The Lover: Book 3 in The Bride Series

by S Doyle

  He sobbed. He wrapped his arms around me and sobbed and it was the most heartbreaking sound I had ever heard in my life.

  Jake

  I came in through the back door with a sense of dread of another night like the last few nights had been. Ellie still couldn’t talk to me about what happened. She was just this zombie going through the motions. I was trying to be as careful as I could around her, but I felt this distancing from her. Like our lives were tied together with a hundred pieces of string that she was cutting one by one.

  “Hey, how are you feeling?” I asked when I saw her sitting at the kitchen table.

  So damn beautiful, I thought. Just a stupid t-shirt and jeans. No makeup. There were times I couldn’t believe she was really mine.

  “Fine,” she answered. In that short clipped way she had been since it happened. Like I was some distant stranger she barely knew.

  Maybe it was the fact there was no food on the table, or cooking on the stove. But for some reason this felt like it had twelve weeks ago. When she had a bombshell to drop on my head.

  “Ellie, what is it? I can tell something is wrong.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  I heard the words. But they didn’t make sense.

  “I don’t… what do you mean?”

  “I’m going back to the room above the Hair Stop. I’ll see if I can get my job back at Frank’s. Chrissy will be heading back to school soon.”

  I shook my head. Why the hell would she do that? This was her home.

  “I’m not following.”

  “I’m done, Jake. I can’t do this anymore. We’re not married. We have no reason to be married now, and I’m done.”

  This. She waved her finger back and forth between her and me when she said it. Our relationship. That’s what she meant by this. Only she said it like it was some foul thing.

  And she was done. With. Me.

  “Done with me,” I repeated. I suppose it made sense, given how she had been acting. But I wanted her to say it again. I wanted her to say it completely so that I would hear it and understand what was happening right now.

  “You don’t want me anymore,” I said again. “Why don’t you say it one more time? I’ve been feeling it for the past two weeks!”

  Yes, I was mad. That she could even think about leaving me. We were happy. So fucking happy. Yes, a horrible thing happened. We’d had horrible things happen to us before. We had survived so damn much together, and now she was just done?

  “Oh no. You don’t get to make this about me.”

  Was she getting pissed? She was sitting there dumping me, and she was getting pissed at me? Was she serious right now?

  “How can I not make this about you?” I charged at her. “You’re sitting there telling me you want to go. You’re done with me. I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay. So yes, Ellie, this is about you and your choices. Not mine. Never mine.”

  “Hey Jake.” She stood up then and braced her hands on the table. “Breaking news just in. I LOVE YOU. I HAVE LOVED YOU FOR YEARS. And you know it! You goddamn well know it. But you don’t love me. Oh yes, you care for me. I’m family. But you’re not in love with me. You know how I know? Because when we woke after my birthday you should have said I love you Ellie. Come home with me. Because when I told you I was pregnant you should have said I love you Ellie, please marry me and make me the happiest man alive. But you didn’t. Not one I love you. Not once. So yes, I’m done, Jake. I deserve to be loved as much as I love you. I deserve the kind of happiness my parents had. I do.”

  Wait. What? She thought I didn’t love her? She thought I wasn’t in love with her. How was that fucking possible? Yes, I screwed it up when she told me about the baby, I knew I should have said probably exactly that, but I couldn’t say those things. I wasn’t the kind of man who could just say those things out loud. It was about actions, not about words.

  Because of her.

  It felt like a ghost running across the back of my neck.

  “I’m going to go back to the room over the Hair Stop. You are going to build your house as quickly as you can and move onto your land. Some day in the future we’ll find a way to get along somehow. And that is the end of the Jake and Ellie story. Goodbye, Jake.”

  I watched her turn her back on me, watched her walk out of the kitchen, and I thought oh hell no. That was not how our story was going to end.

  I wasn’t letting this happen because of my goddamn mother. I chased after her and caught up to her at the door.

  “Don’t go.” I remembered. That’s what I had said to her that day so long ago.

  She turned around but I didn’t see Ellie. I saw her. My mother.

  “That’s what I said to her the night she left. She came into my room. I was eleven at the time. You don’t remember her, I know, you were just a baby. Anyway, she came in to tell me that she was leaving. That she couldn’t stay in Montana anymore and that it was better if I stayed with Dad. Then she said it would be cleaner this way. I didn’t realize at the time she meant she was just going to forget she ever had a son. Then she left the room, and I ran after her down the hall and I said, Mom, I love you. Please don’t go. And she left.”

  “You never told me.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Who wants to tell that story? I told myself I would never say those words again. That wasn’t going to happen. No way. That… being rejected like that…that just hurt too much.”

  I would certainly never ever beg. Never again. That’s what I told myself.

  “Oh Jake, I’m so sorry.”

  “I tried to show you. I thought I… did. I tried to give you presents I knew you would love so you would see. I tried to be there for you when you needed me. I tried to be the man someone like you deserved. I… in bed… I mean I tried to show you what I was feeling the whole time. I thought you knew. You had to see it. Feel it. Yeah, I thought if I could show you. It would be enough.”

