Before She Was Mine

by Amelia Wilde

  The driver is close enough for me to see him.

  Alexei.

  Eyes wild, hands braced on the steering wheel, mouth stretched open wide. Is he laughing or shouting? I have no idea, but his eyes meet mine and his expression contorts into a sneer. It’s one of pure rage, ugly and unrestrained.

  He rolls down the window and his voice spills out onto the street. It’s a long slur of curse words and something unintelligible.

  “Move. Move.” I lock my arm around Summer and back her up into the doorway of the jewelry store. “Open the door. Open the door.”

  I can’t see her, but I hear when she finally gets the latch open. “Oh, my God, Day, oh, my God—”

  “Go in!”

  I feel her step away from me, into the store, and brace both of my hands against the recessed entryway. He’s not going to get to her. Not now. Not ever.

  He rolls the window back up.

  Inside the car, Alexei turns his head to the right and then to left. People are reacting—fucking rare for New York City—and the man from the opposite corner is at his windshield, both hands up, tapping on the hood. “What are you thinking, man? Are you having a stroke?” He shouts the words at the windshield, but Alexei is looking at me.

  I don’t flinch.

  Fuck. His mouth makes the shape of the curse and then his shoulders go down. The car reverses back out into traffic and a cab swerves to miss him.

  With a screech of tires, he disappears into the line of cars. I follow him as long as I can. I follow that car until he’s out of sight.

  All I can hear is my own heartbeat.

  All I can feel is sickness rising in my throat.

  I’m bringing this onto her. Me. It’s all me. It’s all my fault.

  I can’t do it.

  29

  Summer

  The power drill hums in Dayton’s hand. He’s installing an extra deadbolt on the front door of our apartment.

  The silver bag from the jewelry store sits abandoned on the tiny kitchen island. I can’t decide whether I should be sitting or standing. If someone bursts through the door, even with the deadbolt in place, I want to be on my feet and ready to run

  The last screw goes in tight. Dayton shoves every lock home, then tests the door with his hand, pulling on it with his full weight. The door doesn’t budge. My heart beats high in my throat. Part of that is the baby’s fault, but mostly it’s because of the guy in the car. He tried to kill us. My heart’s been racing ever since it happened. The cab ride home wasn’t even enough to calm me down. Not that it was a relaxing cab ride—Dayton made us switch cars three times over the course of the ten-mile ride.

  Dayton drops his tools onto the table in the entryway. As soon as they hit the wooden surface he turns and rushes past my spot in the living room. He hobbles into the bedroom. His foot must be killing him. What the hell does he need in the bedroom?

  I remain where I’ve been stationed, watching him install the lock. I take a series of calming breaths, steadying myself, before taking one last deep breath and straightening my posture. This is fine.

  Yes, it was scary when the car jumped the curb and tried to kill us, but I can’t freak out anymore. Not anymore. The baby senses everything that I feel.

  I put my hands on my belly and baby rolls beneath my touch, a languid turn, as if nothing is wrong in the world.

  “You’re right,” I murmur. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll keep you safe.” Goosebumps rise up on the back of my arms. I haven’t said it before, but future me will say it countless times. It’s a blow to the heart, isn’t it? You meant those words as a promise, but nothing’s a guarantee.

  I follow Dayton into the bedroom. He’s rummaging through the dresser drawers, one by one, methodically searching beneath my panties, beneath his shirts, beneath the spare sheet sets I can’t bend down to reach any more.

  “Day.”

  He straightens up and turns his head to look at me, and I’m struck by his expression, a combination of determination and terror.

  “Come here?” I hold my arms out to him and he limps across the room, the intensity of each step showing in his face, and then he bends all six-feet, three inches of him to wrap me firmly in his embrace.

  We stand that way until my heart isn’t racing anymore.

  “I have to go.”

  I must have misheard him, with my ear pressed up against his chest like that. “What?”

