He glanced up to the cabin and caught sight of me watching him. Our gazes locked for an instant, and I gave a little wave from where I stood at the window. He smiled back before he turned to toss one last stone into the water. He rubbed his hands together, shedding the sand from his palms, and slowly made his way up the beach toward me.
My breath caught as he walked through the side door and scooped me into his arms, holding me tightly against him as he kissed my neck, growling playfully against my skin. I laughed quietly and kissed him on the mouth, unable to resist feeling closer to him.
“Good morning,” he whispered against my lips as what he had done to my body the night before played through my mind, causing a heated blush to spread across my cheeks.
“Morning,” I whispered back. I felt his hand reach down and grip my backside, covered only by a lacy pair of panties.
“Nice,” he mumbled as he kissed me again.
I pulled away when I felt his intention shift, knowing that we needed to talk before our bodies spoke for us. “Drew, we need to talk,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest, bracing myself for whatever was to come.
He took in a deep breath and blew it out through his nose before responding. “Okay,” he said with resolve, as he sat down on the arm of the couch.
“You can’t keep avoiding the future, Drew. I need to know what this is,” I said waving my hand between us. “I need to know what you want.”
“What I want?” he asked with a smirk. “As if it’s that easy,” he mumbled.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, as I squeezed my folded arms tighter across my chest.
“What do you want, Gemma?”
His gaze was boring into mine, and I couldn’t tell if his question was accusatory or inquisitive. I was fumbling, unable to read him, dreading each word that we exchanged. I hesitated for only a mere moment. “I want you,” I said with an unwavering stare. “And I want this baby. With you. No matter who the father is.” I saw a flicker in his gaze as my last words spewed from my mouth before I could take them back.
“What do you mean, no matter who the father is?” He squinted his eyes at me, questioning everything now. And I wanted to kick myself for admitting that to him before he could tell me if he saw me in his future. I guess it was better that he knew the entire truth before I forced him to make a decision.
I took a deep breath and instinctively brought my hands to my belly, as if I needed to protect him or her from whatever came next. “This baby was conceived in May, Drew. It could be Ryan’s or yours. It’s too close to tell for sure.” I searched his eyes, waiting for his reaction.
He stood and began to pace in front me, scrubbing his hands over his face as I heard him take deep, ragged breaths.
I stepped closer to him and reached for his arm to stop his pacing. “I can’t take this anymore, Drew. Tell me what you want.”
I saw so much pain in his eyes, it nearly brought me to my knees as he remained quiet once again, conflicted.
“TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT,” I screamed in frustration, throwing my hands up into the air.
He gripped his hair in his hands and said quietly, “I want you, Gem.”
I waited for the blow, knowing that a “but” was coming.
Shaking his head back and forth, throwing his own hands in the air, he said it. “But I can’t do this.”
Tears spilled from my eyes as his words crushed my heart and whatever hope I had left for us. I folded my arms tightly across my chest once again, trying to comfort myself against the agony.
He was suddenly angry, tears filling his own eyes. “God dammit, I can’t do this,” he yelled as he looked upward, as if he were actually talking to God.
I was so confused. He was saying one thing, but his body was saying something else entirely. And he was so angry, but not at me. I stood in silence and waited for him to explain himself.
“It’s too late, Gemma. Don’t you see? I was okay with this. I had made peace with this before I came here. I never expected to see you, to be here with you. I don’t want to leave you,” he said through his own tears as he stepped toward me.
“Drew, what are you talking about? You’re not making any sense. I love you. I want to be with you, wherever that may be. We can raise this baby together,” I said reaching for him.
He stepped away from me, gripping his hair forcefully again. He let out a loud groan in frustration. “God, I’m so angry,” he yelled into the space around us before he lowered his voice and looked me straight in the eye. “Gemma, you have to go back to Ryan. Especially if this is his baby. I can’t do this with you.”