  But it wasn’t. This whole time I thought I was giving her everything I had. More than I’d given to anyone in my life. And she thought I didn’t love her.

  Right. Because you had to say the scary words. Out loud. So I had to tell her. If I was going to keep her, I had to tell her.

  I fell to my knees in front of her and rested my head on the womb that used to carry our child. I had never felt a sense of loss so strongly as I had when I realized she’d lost the baby.

  Until ten minutes ago, when she said she was leaving me. So I did the thing I thought I would never be able to do again.

  “I love you, Ellie. Please don’t go.”

  Then I couldn’t control it. I did something I had never done in my life. I cried. I cried for the boy who lost his mother. I cried for my father and her father. I cried for the baby. But most of all I cried because the idea of losing Ellie, the best part of my life, was so damn scary there was nothing else I could do.

  She soothed and rubbed my head. Told me to hush, and that everything was going to be okay.

  Did she mean that? I pulled away and looked up at her but she was getting on her knees too. She took my face between her hands, looked me dead in the eye, and said the thing that I had so badly wanted my mom to say all those years ago.

  “Okay, Jake. I’ll stay.”

  “I love you.” It was easier the second time.

  “I know that now.”

  “I love you,” I sighed. It felt like some huge weight had been lifted off my chest. “I have. For years. I didn’t realize until now… why I couldn’t tell you. All this time I thought I was protecting you, making you sure you had choices…I was really just protecting that eleven-year-old boy. Ellie Samson, I love you.”

  She smiled, and swear to God it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

  “See, was that so hard to say?”

  She laughed and I laughed too. Then we kissed. Not a romantic kiss, but a hard one. One that felt like we had sealed some kind of deal.

  Seventeen

  Ellie


  April 22

  I stared down at the ring on my finger and wondered if I was going to pass out. I was sitting in a small vestibule, trying to keep my arms away from my body so I wasn’t all pitted out in my white dress, while Chrissy constantly checked her hair in the small mirror on the wall.

  You’re probably wondering how it all went down at this point?

  After Jake told me he loved me, we’d both decided we didn’t want a rushed wedding. He’d said he wanted it done right, so that everyone would know we were doing this because we were in love and for no other reason.

  That meant a church, a white dress, not just a few friends, but all of our friends (which was basically the town of Riverbend) and a big party afterward.

  Together we’d mourned the loss of our baby. I had told him everything I felt, why I’d felt it. Some of it had hurt him, but it was the only way I knew how to really heal. To forgive myself for the feelings I had when I first learned I was pregnant. Then I had gone on the pill, because we both knew we weren’t ready for children yet and it turned out Jake loved sex without condoms. (Like really loved it.)

  For Christmas, he’d given me an engagement ring. Something totally useless, as a rancher and jewelry didn’t often go together, but still I loved it.

  The ranch was once again at full capacity. Thriving really. Enough so that we could offer Rich a full time position and still have work for Gomez and Javier whenever they showed up.

  I told them both about the wedding when they came in February. I think they had a hard time understanding that we weren’t already married. But they had left at the beginning of April, so that was two less guests.

  Still, the church was packed. I knew this because between checking her hair in the mirror Chrissy would walk over to the door of the vestibule and crack it open and tell me it was packed.

  We picked my birthday, even though it was a Wednesday in April. We picked my birthday because I wanted the best present Jake could ever give me. Himself. Obviously the town didn’t seem to mind.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I said.

  It was Howard. “Ellie, you ready?”

  Howard was going to give me away. I thought back to that first wedding, when Howard had come to get me then. How different everything had been. It felt like a hundred years ago.

  I stood up, and he smiled. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  I heard the organ music start to play. Chrissy did one last hair check, and then air-kissed me as she made her way out of the vestibule. I could see her measured steps as she started up the aisle. Then Howard held his arm out and I took it.

  “A lot different then last time,” he said, chuckling, echoing my earlier thoughts.

  “I don’t know. I think I might be more nervous.”

  “That’s because this time it’s for real.”

  Yes. This time it was for real. Including changing my name to Talley. Of course I had a long conversation explaining the feminist position of keeping my maiden name to Jake. To which he’d said Please. I like the way Ellie Talley sounds.

  I totally caved. Because I liked the way it sounded too.

  Howard and I turned the corner and everyone stood. It was without a doubt the craziest moment in my life. Everyone was there. Frank and Bernie, Pete, the Pettys, crazy enough both Mr. and Mrs. Nash came together, Karen and Lisa, Denny and Maryanne, the Simpsons. Bella, who had done my hair earlier that morning. Rich, who cleaned up pretty well for an old ranch hand.

  My life. My people. My family. All standing up and looking at me.

  And then I saw Jake, and they all went away. He wore a suit and tie. His hair was freshly cut. He was smiling. Beaming actually, and it was because he was happy.

  I made Jake Talley happy, and to me there was no greater honor on this earth.

  Howard gave me a little tug and I made my way to him. Then Jake was taking my hand and we were standing together in front of the minister.

  “I’m nervous,” I whispered to him. “I don’t want to forget my vows.”

