Paradise Syndrome

by Louise Hall

  Before either of them could say anything else, they were interrupted by a group of Japanese tourists.

  “Take photo?” one of them smiled widely, thrusting her phone at Kian.

  Kian did as they asked but as soon as the tourists turned to look out of the window, he reached for Cate’s hand and tugged her out of the shadows and down the stairs.

  As they walked down the side of Cal Anderson Park, it started to rain heavily. They sheltered under the awning of an art supplies shop with a kit of cooing pigeons huddled by their feet. There was a statue of Jimi Hendrix in front of them; someone had left a lit cigarette in Jimi’s hand and they watched it disintegrate onto the slick pavement.

  “I don’t think it’s going to let up anytime soon,” Kian frowned, looking up at the still-black clouds above their heads. Cate wrapped her arms around herself. Her denim jacket was soaked through and sticking to her skin. She hadn’t bought a warm coat yet, hoping she could get away without one until after the baby was born. As she wiggled her toes, she could feel the water sloshing inside her ballet pumps.

  “Come here,” Kian pulled her into the warmth of his leather jacket. While they waited, Cate rested her head on his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of worn leather, soap and Kian. “Do you want to go home, angel?”

  Cate looked up at him, “when it stops raining, yeah.”

  Kian smiled, “I was talking about Manchester.”

  Cate felt herself getting all emotional. “You love it here.”

  Kian shook his head, “I love you, Cate. You know that.”

  “I love you too.” Even though the rain was pelting down, Cate felt a lovely warmth radiate out from her chest. She’d worked so hard to hide how she was feeling from Kian that she’d forgotten that he was her best friend. “I’ve, um…I’ve been seeing a therapist. She thinks that I’ve got prenatal depression.”

  Kian speared his fingers through her inky-black hair, tilting her head back. He had thousands of questions. “Why didn’t you tell me, angel?”

  Cate wanted desperately to look away so that she didn’t have to see the hurt in Kian’s black eyes. “I didn’t know that’s what it was,” Cate stumbled over her words. “It was only when I talked to Nate. His mum suffered really badly.”

  Kian tensed, “you couldn’t talk to me, your husband, but you could talk to Nate?”

  “He caught me at a really low point,” Cate felt so ashamed of the dark thoughts she’d had that night. She still wasn’t ready to confess to Kian that she’d thought about killing herself and their unborn child.

  “You’re freezing,” Kian frowned.

  There was a café just a little further up the street. It was lovely and warm inside. While Kian queued up at the counter, Cate sat in one of the leather booths; they were generously sized so she didn’t have to worry about her bump. The other customers were students from the local college tapping away on their laptops or flicking through thick textbooks.

  Kian came back with two steaming-hot mugs. Cate’s was hot chocolate with a swirl of whipped cream. “Mm,” she wrapped her cold, damp hands around the mug, feeling the heat licking up her fingers. She slipped off her damp jacket and laid it down on the bench to dry. She was wearing a black dress with purple lightning bolts printed on it and black leggings. As she took a sip of the rich, velvety hot chocolate, she closed her eyes, feeling the warmth radiate through her body.

  Kian shifted opposite her. “What’s wrong?” Cate asked, opening her eyes.

  He dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Just don’t make that noise again.”

  When Cate realised that he was uncomfortably aroused, she couldn’t stop laughing.

  “It’s not funny,” Kian pretended to frown. Although he’d quite happily walk around with a permanent hard-on if it meant he could hear Cate laugh like that again.

  He couldn’t believe that his wife had been diagnosed with depression and she hadn’t confided in him. “Talk to me, angel.”

  Cate shifted uncomfortably. She was hyper aware of the other customers in the café.

  “What’s wrong?” Kian enveloped her delicate hand inside the warm, strength of his own.

  “Can we talk about it at home?” Cate bit her lip. “I don’t want to do anything else to embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass me?” Kian asked incredulously.

