Retrieval

by Aly Martinez

  I proposed on our first date.

  She laughed and told me I was insane. Less than a day later, she said yes.

  It was a whirlwind, but we were happy…

  Until we got greedy and wanted a family.

  It was a life I couldn’t give her, not for lack of trying. Fertility just wasn’t on our side. We sought out doctors and treatments. Spent money we didn’t have. Lied to our families. Smiled for our friends. Put on a brave face for a world that didn’t understand.

  Finally, we were successful…

  Until we were forced to bury our son.

  We were left broken, battered, and destroyed.

  They say love is in the details, but it was the details that ruined us.

  This is the story of how I took back what had always been mine.

  The retrieval of my wife and our family.

  RETRIEVAL

  Copyright © 2016 Aly Martinez

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others please purchase a copy for each person. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  RETRIEVAL is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  Cover Designer: Hang Le

  Photograph: Eric Battershell

  Models: Tessi Conquest and Burton Hughes

  Editors: Erin Noelle and Mickey Reed

  Proofreader: Julie Deaton

  Formatting by Champagne Formats

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Other Books

  About the Author

  The house was dark when I quietly twisted the lock so as not to wake her. God knows she needed the sleep. I didn’t know how she still functioned when her days were filled with tears and her nights weren’t much better. It was precisely the reason I stayed gone as much as I did. Or so I’d thought as I’d thrown myself into work. Money couldn’t solve my problems, but they might have been able to solve hers.

  My body ached, and my lids barely stayed open despite the pot of coffee I’d downed not even an hour earlier. It was a miracle I had been able to drive at all. I should have just crashed at the office, but after yet another failed prototype, I’d needed an escape.

  Instead, I’d gone home—the very place I’d spent so many nights trying to avoid.

  Only one foot was over the threshold when I suddenly froze.

  “Elisabeth?” I called, flipping the overhead light on.

  My shoulders fell as I found her sitting on the sofa, her long, blond hair curtaining her face and suitcases surrounding her feet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as my gut wrenched, already knowing the answer.

  I had no right to be surprised. I’d all but forced her hand. If I was honest with myself, it was what I’d wanted—for her. However, none of that made the pain of reality any less agonizing.

  My heart raced. “Elisabeth?” I prompted again, needing to hear her say the words almost as much as I dreaded it.

  “I can’t stay here anymore,” she whispered at the floor.

  Acid rose in my throat.

  Out of habit, I dropped my keys into the basket she’d bought when we’d first moved in. “If you fail the key basket, the key basket will fail you,” she’d announced with an infectious smile the day we had become homeowners to the two-bedroom-two-bath starter home we could barely afford. It was just seconds before I’d swept her off her feet and made love to her on the hardwood floor of our foyer in the middle of the day.

  But such was life as a newlywed.

  Inside that house with her was the only place I’d ever wanted to be.

  Until the fantasy of forever had worn off and the walls of real life had closed in on us. Once my refuge, our home became an inescapable prison with bars built of my failures.

  I couldn’t breathe inside that house any more than I could look her in the eye.

  We’d only been married for five years. But, seeing her now, I felt like it’d been a lifetime since I’d peered into her eyes, promising to love her in sickness and in health.

  But it wasn’t like she was the same woman, either.

  Over the last six months, she’d wasted away both physically and mentally in front of my eyes.

  And I’d done absolutely nothing to help her.

  But how do you throw a lifeline when you yourself don’t even have a rope to hold on to? I might have been able to keep her afloat for another day, but I’d never have been able to pull her back to me.

  We merely existed on the same plane. Living under the same roof, eating meals at the same table, sleeping in the same bed. But we were far from sharing our lives together.

  “Are you coming back?” I asked, not willing to accept the truth that lingered in the air around us.

  Her deep-green eyes lifted to mine—the red rims and the dark circles doing nothing to hinder her beauty. Swallowing hard, she shifted her gaze to the mantel on the other side of the room. I knew what she was looking at, but I refused to follow her into the past.

  That might have been our biggest problem of all.

  She was still living there.

  And I refused to go back.

  “Elisabeth?” My voice softened, but the question remained the same. “Are you coming back?”

  “No,” she replied, swiping the tears from her cheeks.

  A thousand arrows fell from the sky, searing into my soul. My breath hitched, and my lungs burned. This was it—the end of my life as I knew it. But, in that moment, with her shoulders hunched forward in defeat, I realized that it was the end of hers, too.

  Why did that realization hurt more than the lifetime of loneliness that was awaiting me when the sun rose?

  I lifted a hand and rubbed my chest, hoping to ease the mounting pressure threatening to overtake me. “Don’t do this,” I mumbled through the pain.

