One (Love by Numbers Book 5)

by E. S. Carter

  My head is stuck, fixated on the man who isn’t even in the room. Seriously, I am beyond fucked up.

  The only thing I genuinely take an interest in are the images. I knew Isaac was at the top of his game, but these photographs eclipse anything else I’ve ever done before. They are too good to advertise some posh water brand, they deserve to be given acclaim and adorn gallery walls for the whole world to see his talent.

  “Can I take these with me?” The room falls silent at the first sentence to come out of my mouth for almost the entire meeting. Lifting two of my favourite images, I hold them up in question.

  “Sure, sure,” Karl flusters, followed by a “Take as many as you want,” from Joel.

  So I do just that. I gather up every image laid out before me and stand, indicating that I’m done here.

  “If we’ve covered everything, I’ll leave you with Elaina to finish off.”

  She gapes at me, about to open her mouth and curse me out but her professionalism wins over, and she nods tightly, her eyes boring into mine, threatening all kinds of retribution when she gets me alone.

  I briskly shake both men’s hands as I leave the room with my haul of photographs tucked safely under my arm. It’s only when I exit the building, and my feet hit the pavement outside, that I take my first full breath.

  This needs to stop.

  This situation is all my fault. Not Isaac’s, not Céline’s, and certainly not Elaina’s.

  I am the one with the ability to end this.

  This is not who I am. I hate the person I’ve become over the last few weeks. I’ve always been the fun-loving, hard-working, fitness enthusiast who worked hard and played hard.

  The self-destructive arsehole currently inhabiting my body needs to be extinguished.

  No more.

  Time to draw a line under it. I’m done.

  “You fucked up today.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s time to get your shit together Flynn and either tell me what’s going on or get over it.”

  “I know that too.”

  I raise myself over the bar for one last chin lift and drop down to the floor, grabbing my towel before turning to face my best friend.

  She looks up at me with a mixture of worry and hurt flashing in her eyes. I know I hurt her when I lock her out, but she knows that’s my way. I’m not a spill my guts kind of person.

  “It was a blip. I’m over it. Normal service shall be resumed.”

  I give her a cheeky smile hoping to break the tension, but she just looks sadly at me.

  “You know what? One day soon, every poisonous thing that you keep bottled up inside is going to spill out. The longer you let it fester and grow, the uglier that moment will be.”

  She turns to leave the room that I converted into my personal gym. It’s the biggest room in the whole apartment, and it’s the place where I retreat when I need to not only work out my body but also my mind.

  “I love you, Lei,” I whisper to her, causing her to still in the doorway.

  “I love you too, Flynn.” She doesn’t turn around, and part of me is relieved, the other part of me injured. I cannot afford for her to give up on me. I’ll have no one left.

  With sweat rolling over my skin, my breath hammering out of my lungs and my legs being tested to their limits as I pound out mile fifteen on my running machine, I vow to do better, to be better and to right all my wrongs. Starting with Elaina.

  I may be unable to allow her to see inside of me, but I can still show her the man I want to be and the friend I should’ve always been.

  Then I’ll apologise to my parents for being absent from their lives these last ten years. I may have provided for them financially by paying off their debts, buying them the first home they’ve ever owned and making sure they will never struggle again, but I haven’t been a son. In fact, that night, ten long years ago, they didn’t lose just one child, they lost both of us. When he left us, shattering our family into sharp shards of pain, he took a huge part of me with him.

  I can never forgive him for abandoning me, for willingly deciding that life wasn’t worthy, that we weren’t enough, and for leaving me with questions that will never be answered and an emptiness that I’ll never again fill.

  He gave up.

  He checked out.

  He said he couldn’t do this anymore, and by this he meant life.

  He couldn’t do life anymore.

  So we were left to try and live a life without him. A half-life of what ifs, whys, and painful memories. How can the party go on when the most vibrant, effervescent person has taken their leave? The music has died, the colours have faded, and everything is over too soon.

  He said that living a lie was killing him.

  He said that pretending was killing him.

  He said that life was killing him.

  He was tired of it all. Tired of hurting everyone he loved with his lies.

  His truth hurt us more.

  His truth destroyed us all.

  Because it took him away.

  All that was left was the thick bough of a tree, empty bottles strewn in long grass, scattered pills fallen from up high, tight rope knotted to choke and scrawled words of love that would never be enough.

  The call came as I was pulling to a stop in the car park of the Wicked Water offices.

  My helmet is fitted with Bluetooth, but seeing as I was already at my destination, I pulled it off my head, attached it to my bike and strode towards the front of the building with my phone to my ear and my hand attempting to tame my wayward hair.

  “Hey, Mum. I’m just heading into a meeting. Can I call you back in an hour?”

  The initial silence should have given me pause. With my mind on other things specifically the man who was likely to be in the building before me, I didn’t read the signs.

  “Mum? Did you hear me? Listen, I think we have a bad connection. I’ll call you later.”

  “We need you, Isaac. Josh needs you.”

  Her tone stops me in my tracks just meters from the front door.

