Shattered Love: Book one of the Forever us series

by Nivia Borell

  “What would such a thing accomplish, Damien? It won’t bring our baby back or bring us back together.”

  He puts his hand on my belly. And then I notice his hand curl into a fist.

  I say, “I don’t have the energy to hate Monica for what she did. She is in love and had no idea I was pregnant.”

  “Don’t find excuses for her, Bria. And you’ve had years to accept the loss of our baby. My grief has just begun.”

  I unhook his fingers and kiss his knuckles. Like old times, the anger gives away, and my heart made a flip-flop at this one thing that hasn’t changed.

  “I didn’t even drink, Damien. I was worried alcohol would harm our baby, so I just had a few sips of wine, no more. When I said my goodbyes to the girls, I thought I was beat because of the pregnancy. The next thing I recall is this thumping headache and slight dizziness and you standing there in front of me with a shocked expression on your face. The moment I spotted him next to me, I sensed everything would shift. I tried to find my voice again and ask what he was doing next to me, but it was like my vocal chords were knotted in my throat. But when you scurried away without giving me the time to react, somehow, I knew you would never believe me again.

  “And so I decided I couldn’t tell you about the baby because I was sure you would ask me if it was yours, and it would have shattered me. I don’t remember how I got dressed and reached home. My parents sensed something bad had happened. I told them through my sobs how you found me. My parents froze on the spot, Damien. They didn’t have it in them to comfort me or even question me. They mumbled we could talk about it later when I felt better.”

  Damien caresses my belly while our eyes lock on each other, and I keep confessing. “The next few days, I felt worse and worse. I shivered, my body burned with fever, and I couldn’t eat a thing. I threw up constantly and the sheets were drenched in my sweat. I felt a constant pressure in the center of my chest. My parents assumed my sickness had to do with the breakup, and even when they said it’s time to go see a doctor, I refused.

  “Maybe I could have prevented the miscarriage. Oh, Damien, there are so many things I did wrong! The guilt, though, knowing I should at least have done some damage control, but instead, I waited until I collapsed with pain in my chest. My heart snapped, and I had my first heart attack. They got my heart beating again, but I couldn’t ask about the baby since I was mostly unconscious.”

  Damien shuts his eyes, a lone tear leaking from the corner. I crane my neck and kiss his eyelids. The pain reflected in his open eyes twists my stomach.

  “I woke up in a hospital bed in London, alone and scared to my bones, and with a doctor who said I needed surgery because my heart had been damaged when I had the attack. I thought surgery wouldn’t be good for the baby and informed him I was pregnant. He looked at me with so much empathy, I perceived what he would say would break me further.

  “The doctor communicated that I had miscarried. It’s common in the first trimester. Then he said I was young, and he was sure I’d have another baby when the time came. He added they had not informed Mom and Dad because, officially, I was an adult, and it was my decision. His priority was to repair my heart. It was then with his warm smile in the corner of his mouth, everything in me switched.”

  The sobs rock my body and Damien clutches me to him, and kisses the top of my head.

  “I muttered I needed a little time to myself. Alone, I broke down into ugly sobbing. I screamed your name, and the next thing I knew, nothingness enveloped me. My therapist later explained I had developed an emotional numbness because of the trauma and was experiencing depression. With time, medicine and therapy, I would feel again. I went to the therapist for a while, but it was a losing battle for Dr. Brown. I didn’t agree to any of his suggestions and declined any medication.”

  Damien strokes my back, and it helps to alleviate the pain caused by the memory. His arms and chest shield me, and so I continue, “The thing is, I enjoyed the emptiness and feeling nothing because I knew there was no way I could outlive the pain. In the span of a few weeks, I’d lost you, our baby, our love, a future, and had disappointed everyone. So, yes, I was being selfish, but it’s how I stayed alive, Damien, and... with the help of Quinn Hope.”

  The words keep flowing from a place deep within me that wished to expel the baggage I carried for so long.

