by Rissa Brahm
She felt her father moving his feet, guiding her somewhere, but he didn’t let go of her. His grasp stayed firm and tight.
Please, Daddy, don’t let go, or I’ll fall. I will just fall forever and ever.
He began to fold himself and her into a seat. Onto a cushiony seat. A soft, velvety one. His whisper in her ear matched the feel of the fabric on her hands and legs. “She stayed in bed later than usual today. Reading.” He paused then. And when he resumed, his tone had raw, guttural emotion in it. “And when the nurses came to check on her, she had her book on her chest. She had just drifted out of her body. Poof, just like that.” She could hear her father’s heart racing, her ear mashed to his chest. Then he swallowed—she heard that, too. A cavernous echo in an endless cave.
Her father shifted, his arms loosened, his hands went to her face, lifting her eyes to his. But she didn’t want to look at him. She couldn’t. She just kept her eyes shut tight. Like her life depended on it.
“She was reading your book, bitay. Yours and hers. You were there with her, and it couldn’t have been more perfect. Just couldn’t have…and I thank you for being such a beloved heart to my youngest girl. My Prana.”
She opened her eyes when a water droplet hit the top of her head. And there on her father’s face were a stream of tears plummeting to their death off his hard-angled jaw. She pulled her father in to her. A hard, powerful embrace in honor of their sweet Prana.
*
“I will get you both some water,” Sylvia said softly, touching Preeya on her shoulder.
“Thank you, dear,” Preeya’s father whispered, slowly unhinging himself from Preeya’s reciprocal hold.
Preeya wiped her face but kept her eyes softly shut. She took a huge, empty breath in. And there she sat, as if floating in space. She didn’t want to open her eyes. To see her surroundings. Not ever. Her world now without…
But, Ben.
Her eyes sprang open and there he was, sitting in the armchair next to her.
“Ben.”
“I’m here.” He reached for her hand and grasped it tight.
She patted her father’s arm and stood up. Ben stood, too, and pulled her in with his strong, decisive arms, and just held her. She had no more tears to cry; she was just an empty reservoir in drought conditions. Not even a well of springs beneath her surface.
He moved his hands to her shoulders to give enough space for him to look her in the face. He said nothing with words. Just the warm love told in his amber eyes made her know he understood. He, of all people, understood her pain.
“Daddy…” Her voice scratched to a start. “This is Ben, Doctor. Benjamin Trainer…” She moved to Ben’s side. Not another word of explanation was needed to know who he was to her. Obvious and raw, a blind person could see. “Ben, my father, Doctor Indra Patel.”
“A true pleasure, Doctor Patel.” Ben held his hand out to her dad. She watched her father—an even newer version of the man—take Ben’s hand and they shook. Then, to Preeya’s complete surprise, her father pulled Ben into him and hugged him hard. Gave Ben a firm pound on the back.
She let out a puff of a laugh, her heart leaping to her face. But in the span of a breath, it drifted back down into her chest, mimicking her father’s glow morph back to stoic. For her—and for her father, it seemed—the introduction of Ben, the man who’d won the heart of Indra Patel’s now-only daughter…well, it was heart-wrenching and heartwarming in the very same beat.
She sighed and looked up at Ben as he returned to her side. Bittersweet, she thought. With infinitely more sweet than bitter. She melted into his arms and they all stood in silence. A surrendered peace descended and told her it would all be okay. Eventually.
*
Another round of introductions were made when Sylvia came to join them with waters and a clipboard of paperwork for her and her dad to complete. As she stared glossy-eyed at the heading on the first page—Deceased—she felt a tinge of nausea.
Fingertips to lips, she sat straighter to try to settle her—oh God.
Oh my God. The baby.
Her baby. She hadn’t gotten to tell Prana. Her sister left before knowing about the miracle growing inside her. Preeya’s breath started racing. Panicked, she felt the greater impact of Prana’s departure then, like a firestorm—hot, sharp agony.
Then light-headedness.
