said.

  I handed him the soda, my fingers brushing against his. They were long, strong, and purposeful. The fingers of a writer. I watched as he wrapped his lush lips around the rim of the glass bottle and tilted his head slightly backward. His eyes closed as he savored the cold, refreshing beverage. I imagined this is what he would look like after having an orgasm. In my head, I unzipped his fly and gave him a hand job that made him explode and shout my name. Holy fuck!

  “How much do I owe?” he asked, bringing me back to my senses.

  “It’s on the house, if you sign my book.”

  His beautiful squiggle of a brow arched and then he quirked a smile, made sexy by the way the left corner curled upward. “So, you know who I am.”

  I smiled shyly. “Yeah. I loved your book. Will you sign it?”

  “Sure.”

  I was taken aback. I suddenly realized that the book was upstairs in our apartment above the deli. “I have to get it. Would you mind minding the store for just a few minutes?”

  “Not a problem.”

  I hurried to the back of the restaurant and raced up the flight of stairs to the apartment my dad and I shared. The book was on my nightstand in the bedroom I had slept in as a child. I had reread passages of the book every night before I went to sleep. I think it helped me from having the nightmares that haunted me.

  When I jogged downstairs, book in hand, he was behind the counter, attempting to cater to a twitchy elderly man. I had to bite down on my lip to stifle my laughter. The customer, one of our pickiest, was asking for an extra lean roast beef sandwich, dressing on the side, and French fries well done. Poor Ryan. No matter how many pieces of meat he cut, it was never lean enough for Mr. Picky.

  Scurrying behind the counter, I said, “I’ll handle this while you sign my book.” He let out a loud sigh of relief.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, taking the book from me.

  “Willow.”

  “That’s a beautiful name.” He smiled—this time a dimpled smile that rendered me breathless. It stretched across his beautiful face as he pulled out a black pen from his back jeans pocket. Being a writer, I guess he always carried one with him. You could never tell when or where inspiration would hit.

  I took care of the curmudgeon while watching Ryan sign my book from the corner of my eye. I had mechanically signed numerous ballet programs for fervent fans, but I hadn’t been on the other side of the table for a long time. It was simultaneously nerve-racking and exhilarating. Stopping midstream, he glanced at m
e, his brows knitted together as if not knowing what to write.

  After I got rid of Mr. Picky, I handed Ryan the bag with his sandwich. He, in turn, gave me back the book.

  “Thanks,” we said in unison, our eyes never straying from one and other.

  A saucy grin spread across his lips as he strode to the front door with his sandwich bag in hand.

  When he was gone, I eagerly flipped open my book. On the inscription page were these words:

  Willow~

  I look forward to seeing you again.

  ~Ryan

  What did that mean? Did he want to go out with me? Or was he talking about coming back for another sandwich? My heart pounded with anticipation and anxiousness. The truth was, I couldn’t wait to see him again.

  TWO

  Ryan

  There was something about her, I thought as I briskly walked to the pub where I was meeting my best bud, Duffy McDermitt. We had a standing boys’ night out every Tuesday. It was a way of staying in touch and keeping up with what was going on with Arts & Smarts of which he was now Editor in Chief. He had replaced me after I quit following a major and painful blow up with the publisher—my father—one I tried not to dredge up since my father and I were making amends. Slowly but surely with the help of a top Manhattan shrink. Duffy, just as I predicted, was doing a great job with the magazine. Advertising sales were at an all-time high, and on the online “zine” was flourishing.