In Between Heartbeats (Hearts in Waiting Duet: Book Two)

by Amanda Cuff

  But when I make it into the room, there’s no one there to introduce.

  4

  Addison

  Call me a coward if you want, because I absolutely am. This day has been a whirlwind of awkwardness from the moment I opened my eyes, but the icing on the metaphorical freaking cake would be having to meet Chase’s parents.

  I mean, what was he supposed to say?

  Who’s this, you ask? Oh, this is my vacation girlfriend. She’s just in town to wreck my entire world with her out-of-wedlock baby.

  Eh, no thanks.

  So before either one of us could be put in that predicament, I hightailed it out of there. Right up the long staircase and into the first room I came across.

  Now, I’m standing with my back against the door, face-to-face with an amused Emily and a confused Willow.

  “This isn’t the bathroom,” I joke lamely, heart racing while I take in the room around me. A queen-size bed takes up most of the space, with a side table on each side and a dresser on the opposite wall. A TV hangs above it, a muted sitcom with teenage girls on the screen.

  Emily laughs around a black hair tie hanging from her lips. Willow is sitting in front of her legs, her head tilted back to give her mother better access to braid her hair, but it swivels as she looks my way.

  “The bathroom is across the hall, one more door down,” Willow says, pointing her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the direction I should have taken, then allowing Emily to pull her head back into place.

  “Thank you,” I say with a quick nod.

  She’s a cute kid, a pint-sized replica of her mother, with matching blonde hair and blue eyes. She looks to be every bit the character that Drake and Chase described her as, with an infectious smile and a face that twinkles with mischief and innocence. It’s odd to look at her and see her for the first time as Chase’s daughter, an entire human being whose life has been so heavily influenced by him.

  Since college, devoting so much of my life to the firm had made it so I didn’t keep many friends in my corner, and the ones I did have were nowhere near a time in their lives for having children. I can’t even recall any major interactions with kids and here I am now, having one of my own.

  Emily makes quick work finishing up Willow’s braid then pats her arm. “All right, time to go! You don’t want to keep Nana and Pops waiting.”

  Willow turns and kisses her mother’s cheek then jumps off the bed. “Bye, Addison!” she says before bounding into the hallway, her feet pounding loudly against the stairs as she rushes down them.

  “Avoiding his parents, huh?” Emily asks. “I heard the doorbell.”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “This day has already been…a lot.”

  She nods and stands from her bed, inch by careful inch.

  God, she looks so tired.

  It’s as if Willow took all of Emily’s energy with her when she left the room. The woman deflated immediately; her shoulders slumping, her smile sliding off her face.

  “You don’t have to worry, you know. He’ll do the right thing. Chase always does the right thing,” she says.

  “I’m not even sure what that is at this point,” I tell her honestly.

  I know her words are meant to comfort me, but they don’t.

  Chase already has a family. A wife and a child. I don’t know where I fit into all that, but the idea of being part of his life for the sole reason that it’s the right thing to do doesn’t give me the warm and tinglies inside.

  I feel like an outsider, stepping into territory that isn’t mine to be in.

  During our conversation this morning, she made it clear that her presence in Chase’s life shouldn’t keep me from finding where I fit into it, but that didn’t make things any clearer on where we’re all supposed to go from here.

  “You’ll figure it out,” she says with a shrug.

  And I believe her—because what other choice do I have? No matter where our relationships lie, this baby will be here in six months; and when that time comes, we all need to have our shit together.

  “Addison?” Chase calls from the hallway.

  “Time to face the music,” Emily sing-songs, shooing me out of the room with a tired smile. The corners of her mouth barely lift, and she looks like she’ll fall asleep the second her head hits the pillow.

  “Hey,” she says softly, stopping me as I turn to leave. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure this out.”

  We.

  It’s odd feeling like I have someone to share the burden with, even stranger how we’ve come to be thrown together in this predicament, but I say nothing as I shut the door behind me, coming face-to-face with Chase.

  He nods his head in the direction of the staircase and I follow him down in silence.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asks when we make it into the living room. He turns to face me, and runs his hands soothingly down my arm.

  I think it’s meant to be comforting, but for some reason, his touch causes me to shiver.

  “Water, please,” I whisper.

  I’m not sure which betrays me, if it’s my voice or my eyes that have pooled with lust, but either way, he can see it.

  He stares hard at me, his eyes slowly making their way down my face. His gaze is filled with so much longing that it feels like a caress, trailing a blaze of heat across my skin. It lands on my lips before he finally takes a long, unsteady breath.

  I can’t ignore the thick hunger that clings to the air around us, but giving in to these feelings is the last thing we should be focused on right now.

  I shake my head, trying to clear my mind and tell him to move at the same time.

  When he turns to leave the room, I sigh, letting some of the tension in my shoulders free.

  For the first time, I allow myself to realize how beautiful their home is—anything to distract me. The living room is large and open, with tall glass windows covering an entire wall. A big, dark brown couch sits against one side of the room and a beautiful stone fireplace adorns another. The last part of the room opens up to the hallway and kitchen.

