Crashing Tides Duet: Anchored and Adrift

by Ruby Rowe

  “I already thought less of my parents. This only reaffirms that I was right in my beliefs about them. What does this have to do with you not talking to me?”

  “I overheard their one condition for keeping their mouths shut; I was never allowed to speak to you again. When I got home after staying the night with you, my father made sure I understood it.

  “He convinced me it was the best way for you to move on. Our parents said I’d be a constant reminder of Rebecca and the blame you would always carry, and I believed them.”

  “That’s why you came to see me the night of the funeral.”

  “I’d been drinking, wallowing in guilt and shame. The alcohol gave me the courage to tell you how I felt about you.”

  Sitting up straight, she scowls at me.

  “That means when you took my virginity, you already planned to never see me again.”

  “I didn’t intend to touch you when I showed up, but once you were next to me, I couldn’t resist, especially after you kissed me, letting me know you’d let me touch you.”

  “Yes, but I had a right to know you weren’t coming back before I slept with you.”

  “You’re right, but would it have changed anything that night?”

  She glances away. “No, we still would’ve had sex, but only because I would’ve convinced you that never speaking to me again was going to be more detrimental than abandoning me.”

  “I’m sorry. I feared my father, but I was more afraid of the pain I’d see when you looked into my eyes every day.”

  “You don’t understand the consequences of your actions, the magnitude they had on me.”

  Needing to be closer to her, I lean over the glass table.

  “You’re wrong. I’ve lived with the guilt and shame, and I’ve thought about you and the sacrifices you made for me every day since the accident. Every. Fucking. Day. You have to believe me. I always wanted you.”

  “If you cared so much, why didn’t you contact me once I was older?”

  “I considered it, but years had passed, so I figured you already had a man in your life or hated me. Either outcome would’ve sucked, so it was easier not to face it. I was a coward, and I’ll apologize as many times as it takes.”

  Swirling her finger around the top of her wine glass, she stares at it.

  “I’ve already forgiven you. It sucks to hear about my parents, but they let me down years ago, so this news isn’t shocking. It helps to know you didn’t want to leave me. If our parents hadn’t said anything, would you have seen me after that night?”

  I grasp her hand and place it between mine.

  “Of course, I would’ve stayed in touch with you. At the least, we would’ve remained friends, but I believe we could’ve been so much more, especially as we got older.”

  I’m surprised when she smiles. “Knowing you always wished you could see me leaves me happy. I missed you so much, and the fact you were missing me, too, makes me feel like we weren’t so far apart.”

  “That’s a relief to hear. Now, tell me what it is you’re holding in. One more thing, Sailor Girl, and we can put all this behind us and focus on the future.”

  Taking her hand away from me, Sailor pulls her knees up in her chair and wraps her arms around them.

  “You’re already trembling.”

  “That’s because this is the hardest thing in the world for me to discuss. You know how our parents wouldn’t let you talk to me? They also wouldn’t let me tell you my secret.”

  She snaps her eyes shut the way she so often does when we revisit the past. My chest constricts, knowing it’s still so painful for her, and I’m the one most responsible for it.

  “I imagined saying these words to you a million times, along with imagining your reaction, but after a few years of never hearing from you, I buried it the best I could. That was … until I saw you here.”

  Sailor bursts into tears, and I don’t understand what could be worse than the issues we’ve already dealt with. Getting up from my chair, I walk around to squat next to her. I glide my hand along the side of her hair and use my thumb to brush away her tears.

  “I can’t watch you carry this another day. Just say it.”

  “Elliott.” Sucking in fast breaths, she looks me in the eyes. “We had a baby.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sailor

  The look of shock on Elliott’s face is as great as when he first discovered me in his condo.

  “What? No.”

  “It’s true. I got pregnant when we had sex, but our baby died. He died.”

  Elliott falls back on his ass, and bringing his knees up, he clutches the sides of his head.

  “A boy… Did you have an abortion?”

  I shake my head. “No, I hid the pregnancy as long as I could so my parents couldn’t pressure me into having one. I wanted our baby as much as I wanted you.”

  “Explain, Sailor. Tell me what the fuck happened.”

  I sob again, harder this time as all the memories of delivering and holding our deceased child crash in my mind like a stormy ocean’s tide.

  The immense loneliness and grief pummel me all over again, pulling me under the water. Picking me up, Elliott carries me inside to the couch. He holds me in his arms, and I weep against his chest.

  “I hid the pregnancy for as long as I could, but my mom figured it out when I was five months along. They made me finish the school year at home, and once I confessed it was yours, they insisted I give it up for adoption. They didn’t want anyone to know we’d messed around that soon after Rebecca’s death.”

  I bury my face further. “They were so ashamed of me, Elliott. They’ve never looked at me the same. Never. I was a kid myself, but they didn’t see it that way. I was only a disgrace and a failure in their eyes.”

  Kissing the top of my head, he rocks me.

  “You could never be either of those things.”

