by Street, K.
Macy’s face was ashen, but her blue eyes were clear as crystal. Her voice barely a whisper, she asked, “What did you say?”
“Lucas. Who the hell is he?”
“Oh God.” She pressed a hand to her mouth and shook her head. “How … how do you know about Lucas?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, widened my stance, and glared at her. “You mentioned his name in your drunken stupor.”
Guilt flashed in her eyes, and she hesitated a little too long.
“You know what, Mace? Keep your fucking secrets. I’m done.” I yanked my jeans off the floor and ended up pulling the bottom drawer of the nightstand halfway out in the process. I was too fucking pissed that I hadn’t noticed one of the belt loops was caught on the corner.
“Nash, it’s not what you think.”
“Really?”
Something inside the drawer captured my attention. I slid into my jeans and bent over to retrieve it.
Macy’s panic-stricken voice filled the room. “Nash. Please. Don’t.” She scrambled to her feet.
But it was too late.
The whole world tilted on its axis.
My fingers grasped the paper’s edge. I brought it closer to my face and stared at it, dumbfounded.
White amid a sea of grainy black.
All the oxygen was sucked from the room.
The backs of my knees hit the edge of the mattress as I stumbled backward.
Even as my ass dropped onto Macy’s bed, my eyes never shifted from the photo in my hand.
“I’m sorry, Nash. I’m so sorry.” Raw anguish dripped from her words.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her as I asked the question I already knew the answer to.
21
Macy
“You were pregnant?”
Regret infiltrated every cell in my body.
I’d pictured the moment Nash learned the truth dozens of times. I had rehearsed the words I would say to make him understand. But never once, in all those imagined scenarios, had I considered for a second that, when he found out the truth, it would happen like this.
“Yes.”
“Was it mine?” he gritted out.
His question burned like acid dripping into an exposed wound.
“How can you even ask me that?”
Without answering, he scrubbed his palm over his face, got to his feet, and began to pace.
“You kept this from me?” He gripped the sonogram between his fingers. “All this fucking time, and you kept it from me.”
“I tried to tell you so many times.”
“Ten years, Macy! You had ten fucking years!” He stalked over to my dresser and slammed his open palm down with enough force to knock over the knickknacks that rested on top. “That night”—he turned to me—“did you know?”
“No.” Desperate for him to believe me, I shook my head so damn hard that I swore it rattled.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes. Because it’s the truth.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, the truth hasn’t exactly been your strong suit lately.”
“That isn’t fair. You have no idea what it was like for me.”
He thrust an accusatory finger at me. “And whose fucking fault is that?”
“Really?” I scoffed. “You didn’t want me, remember? You threw me away, Nash.” Angry tears spilled down my cheeks, and I did my best to swipe them away.
“That is bullshit. If I had known—”
“If you had known? Then, what? You would’ve taken me back out of some twisted sense of obligation?”
“Yes.” His fingers dived into his mop of hair and tugged at the roots. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
“I should’ve told you. I’m s-so sorry I didn’t.”
Nash’s hands balled into tight fists. “Sorry? You’re sorry? My God, woman! Don’t you fucking get it? Sorry doesn’t fix this. You were pregnant with my baby, and you never said a word.”
My face was coated in a mixture of snot and salty wetness. “Y-you don’t under-understand.”
“You’re damn right I don’t understand.” His voice dropped low, and his tone went hard as granite. “Where is the baby? What did you do?”
His accusation ricocheted in my head.
It exploded like shrapnel inside me.
A jagged blade ripping through my flesh. Shredding organs. Exposing bone. Annihilating every part of me.
“Fuck. You. Nash,” I cried. “Fuck you for blaming me. F-fuck y-you.” I collapsed into a heap on the floor and protectively wrapped my arms around myself while my soul bled out. “I-it w-wasn’t m-my fault.” I rocked back and forth. “I-it w-wasn’t m-my f-fault.”
It wasn’t my fault.
It wasn’t.
I can’t breathe.
It wasn’t my fault.
I. Can’t. Breathe.
22
Nash
“Macy!” I dropped to my knees in front of her.
Her eyes were wild, and her breathing was erratic.
I gripped her shoulders. “Look at me.”
The command didn’t register, almost as if she was looking through me, not at me.
My own heart hammered in my chest.
“Look at me.” I firmly cupped her flushed cheeks in my palms.
Relief washed over me as her eyes focused on mine.
She gripped my wrists while unadulterated terror flared in her eyes.
“It’s all right. You’re okay. Listen to me. Put your lips together like you’re blowing out a candle.” I held her face tighter while she struggled to follow my order.
Finally, she pursed her lips.
“Good. That’s it. Now, breathe. In through your nose and out through your mouth. Inhale”—I filled my lungs with air—“and exhale.” I blew it out. “Again.”
She matched her breathing to mine.
“Good. That’s good.” My eyes bored into hers. “Keep it up. Inhale. Exhale.”