“Preeya? Are you all right? You look…washed out and…”
“I didn’t get to tell her…she’ll never know. And it would’ve made her so happy. I didn’t get to tell h—”
*
Ben laid Preeya out on the couch while detailing the Vallarta fainting-episode to Dr. Patel. “She’d come-to fairly quickly, though.”
But in his own mind, he thought her reaction strange, such a stark uprising from what had become an almost floating, slow-motion state of being. For all of them, it seemed. Strangers, but tied tightly in a web of love and loss, past and present.
But new beginnings out of that web.
“Preeya. Come back to me,” he whispered between light kisses to her forehead and temple.
What had she forgotten to tell her sister that had upset her so much?
Sylvia came with an ice pack and placed it under her neck.
She gasped awake. “Ever?”
“Preeya, bitay?”
“Ever—what, Pree?” Ben took her hand.
But she ignored him. All of them. She just scrambled for her phone in her purse, and at the same time, as if on cue, it buzzed.
“She’ll be okay, Dr. Patel,” he said while Preeya studied her phone screen as if obsessed. He needed to get her grounded. Alone. “But would you guys mind…getting her some crackers or a piece of toast, maybe? Low blood sugar could be contributing…”
Preeya’s father nodded his agreement before Ben could finish, then took Sylvia’s hand and they left him and Preeya in the sitting area to speak with someone at the front desk.
Still glaring at her phone—a new message?—he wiped a stray strand of her mussed midnight-black hair from her stunned and flushed face. “Preeya,” he whispered.
A beat passed, then another. He couldn’t rush her. After the next moment came and went, he cleared his throat.
She finally looked up at him, a slow smile forming on her lips. A wide, now ecstatic smile.
“Preeya Patel, what is it?” he asked, getting slightly impatient.
“Gigi. It’s Gigi.”
“No, not who…what? What was bothering you, Preeya?”
“I remembered that I had news—news to tell you, Ben. But then when I realized that I’d never get to tell my sister the news…God, if fate had just waited a few hours—but it’s all okay now. I know she knows,” she said, holding up her phone, near-giggling, tears pooling in her eyes. “She already knows,” she said, then took his shirt collar in her grasp and pulled him closer, within inches of her face now. “Ben,” she whispered, then swallowed and sighed a light, blissful sigh. “You and I…we’re having a baby.”
CHAPTER 45
He only squinted his sun-kissed eyes at her. Speechless. A muddle of emotions waxing and waning across his face all in one forever-moment.
She sat up straighter on the lobby sofa of SafeHaven and searched his eyes. To be sure he’d heard her right. “Ben? Did you hear what I said?”
“I just don’t want to wake up. If this is a dream, I’m scared I’ll wake up from it.” He brushed his finger down her cheek. “Marry me, Preeya Patel. Be my wife. The mother of my child. Of our child…oh God, this is a dream.”
She stroked his face, catching a lone tear on its descent, and took his hand to her belly, and held it there. “No, it’s not a dream, Ben. You have me—I mean us. God, it feels amazing to say that—us!” She kissed his mouth with a force he couldn’t possibly mistake to mean anything but yes, she’d be his wife.
“To avoid confusion, my Preeya—as we’ve had some in our extremely short time together—I need to hear you say it.”
She laughed
hard, from her gut. So maybe he’d always need clarification, confirmation, but she loved it. “I will be your wife. Yes. I am so in love with you, Ben Trainer.” She kissed his lips over and over again. “I can’t breathe, I love you so much.”
He grabbed her and squeezed her tight. Like he never wanted to let her go. “Preeya …I have no words for how I feel about you. But I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you. Showing you and our baby.”
“Baby?” Dr. Patel asked, standing in front of them with a small, round plate of crackers.
CHAPTER 46
Five Months Later
She put the dish in the dryer rack and looked at her wrist, at the moon tattoo she’d get removed after the baby arrived. “I can’t believe how many things the OB says I can’t do.”
Ben gripped her ass and pulled her into him, spun her around, then nuzzled her neck. “Oh, but what about all the things we can do?”
