The Road to You

by Melissa Toppen

  I don’t care if it was growing in my fallopian tube, it was still a real live baby in there and that baby is gone. Tears sting the back of my eyes and I turn my gaze out the window.

  “We did,” he says, taking my hand.

  “No, Kane. I did,” I say without actually meaning to. Anger and defeat outweighing my ability to be rational about this.

  “Babe, we can have a baby. The doctor said it’s possible. You still have one good fallopian tube and that’s enough. We can do this. We can have the family you’ve always wanted one day. The impossible is now a real live possibility.”

  “Do you hear yourself? I lost my child hours ago and you’re already planning on replacing it like it never existed,” I bite out, quickly continuing, “And not only that, but you’re getting your hopes up. The likelihood is I will never be able to carry a child. As if I need that pressure. As if I need you telling me how badly you want something with me that I can’t give you.”

  “You’re upset,” he says softly, reaching for my hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be pushing this on you right now. I just thought maybe it would help. Knowing there’s a chance you can have children.”

  “It doesn’t help, Kane. It doesn’t help because I know it’s never going to happen. So stop saying it. Just stop.” I don’t know why I’m being so hard on him. I don’t know why I’m looking at him and all I feel is my anger and my guilt.

  “Elara.”

  “Can you leave please, Kane?” My chin quivers.

  “Babe.”

  “Leave, Kane,” I scream at him. He flinches before his firm mask slides back into place.

  “No.”

  “No?” I question, temper flaring.

  “No, Elara. I will not let you make me the bad guy here. I will not let you blame me and I will not let you push me away. I’m staying, whether you like it or not.”

  My anger shreds and gives way to a sob that rips from my chest, pain flooding through my body as everything seems to catch up with me all at once.

  It’s less than a second before I’m in Kane’s arms and while it’s exactly where I want to be, it’s the one place I know I don’t deserve to be. This is my fault. All of it. Kam. The baby. Everything.

  I should never have let Kane in. I should have known that eventually what I’d done would catch up to me and now here it is. It’s in the knowledge that for a short period of time Kane’s baby was growing inside of me and now it’s gone. It’s in the truth that once Kane learns will result in me losing him too.

  So for a brief moment I let him hold me. I close my eyes and pretend we’re back in Italy. Crammed into that tiny little apartment, Kane spinning me in his arms, a wide smile across his handsome face. He tells me he loves me under the moonlight filtering in through the open terrace door as he moves inside of me. His lips on my forehead in the morning as my eyes flutter open into the early sunlight.

  Every moment flashes through my mind like snapshots. One after the other until so much emotion is flowing out of me I’m sobbing in Kane’s arms.

  And still I let him hold me. Knowing what I have to do. Knowing what I have to say. I selfishly let him hold me because I’m not ready to let him go just yet…but I know I have to.

  “Kane,” I say after several long moments, not able to stop the tears but able to calm myself enough to speak.

  He pulls back and looks down at me, cupping my cheek in his hand. “We will get through this, Elara,” he reassures me with a soft smile which only causes my stomach to twist harder.

  “I need you to sit down, Kane,” I say, a slight shake to my voice.

  “Okay,” he says slowly, turning to take a seat next to me on the bed, angling himself toward me.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.” I let out a slow breath, trying to keep my chin from quivering. “Something that will likely change everything.”

  “Okay.” He narrows his gaze at me, not trying to hide his confusion or worry.

  “I killed your brother.” The moment the words leave my lips his entire expression shifts.

  “What are you talking about, Elara?” he questions after what feels like an eternity has passed.

  “I killed Kamden. It’s my fault he’s dead.”

  “We’ve been over this. Kam’s death was an accident.”

  “An accident, yes. But my fault none the less.”

  “Don’t do this right now. You’re hurting over the baby.”

  “This has nothing to do with the baby,” my voice so loud it echoes around us. “I’ve been trying to tell you for months that was my fault. I told your parents, my aunt, my dad, and no one would listen. I need the weight of it off of me and no one would take it. No one would let me say what I need to say and eventually it buried itself, became a permanent knot in the pit of my stomach that I’ve carried with me every single day.” I wipe tears from my cheeks. “Kam wasn’t the one driving the four-wheeler that day, I was.” This gets his attention and he sits up straighter, disbelief in his eyes.

  “No, Kam was driving. It said it plain as day on the police report.”

  “I was the only one who could give a statement. Where do you think they got that information from?”

  “You wouldn’t lie to the police.”

  “Well I guess you don’t know me very well after all, do you?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do I look like I’m fucking with you?” My voice is borderline hysterical and I have to reel myself back in.

  “Why? Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I need you to know the truth. I need you to know I’m not the person you think I am.”

  “Or maybe this is your sad attempt to push me away,” he grinds out, his expression hard.

  “You think I would make this shit up to push you away?” I open my mouth and close it several times, not able to form even one word to continue.

  “Say you were driving, and you did lie to the police. Why? Why lie?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I admit truthfully. “I guess I panicked. I knew Kam was gone,” I pause to compose myself. “I didn’t want to go to jail.”