Her hot tears streaked over the skin between my thumb and index finger.
“That’s enough. You have to calm down.” I brushed the torrent of tears away with the pad of my thumbs.
“Again,” I coached. “Inhale. Exhale.”
Her heart rate settled a fraction, and she tried to speak, “Na—”
I pressed my forehead to hers. “Breathe, Bee. Just breathe.”
As angry and pissed as I was … as much as my heart ached, I had to get her through these next few moments. Regardless of how betrayed I felt, I pushed all that to the side. She had scared the shit out of me, and her well-being trumped my need to lash out—for now anyway.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat like that—my hands holding her face, her hands grasping my wrists, our foreheads pressed together, and the two of us breathing the same air. When her breathing regulated, I moved behind her, pulled her into my chest, wrapped my arms around her, and waited.
Seconds became minutes. And, still, I waited.
Macy’s voice came out raspy. “His name was Lucas.”
Was.
My muscles tensed.
One. Two. Three.
Hours ago, I’d thought Lucas was another man. But he wasn’t. Lucas was my son.
I had a son.
My heart shattered.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
I forced my body not to react.
She stiffened in my arms, bracing herself for impact. “When I was twenty-two weeks pregnant, I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t remember the last time I f-felt—” Her voice broke on a sob.
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I tightened my hold and remained silent.
“I couldn’t remember the last time I felt him move. I w-went to s-see the d-doctor.” A shudder ripped through her. “When they did the ultrasound … h-he d-didn’t have a h-heart-heartb-beat.”
Macy shifted against my body. She threw her arms around me and wept into the crook of my neck. Her tears dampened my skin. Her pain seeped int
o my pores. Her heartache adhered to mine, and the agony that coursed through me was multiplied tenfold.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
The weight of her grief on top of every emotion crashing inside me was too fucking much. I couldn’t bear it.
She should have told me.
She should have come home.
Fuck.
This was too fucking hard. My lungs burned, and it felt like I was the one who couldn’t breathe.
“I have to go.” I attempted to move, but Macy clung to me like a second skin.
“P-please, Nash. P-please d-don’t g-go.”
Gripping her forearms, I peeled her from my body, moved her aside, and stood. I grabbed my shirt from the floor and then tugged it over my head. The fabric absorbed the sniveling mess of Macy’s breakdown.
“Nashhh,” she wailed.
“I can’t. I can’t be here. I can’t do this.”
“I-I’m s-so s-sorry.”
I found my socks on the floor and put them on. “Twenty-two weeks. That’s almost six months. And you didn’t tell me.”
“I was a-alone and s-scared.”
“No matter how you try to spin it, there’s no excuse. When you found out you were pregnant, you should have come home.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. Don’t you see? Lucas would still be gone.”
“You don’t know that!”
She jerked back as though I’d slapped her.
“You don’t know that,” I repeated, not quite as loud.
“Y-yes, I-I d-do.”
Hot tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I knew I needed to get the fuck out of there. I picked up my work boots, not bothering to put them on, and stormed out of the room and down the hall.
Macy’s cries filled my ears until I slammed the door behind me.
23
Nash
Pregnant.
She was fucking pregnant.
I had a son.
And he’s gone.
I pounded my fists into the steering wheel. Emotions swirled in my gut, churning like a fucking violent sea. One surged higher than the rest. It broke through the surface like a damn geyser.
I peeled out of the driveway and headed for home. When I got there, I changed into a pair of athletic shorts and went into the garage. I taped up my hands and stood in front of the heavy bag.
I heard Macy’s voice in my head.
“His name was Lucas.”
Punch.
“He didn’t have a heartbeat.”
Punch.
“You threw me away.”
Punch.
Punch.
Punch.
White-hot rage screamed through me, and the person I was pissed at most of all was myself.
I did this.
A guttural roar echoed in the space as I repeatedly beat the hell out of the bag. Striking until my fingers ached, my knuckles swelled, and my muscles burned.
No matter how much fury I unleashed, it did nothing to dull the intensity of my pain.
Things would have been different if I hadn’t sent her away, if I hadn’t let her father get inside my head. Macy and I … we could have figured it out. If Macy had had a better doctor or gone to a different hospital, Lucas would have survived. If I hadn’t fucked it all up, we could have been a family.
This was my fault.
I tried to be the hero and ended up the villain.
I dropped to my knees on the concrete floor. My fingers dug into my scalp, and I pulled my hair by the roots. Sounds I didn’t recognize reverberated inside the garage, and I did something I had done once in my life and not since the night I broke Macy’s heart as well as my own.
In my moment of weakness, I let the tears fall.
* * *
My knees ached by the time I picked myself up off the garage floor. After I showered and got dressed, I reached for my phone and dialed Tucker’s number. Then, I spent the rest of the night with my guitar in my hands and tried like hell not to think about the woman who had ruined me and all the ways we had destroyed each other. Or the little boy I would never know.