She giggled then threw her arms up and around his neck, getting his collar wet with suds but neither of them caring. She pressed her lips to his, unable to get enough of him.
“Hey, though.” Ben pulled back, his mouth curled. “The doctor also said that you can fly…for another two months.”
“I knew you’d catch that.” She hadn’t been to an OB appointment without him yet. It was sweet how involved he wanted to be. “It’s just…an airplane. I don’t want to deal with the restrooms, the seats—I mean, look at me!”
“You’re perfect.” He lifted her onto the kitchen counter and pushed her hair back away from her face. “And gorgeous. I could look at you every second of every minute of every hour, of”—he kissed her neck—“well, you get the idea,” he said through incremental kisses along her collarbone while his hand slid down her baby bump, under her blouse, and slowly up to her heavy right breast.
Preeya hummed, then he tweaked her nipple and she squeaked then giggled.
“Mmm, that giggle of yours. And your scent.” With his nose nuzzled in the crook of her neck, he inhaled. “And your sensuous, glowing body—carrying our child,” he said, pulling her into him—into his hard, pulsing need—and moaned into her ear.
She loved that he couldn’t seem to control his desire for her.
For her, back pain and exhaustion aside, she really loved their constant and mutual hunger, their foreplay, and, oh Lord, their lovemaking.
“I want you with me, is all,” he whispered, then noticing the time on her wrist, stepped back with a reluctant groan and pulled a coffee mug down from above their heads.
“It’s a conference.” She shifted to face him. “You’ll be busy the entire time.”
His lecture series on campus would end in a few weeks, and as an attempt to keep him connected, if only domestically, Doctors Without Borders had asked him to do some training, speaking, and fund-raising.
“Well,” he said, waggling his brows as he filled his coffee mug, “not at night…”
She smacked his shoulder.
He smirked. “Hey, other than working lunches, I’ll be all yours for meals, and…you’ll be all mine.” He nipped her ear.
She sighed, reached for a kiss, then slid off the counter to get back to the dishes. “We’ll see,” and began to pour the glass of milk she could no longer stomach down the drain. She cringed and flinched from the milk’s resonating odor. “Wow. So, forget about the tight squeeze on a plane, just the crazy random smells that set me off, Ben…the food, the people…then the recycled air and colds… ” She swallowed and blinked to settle her rumbling gut.
He nodded, took her cheek, and stroked his thumb across her brow. “Well, babe, I’ll just have to put it off until after the baby comes.” Yes, he somehow had organically begun calling her “babe”—and she loved it. Funny how perspectives and associations changed. “Babe” from Ben’s lips had a completely different connotation.
“You’re too much,” she said before slamming him with a kiss. “But I am fine alone.” Her monophobia hardly flared up anymore. Maybe because—she rubbed her belly—she was never really alone anymore.
“I know you’re fine alone. I just don’t want to be without you.”
*
Seattle’s sun eeked through the clouds, which it seemed to do more often these days, despite autumn’s full swing. Ben locked the door behind him and hopped on his bike, ready to ride to campus, and to scheme.
If he could plan it right, take her father up on some long-overdue fatherly attention and means—though Ben was financially set, pulling in a doable guest professor’s salary plus his past savings—he had no qualms about asking Indra Patel to help carry out his plan. With a child on the way and all the traveling he and Pree discussed, Ben didn’t think twice about delegating the expense of a private jet and a beach ceremony in Puerto Vallarta to “Dad,” as Preeya’s father preferred Ben call him.
Yeah, a jet would address all of Preeya’s flying concerns. A white sand ceremony on the bay, then off to their hidden beach at the Marietas…perfection for his Perfection.
So, she’s five months along now. She can travel through her seventh or eighth.
His surprise could actually work.
Now, she’d said again and again that she didn’t want the real wedding, the ceremony, the party—but he knew she’d just said that for his benefit. Her huge heart, sensitive to his feelings, thinking he couldn’t handle a big, traditional thing, too reminiscent of…his first wedding. But he had already reconciled everything: his love for Preeya, this chance with her—a second chance at love he could have never imagined possible. And there also wasn’t an ounce of doubt that Jamie had wanted this for him. This love.