  “Why would you go to jail, Elara?”

  “Because I killed him.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he grinds out, his jaw clenched tight.

  “I’m the reason he’s dead. That’s the same as killing him.”

  “Only you know what happened that day, Elara. You’re so convinced that you’re to blame, yet no one knows the full story. Maybe you’re just so hell bent on blaming yourself that you’re afraid if you tell another person you might actually have to face the fact that this wasn’t your fault.”

  “But it was,” I interject. Shifting to sit upright, pain shoots through my abdomen, causing me to cringe.

  “Babe.” Kane starts to stand but I hold my hand up and shake my head.

  “Please, don’t. I have to get this out.”

  “Then get it out and let’s deal with this shit once and for all,” he clips, clearly trying to keep his own emotions in check.

  “It was my idea to take the four-wheeler out. Kam didn’t want to do it. He never liked those things.” I knot my hands in my lap. “But like most things, he did it because I asked him to. We rode for a few hours. Mainly down trails and through the creek bed. I let Kam drive because he said he didn’t have a death wish.” I choke on my words, wiping fresh tears from my cheeks as they spill.

  Kane sits motionless next to me, watching me with a pained expression.

  “I convinced him to let me drive, promising we could return it and do something else as soon as I got my turn. He conceded but insisted I keep the only helmet. He’d made me wear it the entire day much to my disdain. I wasn’t in the mood to argue, knowing there was no way I was going to talk him out of it, so I took the helmet and climbed into the driver’s seat.”

  Closing my eyes, I remember it like it was yesterday.

  “He’d said, don’t make me regret this, bean,” I continue to spe
ak with my eyes closed. “Take it nice and slow. No funny business, he warned. Only I didn’t listen. Instead I did the exact opposite. I whipped the four-wheeler around so fast I nearly threw both of us off before speeding through the field as fast as I could get it to go.”

  “I can still feel Kam’s arms around my waist. Hear his voice in my ear begging me to slow down. But I ignored him. I was determined to show him how fun riding a four-wheeler can be when you’re not driving like an eighty year old. I took one hill going pretty fast. We had to have gone a good ten feet in the air. Kam was holding me so tightly I was having trouble breathing so I slowed down enough to tell him one more jump and I promised I was done. He asked me to let him off.” I open my eyes to see Kane’s dark gaze locked on my face.

  “He asked me to let him off and I told him to stop being a baby,” I say, choking slightly on my words. “I didn’t let him off. I took off toward another hill, hitting it going even faster. Only this time I was too far to one side and the four-wheeler turned. All I know is one minute we were in the air and Kam’s arms were locked around me. The next he was gone. I hit the ground so hard it knocked me unconscious even with the helmet on. When I came to several minutes later, I was confused, my arm was killing me, and I couldn’t find Kamden anywhere.

  “Then I heard it. His voice. It was broken and ragged but I heard him calling for me. I found him almost instantly. He was pinned under the four-wheeler, blood pooling out of his mouth as he tried to speak. I remember trying to lift it off of him. I remember screaming for help. And then I remember Kam saying my name so gentle that I had to look at him. Come here, bean, he said. It’s okay, he said. Everything is going to be okay. He was lying there trapped under that four wheeler, bones broken, bleeding internally, and he was reassuring me that everything was going to be okay. How messed up is that?”

  I swipe angrily at my tears, barely able to hold myself together.

  “I don’t remember calling 911 but I know I did. I don’t remember how long it took them to arrive. All I know is that by the time they made it there he was gone. He had started gasping. I held his hand so tight, begging him to hold on but he couldn’t. He couldn’t hang on.” I’m hysterical, gasping for breath, crying so hard I can’t see Kane through my tears.

  “He told me he loved me. He said, I love you to the moon, bean. And then he closed his eyes.”

  Through my emotions, I can’t speak anymore after that. Can’t push out another word. All I see is Kam, lying there, blood everywhere, telling me everything would be okay, telling me he loved me.

  “I love you to the moon, bean.” Those words will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  I pull the blanket up to my chin and let myself cry, the sobs racking through me cause me so much physical pain it blurs my vision but I can’t pull it together. I can’t hold it in anymore. I’ve been living with this truth, with this guilt, for months, and now it’s out there. Now someone else knows the truth. They know what I’ve done.

  The bed shifts and I feel Kane next to me, his lips against my hair.

  “My brother loved you more than anything in this world. Even with his dying breath he told you so. Do not disrespect his memory by doing the one thing you know he would never want you to do. This isn’t your fault, Elara. I can see why you feel like it is, but it isn’t. It was an accident and accidents happen. Sometimes there’s not one damn thing we can do to stop them. We can’t change the past either. It’s time you made peace with that.”

  And with that he straightens, turns, and quickly exits the room.

  Five months earlier…

  “You promised we’d do dinner and a movie tonight,” I remind Kam, crossing my arms over my chest as I stare at him across the four-wheeler between us.

  “I know, bean, but we can do dinner and a movie anytime.” He smiles, knowing I can’t stay mad at him when he looks at me like that.

  “Nope. That’s not gonna work this time.” I hold my stance, shaking my head adamantly.

