by Gemma James
I’d never seen him so livid, so destroyed by what he thought I’d done. I could have fallen to pieces at his feet, could have begged him to put me back together again. To make me whole. But I wouldn’t. This was my chance to wash him from my life. Truly start over. Eve would be fine without him. I would be fine without him. The baby we’d created together, the one he hated, would be fine without him.
“Okay,” I whispered, forcing my shaky limbs to move. I picked up the bag he’d tossed on the floor, pulled my purse strap high onto my shoulder, and headed toward the stairs. I said nothing; he wouldn’t listen anyway. The man I knew was gone. I didn’t know this stranger who had just cast me aside like I was nothing. Gage Channing had made me feel a lot of things in the time I’d known him, but never this—like I meant nothing to him.
I clutched the bag, knuckles turning to ash as the pain threatened to choke me. My whole body was ash. He’d incinerated me. A month ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I loved him, and his hate almost brought me to my knees. Devastation welled in my throat, and I grabbed hold of my last thread of strength. I would not break down in front of him. I wouldn’t.
“Wait,” he said.
My lifeless feet halted on the first step. Slowly, I turned, a pang of hope fisting my heart.
His mouth never strayed from the mean line it formed. “My mother’s ring.” He marched to where I stood and held out his hand. “I want it back.”
I blinked several times as I slid the ring down my finger, and I made the mistake of meeting his eyes as I dropped it into his waiting palm. That seething hatred wrecked what was left of me.
“You’re the last woman on Earth who deserves to wear her ring.” And with a wave of his hand, he dismissed me.
Just like that.
And I didn’t know how I kept from breaking on the spot.
18. Purgatory
We left before sunrise, and my tears fell in an endless stream once Eve and I sped down the road. I had a full tank of gas, a credit card with unlimited capabilities, and nowhere to go. No one to turn to. So I just drove, practically on autopilot because I was aware of nothing.
Only the hum of the road underneath me and the trickle of rain splashing the windshield.
Eventually, the flow of heartbreak slowed, and I realized I’d looped downtown Portland on the freeways twice when the first hint of pain began in my lower back. I straightened in the driver’s seat and tried to get comfortable, but my head swam.
God, pull it together, Kayla.
Eve slept in the backseat. I glanced into the rearview, noticing how uncomfortable she looked with her head hanging over the edge of the car seat. I couldn’t be a wreck when she awoke. Wiping my eyes, I looped the city again and gave myself time to calm down, but it didn’t help much, especially when the traffic on the 405 came to a standstill.
Wonderful.
My stomach grumbled, and I was sure Eve must have been hungry too since we’d left his house without eating. Traffic inched forward at an agonizing pace—morning rush hour traffic at its finest for sure. My stomach grumbled again, this time accompanied by cramping that gripped my right side with the strength of pliers. I squeezed the steering wheel and told myself everything was okay.
It’d been a couple of stressful days, and I remembered cramping during my pregnancy with Eve. My stomach was too empty; I’d thrown up again before leaving his driveway and had gotten a bit of satisfaction at leaving my nasty bile on his pavement.
Pain spread through my abdomen, and my pulse sped up, thundering in my ears as I drew air into my lungs. This was more than hunger pains. The black interior of the car wavered, as if I saw it through warped glass, and a dull ache started in my shoulder. Suddenly weak, I let my head fall back against the headrest and closed my eyes.
Someone honked. Behind me?
I didn’t know. Was traffic moving? I couldn’t concentrate beyond the pain. Something was wrong, and I thought back to my first pregnancy; the one Rick caused me to miscarry.
Not again.
Last night, Gage had slammed me into the bathroom wall before he’d stalked out, and when he’d returned…
But he hadn’t hurt me. Not really. He may have marked my ass and thighs, but the real damage had been psychological. Someone honked again just as my vision started to fade. Blindly, I reached for my purse, tried to get my hands on my cell as my foot let up on the brake. The car lurched forward and hit something…
I was on my back when I gasped to awareness. My arms and legs thrashed, and someone held them down. Panic cut off my air, and I couldn’t make a sound, so where was that screaming coming from? That gut-wrenching crying? Sounded much too young to be me.
Eve.
Eve was crying. Where was she? I needed her by me, needed her hand in mine so she wouldn’t be alone and scared. I found my voice but no more than a whimper escaped as my right side lit on fire.
“…into shock! Let’s move it!”
Voices, commotion, bodies crowding me, hands reaching, yet I could grab onto nothing. I sucked in each breath, as if through a straw, and a drop of sweat trickled down my face. My whole body heated—too hot, too drenched. I was burning alive where my baby nestled; my tiny baby who had yet to form arms and legs, fingers and toes. Who barely had a heartbeat.
I was losing him, and Eve had asked for a brother last Christmas.
My stomach dropped at the sensation of being lifted, and when I opened my eyes for a second, squinting against the colorful lights that strobed atop the ambulance, I saw the ominous clouds overhead. Thick and grey, they extinguished the brilliance of the rising sun and set the scene perfectly for this day.
“Wh…what’s happening?” I managed to say.