  Cate reluctantly told him what his U.S. agent had said when she’d first arrived in Seattle. As a professional athlete, Kian was like a major corporation and as his wife; Cate was like one of his employees. Any ill-advised or reckless behaviour from her could jeopardise Kian’s position in the team and his earning potential in terms of endorsements.

  “I’m going to fucking kill him,” Kian lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “Is that why you didn’t want to tell me, angel? Do you really think I give a shit about any of that?”

  Cate hung her head, yet again feeling like she’d made the wrong decision. Kian stroked his finger along her jawline, gently tilting her head back. “All I care about is you and the children, angel. That’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cate said. Her voice was still raspy with tears.

  “Unlike my douchebag of an agent, you have nothing to be sorry about,” Kian locked his gaze with hers. “If you’ll feel more comfortable talking about this at home, angel, then that’s what we’ll do but we are going to talk about it.” He reached down and rubbed the pad of his thumb over the silver locket she always wore. “You’re my first half.”

  As she drained the last dregs of her hot chocolate, Kian leaned across the table. “Come here,” he said, stroking his thumb over her bottom lip.

  She’d had a dollop of whipped cream on the corner of her mouth. Quickly checking to make sure that nobody was watching them, Cate sucked the pad of his thumb into her mouth, lapping at the blob of whipped cream.

  “Ugh,” Kian grunted, draping his jacket across his lap to hide his arousal.

  “I’ve missed this,” Cate grinned. “Us.”

  Kian intertwined his fingers with Cate’s, “me too.”

  “I’ve been so lonely,” Cate spoke so softly, Kian could barely hear her. This was the first time they’d been together, just the two of them, without arguing or making love since L.A.

  When they came out of the café, the rain had stopped. “We should go,” Cate checked her watch.

  “One more stop,” Kian reached for her hand. They walked down a side street and stopped in front of a large, red-brick building. “I thought you might want to go here first.”

  Cate looked up at the blue and red sign hanging above the front door. It was Seattle’s most famous bookstore. “Can we go inside?” she asked excitedly.

  “Of course,” Kian held the door open for her. “Wow,” Cate marvelled as she walked inside. “This is…”

  “Why don’t you have a look around?” Kian kissed her cheek, “I’ll be over there if you need me.”

  He sat on one of the comfy, leather sofas in the middle of the ground floor and checked his e-mails on his phone while Cate wandered up and down the aisles. They could never have done anything like this back home. She wondered how many times Kian would have been pestered for autographs and selfies if he’d been at the bookstore in Manchester city centre?

  She ran her fingers over the rows of brightly coloured books, delighting when she saw some of her favourites. It was like bumping into old friends. She found herself gravitating towards Fiction and the B shelves. Her eyes scanned the rows anxiously; it couldn’t be a proper bookshop if it didn’t have…There it was. Cate picked up the copy of Jane Eyre and touched the cover, it was more gritty than the glossy covers they sold at home. The edges of the pages were bumpy which gave it character.

  Seeing that book was like seeing the first glimmer of sunshine after an almighty rainstorm. It had been her constant companion ever since she’d first devoured it as a teenager. It had accompanied her on her first secret dates with Kian; it was packed in her hospital bag when she was pregnant with Lola
and it had been pulled from the shelf and thrown against the wall of her closet when she’d found out that Kian had cheated on her with Sinead’s friend.

  “I can do this,” Cate murmured, putting the book back on the shelf for somebody else to discover.

  Bolstered from having finally told Kian the truth, Cate knew that she wouldn’t always feel like this. She thought about the panic attacks she’d had when she was pregnant with both Lola and Mateo. When she’d first started having them, they were so frightening; it was like being in the eye of a vicious storm, she couldn’t imagine that she could ever feel calm again but she did. She’d become a veteran of her panic attacks now; she’d had so many that she knew what her triggers were and had a whole army of tricks to cope with them thanks to India.