  “My psychiatrist warned me of the dangers of my condition. There is a risk one day I would feel everything at once, and it would be agonizing, but I didn’t care. I had nothing left to care about.

  “Everything that has happened tonight has somehow brought my walls crashing down at my feet. I feel too much, and I don’t know how to protect myself anymore. But I’m fine with all of it. For the rest of the time I have left, I want to feel everything. And I will die either of the happiness I feel reliving everything I buried, or of sadness for everything I will never have. Either outcome is fine because at least I will feel. The irony of it all is for years I denied my feelings, and now, I embrace them with an open heart. Maybe it’s because I have nothing left to lose.”

  I should have paid attention to how my words may affect him. If his grip on my body is any indicator, he doesn’t take my confession with ease.

  DAMIEN

  This woman gives me the hardest whiplashes possible. Breathe in and out, Damien, count to fucking one hundred thousand, weaken your damn grip, and be patient with her, I keep repeating in my head. Fuck, no I have no time to tread on eggshells. So, what do I do next? I unleash my frustration on her. To my excuse, I am desperate not to lose her.

  “So, you have made your decision then, Bria? Is it easy for you to know you’ll die at twenty-five but could have prevented it? Aren’t you the embodiment of selfishness, then? Do you realize there are people out there who would sell their souls for one more day of life while you just toss it away like it’s nothing? Is your life so worthless to you, Bria?”

  She gasps, stomps off the bed, and paces. She is seething. Well, I am fuming. She’s talking about it so nonchalantly, and not like she is sealing a pact with death.

  Bria halts, eyes piercing me, her hands wavering in the air. “Don’t be ludicrous, Damien. I have laid my heart out for you here, and I don’t know why you have to torment me like this. Well, sorry for not caring about anyone and anything and sorry for my inability to care about my endurance, but that decision was snatched away from me seven years ago. Yes, it is easy to talk about it. It’s the easiest thing I’ve had to deal with in the last few years.

  She puts her hands on her waist, bending slightly in my direction, eyes full of challenge. “And I have a real big problem with your sudden change of heart, Damien. Why? I was more than worthless to you. For four years, you have treated me like a disease you couldn’t eradicate. My departure sets you free. So join me rather than fight me, Damien, and we’ll get something both of us wanted… some kind of freedom.”

  I can’t stand it anymore, hearing her spew all this rubbish. And I know I made her feel this way, but the guilt has already been eating me alive, and she rubs more salt in the wound. I pounce on her, her eyes round and wide. Does she detect the furious look in my eyes? I clench her upper arms.

  “Listen to me, and listen to me good, Bria. You weren’t the only one in pain. I have suffered from your loss for the last seven years drinking myself to sleep for half a year, burying myself in work because those were the only moments when I would have a break from my pain and from missing you like crazy. In the meantime, I had to find a way to survive without you, and not even for one fucking day have I succeeded. I dreamed of you and hated myself even more for not being able to wrench you out of my heart. I fucked countless faceless women just to erase you from my body, and all I could see was your face if I opened my eyes.”

  I cup her face in my palms and admit, “And do you know what I felt? Guilt and regret because it should have been only with you, but I didn’t know then what a complete idiot I was. I missed you every day until I couldn’t take it any
more, and I had to protect myself, too, Bria. I supported myself by not allowing my stupid heart to control me, and instead, I let anger and hatred rule me. With them, I built my own walls around myself.”

  Her penetrating stare bores into me, but with every word, she softens in my hands. I call it progress.

  “But nothing could have prepared me to see you again. When you returned to Zürich after three years, and I spotted you with Alexander, it wrecked me. I shut every emotion off. This is how I survived not only that day, but also every other day I watched you with him. But it was the first time that severed me.”

  The misery brought by the memory makes me release her face as my palms curl into fists hanging on my sides, and I snarl. “How would you have acted, Bria, if the roles were reversed? If you knew the love of your life had cheated on you and left with no apology as if it had never happened, and then returned with someone else? It felt like you were spitting in my face. Rage and jealousy blinded me, so pardon me if I let cruelty command me and not my heart which you have stomped over every time we saw each other.”

