Bride for Keeps

by Nicole Helm

  If she tried now and still lost, how would she ever endure it? If she fell deeper, harder, entwined her life with his even tighter…

  She couldn’t do it. She had to be a mother to her child, and she’d never be able to if she started that journey with Carter as a partner.

  Panic beat through her, not just in her chest but also in her neck, in her head, in her wrists. Everywhere she throbbed with panic, struggling to breathe as she detangled herself from Carter.

  He didn’t budge, instead kept sleeping happily on.

  She grabbed her clothes with shaky hands and managed to get them back on her body before slipping out the bedroom door.

  She padded into the kitchen, feeling like a criminal. Her heart beat too hard and she jumped at every noise. She was shaking, couldn’t breathe right, and every cell in her being was telling her to go back to bed and believe.

  But her brain reminded her of all the reasons why she shouldn’t. It might not have control over her body’s reactions to leaving, but it knew what was right.

  She shoved her feet into her shoes and shrugged on her coat. She closed her hand over Carter’s keys and paused, looking at the sparkling rings on her finger.

  This had to be it. Much more and he’d win and she’d…

  What? Be happy and whole?

  She shook away that traitorous thought. Because the truth didn’t exist in hope, the truth existed in experience. Her experience was she and Carter couldn’t do this.

  Or maybe it was just her. She couldn’t do it. She would never belong in a place like this. She would never survive years of cleaning up messes and making things work. She wasn’t strong enough.

  So, she snuck out the front door, got in his car, and started driving.

  *

  Carter rolled over in bed, perfectly warm and satisfied for the first time in months. Months. Sierra wasn’t in bed. But he heard someone out in the kitchen so he didn’t have to panic.

  He felt whole again, all those fractures after Dad had dropped his bomb healed.

  Objectively, he knew they probably weren’t healed precisely. But he’d had all his priorities skewed. Thinking everything in life was McArthurs and putting forth a good image and being a respected doctor.

  But he should have been worried about being a husband and a partner. It should be more important to be a good doctor rather than a respected one. Once upon a time those had been his tenets, but he’d morphed into his father’s way of thinking about things. They weren’t necessarily wrong ways of thinking, but they were too rigid and harsh. It didn’t leave room for him.

  So he’d put in the hard work, he’d try, over and over again until it all worked. Which was life, really. As a doctor, if he stepped back and looked at the whole of life, the body was a thing of balance. You never knew when things would throw it out of whack, when things would threaten survival, when time and toil changed the way a body did things.

  Life was just like that. Never perfect, though sometimes good enough you barely noticed the time passing. But problems always cropped up, and ignoring those issues rarely made them better.

  He should tell that analogy to Sierra. She might not appreciate it as much as his doctor brain did, but maybe it’d clarify where he was coming from.

  On a yawn he rolled out of bed and pulled on his boxers and headed for the kitchen to see what she was up to. Except there was no lively blonde in the cabin’s kitchen.

  “Lina.” His sister’s presence made…zero sense.

  She turned from where she’d been looking out one of the kitchen windows that offered a view of the slew of evergreens dashed with snow. She wrinkled her nose. “Ew, put some clothes on.”

  But that didn’t penetrate at all. “What are you doing here? Where’s Sierra?”

  Her face changed, going soft, which was not a Lina trait at all. She looked away. “Go get dressed, Carter.”

  But he simply stood there absorbing…this. Lina was here. Sierra was not.

  His sister was here.

  His wife was not.

  It reminded Carter of the moment after his father had announced he wasn’t actually Carter’s father. There was a kind of numbness that spread from that deep flash of pain. Denial and impossible disappointment twined together to make the entire world feel frozen.

  But he forced his feet to move, retrace his steps, go into the bedroom to find his clothes. He stopped in the doorway, looking at the rumpled bed, and he didn’t…

  She’d left. After all they’d shared, after all he’d laid bare. She still left. Without the courtesy of an explanation or a goodbye.