“Do what with me? Raise a baby? Is that what you’re saying? You don’t want to have a baby with me?” My need for him to clarify what he was saying, what he was feeling, was overwhelming. I didn’t want to let him go.
“I won’t put you through this, Gemma. You have to go. Go back to Ryan.”
He was beginning to scare me. He wasn’t making any sense. I knew that he loved me, but I was unsure of what was tearing him apart inside. I was falling apart inside too. His words were leaving me stranded somewhere between hope and despair.
“Drew? What are you saying? I love you. Please don’t do this,” I begged, desperate for him to see how much I wanted this life with him.
He paused in front of me and reached out to cup my cheek in his hand. He looked into my eyes with the gravest sincerity. “I love you too, Gem. More than anything in this world.” He brought his hands to my nearly flat belly, and I covered his hands with my own as he continued. “And I already love this baby inside you, whether it’s mine or not. But none of that matters.” He shook his head as he turned away from me, as if he were unable to face me any longer. “None of it matters,” he screamed at no one as my heart broke from his distress.
“Why, Drew? Tell me what’s going on. Is there someone else?” I asked, staring at his back as I cried for him, for us.
He whirled around, with tears running down his cheeks. “There’s never been anyone else, Gemma. It’s always been you,” he whispered.
His gaze was so intense, burning right through me. But the desolation in his eyes told me more than I wanted to know. I knew it was coming, the truth that he had been keeping from me. The truth that I was desperate to know but scared of what it would mean for us, knowing that whatever he said next would tear us apart for good. Seconds ticked by, as we stood in silence. My heart was already crushed, bleeding for him as I felt its heavy beat inside my chest, thump . . . thump. I watched his lips when he began to speak as I hung on his every word.
“I’m dying, Gemma. I came here to die. I never expected to see you, to be with you again. I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you. I’m so sorry.”
His words echoed in my mind, pulling me into a dark abyss.
“You can’t stay here with me. You have to go back to Ryan.” His words were growing distant as blackness settled in all around me. I reached for him and felt him envelope me in his arms. I looked up but could no longer see his face, his voice barely audible and so far away as he whispered, “I love you, Gemma. I’ll always love you . . .”
Panic consumed me; my breath became shallow. My heartbeat pounding in my head was the only sound that I could hear as my world swirled around me, sucking me further into the blackness. I could no longer feel Drew against me, and so I frantically reached out my arms, tried to close my palms around something, anything, but came up empty. Drew . . . Drew . . . Drew. I was screaming his name in my mind, but there was no sound. Only darkness.
Twenty-Eight
“Gemma? Gemma? Can you hear me? Baby, wake up.”
I could hear his muffled voice in the distance, but it wasn’t the voice that I wanted to hear. I reached deeper into the crevices of my mind, searching for its meaning. Why was he here? My reality was fading, its once vivid colors dwindling into the background of my mind as his voice became louder and clearer. I desperately wanted to go back to where I had been, back to Drew’s arms.
I tried to squeeze my eyes tighter, tried to focus on his face—the strong curve of his jaw, the blue of his eyes mirroring a bright cloudless sky, the crazy brown hair that he let fall where it may, his strong voice, his words . . . I felt the sharp pain in my chest as I remembered his words, I’m dying.
I choked on a sob in my throat as Ryan’s voice became closer, clearer. I realized that the image of Andrew, the feel of him, the sound of his voice . . . was gone. Andrew was gone. I blinked once, twice, blinded by the brightness that invaded my sight. Where everything was once so clear, it was now blurry and out of focus. I had felt weightless just moments before, but now gravity was pulling me back to the center of the earth as I slowly became aware of my surroundings.
“Oh, my God, Gemma,” Ryan said with tears in his eyes.
His face was slowly coming into focus. My eyes scanned the room, bright white walls, machines, a white board with my name written on it along with numbers, charts.
Confusion settled inside me. Where was I? Where’s Andrew? I tried to speak to convey my confusion, but nothing happened; there was no sound.