  Not even to my ears do my words sound remotely like an apology. There is no wonder her nostrils flare as her jaw twitches, and she sneers. “Well, now you know I never had a romantic involvement with Alex, and to be exact, with no other man, at all, Damien.”

  My hands cling to her upper arms as I crook my head. “You just let me believe it, then. Why?”

  She raises her shoulders, chews on those tempting lips and says, “I preferred it. You had your hatred, and I had Alex as support. No one ever probed me about our relationship, and I let anyone believe what they wished. It was irrelevant to me how we would be perceived. I didn’t care.”

  She pokes her finger in my chest and continues, “But you protected yourself better than I ever did, Damien. You won the war you initiated. However, I won my freedom.”

  Yes, right, Bria, keep dreaming on baby, and I rant, “God, woman, I had nothing left in me! I longed for a reaction, Bria. I couldn’t stand to be near you. It was hard enough not having you, but it was horrible to see you look at me as if I represented nothing to you. I did what was necessary to tame the monster in me, and I did it by finding ways to torment you and not knowing what my actions would cause you. I only knew I would do everything to see even a small glimpse of caring in your eyes. So, what did I win, Bria? Your death sentence? Is this what you desire? To make me crazy because I am right there on the brink of it. One push more, Bria.”

  I sink to my knees and raise my eyes to her. “Deliver it, then. Why are you waiting? I will say it to you until you’ll finally hear me and believe my words. I don’t have it in me to fight with you, anymore. I am done. Are you that naïve to think I’ll survive realizing you are ill and dying because of me, Bria? Will my lunacy set you free? Because right now you just have to ask, and I’ll give you everything but not my approval to die.”

  There it is, the hope rising once again in my chest as I survey her and witness her quivering lips and glossy eyes. Bria drops to the floor and places her hands on my thighs. Forehead to forehead, heart to heart, she says, “I want what I’ve always wanted… for you to be happy. I can’t imagine what you went through. At least I ceased feeling and caring. I am sorry I caused your pain, but let me go, my love. We can’t continue chained together like this. Look at us, at what has become of us.”

  I shake my head, and my words ring with determination. “Ask me anything else, but not this, Bria, because I can’t. It’s not in me to let you go. You’re asking for the impossible. If it is true that you value my happiness, then you must realize if you leave me, I’ll never be able to find it again. I forgot long ago how it feels to be happy. Never could without you.”

  “Damien, baby.” She puts her hand on my face and brushes some strands of hair hanging on my brow and tucks it behind my ear. “You did it once. You can do it again.”

  Those sparkling hazel eyes of hers shine with belief. They deflate me as I clasp her hands and admit, “Bria, my life, I survived knowing you were living your life far from me, but you were still there. How can you ask me to survive your death? Let me assure you such scenario would be impossible.”

  She slumps on her bottom staring at our linked hands resting on my lap and mouths. “Why did you have to complicate things like this, Damien? My plan was organized in detail. I didn’t even invite you to the party tonight because I think I sensed deep down you would come and somehow alter something in me again. I’ve avoided you for one whole year straight, and here you are, ruining me again. Just why?” Her head and shoulders sag, and she sobs.

  I wish to feel guilty, but I can’t. Bria has to live, and I dare everyone to fight me on that.

  I am aware her question about why I am doing this is rhetorical. I lift her chin and caress her puffy cheeks. Her fiery eyes drill into mine as her breath scalds my entire face.

  “It’s too late, Damien, anyway, and you are wasting your time.” She snatches her fingers away and crosses her hands over her chest, nose stuck in the air.

  I grit my teeth and say, “The second I take my final breath it will be too late, then and only then. So, you decided. Good, then, you haven’t left me another solution. I’ll call the families and inform them of your decision. It is only fair they hear about it. Or do you expect me to lie to their faces about your so-called plane crash? Do you think I’ll be able to live with the fact I knew damn well it wasn’t some accident, but the diabolical plan of a hurt woman on a suicidal mission? I wouldn’t care at all if it were any other woman but mine.”