  As though he didn’t matter, as though nothing they’d ever had mattered. He walked over to the bed with the intention of grabbing his jeans where they lay in a heap on the floor.

  Instead he found himself sinking onto the mattress, lowering his head to his hands. He’d tried, put his all, his heart and soul into repairing things. Into her. And he still hadn’t gotten the result he’d wanted.

  She’d left. It was all a failure. A new kind of failure because any time he’d considered failure in the past it wasn’t like this. It was worrying his father would find out and be disappointed. It was worrying about reputation and what others thought, not the actual failure result.

  This… He couldn’t bring himself to worry about his family’s opinion or what the town or hospital would whisper behind his back. All he cared about was the fact Sierra wasn’t here, after all the inroads he’d thought he’d made and she’d still run away.

  He lifted his head, frowning. She ran away from things that mattered. He thought he’d gotten through to her, but apparently he hadn’t. At least not enough. He could give up, let that feel like a failure. Or…

  She ran away when things mattered. Who was he to think one night would fix that pattern? Giving up now would only put them back to where they’d been, and he wouldn’t go back there. No amount of failures could allow him to forget he had to keep trying, because as long as she was running, this was something worth fighting for.

  Yes. No matter how many failures or setbacks. He pulled on his pants and shirt and then went back to the kitchen where Lina was sitting at the table, sipping tea.

  “So, what exactly are you doing here?” he demanded.

  She frowned, presumably at the tone, but she shifted uncomfortably, her eyes darting anywhere but to him. “Well, Sierra asked me to come get you since she, you know, took your car.”

  “Right. Did she say anything else?”

  “Uh.” Lina winced. “No. Just to get you home.”

  “Of course.” It might hurt, but he would take it as a good sign. He wasn’t sure what had happened in his life to make hurt a good sign, but she’d disappeared early in the morning. She’d left no note, no words not to follow. It meant she’d been driven by panic, not rational thinking.

  He had to believe that.

  “You’re kind of freaking me out,” Lina said, studying him uncertainly.

  “Why?”

  “You’re calm, but kind of like…murdery underneath that.”

  “I’m not murdery,” he replied darkly, moving for his shoes and coat. “I’m determined.”

  “Determined to commit murder?”

  “No. Now, stop sitting around chatting and relaxing—I have things to do.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Find my wife things. What else would there be?”

  “She sounded… Maybe you should give her some space. She was upset when she called me. Afraid, almost. I’m not saying she’s afraid of you, just… She’s struggling. You should give her space.”

  “Why?” Carter demanded, shrugging on his coat once his shoes were tied.

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why should I give her space when she’s upset and struggling?”

  “Because people want to be alone when they feel like crap,” Lina said stubbornly, her scowl awfully deep for someone who, as far as he knew, had never even dated.

  “No. I m
ean, maybe sometimes. We’re talking about people, and people are different and complex and flawed. There’s no one solution fits all, but Sierra… Look, she needs—”

  Lina snorted. “I’m sorry, I find it really hard to believe you know what she needs.”

  He looked at his sister then, really looked. In some ways, they were nothing alike. Lina had a sharp tongue and the older she got the less afraid she was to use it. But she could be hard and judgmental, and in that way he saw himself.

  It softened him in some ways, because he knew that the hardness stemmed from trying to protect themselves. A shell they’d all grown in the face of their parents’ demanding expectations.

  “Maybe I don’t know what she needs, but I know she’s scared. I know she’s running because she’s afraid that I can’t be what she needs. Why would I let her keep thinking that? Even if it’s not what she needs, though I have my doubts on that, I’ll never give someone I love the space to think the worst again. Not after dealing with the aftermath of that. I have to keep showing up even if it’s just to stand there.”

  Lina frowned deeper, but she didn’t continue her argument.

  “So, where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She just told me she took your car and you needed a ride home.”

  “Then I don’t need a ride home. I need a ride to her.”