  Dayton holds me at arm’s length then, his dark eyes burdened with pain. “I can’t stay here with you, Sunny.” He lets me go and runs both hands through his hair. His voice hitches. “He’s after me.”

  “Who’s he?” He turns away from me, but I stop him, gripping his elbow and drawing his attention back to my eyes. “No. You need to tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s nothing you need to know about. It’s nothing you should know about. The less you know—”

  My pulse pounds in my ears. “The less I know, the more fucking terrified I am, Day.” My palms are sweating and I feel like I’ve stopped breathing. He steps back over to the dresser and begins rifling through it again. “What are you looking for?”

  He straightens up, blows a breath out between his lips. “A gun, Summer. I’m looking for a gun. But I don’t have one.” Day’s jaw works. “I don’t have one, because where was I going to keep one while I was living in that shithole of an apartment? I couldn’t trust any of them with a gun, much less myself—” He roughly shakes his head as if to erase what he was thinking. This is more than he meant to say.

  “Dayton, you can’t do this. You can’t walk away from me because you think you’re dangerous.”

  He lets out a short, sharp laugh. “I am dangerous. I’ve told you that before. I warned you about my past. It’s back. Don’t you get that? What else has to happen for you to understand?”

  “Yes.” My voice trembles, but I force myself to hold my head up high. “I work with people who’ve had rough lives, Day, and I’m not a little girl.”

  “I’m sorry.” Day steels himself and heads into the walk-in closet, emerging a couple of seconds later with a black duffel bag. “I’m sorry, Summer. I know you’re not a kid. But you have no idea—” He closes his eyes and curses under his breath. “You have no idea what it was like when I came back home. You have no idea what people like him are capable of.”

  “I was standing on the sidewalk right next to you.”

  A flash of emotion streaks across Day’s face, and he’s at my side again. “Did you see the man in the car? Did you see his face?”

  I search my memory and can picture the man’s profile, his pale face planted behind the windshield, his nasally voice drilling into me from inside the car. “Yes, but—”

  “Have you ever seen him before?” Day braces his hands on my arms, holding me still. “Summer, it’s fucking important! Have you seen him before?”

  “No.” Something is tingling at the back of my mind. “The only thing was—”

  “Tell me. Right now.”

  “I’m trying.” I take a deep breath to concentrate. “The only thing was that his voice sounded familiar.” Where have I heard that voice before? “I think he was the one who followed me that day.” That day is code for the last time I ran outside alone.

  Day’s face hardens and turns pale. He releases me and returns to retrieve his duffel bag that fell to the floor when I mentioned standing next to him on the street. It takes him all of five seconds to yank open his dresser drawer, yank out an armful of clothes, and shove them into the bag, but in those five seconds, my mind struggles to process a memory.

  “That’s not the only time I’ve heard that voice,” I say, thinking out loud, and I tap my fingers in the air, just like I do when I’m sitting at my desk at Heroes on the Homefront.

  Just like I do on my desk.

  “He called my office once,” I recall, the words floating reflectively into the air as the memory dawns on me, and Dayton freezes in place from his packing. “He lef
t a message that included my name, then there was the sound of some weird breathing. It was when I was at home. They forwarded the message from my office to my phone.”

  Day drops the bag. “You’re done there.”

  “What?” I say, incredulous.

  “You’re done working there. Call in and tell them you’re done.” He snatches his phone off the top of the dresser and tries to press it into my hands.

  “Dayton, no. I’m not quitting my job because—”

  “He tried to terrorize me…by using you.” Day’s voice is deadly serious. “He followed you in his car. He almost killed us today, and all for the kind of revenge that’s never going to—” He closes his eyes, swallows hard. “I don’t care if you call in or not. You’re not going back there, and that’s final.”

  The injustice of this, coupled with the adrenaline from the episode on the sidewalk and the ache at seeing his consuming fear, makes my throat tighten. “Oh, yeah? Is that what you think?” Who does he think he is? My dad? My brother? Does everyone in my entire life think I’m too stupid to make my own decisions?