  “Mum?” I ask cautiously, nerves building in the back of my throat almost choking me, “What’s going on?”

  I don’t want to ask because I know something is wrong, very very wrong and for a brief moment when faced with something bad, you want to pretend nothing’s happened and that everything is okay.

  But nothing is okay.

  “Mum? Has Josh been hurt? Is Ivy okay? Has the baby arrived?”

  Silence.

  “Mum, I’m freaking out here. Talk to me.”

  I’m already walking away from the building back to my bike. My stomach churns before bottoming out, and despite the surrounding streets bustling with life all around me, all I feel and all I hear is silence.

  A harrowing sob, the kind that comes from the depths of your belly, echoes over the phone line, followed by the choked words, “Please, Isaac.” Muffled sounds crackle over the airway, the phone is taken away from my mother and handed to someone else.

  “Iz, it’s Emma. I’m here with Josh and your parents, so they are not alone but if you could…”

  “Where are you, Emma? What the hell has happened?”

  She takes a heavy breath that ripples over my skin setting my nerves on edge.

  “We’re at the General Hospital, Accident and Emergency. Please, if you can come quickly, I don’t… I just…”

  “I’m on my way, Emma. I’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.”

  Ten minutes later I burst through the A&E doors having broken every traffic law in the Highway Code.

  I wait in line, stifling the urge to scream and shout at the receptionist who is tucked safely away behind her Plexiglas enclosure.

  When I finally get to step up to the counter a few minutes later, I don’t even know why I’m here. Nobody told me who was injured or unwell. It could be Josh, or God forbid, little Ivy.

  “I… umm… had a call from my mother, I’m looking for-“

  “Is
aac!” Emma’s voice cuts through the noise of the crowded waiting room, and I spin to face Jake’s wife. She rushes up to me, crushing me to her in a hug so tight I can barely breathe. When she pulls away, her arms are shaking, and her face is ashen.

  “What’s happened, Em? Where is everyone?”

  “Sir, if you’re done here, step away from the counter.”

  The harsh voice of the hospital receptionist interjects, dragging my eyes away from Emma.

  “Sorry… I… umm, I’ll just get out of the way.” I lead Emma away from the counter and against the nearest wall attempting to find some privacy. When I look down at her distraught face, I have that thought again, the one where you wish you could say ‘don’t tell me, I don’t think I can bear to hear the words.’

  Instead, I wrap my arms around her and pull her to my chest saying, “What’s happened?”

  With a deep, shuddering breath, she pulls away and looks at me with aquamarine eyes that are overflowing with unshed tears.

  “It’s Laura. Josh arrived home and found her asleep in bed. Your mother had only left her a few hours before as Laura said she was feeling tired and wanted to take a nap. When Josh came home he couldn’t rouse her and called for an ambulance. We don’t know anything yet. Josh and your parents are in the family waiting room, Liam and Nate are on their way.”

  “But she’s okay, and the baby is okay?”

  The tears that pooled in her eyes moments earlier now spill free and her face crumples.

  “We don’t know, they have taken her to surgery and are about to perform an emergency caesarean, but they lost her on the way here in the ambulance. They couldn’t find her pulse or a heartbeat for the baby.”

  I know words are coming out of her mouth, but I just don’t understand them. I don’t understand anything.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She sobs loudly, and I realise that I need to hold this together, that I need to man up and keep my crumbling emotions in check.

  “Take me to them.”

  I wrap my arms around her shoulder and allow her to guide me through the throngs of people, out through a set of double doors and down a long corridor. A few turns later and we arrive at a room with a sign that says ‘Family Waiting Area’.

  She stops outside with her hand on the door and hesitates.

  “It’s okay Emma. They are all going to be okay.”

  Broken.

  Have you ever watched someone you love completely shatter before your eyes?

  Have you ever felt the sharp stab of impotence because you cannot do anything, say anything or be anything that they need to get through an event that has wiped out their reason for living?

  Watching my brother splinter apart in front of my eyes was a living hell for which I have no name.

  It took everything I have inside me to tell myself that just being there, not healing, not curing, not making anything better, was enough.

  It wasn’t.

  And it wasn’t just Josh who was ruined.

  My mother was inconsolable; my father struggling under the weight of her grief, then there was Emma, currently being comforted by Liam, my youngest brother. They have always had a close connection, siblings not by blood but by marriage.

  That left Nate and me to silently stand guard over Josh.

  We both sit on either side of him where he’s slumped on the floor against the farthest wall. That’s the place where he collapsed when the Doctors came to deliver the news we never expected. That’s where he crumpled when his entire world crashed down around him and buried him alive under the rubble of shock, pain and loss. We sit immobile in the same spot, never moving, no matter what happens around us. Our hands on his body, in a futile attempt to offer comfort.

  You may not feel this way now, or for the foreseeable future, but you are not alone.

  The thing is, though, he is alone.

  His grief is his alone.

  His loss unlike ours.

  It’s catastrophic, it’s all consuming, it’s fucking unfair, and I want to scream at the top of my lungs at the injustice of life and the villainy of death.