“It’s okay. Don’t try to talk, honey. Just relax.” Ryan’s words did nothing to alleviate the anxiety that was suddenly building in me. I needed to know what was happening. I could feel my lungs fill and empty, and my heart beat deep in my chest. But I couldn’t feel much else. I tried to wiggle my toes or my fingers but could not feel them. And then I remembered the baby. I was pregnant. Or was I? What was happening?
“Baby,” I croaked, my strained voice sending a thousand splinters to the back of my throat.
“The baby is fine, Gemma. Everything is fine. You came back to me. Oh, God, you came back to me,” Ryan said, as he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it adoringly.
I wasn’t sure of anything in that moment, but his words brought me back to that day. The image of him with that woman burned into my mind. Had I come back to him? In what regard? I attempted to turn away from him, unable to sift through the dull but varied emotions that struck inside me but was only able to direct my eyes away from him. My baby was okay. A flutter of hope surged though me, as I held on to the only thing that I could seem to make sense of in that moment.
A brief moment passed or maybe several minutes before I heard a foreign voice calling my name. I turned my gaze to the sound of the voice to find a tall older man in a pair of blue scrubs and a long white lab coat.
“Gemma, I’m Dr. Selzman, your neurosurgeon. I know that you must feel very confused right now, but I want you to try to relax. I’m going to explain everything to you in a moment, but first I would like to conduct a physical exam, if that’s okay?” He waited for me to respond, as if I had a choice in the matter.
I nodded softly, the slight movement causing pain to ricochet through my head and down my neck. I winced.
“Are you in pain?” Dr. Selzman asked.
I nodded again, closing my eyes against the pain.
“I’ll give you something for the pain in a moment. Can you open your eyes for me?”
I slowly peeled open my eyes again and blinked when he flashed a bright penlight into my line of sight before he held my eyelids open with his fingers.
“Follow the light please,” he said.
I did as he asked. I followed his instructions and answered his questions with a subtle nod or shake of my head. With each minute that ticked by, the fear swelled inside me as I tried to imagine what all this meant, what had happened, and why Drew wasn’t here by my side.
Once he was pleased with my physical response to his exam, Dr. Selzman began to explain how I came to be in this bed, in this state.
His words were precise and clear as he explained that I had been in a car accident, thirty-one days ago. I had hit a deer which had somehow sent the car into a tailspin until it smashed head-on into a tree. I had hit my head on the windshield at impact when my air bag failed, causing a severe head injury. The rest of my body was unscathed, but the severe swelling in my brain was nearly fatal. I had been in a coma for nearly a week, but he had to keep me in a medically induced coma thereafter when I began to regain consciousness before the intracranial pressure was reduced. He was finally able to lift the drugs, allowing me to wake up. He went on to explain that the numbness I felt in my extremities would recede over time once the medications were completely bled from my system.
They had discovered that I was pregnant, only a few weeks at the time, and thought for sure that my body would naturally miscarry from the trauma. But miraculously the pregnancy had remained viable. They had just heard the heartbeat for the first time yesterday, and the baby seemed healthy and thriving. The doctor had every reason to believe that I would make a full recovery, and they would continue to monitor the pregnancy carefully. He warned that I wasn’t out of the woods yet as I was barely eight weeks into the first trimester, but he was hopeful.
“You still have a long road ahead of you, Gemma. Right now all you need to worry about is getting your rest. We’ll take care of everything else,” Dr. Selzman reassured me.
His words washed over me as I tried to absorb the shock of what had happened. I had been in an accident; I had nearly died. I tried to think back to the accident, but everything was still a little fuzzy. Thirty-one days. The accident was thirty-one days ago. My mind locked on the memory of the deer lying in the middle of the road, hitting my head on the windshield because I had removed my seat belt for that brief moment. Although I had been fine. I had finished my drive to the cabin. It was just a deep cut and an annoying headache. Every moment from that point on flashed through my mind as I tried to make sense of everything.