  Dayton levels his gaze at me. “Yes.”

  The first tear slips down my cheek, but I’ll be damned if I cry any harder than that. “You’re wrong.” My voice trembles. I hate it for trembling. “I’m going back to work on Monday, like I always do. My clients need me.”

  “They’ll get by.”

  “Will they?” I advance on Dayton, every step looking more ridiculous than the last, I’m sure. “Where would you be right now if it wasn’t for me? Killing yourself at that factory, that’s where. The rest of my clients deserve the same help you got.”

  “I didn’t want your help,” Dayton roars, blood rushing to his cheeks. “I didn’t want anyone’s fucking help. I only went because that asshole at the VA insisted. If I wanted to quit crushing the fuck out of my leg, he said I had to—” His fists clench at his sides in an attempt to rein in his anger. “I didn’t want anyone’s help. I didn’t deserve anyone’s help. And if that’s what this is about—”

  “That’s not what this is about,” I shout back at him, fear and rage and hope all coalescing together in my chest. “This is about the fact that I love you. And I’m pregnant with your fucking baby. And if you walk out on me right now, with that guy lurking out there, then—then—” It leaves me breathless, gasping, and now the tears gush forth, the dam bursting. “How would that be the right thing to do, you asshole? How could you say that to me? How could you threaten me with that? You’re worse than him.”

  I turn away quickly to hide my emotions, heading blindly for the bathroom. I lean over the sink and turn on the cold water, the rushing sound comforting.

  A minute later I sense Dayton standing behind me. He says something I don’t hear, and then I hear, “Sunny.”

  His hand comes down on my shoulder, tentative, apologetic, but I’m still fucking furious. I shrug it off. “Don’t touch me.” The water is louder than my own voice. “Don’t touch me. Just don’t touch me.”

  30

  Dayton

  Summer is silent as we walk down the hallway to the ultrasound room.

  She’s spoken to me twice today. The first time was to say my ultrasound is at twelve-thirty. The second time was to say you don’t need to be there.

  Fuck that. I’m going to be here, even if she’s freezing me out.

  I was awake when she started crying again last night, soundlessly, her shoulders shaking under the comforter, but when I tried to take her into my arms, she went stiff and still and refused to let me touch her.

  I feel like shit.

  I feel like shit on every level, from the worn-away liner in my prosthetic to the sleepless grit in my eyes to the fact that even when I’m trying to get as far away from my past as I can, it always catches up with me. No fucking surprise. I’m a man without both of his feet.

  It was only one day.

  The rest of it—the rest of it, I’ve lost track of. A few weeks? A few months? I was swimming in a sea of pain, endless and excruciating, and I knew it was my punishment for that lapse in my attention on that mountain. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I made the choice. I’d explain it to Summer now that the desperate need for flight has passed and I’ve settled into the fact that we’re staying where we are, but she will not speak to me. She won’t even look at me. She came to this appointment in a separate cab.

  She lies back on the table and pulls up her shirt, her belly big but still perfect, her skin creamy and beautiful. The ultrasound tech makes small talk. It all washes over me, meaningless and generic. It’s hot out there, huh? You must be miserable. No, it’s all worth it in the end. With my two…

  Summer’s face is lit up by the ultrasound machine, and I can see from here that she’s exhausted. Heavy, dark bags under her eyes. Her mouth in a thin line. My heart wrenches. This should be a joyful experience for her, or as much as it can be. Hot, sickening spasms of guilt sear across my gut. It would be a beautiful experience, if it wasn’t for me.

  “Here’s baby’s head,” the tech says, and presses the wand into Summer’s belly so we can both see. The profile is perfect. I don’t linger on the screen.

  Summer’s face softens. “Beautiful,” she whispers. I want so badly to be holding her hand.

  “Did you find out the sex at your twenty-week appointment?” The tech’s voice is carefully neutral. She’s not going to push us one way or the other. There’s zero pressure in the room as she swipes the wand around, checking the heart, the lungs, the fingers and toes.