“We’re taking you to the ER. We’re doing everything we can to help you,” a deep voice assured.
But the crying hadn’t stopped. My poor baby. Why was she crying? “My daughter…”
“She’s okay. An officer is taking her to the hospital. Is there someone we can call to meet her?”
“Gage”—I felt myself sinking, much too fast—“Channing.” Why had I given his name? He hated me, hated the baby.
The baby…
“I’m pregnant.” I moaned as another wave of pain hit. I must be dying, I thought before there was simply…nothing.
19. Gone
A low moan roused me.
“Kayla?”
Someone moaned again, and I realized it was me. I forced my lids open, squinting against the soft light that seared my eyes. “Ian?” I had to be dreaming. Why would he be here? I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where here was.
“Hey.” His gentle voice came from my left.
I swerved my head and blinked the room into focus. A small and windowless area, partitioned by curtains, enclosed us. Ian sat at my bedside, and I noticed a monitor behind him. “Why…” God, why did talking grate my throat like sandpaper? And why was I in the hospital? At least, I assumed it was a hospital. Sure smelled like one. “Why am I here?”
“How much do you remember?”
“Um…” Driving. Crying. Pain. “I was driving. We were stopped in traffic…” I drew a blank after that, though the feeling I should recall something—a voice assuring me everything would be okay—remained.
And crying. I remembered Eve crying.
“You were on the 405 when you passed out,” he said, fingers folding around mine. “Another motorist called 9-1-1.”
I squeezed his hand, mainly because I needed to hold onto something, and he just happened to be there. “What happened? Where’s Eve?”
His gaze fell. “Did you know you were pregnant?”
Were.
I sucked in a quick breath. “The baby?”
“I’m sorry. Your pregnancy was ectopic.” He pulled his hand from mine and wiped both palms down his face, and I realized how exhausted he seemed. “Your tube ruptured. I was the attending when they brought you in. I’ve never been so scared in my life.
They had to rush you into surgery.”
I comprehended his words, but mostly I felt numb. “Am I gonna be okay?”
He slumped into the chair. “The internal bleeding wasn’t as bad as they feared. You lost some blood, and they couldn’t save the tube, but you should recover fine.”
“Where’s Eve?”
He clenched his jaw. “She’s in the waiting room with Gage.”
He came.
A nurse appeared from behind the curtain. “Good, you’re awake,” she said. “They’re about to move you to a more comfortable room. Are you in any pain?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I said, though I hadn’t tried to move yet either.
She fastened a blood pressure cuff around my arm, and a machine buzzed. “You’ll probably feel woozy from the pain meds.” She took more vitals and then made notes in a chart. “I’ll leave you in Dr. Kaplan’s hands.” With a smile, she disappeared through the gap in the curtains.
Ian fell eerily silent, and I was too drowsy to ask what was on his mind. I must have dozed off, because they startled me awake when they moved me into a private room. Ian never left my side.
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” I mumbled, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
“My shift was almost over when the ambulance brought you in. You’re stuck with me.” He settled into a chair and leaned forward. “Kayla,” he began hesitantly, resting both elbows on his knees, “we need to talk about the bruises.”
“What?”
“On your backside. You’re black and”—he cut off and swallowed—“You’re black and blue, and I’m pretty sure I know why.”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not the only one concerned. The staff here mentioned abuse.”
“And you helped them with their assumptions, didn’t you?”
“I can’t keep quiet about this anymore. He’s hurting you. What are you gonna do when he starts in on Eve?”
I jerked into a sitting position, grimacing as pain seared my abdomen. “Gage would never hurt her.”
“He’s got you brainwashed—”
“You need to stop right now.” The warning in my voice must have registered because he gaped at me. “I’m not blind to his ways, and I’m not a pushover either. What’s important is how he’s treated my daughter, and he’s been nothing but good to her.”
“And what about you? How does he treat you?”
The echo of Gage’s mistrust pained my heart, and I pushed the memory into a hidden compartment of my mind. “What we do in the privacy of our bedroom is none of your business.”
“You’re in denial.”
“No,” I choked. “I just lost my baby and the last thing I need is another lecture from you.”
“I know you’re hurting, but I can’t ignore this. Seeing you hurt like that…” He shook his head. “A social worker is waiting to speak with you. You need to talk to her.”
“What good is talking to some stranger about my sex life going to do?” I didn’t care if my words got under his skin; his burrowed into mine like a chigger.
He winced. “Talk to her. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I can’t believe you got a social worker involved.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t leave those bruises on your body.”
Regardless of how much Gage had hurt me, he’d stopped when I said the safe word. That had to mean something, right? Or was I so far gone from logic and reason that I didn’t recognize good from bad anymore? “I told you I was wrong for you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I did listen!” He sprang to his feet. “I’ve done my best to move on,” he continued, lowering his voice, “but when you’re brought into my ER, nearly dead and covered in bruises…I can’t handle that. I’m not sorry for loving you, and I won’t apologize for saying what you don’t want to hear. You need help.”
“You need to stay out of this.”