  I wasn’t sure who I’d meant that for though.

  Was I chastising myself for having asked her to prolong the inevitable just because I wasn’t ready to lose her yet? Or was I asking her to stay in this sham of a marriage for even one day longer?

  Probably both.

  “You’ll be okay,” she assured me, pushing to her feet and gathering her bag, complete with our Yorkie, Loretta, tucked in her mesh dog carrier.

  My pulse quickened, nature’s fight-or-flight finally kicking in. But I’d been in flight mode for entirely too long. There was no fight left.

  I stepped into her path. “Elisabeth, please.” I wasn’t sure why I kept saying her name. I secretly hoped that it would snap her out of it, bringing her back to the reality of it all. But it was the reality that was killing us.

  “I’ll take off work tomorrow,” I pleaded. “We can talk
. Figure things out.”

  It was selfish. Completely and utterly selfish. But that was nothing new for me.

  Her chin quivered as a steady stream of tears fell from her eyes. “Promise me something, Roman.”

  I would have promised her the entire fucking universe if it had made her stay one night longer. But who was I kidding?

  We were over.

  We both knew it.

  “Anything,” I whispered, reaching down to take her hand, desperate for the connection I didn’t deserve.

  “Remember to live.” Her voice caught, and a silent sob tore through her.

  Cupping the back of her head, I pulled her into my chest.

  “I can fix this,” I swore, but it was yet another lie. “We just need time.”

  Her shoulders shook as she cried in my arms. “We…we promised. We told him we’d live for him.”

  I closed my lids and clung to her tighter.

  We were supposed to be fighting and screaming. That was what soon-to-be-divorced couples did. But that wasn’t us. We didn’t hate each other. Elisabeth was my soul mate on every level.

  And she was paying the price for that.

  Minutes later, the tears stopped and she backed out of my arms. I fought the urge to regain my hold, forcing her to stay. But her sad resolve as she hurried to the mantel and then to the door made it clear it’d be a wasted effort.

  Never in a million years had I thought I’d be standing there, watching her walk away.

  But, then again, I’d never expected her to have the urn of our only child cradled in her arm, either. A reminder of just how much I hadn’t been able to give her. How much I’d never be able to give her.

  My past, present, and future were walking out of my life, and I stood immobile as every fiber in my being screamed for me to drop to my knees and beg her to stay.

  To take her in my arms and tell her that we’d figure it out.

  To reclaim my life once and for all.

  But how would that have helped her?

  Staying wouldn’t magically bring back her smile. Nor would it make her look at me with those bright-green eyes that made me feel as though I could conquer the world.

  It wouldn’t give me back the crazy woman who argued with her whole heart and loved with her entire soul. No. Those days were gone.

  I’d lost that woman somewhere in the bitterness between grief and blame.

  We’d been happy once.

  But we’d gotten greedy and tried to start a family.

  That was her future. Not mine. Regardless how desperately I longed to give it to her…and then selfishly take it for myself.

  Sex. That’s how babies are made. Children as young as elementary school are taught the simple biological facts of reproduction.

  But what they never tell you is that, for one in six couples, having a baby goes a little differently.

  For Elisabeth and me, it looked more like this:

  Thirty-six months of crushing disappointment.

  Three miscarriages.

  Hundreds of tests our insurance company refused to cover because the inability to reproduce was not considered a health condition.

  Countless tears.

  Helplessness.

  Failure.

  Failure.

  Failure.

  Her broken heart.

  My empty chest.

  Thirty-seven thousand dollars we didn’t have.

  In vitro fertilization.

  A sperm donor.

  A handful of hope.

  A positive pregnancy test.

  Five months of utter bliss.

  Earth-shattering devastation.

  A funeral for a child I would never get to see grow up.

  A job that became my only reprieve from reality.

  And now…losing the only woman I would ever love.

  I’d always been amazed by how much punishment a heart could take. I was broken, battered, and destroyed. And yet, much to my dismay, as I watched the front door close behind her, my heart kept beating.

  Two years later…

  “Where are you taking me?” I laughed as Jon blindly guided me through the empty house.

  His tall body pressed against my back while his callused hand covered my eyes.

  “Promise me you won’t freak,” he said cautiously.

  My body stiffened. “What did you do?” I fought against his grip, no longer willing to play his game.

  He squeezed my hip to keep me in place then muttered, “Chill. And promise me.”

  “I will make no such promises. If you have to tell me not to freak, chances are I’m going to flip.”

  He chuckled. “You totally are.”

  I nudged an elbow back into his ribs. “This is not funny.”

  A grunt left his mouth, but it was followed by more laughter, which made it known that he disagreed.