And then it hit me. My terrified screams while the car spun out of control. Seeing the tree come at me in full force, as if it was happening in slow motion. Knowing that something very bad was about to happen, the overwhelming fear that ripped through me. And Ryan’s face—my last thought that I could recall.
The cabin. Drew. Everything. Was it all a dream? It couldn’t possibly have been a dream. It was so real. I felt things that I hadn’t felt in a long time. And the pregnancy? How could I have known that I was pregnant if it hadn’t been real?
I was overwhelmed with relief that I was alive, that my baby was real and growing inside me, and yet I was full of grief as if I had lost something. And, in a way, I had. I had lost Drew. I closed my eyes and conjured his face from my recent memories. How could this not be real? What we shared? Tears wet my cheeks as I felt a tightness in my chest, a pressure slowly building, clenching my heart tightly. I wasn’t sure of anything in the moment.
A sudden need to find Drew consumed me. I had so much to say to him, so much that he needed to know. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move. My useless body felt the weight of a thousand pounds, and I knew that I wouldn’t be leaving here anytime soon.
I heard Dr. Selzman ask if I had any questions, his broad forehead lined with concern as if he sensed the panic rising in me. I couldn’t seem to form any words on my tongue so I merely shook my head. As he left the room, I was aware of Ryan at my side, reaching for my hand again.
“Gemma, did you hear that? You’re going to be fine, and we’re going to have a baby,” he said ever-so-softly.
I couldn’t move my hand from his touch, but I pushed against the pain and the invisible chains that held me in place and turned my head to the side, slowly, away from him. I couldn’t look at him right now, in this moment, when all I could see was Drew’s face. I couldn’t forget what Ryan had done, how he had hurt me. It was frustrating to not be able to convey my thoughts to him or move my body in protest, and I was so tired. I closed my eyes, shutting it all out, welcoming the darkness once again.
Twenty-Nine
I woke in a panic. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get used to waking up in this place. Each and every time, it took me a few minutes to orient myself. The stark white walls, the antiseptic smell, the constant noise muted by eerie silence. Each day I gained back more of myself. I could move
my extremities, talk, sit up with assistance. The physical recovery was my biggest challenge, Dr. Selzman kept reminding me, but I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t help but wonder when I would laugh again or when I would find peace in the knowledge that my baby was going to be okay.
Ryan took longer breaks from my side when he realized that his presence was anything but comforting. I couldn’t seem to move past this resentful anger that took root inside me and seemed to grow with each passing day. The worst part was that I wasn’t even sure what or who I was angry at. My thoughts centered on Drew and the day when I was strong enough to find him. I had used Ryan’s iPhone to search the Internet for “Andrew Monroe” and for contact information for the Monroe Enterprises’ offices.
After several phone calls to offices around the globe, I had finally been told that “Mr. Monroe was on a leave of absence, and it was unsure when he would return.” These words echoed in my mind, oddly familiar. I had tried to contact Andrew’s father, but he was impossible to reach as if I were trying to call the President of the United States, rather than the president of a multibillion-dollar enterprise. I refused to contact William, although his name had popped up in several of my searches. He wasn’t linked to Monroe Enterprises in any way that I could tell, but I refused to find out more information about him.
I had found a number for Sal’s Garage and had left a message for Logan, but I hadn’t heard from him either. And so I was left with the wait, my patience wearing thin, as I focused on my recovery so that I could leave this place and find Drew myself. I didn’t care what it took; I was going to find him.
I heard a knock on the door to my room that sat slightly ajar—the nurses’ best attempt for my privacy. They had moved me out of the ICU last week—now that my condition was no longer “critical”—to a step-down unit where I was still being closely monitored, but it was more peaceful, less intense. This allowed me the ability to eat real food, rather than being fed through an IV and a feeding tube. And it allowed my family to fill my room with a beautiful array of flowers, which my mother brought in every three days to “keep things fresh,” as she liked to say. And that is what she held in her hand now, a beautiful arrangement of wildflowers, as she stepped into my room quietly.
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