  What feels like hours but is likely just a few minutes later, Josh propels himself up from the floor throwing off our hands as if our touch physically burns.

  “I want to see her. I need to see her.”

  His wild eyes dart around the room never landing on anyone for more than a second.

  When nobody moves or answers him, his hands ball at his sides and he lets out an unearthly roar. It’s as if someone else, some crazed and rage fuelled monster, has inhabited my calm, quiet brother’s body.

  The thing is, it has. Denial and anger have taken control of my normally placid brother and hold him in their remorseless grip.

  “Take me to my wife!” His demand is pulled from his chest and expelled into the room with the force of a fist to everyone’s guts.

  “I said, take me to my fucking wife!”

  Rage twists his handsome face into painful ugliness, and we all stare in shock and helplessness unable to find any words of comfort or aid.

  Chest heaving, arms shaking, he stands before us in naked fury. The veins in his neck and forehead stand out in stark relief against his pallid skin.

  As quickly as the rage takes him, it leaves.

  His body, unable to contain his sorrow, slumps. His head drops to his chest and a voice saturated in pure grief utters his last plea.

  “Take me to my wife. She needs me, and she’s alone. She hates being alone.”

  I feel my own heart throb and threaten to shear itself straight through the centre. I can give him this. I can give him his one true love if only fleetingly.

  Ignoring everyone else in the room because I need to keep calm and not allow the pain I will see on their faces stall me, I slowly walk up to Josh and lightly place my hand on his shoulder.

  He shudders at my touch but doesn’t shrug me off.

  “Come with me, Josh. I’ll take you to Laura. Just hold on to me, okay.”

  He doesn’t respond or acknowledge me, but he allows me to lead him slowly from the room.

  The nurse stationed at a desk a little way down the hall notices us before we get to her. She stands, sympathy flooding her features and nods in agreement before I even ask my question.

  “Mr Fox?” she addresses Josh, and he lifts his head, his haunted eyes blinking just once. “Let me take you to your wife.”

  He nods. One pitiful movement of his head and we silently follow the nurse to a room set off from the corridor.

  When she stops outside, she addresses Josh once more.

  “We’ve made her comfortable and removed all the tubes and equipment, so she just looks like she’s sleeping.” Her eyes find mine before falling back to Josh. “Take as long as you need. When you’re ready, I can come and get you to see your new son.”

  “No. Just leave, I just want to be alone with my wife. Both of you leave.”

  I open my mouth to tell him he needs to see his new baby but a quick look at the kind nurse and the slight shake of her head has me closing my mouth in silence.

  “That’s okay, Mr Fox. We’ll leave you for as long as you need.”

  She quietly pushes open the door to the dimly lit room and opens it wide for Josh to walk in.

  I do not follow. He needs this time for himself. He needs to say goodbye without an audience. He needs to speak of his love freely and feel the touch of her skin one last time.

  This is his last moment with the girl he has loved since the day he met her when they were both just fourteen years old.

  Young love with long lives ahead of them. Plans to make, family to build, and dreams to chase.

  This morning he woke up and kissed her warm lips goodbye, spoke of the future they were building and of the new life they were eager to welcome.

  This evening those warm lips are now cold, and he will speak of a future in which she will not physically be present and of a child that will never know the warmth of her t
ouch.

  While he spends his last moments with the girl who stole his heart as a teenager, I will take his place and sit with his new born son.

  I will watch over him, so he is not alone, and until his father returns I will tell him how much he’s wanted and loved.

  Life gives and life takes away.

  It’s brutal, and it’s fucking unfair, and I don’t understand it, but what I do know is that it goes on with or without you.

  The nurse grants my request and takes me to see my new nephew.

  I sit next to his cot and look down at his mop of dark hair that is so much like Josh’s and begin telling him a love story.

  A story of a shy young boy and a sweet young girl and of how nothing, not even death, could kill their love.

  Their love lies before me with ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes, and a cute button nose. Their love will grow with him, and as I rest my finger next to his tiny hand, which he then grips tightly between his soft fingers, I promise him that everything is going to be okay. That his Daddy and Mummy love him.

  That we love him.

  Love; it’s precious, it’s life. Never take it for granted.

  Almost twelve months later.

  “That’s the last of my things in the removal van. You sure you don’t want me to hang around and help you finish loading yours?”

  Elaina stands in our now empty living room with her hands on her hips surveying the space. It’s completely barren, except for my last few boxes propped against the wall.

  “Nah, I’m good. You can head off. I’m sure Jace is eager to get you all to himself.”

  “He’s getting me all to himself for the rest of his life.” She wiggles her ring finger at me; the one adorned with a rock the size of Gibraltar. “I think he can spare me for a little while longer.”

  I drop the last of my books into the box at my feet, dust my hands off on my jeans and walk towards where she stands.

  “He’s a lucky man, Lei. Now, go and begin the rest of your life and stop worrying about me.” I wrap my arms around her petite frame and drag her to me for a hug.