His body tensed. “You’re a smart, courageous woman, and you’ve always put Eve first. If I know nothing else about the person you’ve become, I know that’s still true. You can’t go back to him. If not for yourself, do it for her.”
The sting of fresh tears threatened, but I refused to let them spill. “He doesn’t want me anymore.”
“What?” He sounded incredulous.
I let out a bitter laugh. “He thinks the baby is…was…yours. He says he can’t have kids.” I glanced up at him. “Did you know Liz was pregnant?”
The question hit him like a punch to the gut. He stumbled back. “No, she wasn’t.”
“Gage says she was. He also says the baby was yours.”
“That’s…nuts. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“I don’t know.” I absently played with the edge of the blanket wrapped around my body. “Did he ask to see me?”
“I suspect you know as well as I do that Gage doesn’t ask—he demands.”
“I want to see him.”
“I can’t change your mind, can I?”
“We already went over this in Texas. I made my choice.” Well, it’d been made for me, but I wouldn’t tell him that. “I care about you, but you need to let me go.” I narrowed my eyes. “And you never should have gotten a social worker involved.”
“I didn’t. Gage’s abuse did.”
I gritted my teeth. “It’s unnecessary. If anyone asks, tell them the truth. I like kinky sex.”
“Jesus, Kayla…”
“Can you please send him in? I need to see Eve.”
“Fine,” he said in a clipped tone. “I’ll send the bastard in.” He stormed from the room, and not two minutes later, Gage stood in the doorway.
I looked behind him, hoping to spot my daughter’s short auburn curls, but she was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Eve?”
“Ian took her to the cafeteria,” he said as he closed the door. He stepped to my bedside and sank into a chair. “She’ll be back in a while. I wanted to speak with you alone first.”
“Why? You hate me, remember?”
I jumped when his hand settled over mine. “You need me.”
“I needed you yesterday.”
He dropped his head onto the thin mattress, next to my hip, and kissed the palm he held. “I don’t hate you.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
“We’re not doing this now. You just got out of surgery.”
“Why not? Ian didn’t hold back.”
“What are you talking about?”
I snorted. “Apparently, the hospital staff thinks you’re abusing me. He wants me to talk to a social worker.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe you should tell them everything. You could easily send me back to jail.”
“I was willing, Gage.”
“That’s not entirely true. I kidnapped you, and last night…”
My breath hitched, then shuddered out. “What you did and said hurt, but I knew what I was getting into when I stayed. You gave me the option of leaving, but I stayed.” I caught his gaze. “I was willing. You made me admit it, remember?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “I remember. I molded you into what I wanted, and then I threw you out at the first sign of trouble.”
“Why’d you do it?”
He fell quiet for a few long moments. “It was deja vu, Kayla. I should have punished you for lying to me, but demanding marriage and then making you leave was wrong.” He held his mother’s ring between two fingers. “This belongs on your finger. No matter what, you are and always will be mine.” My mouth gaped as he slid the diamond onto my finger—as if he’d never demanded it back to begin with. “I was scared of hurting you,” he said. “Really hurting you.” He paused, avoiding my eyes. “Did I cause your miscarriage? I don’t care that it was his, if I made you lose your baby—”
“The baby wasn’t his!” I yanked my hand from his grasp. “You refuse to believe me, but it’s the truth.” Sorrow welled in my throat. “The baby was ours.” Turning away, I buried my face in the
pillow and muffled my sobs. I formed a ball, bringing about pain from the incision but instead of recoiling from it, I held on to it, breathed through it until I could think of nothing else.
His voice called to me through my despair, and I tensed when his arms came around me. Gage wasn’t the comforting kind.
“I didn’t mean to do this…” he cut off, strangled.
“You didn’t. It was a tubal pregnancy. A miscarriage was inevitable.” His embrace comforted me more than I wanted to admit, especially after what he’d said and done, but I needed his arms to live through the next second, the next minute, the next hour. “Why can’t you trust me? You swore nothing happened with Katherine, and I took your word for it. Why can’t you do the same?”
“It’s not that simple.” He withdrew his arms, sat up, and scooted to the edge of the bed, as if he needed distance.
“Then make it simple. God, you made me love you!”
“What else do you want me to say, Kayla?”
“Everything! I want answers. I want to understand why you’re so adamant the baby wasn’t yours.”
He hung his head. “They told me back in high school I can’t have kids. I sustained a lot of damage from…it doesn’t matter.”
“Damage from what?”
“A nasty brawl with the bastard my mother married.”
A beat of heavy silence weighed on us, and I hurt for him as much as I did for myself in that moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because telling you would have led to this! You and your questions. I try not to think about the past, and I sure as hell don’t talk about it.”
“But you put me on birth control…” I shook my head as nothing about this made sense. “Why would you do that if you thought you couldn’t father children?”
“I gave you a placebo, Kayla. I can’t father children.”
“Obviously, you can,” I snapped. “Whoever diagnosed you made a mistake, or something changed—”
“I’m not discussing this with you,” he interrupted. “You need to focus on recovering.”
“I didn’t sleep with him! It’s only been you—in four fucking years, Gage, it’s been you!”