  I walk over to it, looking closely at a large group of pictures arranged in a collage on the wall. They’re mostly of Willow, some alone and some with Chase or Emily. There’s a picture of the child with an older couple. The woman is beautiful, with chestnut-colored hair and a sweet smile. I can’t decide if the man looks more like Chase or more like Drake, so I’m unsure who they are to Willow.

  Finally, I come across a photo of three kids, maybe just a little younger than Willow is now. I’m hit again with how much Willow looks like her mother, as the girl in the photo has to be a young Emily. Which means the two boys must be Drake and Chase—Drake with a large welcoming smile, Chase with a serious scowl. I can’t help but grin at how perfectly adorable the group is.

  “That was the first summer Drake and I met Emily,” Chase says, walking back into the room with a large glass of water in each hand.

  I grab mine with a “Thank you,” and take a few long drinks.

  He heads over to the couch and I sink in on the other side of it. “She and her mom moved to town after her parents divorced, and we’ve pretty much been inseparable since. Her mother worked a lot, so after a few months, we spent more time together than apart. When my father bought the cabins, we would all go up there on weekends and explore together.”

  “Your parents never worried about any funny business?” I ask, taking this opportunity to see if he gives me the same story as Emily, about their relationship being platonic from the start.

  “We came from different parents and households, but we were pretty much raised as siblings. Around puberty, I think, our sleepovers went from us all together in our sleeping bags to having to sleep in different bedrooms. Emily was given the upstairs loft of the cabin, which ticked Drake off because he didn’t think it was fair that she got her own bathroom.” He laughs softly and looks down. “I don’t know. We were good kids. I guess they trusted us when we said we weren’t interested in e
ach other like that.”

  “How did they react when you two got married?”

  “My parents were always accepting of our situation. The whole town has been, honestly. There’ve been rumors, at times, or questions. But we just ignored them and moved on and eventually, they got bored and moved on too. I’m not sure how many people know or understand our dynamic one hundred percent, but what they do know is that everything we do is for Willow. Everyone in town loved Emily’s mother, then Emily, and now Willow. They’re all so much like one another. Loving, giving, selfless. Emily has such a good heart, and with all she’s been through, I’m sure no one ever wanted to make things harder for her.”

  “Is that why you did it then? You married her to make things easier on her?” I ask.

  He scrunches up his face and reaches up to rustle his hair like he’s uncomfortable.

  Can’t say I blame him.

  “Yeah. I mean, Emily was completely on her own when Willow was born. Her colic was so bad that Emily was barely sleeping. She just became a shell of a person. We were all so worried about her and we tried to help as much as we could, but Emily is so fucking stubborn. You can’t make her do shit.

  “In a way, I felt responsible for the situation. When Emily was pregnant, talking through what to do, I was the one giving her all the reasons why she’d make a great mother. There were times I was probably too pushy, to be honest. Too invested. But I knew Emily would never forgive herself for a choice other than raising Willow. She’s the most nurturing person I know.

  “And then, when Willow was about four months old, I came up with this hair-brained idea on how I could help Emily. I bought this house and maybe a week or so later, Drake and I took a day off work and we moved in all of Willow and Emily’s things and that was that.”

  “That was that,” I say quietly when he finishes.

  He makes it sound so simple, as if there were no options other than buying a house and moving in with the two of them.

  “She fought me on it at first, but I think it was more her personal battle with pride than anything else. She knew it was the best thing she could do for Willow, and I don’t know…we just never looked back. They became such a normal part of my routine that even when the colic got better, and Willow was sleeping through the night, I wasn’t ready to let them go and Emily wasn’t ready to leave.”

  “But you’re not in love with her?”

  “No, Addi.” His words are soft and gentle. “We aren’t romantic. We don’t share a bed. She even kept her maiden name. But as unorthodox as we might be, we’re a family. Before we knew it, five years had passed, and Emily started to get sick.”

  “Which is when you got married,” I say.

  He nods, reaching for my glass of water and setting it beside his empty one on the side table. He leans his elbows on his knees, gripping his hands together, and looks out into the room. “The lymphoma came out of left field. One day she was fine and the next, she was exhausted. She was tired all the time, and losing weight rapidly, but we never expected to hear the word cancer. It shook us both. She didn’t have insurance through work, didn’t qualify for Medicaid, and the cost of chemotherapy is astronomical. There was no way we could afford it, but she needed it.”

  He looks over at me with a sad smile before continuing.

  “She handled everything like a champ the first few days, like it hadn’t quite sunk in. Then one night, after putting Willow to bed, it hit her. She cried for hours, worrying about what would happen to Willow if she didn’t get better. She was terrified Willow would be ripped out of the only home she had ever known because I had no legal right to keep her.

  “I held her while she cried, and when she was finally asleep, I drove over to my parents’ house and woke my dad up in the middle of the night to tell him I was going to marry her. I knew the company could provide her insurance to help with the cost of treatments. I could adopt Willow so if the worst were to come, she could stay with me. I thought Emily would put up a fight at the idea, but she agreed, and we were married within a few days. My dad hired a private investigator and after a few months, we found Willow’s father. He gladly signed over his rights to me, but it took another six months until the adoption was complete.”