  “We were at an impasse. I refused adoption, and they said they’d disown me if I didn’t do it. Your parents tried to convince me to give it up, too, and they insisted you couldn’t find out. I was fifteen, making a life-altering decision alone.

  “I decided I’d keep resisting until they had no choice but to let me keep him. I figured my parents would eventually cave and help me once they saw him.

  “I wanted you to know, but the day after we slept together, your dad told me you didn’t even want me to have your phone number. I had no reason to think you’d want our baby. They kept telling me it would ruin your life.”

  “Fuck, I can’t believe this is happening.” He cradles me tighter in his arms, and I feel his body shake as he begins to cry, too.

  “At thirty-two weeks, I didn’t feel the baby kick. It was already so hard to talk about the pregnancy with my parents, so I waited a whole day to tell them. It was too late, Elliott. A knot had formed in the umbilical cord, and it was too late.”

  “Sailor, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “You had Elliott’s baby?” Jake asks. Not having heard him come in, I sit up and wipe my face. He’s staring at us, his eyes watery, too, like they’re barely holding in his confusion and hurt.

  “Jake, I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”

  “When?” he asks angrily. I see that his hands are balled into fists.

  “Back off, Jake,” Elliott says as he palms his eyes to wipe away his tears. I climb out of his lap and retreat to the empty side of the couch.

  Silence. Like the delivery room right after I gave birth to a baby who wouldn’t cry, this room is silent, too.

  “When did it happen?” Jake asks again.

  “It’s none of your fucking business.” Elliott jumps to his feet.

  “None of my business? I think I have a right to know the details, seeing how she and I are dating. How could you hurt her like this? Why weren’t you there for her when it happened?”

  Elliott charges Jake and shoves him, so I hop up and run to get between them.

  “Stop, this
is hard enough. After Rebecca died, Elliott and I slept together. When and why that happened is private between Elliott and me.

  “Our parents forbade Elliott to ever contact me again, so he never knew about the baby, and we never saw or spoke to one another again until the day he walked into this condo and found me. I promise.”

  Turning his back on us, Jake paces and grips the back of his neck. He spins around and glares at Elliott as he points his finger.

  “Sailor was a teenager. You knocked her up right after your girlfriend died, and your rich, powerful daddy made it all go away. Am I right?”

  “Jake!” I say.

  “No. Let’s get this over with,” Elliott says. “The detective’s never going to let it go if we don’t. It’s his fucking job to have all the answers, and he thinks he’s entitled to them, too.”

  I turn to Elliott and plant my hands on his chest.

  “Don’t do this. He heard all he needs to know, and the last thing I can handle is the two of you fighting.” Elliott looks down at me, and his tears come again. I stare back, my gaze pleading for him not to confess about the wreck.

  Swallowing, he looks over my head at Jake.

  “Please give us two minutes alone. Then, you can ask her all the questions you want in private.”

  Shaking his head, Jake storms toward his room. Elliott grasps my shoulders as we hear the door slam. “You can’t forgive me for this one.”

  “I already forgave you. Are you trying to say you can’t forgive yourself?”

  “The guilt was hard enough to bear when I thought I only left you alone, but I abandoned you and our baby. Our son. There aren’t enough sorrys for me to say, and I sure as hell don’t deserve you.”

  “Don’t make a rash decision like we did when we were younger.”

  He pulls me to him and kisses the top of my head, his warmth and affection comforting me. I don’t want him to let me go, but my gut says he’s going to, and it’s the reason I didn’t want to tell him my secret.

  Loosening his hold, he gazes down at me. His eyes are red and swollen, lips quivering, too.

  “The last thing I want in this world is for you to feel like I ran out on you again, but you deserve a guy who hasn’t broken your heart into a thousand pieces. No matter how much I want to be that man, it’ll never be me. It’s too late.”

  “No, Elliott.”

  “I have to get out of here and think. I’m sure Jake will take care of you in the meantime.”

  Jake

  Hearing Sailor wail, I jerk my bedroom door open and find her curled up on the couch.

  “Where is he?” I ask angrily.

  “He left.”

  “I finally have a valid reason to kick his ass, and he leaves.”

  “Stop.”

  Scrubbing my face, I sit on the couch by Sailor’s feet.

  “I’m sorry. Come here.” Sniffling, she sits up, and I wrap my arm around her back and pull her to my side. “What can I do to help?”

  “This. Just hold me.” I do what she says, but I can hardly sit still. It’s selfish of me, but I want to know more about their history and what it means for us. “I’m sorry,” she adds.

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I’m sure you think you had a right to know this, but I couldn’t tell you until I told him, and I’ve been too afraid.”

  “He wasn’t lying when he told me you two had a history, and he didn’t even know the main event. I wish I’d known. I never would’ve put you in this position, where you were forced to see him again.”

  “This has needed to happen for years, and I’m the one who’s sorry. You’ve been caught in the middle, and I never wanted that.” She lifts her head to look at me, so I hold the back of it and kiss her.

  “I want you, Sailor. This doesn’t change that, but I see now how complicated the situation is.”