  Lina’s expression went a little soft. “Carter…”

  “Help me find her, Lina. Please.”

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said please to me and actually meant it.”

  “Well, that’s going to change.” A lot of things were.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sierra had spent the morning driving around in Carter’s car. She should have returned it. She should have gone home, but she wasn’t ready to face anyone. So, she’d driven to the closest town from the McArthur cabin and gotten breakfast to go. She’d even filled up his gas tank as she’d driven in a meandering, back-roads fashion back to Marietta.

  It had felt nice, kind of. Nothing but silence and gorgeous mountains and a pretty Montana morning. She’d never loved being alone, but there was something in it that gave her room to work through her thoughts, her feelings, her panic.

  She’d hoped for the kind of clarifying moment she’d had in that Walmart bathroom. Was that only a week or so ago? It felt like years. Years and years ago.

  But it hadn’t been, and instead of that absolutely sure resolution she’d made in that bathroom, she drove into Marietta feeling as unsure and confused as ever.

  She didn’t want to leave Carter. She hadn’t wanted to leave that cabin. Love and being with him were good and she wanted those things. She wanted to believe everything he said about cracks and love and the things you had to do.

  But no matter how much those things resonated, no matter how much she wondered if fixing this wasn’t the right answer, fear lingered.

  Would this much fear linger if love was enough? She didn’t doubt they loved each other, what she doubted was the ability of love to survive…life. Or maybe even her.

  She couldn’t face her parents with all this uncertainty. Not when they knew she’d been gone overnight and Carter had been the one to contact them and tell her where she was. They’d be expecting things and she wouldn’t know how to answer.

  Not without showing them all her cracks. And there was all that fear again, mixed in with this new…desire. Almost as if she kind of wanted to let them see all her insecurities so they understood for once why she was the way she was.

  Damn Carter. He’d messed her all up. She needed someone who’d talk some sense into her. Someone who saw her for what she was. Who knew how awful she could be and would support her in the very real knowledge that she, she, could not do this. She wasn’t strong enough for love and cracks and years upon years. Yes, that’s exactly what she needed.

  She drove to Kaitlin’s apartment above the florist shop. It wasn’t fair to bother Kaitlin when she had a newborn, but Sierra was too mixed up to worry about fair. Too desperate for someone to reassure her what she knew to be true…was.

  She parked and then went to the back and up the stairs to Kaitlin and Beckett’s apartment.

  She knocked and Kaitlin answered, baby Ellie all curled up into her chest.

  Sierra’s own chest clutched tight. She was going to have one of those. A tiny, defenseless human being, and she was going to have to be strong enough to protect her or him, raise them to be good, upstanding people.

  She rubbed at her chest as her sister’s expression registered surprise.

  “Sierra.”

  “Sorry. I know you’re probably like a million times exhausted and I didn’t tell you I was coming.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Kaitlin said, moving aside so Sierra could step in. Kaitlin’s normally tidy place was a haphazard mess of baby things. “Beckett had to go into work for a few hours and it’s just me and Ellie and I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m terrified. I have to pee, but she cries every time I put her down and—”

  Sierra held out her arms. “Give her to me. Pee.”

  “God bless you,” Kaitlin said vehemently, handing Ellie over carefully and then rushing to the bathroom.

  Sierra stood in the midst of a messy whirlwind, this tiny, tiny little thing in her arms. Ellie blinked up at Sierra, her dark blue eyes seeming to take in Sierra’s face. Then she made a snorting noise, closed her eyes, and settled against Sierra’s arm.

  When Kaitlin reappeared, Sierra surveyed her older sister. Kaitlin’s hair looked a bit like a rat’s nest, she had bags under her eyes, and there were spots here and there on the shoulders of her shirt.

  “You could have called Mom. Or me,” Sierra said gently.

  “I know, but I need to learn how to do it on my own. I wanted to do it on my own. I just… She’s so little.”