  I can feel her fright rise, hands trembling in her lap. It seems I hit a soft spot. Her reaction reveals she didn’t even think of the major difference my knowing would make to her well-structured plan. Something like victory surfaces. I cup her face, and only when our eyes lock, do I add, “I am a winner, Bria. It’s in my blood, and now I had better win because our lives are at stake. I may not care too much about mine, but I care about yours.” I’ll defeat her death wish if I have to.

  She squeezes my hands and says, “I know you are tough, the strongest person I’ve ever known, Damien. You’ll find it in you to survive this. Don’t get our parents and siblings involved. It would just add another layer of pain. Not even the strongest person can face so much loss.”

  She doesn’t fool me with her pliant and pleading art. I plan to reveal it’s just an act.

  “So you doom me either way, Bria. Live with the guilt of your death and pretend I don’t know what happened or live with the guilt of telling the truth and facing the consequences. Is this some sick distortion of seeing the glass as either half-full or half-empty?”

  She cages my hands in hers and deadpans. “It’s irrelevant whether I see it as half-full or half-empty because in the end, what’s in it tastes the same. The glass only points out how I view my options.”

  She and her warped logic. I could smash my head against the wall. Urging some patience from the pits of myself, I say, “Well, I don’t care. I can’t let you have your way. This is why I’m here tonight, to save you from yourself. And honestly, Bria, I didn’t need a stupid invitation. A lack of one did not deter me. Something had to be wrong…” I pause taking a breath. “Out of nowhere, you’re throwing a party on your birthday. I don’t believe in coincidences, Bria, never have. And you told me once you would have a birthday party when there was something worth celebrating. Stupid of me to be curious about it and not realize death would be a good reason for celebrating.”

  She digs her fingers in my palms, and adds with eyes blazing, “You can’t stop me.”

  I knew it, her sweet play, just a façade. It takes more than illness and numbness to extinguish the fire within her.

  “Really, now? Tempting me won’t help your plan, Bria. If I have to chain you up and abduct you, you won’t leave this room without me by your side.”

  She jabs at my shoulders and screams, “You are so inflexible, Damien. How hard can it be for you to understand it’s too late, anyway? Do you wa
nt me to spell it out for you? My heart is damaged, and by now I’m sure it’s not even fixable. You have no idea what you’re talking about. But I know, and I don’t want to put our families through the process. I’ve been in hospitals, more often than I want, Damien. The patient slowly dies, and his family suffers with him as he struggles for a breath that won’t come anymore.”

  Meanwhile, I am rooted to the spot, trying to gauge her next reaction or assault.

  “It should be our decision, not just yours to make. I won’t lie for you, Bria.”

  She scrambles to her knees leaning toward me as she puts her delicate palm against my chest. It might have been sweet if it wasn’t for the fire in her eyes and her next outburst, “Goddammit, allow me to have this! I beg you. I’ve never asked anything of you. Just comply with this one thing.”

  I glance up to the ceiling. Desperation crawls inside me, but I have to find some calmness and the words to get through to her. As in a slow-motion clip, I dip my chin and say, “If I knew it would be what you need, then I would give it to you… freely, may I point out? And I won’t make an exception. You don’t need this. You just want it like some spoiled brat who wants a Birkin bag just for the hell of it.”

  She huffs, and her eyes go wide. “Are you comparing me wishing for peace with wanting a designer purse? This has to be the most stupid comparison in history.”

  I wave her off and add, “Semantics, Bria. You’ll never be free of me. It’s our curse. It was also our blessing, and you won’t find peace, not now I know about everything.”

  She leaves me kneeling on the floor, hands outstretched as she leaps to her feet. Bria has her back to me as she places her hands on the windowsill, her gaze miles away. My arms drop.

  “Well, then, too bad for you, Damien. Maybe a year ago it could have worked out, but not now. Why won’t you understand and accept it?”