24
Macy
Sorrow shackled me to the floor. My body quaked from the sheer force of my heaving sobs as raw anguish poured out of me. If broken had a sound … this was it.
I shed tears for Lucas and the overwhelming sense of loss that ripped the breath from my lungs.
I wept for the girl I used to be. The one whose world had been irrevocably altered the second she held her lifeless baby in her arms. For the woman I was now and how Nash’s words had gutted me to my marrow.
I cried for Nash. For the hurt I had caused him. For all the time we’d lost, trying to protect each other but still managed to fuck it all up in the end.
Blinding pain hammered inside my skull. Still, I bawled … until I was on the verge of throwing up, and there were no more tears left.
When my bladder could no longer be ignored, I crawled across the floor to the bathroom and used the doorjamb to pull myself up. After I took care of business, I blew my nose and then moved to the sink to wash my hands.
The entire time, I never lifted my eyes to the mirror. I knew how red and inflamed my cheeks were by the way they burned and how swollen my eyelids were by their heaviness. I didn’t need a visual of how awful I looked. What I did need was something for my raging headache. I reached into the medicine cabinet, opened the bottle of ibuprofen, and shook two into my palm. I tossed them back and chased them with water from the faucet. Then, I climbed back into bed and curled into a tight ball.
Last night, I had gone to The Hideaway because I wanted to be numb. Today, I craved the same thing. I closed my eyes and let sleep offer me the reprieve I was so desperate for.
Hours later, I woke up, groggy and heartbroken. I dragged myself from the warmth of my bed, slipped on a pair of yoga pants, and stumbled into the kitchen for coffee. As I waited for it to brew, I couldn’t stop thinking about Nash or the anger and devastation that had marred his features when he walked out the door. Worry for his well-being overrode my own hurt.
I found my phone inside my purse on the table in the living room. The battery was at twenty-five percent, so I carried it back into the kitchen and plugged it into the charger. My finger slid over the bar to unlock the screen. There were missed calls and a few text messages, too. All from Nash and all from last night before he found me at the bar.
Nash 8:30 p.m.: Everything okay?
Nash 8:45 p.m.: Where are you?
Nash 9:00 p.m.: Damn it, Mace. Answer your phone.
Seeing his words on the display only made me feel worse. I wished more than anything that I could change the last twenty-four hours.
Or go back ten years.
If I had told him sooner, maybe things would have turned out differently. I stared at the screen and tried to figure out what to say. My fingers began to move …
Me: I’m—
Delete.
Me: I never meant to—
Delete.
Me: I just need to know you’re okay.
My thumb hovered over the Send button. He wasn’t okay. I knew that, but I had to know if he was safe. His tires had squealed out of my driveway when he left. Whenever Nash was worked up, he drove like a bat outta hell, and I needed to know his car wasn’t wrapped around a tree. Even if we never worked through the past, if he never forgave me, I could find a way to live with that. But I couldn’t fathom living in a world where Nash didn’t exist.
I hit Send and waited for the dots to jump. Time eluded me, and still, I waited. He never responded. With every second that passed, my anxiety ratcheted up several notches. Soon, visions of his mangled body flickered in my head. I couldn’t take it any longer.
I hit the Call icon. On the fourth ring, his voice mail picked up. His voice filled my ear.
“This is Nash. Leave a message.”
Beep.
“It’s me. I just …” I trailed off and let sile
nce hang on the line. I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to explain … but it was more than that. I wanted to make him hear me, but I couldn’t do that on a damn voice message. “I just need to know you’re safe.”
I disconnected the call, set my phone down, picked up my mug of barely lukewarm coffee, and put it in the microwave. My stomach growled, but there was no way I could eat.
The microwave dinged, so I retrieved my cup and headed to the living room. As I sat on the couch, there was a knock on my door. I hoped against all odds that it was Nash, but when I opened it, Tucker stood on my porch.
He wore dark jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a look of concern. “You okay? You look like hell.”
“Jeez. Thanks, Tucker. You really know how to make a girl feel special.”
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“Sorry. Come in.” I stepped out of the way to allow him to pass and closed the door behind us. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“You realize it’s six in the evening, right?”
“Beer then?”
“No, thanks. Let’s sit.”
We sat on opposite sides of the couch.
I glanced in his direction. “Tucker, if you came over here to give me one of your brotherly chats—”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
He reclined back into the couch and crossed his ankle over his knee. “Those swollen eyes of yours tell a different story.”
“Did Nash call you?”
“He did. He said you might need a ride to The Hideaway to pick up your car but didn’t elaborate.”
“Is he okay?”
“He sounded rough.”
I nodded. “Did he say anything else?”
“No, but Cam mentioned you ran out on brunch yesterday. What’s going on with you?”
This was the last thing I needed right now. Tucker and I might have grown up together, and while I loved him like a brother, I couldn’t talk to him. Not about this.