  Then he squeezed my hand and reminded me of something I think I always knew.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”

  Jake

  April 22nd Ten Years Later

  On a road between Long Valley and Riverbend

  “Oh Jake!!!! I think you need pull over.”

  “Do not do this to me, Ellie. We’ve got about ten more minutes until we get to the clinic.”

  I hit the gas even harder, but then she reached over and grabbed my arm. I could tell by the force of her grip the level of pain she was in.

  “You may have ten more minutes. This kid does not. It wants out. Like now!”

  Fuck!

  “Jake, you’ve brought a thousand calves into this world, you can do this. Ohhhhhhh. Jake, hurry. I need to push. Seriously.”

  She was panting with short pants to control the pain, but I could see it wash over her body, the way it tightened her belly.

  There was no hope for it. I pulled the truck over to the side of the road.

  “Ellie, you’re going to need to get into the back seat. Can you do that? Wait for the next ease of the contraction and then move.”

  “Move,” she muttered. “Like I’m not the size of a beached whale.” Still, she was undoing her seat belt.

  I got out and opened the back door of the truck. I probably should have taken the minivan, but when her water broke I hadn’t been thinking of a side of the road delivery. Just getting her into town as fast as possible.

  “Okay, see this?” I pointed to the handle bar above the window. “Grab on to that with both hands. You can use that for leverage.”

  She’d worn one of her light, maxi-length maternity dresses. I pushed the material up over her belly and then ripped her underwear off. Which, don’t ask me why because she was screaming in pain with an enormous belly and gigantic maternity panties, was still a little hot. Because it was Ellie, and anything to do with Ellie was hot. I made a mental note when she was recovered to try this trick again.

  Then I focused on the task at hand. I spread her knees wide, and holy shit she was right. The head was already crowning.

  I looked up at her. “Good call.”

  She puffed through a contraction. “Third time. I got this nailed.”

  “All right, let’s do this. Let’s give Jack and Sam their newest sibling.”

  Jack was for Jackson Talley Jr. Ellie loved my name, and while she felt Jake was a suitable nickname wanted to keep the Jack in Jackson. Sam, well that was obvious. For this baby we’d decided not to know the sex in advance. For a boy we were torn between Tom and Alex. I had no idea what she was thinking if it was girl. I just told her she couldn’t name it Petunia.

  It was messy, but it was almost too easy. Ellie bore down on one long push, and my daughter slid out head first, then a shoulder like she simply could not wait to meet us. Finally she was free and I laid her on Ellie’s chest. While Ellie checked that her mouth and throat were clear of any mucus, I ripped off the bottom of Ellie’s dress to dry the baby and wrap her up as best I could.

  Then I hopped back in the car and drove us the last of the way, where Dr. Jenkins was waiting for us to deliver the afterbirth and cut the cord.

  Ellie

  A baby girl. I glanced down at the pink bundle in my arms and promptly fell even more in love than I already had when Jake first laid her on my chest. Just like I had done with Jack and Sam. It was this bottomless well of love that never seemed to end.

  We were driving home now. Dr. Jenkins had given me and the baby a thumbs up, so there was no point in staying at the clinic. I was sore as heck sitting in the truck, and we hadn’t had time to bring the baby seat, so Jake was driving twenty-five miles an hour which meant the trip would take even longer, but none of that mattered.

  Not when I was so blessed.

  “I told you we should have stayed and done it at the house,” I told Jake.

  What we
knew after two previous pregnancies was I gave birth at record pace. Jack had been the longest at three hours, but we’d barely made it last time with Sam.

  “What I should have done was have Mary come. Well, too late worrying about it now. We’re just lucky there weren’t any complications.”

  I reached over to rub his arm, because I knew he’d been scared.

  “You did good, Dad.”

  He grunted.

  “Did you call Howard and Mirry?”

  “Yes. I told them what happened. Howard thought it was funny. It was not funny. They are going to take the boys to their place tonight. Let them have a sleepover and give you a break.”

  Howard and Mirry had basically become our kids’ de facto grandparents. They had been over for dinner, which was just lucky timing, when my water broke. Which was a surprise, since the baby wasn’t due until the first week of May.

  Clearly this girl was in a rush to get started with life.

  “What are you going to name her?” Jake asked.

  “You’re going to think this is hokey…”

  “Ellie. Do not go crazy on me.”

  I didn’t think it was crazy. I thought it was just another in a long line of amazing birthday gifts Jake had given me over the years.

  “I want to name her April,” I said, looking down at her, wondering if she agreed. Then I looked over at Jake and I could see him nodding. He understood. Every April he gave me a gift that in some way showed me how much he loved me. This April was no different. To me it was a word synonymous with love.

  “April,” he said. “I like it.”

  “April,” I repeated.

  And that’s how it went, really. Our story. We loved each other, we loved our kids. We had hard times and good times. Sometimes really hard times, but then really great times.

  Overall on a scale of one to ten, I would say my life with Jake was…

  One million. Or a billion. Or a trillion. Did it get bigger than a trillion?