  “Bean,” he says knowingly, crossing around the four-wheeler to stand in front of me.

  “Don’t you ‘bean’ me! You’re totally bailing on me for some bimbo with big boobs and if you ask me, an abnormally large ass.” I pick her apart even though I know the girl in question is gorgeous. Of course she is, as is every girl Kam dates.

  He’s never been in a serious relationship but he has started dating more over the last couple of years. I smile and pretend it doesn’t bother me but deep down I know it’s a lie. A façade for some reason I feel like I have to keep up.

  “Sounds to me like someone is jealous,” he points out.

  “I’m not jealous. I’m mad. You’re leaving me all alone on a Saturday night. What the hell am I going to do now?”

  “El, why don’t you tell me the real reason you’re so upset?”

  “I am telling you the real reason.”

  “I think we both know you’re lying.” He takes a step toward me, closing the distance between us.

  We’ve done this before–this song and dance– toeing the line between friendship and something more. But something about this feels different somehow.

  “I’m not lying.” I act confused. When in doubt, confusion works best.

  “Bean.” He narrows his gaze at me.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I question, panic rising in my chest.

  “Because, you do this every time I have a date. And it doesn’t matter if I bail on you for it or not. Admit it, you hate that I go out with other girls.”

  “I do not. I just don’t think they are good enough for you so I’m not sure why you waste your time,” I counter.

  “As opposed to pining after someone I can’t have you mean?” My stomach instantly bottoms out and I have zero response to what he just said. I can take it so many ways but there’s only one way that matters and that’s what I want him to be saying. That he’s pining after me.

  “What are…” I start, but Kam inches closer, his words drowning mine out.

  “Tell me the real reason you’re mad that I have a date tonight, El,” he continues to challenge, his face so close to mine I can smell the sweetness of his favorite strawberry gum.

  “I already told you,” I grind out.

  “Tell me again.”

  “Because you’re leaving me high and dry on a Saturday night.” I stick to my story.

  “Tell me the truth, bean.” Both of his hands settle around my biceps and I instantly suck in a shaky breath.

  “Kam.”

  “The truth.”

  “I can’t do this right now.” I try to avert his gaze but his hands tighten, holding me in place.

  “We’ve done this for far too long, bean. I’m exhausted and quite frankly I don’t want to do this anymore. So I’m gonna ask you one last time to tell me the truth.” He pauses. “Tell me why you’re upset. The real reason.”

  My eyes dart back and forth between his. Uncertainty and excitement both dance around in the pit of my stomach. I start to answer, second guess myself, and then move to answer again, only to stop myself.

  I hold Kam’s gaze for the longest time; studying the tiny specks of blue and green that I’ve tried counting on more than one occasion.

  It doesn’t take long before my resolution folds and I say, “You know why.”

  “Not good enough, bean.” Kam shakes his head slowly but a small smile has formed on his lips.

  “Because I’m in love with you, okay?” I erupt, the words exploding out of me with so much force that Kam instantly drops his grip on me and I’m able to take a full step back.

  “Come again?” Kam’s smile is now full blown but there’s a darkness to his gaze.

  “You heard me,” I say, wishing I could take it all back in that very instant.

  “Say it again, El.” He closes the distance between us again, his hand snaking around my neck as he holds me firm to him. “Say it again,” he whispers against my lips.

  “I’m in love with you,” I say f
or a second time.

  “It’s about fucking time.” It’s the last thing I hear before Kam’s lips are on mine, soft and gentle, testing me, tasting me.

  His tongue slides against mine and I swear my toes curl from the sensation. It’s everything that I thought kissing Kam would be like and yet completely different at the same time.

  There’s a familiarity about it. Like it’s something I’ve done a million times before and yet there’s this excited flutter of butterflies in my stomach at the same time. It’s hard to explain and yet makes perfect sense all at once.

  Because it’s Kam.

  It’s only moments before he pulls back and drops his forehead to mine. Disappointment seeps through me and yet I’m also grateful for a second to clear my head and try to process what exactly is happening here.

  “I always knew you’d be a good kisser,” Kam says breathlessly.

  “Took you long enough to find out,” I challenge, pulling back to meet his gaze.

  “The same could be said for you,” he reminds me. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Fuck, bean, do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted this?”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” My heart thuds violently inside my chest. And while I’m looking into the same eyes I’ve looked into thousands of times before, it feels like I’m seeing them for the first time all over again.

  “I didn’t want to lose you,” he admits.

  “Now you know why I didn’t say anything,” I counter.

  “Is it possible that we’ve both wanted the same thing this entire time yet we were both afraid to act on it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “It’s been this way for me since day one, El. Day fucking one.”

  “Me too.” I shrug, not sure what else to say.

  “Come here.” He pulls me back to him, kissing me so sweetly I find myself questioning if this is actually real or just the repeat of a dream I’ve had several times before.

  “All these years,” Kam mutters against my lips before pulling back slightly. “All these years I could have been kissing you.” He shakes his head. “So much wasted time.”

  “And now?” I say, my voice thick.