  He turns to me then, face hanging in a frown and worried eyes drilling into me. “I’m sorry I’ve dumped so much on you. I’m sure it looks odd, from the outside looking in. I don’t really expect you to understand why I did it or forgive me for it. Even if mine and Emily’s marriage isn’t real in the traditional sense, I did commit myself to our family, and I had no right to pursue anything with you knowing it could never develop into anything.”

  His apology hurts more than it probably should. I’m not an asshole; I understand his motives and I could never fault him for them, but his words still sting.

  I don’t expect him to leave his sick wife for me. I don’t want to tear apart his family.

  At the same time, I want my child to have a father. And the selfish woman in me wishes that Chase and I could give a relationship a chance. But the thought just makes me feel slimy. Stealing another woman’s husband feels…dirty.

  I finally ask the question I’ve been wondering all day. “How sick is she?”

  5

  Addison

  He sits there for a few moments, letting out a deep sigh before answering.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t want him to think my question is selfish in nature rather than genuine concern.

  “The night before you and I met, Emily told me she and her doctor had decided to no longer pursue treatment. She wanted to spend the time she had left enjoying life rather than sick and miserable from the treatment, especially since it was no longer working. And when I got called away from you, she was hospitalized from dehydration.”

  He stops talking and reaches out to grab my hand. His is shaky and uncertain and it cracks my heart right in two. We both watch as he laces his fingers with mine and slowly rubs his thumb over my knuckle. It reminds me of when we sat together on the porch of the cabin.

  Then, my only concern was having fun and living life. I had no idea Chase was fighting so many demons—but the signs were all there.

  Moments of our time spent together suddenly click into place. The sadness that clung to him, the hesitation to enjoy himself. Part of me regrets having pushed him out of his boundaries and allowing this situation to even happen.

  “How much longer does she have?” I can barely croak out the words, mostly because I don’t want to know the answer.

  Chase pulls his hand from mine and rubs it roughly over his face before staring off into the room. The quiet stretches out over heartbeats. Seconds keep ticking by to the point that when his voice fills the space again, I nearly jump.

  “She has maybe two or three months,” he says brokenly.

  Two or three months.

  Less than a hundred days.

  I immediately feel sick to my stomach.

  How can this be real?

  It’s hard to imagine that the Emily I’ve come to know is the same woman we’re talking about. With only months to live, she’s carrying herself with more dignity and strength than I can even on my best days.

  The guilt feels heavy on my chest like a cinder block, weighing me down more and more by the minute. I feel the tears prick my eyes, but I welcome the sting.

  “And now I’m pregnant.” The second the words tumble from my mouth, I want to snatch them back up and shove them down my throat. Even though it’s not the first time I’ve said them, they still feel big and important, just hanging in the air between us.

  Chase is silent and still beside me. Way too still, staring off into the room as if I’m not right there with him. Heat reddens my cheeks and my neck tightens, almost like an invisible noose has wrapped itself around me. With each passing moment of silence, it squeezes tighter, my breath becoming more and more ragged.

  As if pulled by an invisible string, his head slowly swivels to me.

&nbs
p; I wiggle under his stare, suddenly uncomfortable. The need to run hits me again, but I push it away and will myself to be strong. I don’t have any choice but to face this moment head on, even as my heart constricts in fear and tears roll down my face. “I’m due February third. It’s a Monday.” I pause and wait, but he says nothing. “Of course, only like four percent of babies are actually born on their due date. It’s crazy. I mean, did you know that? I looked it up and everything.”

  He blinks slowly. His eyes are on me, but they’re so glazed over I’m not even sure he’s really seeing me.

  After what feels like a full minute of silence, the panic begins to hit me harder.

  I shouldn’t have brought it back up, not right now.

  We were talking about Emily, not me.

  He must think I’m so selfish.

  “Chase. Please.” My voice is barely a whisper, but it’s full of every ounce of hope running through me. I don’t know what I’m begging him for.

  To accept me and the baby. To not turn us away. To assure me that even though all of this is completely screwed up, he’ll stand by my side and help me raise this child. Hell, I don’t even know if that’s what I want now.

  He already has a family.

  How can I ask him to make room for another?

  He runs those rough hands along his face again. He’s calmer than I expected, but then again, I’ve never seen him anything but. It should probably calm me as well, but it doesn’t. It does nothing but send my brain into a tailspin of worry.

  Just as I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown, he smiles. It’s small, the right corner tipping up ever so slightly, with the left not far behind.

  “You’re smiling. It’s kind of scary,” I say quietly, and he chuckles. The sound is deep and scratchy and so perfectly masculine that it causes another shiver to run through me. “You’re okay with this? You’re happy?”

  “Fuck yes, I’m happy. Are you kidding me?” His eyes are wet and so intense they burn into me.