  Even with my objections, he continued to lead me through the carpeted rooms until my high heels clicked against tile.

  “Okay.” He paused. “It’s not a big deal. So no more elbows. I can’t hazard a broken rib. I’ve got work to do today.”

  I huffed, unwilling to agree for fear of making him a promise I couldn’t keep. “Just get it over with already.”

  “Exactly what every man wants to hear,” he teased and then dropped his hand.

  I gasped, covering my mouth as I spun in a circle, taking in the newly renovated bathroom. “Oh my God. You…you did this?” I asked, moving toward the double vanity. “You did this?” I glided my fingertips over the smooth edge of the brand-new marble countertop.

  He shoved his large hands into the pockets of his dirty jeans and shrugged. “You were never going to sell it with laminate countertops, Liz.”

  My mouth fell open when I saw the dual heads in the new shower, where a linen closet had been not even a week ago. “And a new shower?” I breathed, opening the door and stepping inside.

  He smiled, leaning his shoulder against the wall and crossing his work boots at the ankle. “And a new shower,” he confirmed.

  I did a three-sixty and shrank when I saw the custom tile work I knew for certain he’d done with his own hands. “I…I can’t pay you for this.”

  His deep-brown eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Jon,” I murmured as I caught sight of the new molding butting up against the resurfaced ceiling.

  His eyes followed mine. “Ah…I may have gotten carried away. But you know I can’t half-ass a job. It’s the eleventh commandment.”

  I shook my head, relief filling my chest at the same time guilt took up root in my stomach.

  I’d been trying to sell that house for nearly six months, and with every passing week, it was costing me more and more to carry. I was barely keeping my books in the black as it was.

  While my meager commissions as a realtor paid my monthly bills, they weren’t enough to cover this place. If I wanted to continue flipping houses, I needed to get out from under it as quickly as possible. I’d dumped my life savings into that four-thousand-square-foot skeleton. And then, when that had run out, I’d taken out a loan from the bank and maxed out all of my credit cards.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  I’d vastly underestimated how much it would cost to get that old Victorian back to something inhabitable—much less desirable.

  As it stood, if I could get it sold, I’d be able to recoup my investments and possibly walk away with a few grand in my pocket to show for my hard work.

  But, as appealing as the profits were, that wasn’t why I loved spending my evenings covered in dust, working on whatever project I’d gotten in my head the day before. There was something about watching that house come alive around me that gave me a satisfaction I hadn’t felt in years.

  But, like most things in my life, I’d taken on too much too quickly.

  I did the very best I could on my own, but I was only one person. As I’d learned from the fiasco while removing the fiberglass insulation, I wasn’t necessaril
y qualified in all areas. Luckily, a friend of mine had put me in touch with Jon Hartley when I’d told her that I needed a contractor. He was a godsend who’d agreed to cut me a deal as long as he could work after five every night.

  We’d quickly become friends, and his hourly wage had soon converted to beer and home-cooked meals.

  He was fresh from a divorce and using any excuse to keep from going home to an empty house.

  I understood him all too well. I was two years out and using one empty house to avoid another.

  Jon and I had spent many nights in that old house together. But, in all of our time together, never once had any lines been crossed.

  However, looking around at what had to be at least a ten-thousand-dollar bathroom renovation, I was starting to worry Jon’s lines of friendship were slightly different than mine.

  “Say something,” he urged, walking over and then stopping directly in front of me. He wasn’t touching me, but there was a certain intimacy at his proximity.

  I sucked in a deep breath and swayed away in order to crane my head back. “This is too much. What the hell were you thinking?” I whispered.

  “Honestly?” he asked softly. The corners of his mouth tipped up in a half smile that should have melted me. There was no denying that he was a good-looking man. But…he was Jon.

  I bit my lip, praying for lies. I didn’t want honesty. Not from him. Not about this.

  “Jon,” I breathed.

  His hand found my hip and gave it a tight squeeze. “I was hoping that, if you sold this place, I could finally get some sleep.”

  I smiled, exhaling on a rush. But, when his eyes landed on my mouth, I felt no relief.

  His other hand came up to my face, his thumb trailing back and forth across my cheek as he held my gaze. “And I was hoping, if you sold this place, you’d finally let me take you out and spend some time with you that doesn’t require power tools.”

  I swallowed hard. Shit. Damn.

  “You did this so you could ask me out?” I nervously toyed with my skirt. “That’s an expensive bouquet of flowers.”

  He grinned. “You need out of this place, Elisabeth. And I’m not just talking the financials.” Dipping his head forward, he brushed his nose with mine. “You’re hiding.”