  When she walked across to Kian, he was still on his phone. She placed her hands gently on his shoulders, “let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER 20

  After they’d put the children to bed, Kian suggested that they have a bath together. It was something they hadn’t done since they’d moved to Seattle. Still reeling from the revelation that Cate had been diagnosed with prenatal depression, he wanted her to feel as comfortable as possible so that they could talk.

  Cate looked up at him teary-eyed as he led her into the privacy of the master bathroom and slowly began to undress her. She could see how much effort he’d made to make her feel comfortable. He’d used her favourite jasmine-scented oil, which always reminded her of home and the bathtub was surrounded by gently flickering candles.

  Kian settled her between his parted thighs, with her back pressed against his chest. As the curve of her bottom brushed against his groin, his cock stirred a little but tonight wasn’t about sex. He wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders, needing her to know that regardless of what she told him tonight, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Cate closed her eyes and let her head fall back on Kian’s shoulder. “I think it started when I first found out that I was pregnant. You’d been gone for a couple of weeks by then and I…I just missed you so much.”

  Kian brushed his lips against the side of her neck. As much as he wanted to apologise for not being there, he remained silent. His mum was right; if Cate had a choice between his happiness and her own, she would choose his every single time. If he said anything right now, she would downplay how badly she’d felt so that she could make him feel better about leaving for Seattle. He didn’t want that; he wanted her to be honest with him.

  “I couldn’t get excited,” Cate stroked her hand over her bump, “all I could think about was that it was the worst possible timing.”

  Kian forced himself to listen silently as Cate described how she’d struggled during the five months they’d been apart. Unlike with Lola and Mateo, she’d suffered really badly with morning sickness for the first three months of this pregnancy.

  Kian felt as if he’d been punched in the gut as he realised just what she must have gone through on her own.

  He knew she’d been really hurt but he hadn’t realised until now just how deeply traumatised she must have been by the fact that members of her family and people she’d thought of as friends had conspired with Kian for months to hide the fact that he’d cheated on her at the World Cup. She’d been so focussed on protecting him and the children that again she’d subjugated her own needs. After she’d made the really tough decision that she couldn’t tell him about the baby until she got to Seattle, she hadn’t had anybody to support her, apart from Sinead.

  There had been nobody to hold her hair back or press a cold flannel to the back of her neck after she’d been sick, nobody to buy her ginger biscuits or make midnight runs to the supermarket to satisfy her cravings for hummus. She’d had to drag herself up from the bathroom floor every morning and plaster a fake smile on her face because there was nobody else to make their children breakfast.

  “I thought I’d feel better when we got to Seattle but if anything, I felt worse.” She put her hand over Kian’s. “You’re my best friend but sometimes you felt like a stranger to me. You’d grown your hair longer and you looked so different; you’d built this whole new life here in Seattle. I couldn’t tell you how I was feeling because I didn’t want you to feel guilty for bringing us out here – it was the right thing for both you and the children – and I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise your career.”

  “I know I’m not as glamorous as the other WAGS but I really wanted you to be proud of me. But whenever I tried to do anything like volunteer at the homeless shelter or register with an OB-GYN, something always went wrong and I ended up feeling even more like a failure.”

  “After what happened at Trent and Lena’s engagement party… I just kept thinking that you’d all be better off without me.” She felt Kian tense against her back but he didn’t try and interrupt her. She was so grateful. Although it was unbelievably painful, she needed him to know the complete and ugly truth. “I’d done exactly what I’d tried so hard not to do and I’d embarrassed you in front of all your team-mates. As we walked back to the Space Needle that night, I could feel how angry you were with me. I was failing as a wife and…” Cate blinked back fresh tears as she thought about Lola and Mateo. “I was failing as a mum. You were right; I shouldn’t have taken Mateo with me to the shelter. Anything could have happened to him and it would have been completely my fault.”