The courthouse or a bank notary or, hell, an alleyway would’ve done it for him. He’d marry her, make her his, any way he could. But this would be her first and only marriage, so help him.
He would keep it small and intimate, immediate family and some friends. He only had Stace and the kids, and Stanton and Zoe…but their new baby? So they might not make it. But Amy and Darren and maybe her FA friend Amanda, though she just gave birth…and Gigi—who had given him a look or twenty for not insisting on a real wedding in the first place. But Gigi was farther along than Preeya.
So it would be a seriously small gathering. All the better.
Oh. He’d use the picture Preeya kept of her sister, the one on her nightstand, and blow it up, frame it. Set it at the altar so Prana would be present.
Perfect.
And with Preeya’s father walking her down the aisle, it would be, for Preeya, a closed loop—all the pain of her past culminating in her life, their life, anew. New and beautiful and together.
CHAPTER 47
“Of course you know that I—I mean we”—Preeya’s dad looked in Sylvia’s direction and winked—“will pay for it, bitay,” her father said, his face tilted, a convincing plea in his tone.
Why she and Ben had decided to do the courthouse-thing was beyond her father. She grinned at Ben as she took her dad by the elbow and pulled him to the next row of strollers, trying to keep the topic away from her fiancé and to redirect it to something less redundant and more digestible. She’d been tired of hearing the contests from her father and Gigi and Amanda…Amy, too. “Look at these. They fold up to nothing but open to become…an RV!”
“Your marriage should be celebrated, Preeya.” Her dad patted the stroller-supreme but spoke-on despite her distraction attempt. “Yes, it should be celebrated in front of your family and friends.”
Sylvia kept up with them, nodding like an overly eager stepmother, supporting her father’s genuine desire to see his daughter walk down the aisle. Ben hung back a row, maybe to avoid hearing the tired topic rehashed, and maybe, too, for the allure of toy medical kits for toddlers.
But Preeya might have disliked talking about their “unceremonious” wedding plans more than Ben had. Embers of guilt rekindled in her just thinking on it. She pictured Ben with an inevitable resurgence of grief on the day they’d legally wed. Her chest tightened. That grief he’d
feel would be magnified a thousand-fold if they had a large ceremony—with Ben standing at a grand altar in wait of a bride, a different woman in white, a bride different than his Jamie.
Other valid justifications covered up this predominant fear. Her family. She had no mother or “mother’s side.” And she’d hate to have Champa poisoning her day, and she couldn’t very well carve her out with her father insisting on paying for and hosting it—he’d have the wedding venue bill and hell to pay.
Ben’s only living relatives were his sister and her kids, then their combined handful of friends, and her dad and Sylvia. How silly to have a grand wedding with hardly any attendees. And we surely couldn’t have a party.
Honestly, she could skip it all—she and Ben and a blanket under the stars at Gas Works Park would be a dream for her.
Sylvia took Preeya’s free arm, natural as could be. Her dad smiled, so pleased. “You know I’d love to go dress shopping with you, Preeya. No children of my own, it would be a pleasure. And having just done the research,” she said, motioning to her lacking bust since the double mastectomy, “I know a few places that do custom gowns specializing in rare body shapes.” Sylvia winked, now referencing Preeya’s belly, though without judgment…just matter-of-fact. Preeya had begun to really like Sylvia, though she’d probably not call to chat or anything.
But thinking on rare body shapes, she rubbed her twenty-five-week-old baby bump. A dress? It gave her heartburn just imagining the fitting and measurements. What, an adjustable wrap for the long, elegant train? And for her ever-blooming breasts? She laughed to herself. She could see the shamed secret-section of some glamorous gown shop—a pathetic sign handwritten in marker: For Pregnant Brides—posted at the entrance of the back mop closet.
“Preeya, what do you think?” her father asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“I really don’t want one, Dad.”
“You don’t want a stroller now? That’s what we came here for,” he said, tilting his head the other direction.