  “No,” Summer says, and the longing in her voice takes me aback. We’d laughed at the twenty-week appointment. It was going to be a grand surprise, whether the baby was a boy or a girl, but even in the dark, I can see fresh tears pooling at the corners of Summer’s eyes.

  I clear my throat. “Could we find out today?”

  She looks at me for the first time since last night. “Is that what you want?”

  I scoot closer on the rolling stool and put my hand on the edge of the bed. Not touching her, but available. “What I want is for you to know that some things aren’t surprises. There are things you can count on.”

  Her chin quivers. “Like what?”

  I take her hand in mine and lift her knuckles to my lips. “Me.”

  Summer blinks, once, then twice. “Are you sure about that?” She doesn’t add the rest. She doesn’t add because last night you scared me so badly I cried myself to sleep.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  “Call it, Dad,” interjects the ultrasound tech. “Do you want to know if baby is a boy or a girl?”

  “We do.”

  The tech gives us an encouraging nod, her dark hair shining in the light of the screen, and sweeps the wand confidently around. There is our baby, suspended in Summer’s belly, small and perfect and—

  “There she is. It’s a girl!” The tech says it without warning, and Summer gives a little whoop. I feel her joy straight through her hand. Even if I couldn’t see her smile, I’d feel it in every cell of my body.

  “A girl,” I echo. There’s a burst of light and warmth at the center of my chest dawns like a sunrise. A little girl. I can see her lying in Summer’s arms. I can see her cooing in mine. My two girls. The sunrise turns to a hard light.

  I’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.

  Even if that means going toe-to-toe with Alexei.

  Even if that means atoning for what I’ve done.

  But the future seems far away as the ultrasound tech helps Summer wipe the gel from her skin before she heads down the hall to print off pictures for us to take with us. This time, the prints will say BABY GIRL SULLIVAN on them.

  As soon as the door shuts behind her, I fold Summer into my arms. She leans into me as far as she can, bending her head to rest it on my shoulder. “I’m not going to cry.”

  “Don’t cry,” I say into her ear. “We’re having a little girl.”

  “Yo
ur little girl,” she says, and pushes back to look at me. “Don’t—” Summer swallows and lifts her chin. “Please don’t ever—”

  “I’ll never say that to you again.” I put my thumb on the ridge of her chin. “I’ll never leave you again.” I mean those words with everything in my soul.

  I mean it, but in the back of my mind is the gnawing truth: I might not be able to control it.

  But that’s far from this room and this moment. “You made me so angry,” Summer breathes, and then she laughs out loud, wiping tears from her eyes. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Let’s celebrate first. I want to take my girls out for lunch.”

  “Yes. Let’s invite Whitney.” Summer realizes what I meant a beat later. “And…the baby can come along, too.”

  The shape of the words feels right in my mouth. “But Sunny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me—” Now I’m getting choked up, and there’s no way I’m going to put on that kind of show in front of the ultrasound tech. She would walk back into the room during just that kind of moment. “Just promise me you’ll be safe. I can’t lose both of you.”

  “Lose us?” She laughs, but then her face transforms into a serious expression. “Day, the only way you’re going to lose us is if you walk away.” It takes my breath away. But then Summer grins. “I don’t know how far you’d get on one foot, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it.”

  “You are unbelievable.” I laugh out loud, the tension falling away from my shoulders, and wrap her up in a bear hug.

  “Baby. Baby,” she says, pushing back playfully. “Leave room for the baby.”

  “Is this enough room?” I bend and kiss her, and she opens her pretty lips for me just as the ultrasound tech opens the door.

  31

  Summer

  “What we’re all going to do—even you, Linda—Linda, eyes up here!” My mom, along with everyone else attending my baby shower, laughs at Whitney’s performance, the room filling with the happy sound. “We’re all going to guess how big Summer’s belly is.” Whitney looks over in my direction and raises one eyebrow. “I know. She’s in love with this idea.”