River's Return (River's End Series, #3)

by Davis, Leanne

  Finally, he leaned in to kiss her cheek, and as his mouth hovered there, he whispered, “What was your daughter’s name, Allison?”

  Her body started to shake and tremble again. She moaned and her cries became more vocal. Eventually, she gasped out, “Gabrielle. Her name was Gabrielle.”

  She cried for another fifteen minutes before he gently asked, “Do you want to tell me about her?”

  “I don’t know how,” she whispered back. “I don’t know how to casually talk about her. That’s why I don’t. I can’t. I—I can’t do it. I don’t know what to say.” She started to cry again.

  “What was yesterday?”

  “She would have been four years old.”

  “How long did you have her?”

  “I didn’t.” She suddenly turned towards him, pressing her face tightly against his collarbone. Her entire body seemed to be plastered over him. He had no idea what she meant. He let her cry, and did not press the issue. He got it. He was pretty sure his entire body went numb too, at witnessing her unrestrained grief. Knowing her daughter would have been four changed everything. And it changed nothing. Now, while lying there and holding her, he knew why everything about her seemed so different. He was supposed to be here. He knew it with a surety he never experienced in his life before. All his traveling. All his comings and goings. All his restlessness. All his shenanigans. All the women. All the partying. Everything he ever did was leading to him being right here. He had to be right here, right now, for Allison Gray. There was no other woman who could capture his heart. Not even his friendship. Just Allison. And Shane now believed that everything that ever happened up until that moment was a kind of preparation for him to eventually be with her.

  Few women understood him. Most accused him of being shallow, emotionally unavailable, or a commitment phobe. Shane was none of those; he simply never had a compelling reason to be monogamous. Shane’s lifestyle made sense to him and he never did anything unless it made sense to him.

  Being with Allison, however, was the reason for his entire existence. Now his life made more sense. He was put here solely to be with her. To help her. To hold her. To love her.

  He felt very strange and that feeling overtook his entire body. His heart seemed to slow and expand. His blood rushed a little slower, and smoother. There were no happy rainbows in the sky, but he was pretty sure he was falling in love. If not love, then a sense of complete belonging. Of learning his purpose and finding his point in life. He was, at last, exactly in the place where he was supposed to be.

  His mission was to help Allison heal. Right now, it was still too overwhelming for her. He held her tighter and allowed her to take all the time she needed.

  Eventually she shifted in his arms and he sensed she was ready to start talking. “She died. Even before she came out of me.” She spoke the words only after a long pause of silence between them. They were curled into each other’s bodies, and their hands felt warm to the other.

  Stillborn. Damn, he didn’t expect that.

  “Why are you here?” she whispered.

  “For you,” he stated simply, now very sure of his reason. That was the only reason for anything in his life now. But she didn’t need to totally comprehend that small detail yet. He assumed she needed far longer than he to come to the same conclusion. He was ready to wait. Few people knew how patient he could be, if he had a good enough reason.

  “Have you ever held a dead baby?” Her voice was clinical and detached. Like a professor proving a theorem to a geometry class.

  He moved his hands so they were on her back, and nearly spanned the entire surface of it. She relished the heat of his hands, and his reassurance. That’s all he could give her. He accepted it, so it had to be enough. That must be his point now.

  “No, honey, I haven’t.” He kissed her temple where her head lay beside his, almost buried in the crook of his arm and neck.

  “Have you ever seen one?”

  “No.”

  “They look so perfect. The tiny body is so perfectly formed. Fragile. It’s all right there, in flesh and bones; and you realize what a miracle that a perfect, miniature, baby girl with closed eyes, and the softest, most delicate eyelashes… They looked like little half-moons over her eyelids. My baby… my little Gabrielle, had a shock of red hair just above her forehead,” Allison said before her voice began trembling. A sob escaped her mouth.

  “What I didn’t expect, Shane, was the silence. It’s… otherworldly. Here is this perfectly formed baby that you just gave birth to. Right there. She came out of my body and then… nothing. Nothing happened. The doctors and nurses worked in compatible, but cruel silence. We were all silent. And the baby was silent. Did you know your eardrum will rupture if it’s exposed to sounds of a hundred and sixty decibels? That silence was deafening like that. It hurt my ears like the loudest noise of my entire life. I thought… for a few minutes, I thought I would really go crazy. I couldn’t fucking stand it. Silence. Total and utter silence. Cry. Damn it! Cry! I wanted to scream and scream and scream, please, fucking just cry, my little baby. Prove them all wrong. They had to be wrong. But no, no, of course, they weren’t wrong. Of course, the doctor didn’t miss my baby’s heartbeat since she had none. Naturally, the only explanation was that I just gave birth to a dead baby girl.