  “It’s a miracle how tiny.”

  Kaitlin collapsed onto the couch so Sierra sat down on the opposite end, enjoying the feeling of tiny, warm dozing baby in her arms. It was almost enough to make her problems feel far away.

  But she’d come here about her problems, hadn’t she? She couldn’t exactly ignore them forever. Lina had probably already made it out to the cabin to pick up Carter and he’d likely be wanting his car back.

  But Kaitlin was slumped on the couch, eyes half closed.

  “You look like you could use a nap.”

  “I could use a coma,” Kaitlin replied, but she smiled as she said it. “Or maybe just a bigger house. Beckett’s been taking the night wake-ups, but I can’t sleep through it anyway.”

  “How’s he handling the daddy business?”

  Kaitlin’s smile bloomed even more. “It really is something to watch the man you love be a dad.” At that, Kaitlin straightened a bit and glanced Sierra’s way. “So.”

  “So.” Sierra let out a long sigh. “So.” She should open with something that made sense. A segue of sorts. Instead… “I slept with Carter. Again.”

  Kaitlin’s eyes went wide. “So, you’re going to work things out?”

  Sierra looked down at the baby’s closed eyes and slightly open mouth. “No, I… No.”

  “It might be the baby brain, but I’m confused.”

  “I’m not cut out for this whole…thing.”

  “Marriage?”

  “Yes. Marriage. Love. You have to… You know me, Kaitlin. You grew up with me. I’m not cut out for hard stuff. I don’t have your strength or Luke’s grit. I’m not smart. I don’t have any interests. I’m just… I’m not cut out to be the wife of someone like Carter.”

  Kaitlin studied her for a few seconds and Sierra frowned because she did not see what she expected to, which was pure agreement. Or even reluctant agreement.

  “I don’t believe in cut out, Sierra,” Kaitlin said, and it wasn’t in that careful about-to-let-you-down-easy way. It was fierce. It reminded her of the way Carter had talked to her yesterday. “I believe in the choices we make. They aren’t always easy or fun, b
ut they’re ours, and they determine our future.”

  “I’m choosing to save him from—”

  “Does he want to be saved from you?”

  Sierra wanted to pace, but Ellie was so content in her arms, so she had to stay still under Kaitlin’s steady gaze.

  “You don’t understand. You always do the right thing. You always have. I have always done the wrong thing, and I always will. Carter and I will always circle back to these awful moments where it doesn’t work. I can’t stand the thought. I can’t survive it.”

  “Did you expect to get married and everything would just be perfect? You’d always get along and be happy because you loved each other?”

  “Yes! That’s how love is supposed to work. It’s supposed to be happy and easy or why would people do it?” Why would love be the thing that made the world go round if it could hurt this much? If it meant failure over and over again?

  Kaitlin blew out a breath and rubbed her hand over her forehead. “Sierra, I’m no expert, but speaking from my experience and my experience alone… Look, I’m not speaking bad against Mom and Dad when I say this, because I know they always did what they thought was best. They were and are amazing parents. But I think… Marrying Beckett and having this beautiful girl I sort of realized our parents taught us that if we did everything right, everything would work out. But life doesn’t work like that. It’s imperfect and messy and right doesn’t always make sense, which means just like sometimes the person who does everything right doesn’t get everything she wants—the person who does everything wrong does.”

  Sierra didn’t want it to hurt, but it did, because Kaitlin was clearly the did everything right and she was so completely the did everything wrong. But Kaitlin reached over, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly.

  “I’d like to point out, I never did everything right, and you never did everything wrong. We’re human. We’re complicated. Life isn’t that cut and dried, and neither are we. It’s funny, Beckett wasn’t supposed to be right, but he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Even when we fight. Even when it hurts. It’s not love if it doesn’t hurt a little. Loving someone is always going to hurt a little, if only because you’re both human. You’ll hurt each other. It’s in the making up you find yourselves.”