  “The night you played L.A. Galaxy at home…” Cate gulped. “It was Nate’s night off and he’d gone out for drinks with Layla so after I’d put the children to bed, I was on my own. I went outside and sat on the wooden dock at the back of the house and I…” She was terrified that if she finished the sentence, Kian would never be able to forgive her.

  Kian had already guessed what she was going to tell him. While Cate had wandered the aisles of the bookstore that afternoon, he’d read as much as he could about prenatal depression on his phone. He turned her around to face him. Even though the bath was still lovely and warm, she was shivering. She had her eyes squeezed tightly shut but he could see the tears trickling down her flushed cheeks.

  “Angel,” he said gently. “Look at me.”

  “I can’t,” Cate hiccupped. “I’m so ashamed. If I tell you what I was thinking that night, you’ll hate me.”

  “Not possible,” Kian murmured, bringing her closer. “You thought about hurting yourself, didn’t you, angel?”

  Cate blinked open her eyes, “how did you…? Did you talk to Nate?”

  Kian shook his head. “It was just a guess. Tell me what happened.”

  Cate was so crying so hard that she could barely get the words out. Kian cradled her against him, rubbing his hand up and down her back. “It’s OK, angel.”

  After she’d finished, Kian crooked a finger under her chin, gently tilting her head back. He needed her to look at him, needed her to see that there was no judgement or condemnation in his eyes.

  “How can you stand to even look at me?” Cate whimpered, “I thought about killing our baby, Kian.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “But what…” Cate gulped, “what if Nate hadn’t been outside having that argument with Eric?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful that he was there, angel. You shouldn’t have had to deal with all this by yourself but…” Kian brushed his lips against her damp forehead. “Nate didn’t stop you from hurting yourself that night. You did. You were the one who sat back down on the dock. You’re stronger than you think, angel.”

  Cate cried for a little longer, safely ensconced in his arms. “I’ve missed you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “Are you going to be OK today, angel?” Kian tucked a strand of inky-black hair behind her ear. She was still a little sleepy but she turned her face so that she could press her soft, cushiony lips against the palm of his hand.

  After what she’d told him the previous night, he didn’t want to leave her but he had an early morning training session. “If you need me to, I can stay?”

/>   “No,” Cate shook her head. She knelt up on the mattress, the duvet falling to her waist, exposing the sheer beauty of her bump pushing against the front of her white, cotton nightgown. She held his face in her delicate hands.

  She hated that he had a deep-v etched between his eyebrows. “I’ll be OK until you get back. Nate’s here.”

  “I love you,” Kian kissed her lips tenderly, infusing her veins with such love and acceptance that she felt the warmth radiate from her hair follicles right down to the tips of her toes.

  When he walked into the kitchen, Nate was stood at the kitchen counter, packing Lola’s lunch into a brown, paper bag.

  “Where are the children?”

  Nate looked up, “Lola’s upstairs. She’s lost her shin-pads again. I think Mateo’s trying to help her find them but to be honest, he’s probably just getting in her way.”

  “Listen,” Kian grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, “I’m really crap at talking about all this stuff but I just wanted to say thank you for helping me out yesterday and for… you know, being there for Cate.”

  Nate shrugged like it was nothing. “You’re welcome.”

  “Hi Dad,” Lola came into the kitchen, carrying her shin-pads.

  “Hey baby girl,” he kissed the top of her head. “I know, I know,” he held his hands up in surrender when he saw her scowl; “you’re not a baby anymore.”

  He looked behind her, “where’s your brother?”

  “Lola,” he mock-frowned, “you haven’t locked him in your wardrobe again, have you?”

  Lola stuck her tongue out, “that happened one time and it was a total accident. How was I supposed to know that he’d climbed in there? He’s upstairs with Mum.”

  After another tough training session – Steve wasn’t happy with some of the players’ fitness levels – Kian stepped out of the showers and knotted a towel around his hips.

  “Seriously man, you look like the freaking Fremont Troll,” Trent teased one of their team-mates, who’d had an allergic reaction to medication he’d taken for an STD.