  “I have to move out.”

  “I hate to say it, but I agree.”

  Sailor

  Hearing my bedroom door open, I sit up.

  “It’s Elliott. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” I stretch to turn on the table lamp, and I see on the clock that it’s a little after midnight. After shutting my door, Elliott pads over and stands next to my bed in only a pair of pajama pants.

  I stare up at his flushed, handsome face and his glassy eyes that are still swollen from crying. It tugs on my heartstrings, so I fold the covers back and scoot over for him to get in, too.

  He hesitates for several seconds but finally complies, and as we face each other, he rests his arm around my waist.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur.

  “We agreed you’d never say that to me again, and no part of this is your fault. If you can find the courage to talk about it, I want to know more because you shouldn’t have to live with it alone another day. You had to deliver our son…”

  “I did, and I won’t lie; it was the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, even worse than the accident and Rebecca’s death.

  “My mom was there for me that day. It was the only time she put our differences aside, but it didn’t matter. It was too late, and I’ll never get past the way she and Dad have treated me every single day before then and since.”

  “I guess it means nothing now, but I never would’ve let you go through that alone. I would’ve been by your side had I known.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Can you tell me what he was like? Did he look OK?”

  I inhale, drawing up the tears with my agonizing breath as I also try to muster the strength to proceed.

  “He was precious, Elliott. He already had a bunch of dark hair like mine, but otherwise he looked just like you.” Elliott sucks in an arduous breath, too, and his eyes wash with tears. “I got to hold him for a while, and he does have a death certificate. We can order one for you.

  “My parents convinced me to cremate him. They didn’t want a grave, any proof of his existence, and I regret it to this day. I wish there was a place for you to go to have closure.”

  Reaching behind me, I pick up my penguin I was cuddling earlier. “This was the first gift I bought him, but I never got to give it to him. It’s all I have left, along with the memory of his tiny face that reminded me of you.”

  Grabbing me, Elliott pulls me into his chest and presses kisses all over my head.

  “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” Breaking down, we cry against each other. He clings to me, living through the raw heartache, and I remember when it was that fresh for me. I often felt as if my chest was caving in from the despair. It was a true physical pain, and unlike Elliott, I had no one to cling to. I bore the grief alone.

  Pulling back, I brush Elliott’s tears from his cheeks. “I named him Samuel for your middle name and the S in mine. Samuel Blake.”

  “We had a son, and his name was Samuel Blake,” he says, and I’m sure it’s to make it real. He has no memory of our child to hold on to since our parents robbed him of that the same way they stole our time together.

  “Thank you for telling me about him. I should let you sleep now.”

  “But what happens next … between us?”

  “I leave you alone so you can be with Jake and have all the happiness you’re entitled to. It’ll be a life where you won’t see your painful past staring back at you through my eyes.”

  Elliott gives me one soft kiss. “I love you, Sailor Girl. I’ll love you for the rest of my life, but it’s only right I let you go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jake

  “Sailor, can I come in?” I ask after knocking on her bedroom door.

  “Sure.” I walk inside and find her facing me, stretched out on her bed. The TV’s off, and the curtains are drawn. I swear, the girl thinks too much. She sits up and leans back against the headboard.

  “You’ve barely spoken to me the last three days, yet you haven’t moved out. What’s going on?”

  “I can’t be the girl you need and deserve right now.” Sitting on the
side of her bed, I wrap my hand around her calf.

  “I know you haven’t moved out because you’re hoping he’ll come home, but whether you see Elliott or not, I need to know how you feel about me after all that’s happened.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly how I feel. The problem is that I don’t think it will resolve anything.” Tucking her dark hair behind her ear, she braves a look at me. “I’m falling in love with you. I trust you, and you make me happy.

  “As far as my feelings for Elliott, I’ve loved him for years, but I don’t trust him, and we haven’t had a chance to see if he could make me happy. We’ve had fun times together, but the past seems determined to ruin them.”

  “Wow, I wasn’t expecting you to be that honest.”

  “I haven’t felt worthy of spending time with you when I have strong feelings for him, too.”

  “I already agreed to give you time with Elliott to figure out what you want.”

  “Are you saying that even after finding out about the baby and knowing I love him, you still want a chance at a relationship with me?”

  “It’s not my ideal situation, but yes, as long as it’s what you want, too,” Jake replies. “All I ask is that you be with me because you want to be and not because your first choice was an idiot who gave up.”

  “I would never do that, but what if I always love you both? What then?”

  “I don’t know, doll. I guess time will tell.”

  Elliott

  “How the hell did you find me?” I ask Jake as he walks up the steps to the balcony of my family’s country home in Southampton.

  “The hospital told me you left last night. Since you didn’t come home, I took a wild guess.” He sits in the lounge chair next to mine, only separated by a small table. “I’ve never been here off-season. It’s quiet. You know why that is? Because everyone else is in the fucking city this time of year.”

  I look over at him and glare. “Why are you here, Jake? Are you not finished with your investigation?”