  “Then, they handed me this baby, my own baby, all bundled up in pink and wearing a little hat. Yes, the coloring was off. But I swear to God, I stared and stared and stared at her, willing her to live, begging her lungs to just start rising and falling. It should have worked. She seemed to just be sleeping. I felt under her nose, looking, searching, and needing to detect her breath. Breathe. I mean, who thinks about it? It’s so easy, and everyone just does it. Up and down the lungs go. And yet… nothing. There was no breath from my baby. You can’t imagine how wrong that feels.”

  He tightened his arms around her. Shane never thought about the subject before. To be honest, he knew of some neighbors who lived a few miles down the road that had a stillborn son several years ago. He remembered the twinge of mortality he felt when he thought, shit that’s too bad for them. But he never took the next step and tried to imagine what it must’ve looked like. And how it must’ve felt.

  Now that Allison was talking, it seemed like she needed to purge her confession and get it out. Shane didn’t feel like she expected him to comment. He got that. He was simply being asked to listen to what she had to say, and understand what real pain felt like.

  “She was almost full term. She wasn’t even a high risk baby. She was alive… and then not. I don’t know exactly when she actually died. I remember not feeling her move, so we went to the doctor. I never, not for even a second, could anticipate what happened. But there was no more heartbeat. Nothing. She was silent. Silent inside me. Silent outside me. The umbilical cord got a true knot in it and then tightened enough to cut off her oxygen and nutrients. I was told it was extremely rare and especially to happen before labor started. I had to… I had to still give birth to her like she was a live baby. I had to endure exactly what a normal, healthy newborn and mother go though. Hours of labor, and unbearable pain. The only concession was being doped up on a cocktail of drugs to help reduce the pain. I mean, it wasn’t like I could hurt my baby anymore now, was it? I had already killed her. I was so doped up on narcotics during the birth, it’s pretty hazy for me to remember.

  “So they put a flower on the doorknob of my hospital room. I think it was to inform everyone who entered our room that this was not a happy, normal birth. Everyone that we came into contact with was hushed and solemn. The way they talked to me made me wonder if I were in the library, or they just thought I was mentally slow. Everyone is quiet. That kind of quiet stuck with me.

  “When my milk came in, I tried to banish the thought that it was a useless waste. It would never nourish my child. I still had to heal and I hurt and ached from the delivery. Three days later, when most parents are happily going home with their newborns, and complaining of their
lack of sleep, we were burying our baby.”

  Her entire body wracked with gut-wrenching sobs. Shane swung her over him, lying flat on the bed with her on top of him. She wrapped her arms around his neck as she helplessly hiccupped and sobbed. Her tears soaked him, and the sound of her sobs tore through him. Her cries were as otherworldly and painful as the tortuous silence she described.

  “Here we were, after just giving birth and of course, most parents expect to be overwhelmed with changing diapers and feedings and safely attaching the infant car seat. But instead… oh God, instead, we were inundated with people who were all hushed and sorry as they tentatively asked, Did we want to cremate our daughter? Or bury her? Who thinks to ask that? Who has any fucking clue what they want to do with their baby’s body? Naturally, we had to discuss it. Decide what to do. That was the cruelest joke to ever play on new, grieving parents.

  “We chose to bury her near my aunt. There was no one else, just a distant aunt. We laid her to rest four days after her heart stopped. You can’t imagine how small her casket was... It was no bigger than a little doll’s cradle. It felt… unreal. So unreal.

  “And afterwards… what? What do you do? Everything went to shit. There was nothing to do. We had a house full of baby things and a painted nursery. Cribs. Clothes. Toys. Stuffed animals. All sitting there, waiting for her, forever empty and devoid of her presence. We just stared at each other, and cried and cried. Then… we did nothing. People soon started asking when would we try again? I walked out on a class when another teacher asked me that. As if we had a simple miscarriage. We could, what? Wait the six weeks that they recommended after a miscarriage and just go for it all over again? Ours was like no other grief in the world. She was our child. Our daughter. But we never got to even see her flutter her eyelashes. I couldn’t even have one day with her. Or an hour. I would have cherished even a single hour with her. But I got nothing. I lost a whole lifetime, I missed out on all of her birthdays. I grieve for every single thing she’ll never know, or miss, or ever dream about. But do you know what the cruelest part is? Most people don’t really think you lost a child. It’s almost a relief to them when I say I lost her in childbirth. They sigh and tell me, at least, I didn’t lose my baby to SIDS, or a car accident. ‘Oh good,’ they say, since I didn’t ever get to know her before I lost her.

  “But I held her. I held her in my arms, Shane. She stayed next to me for an entire night. I have her picture. I know she existed. How can anyone just forget that? It doesn’t ever vanish. You can’t just erase her like she never happened. But people can’t even give me the respect and time I deserve to fucking grieve.”

  “Is that why you never told anyone here?”

  Her shoulders moved up and down. “Maybe. What’s the point? Who would understand? Some of them might look at me like get over it. Is that what you think?”

  “No. Not at all.” He felt her lungs exhale, seemingly in relief at his answer.

  “Patrick and I tried again. We really did, but the grief I felt was intolerable at times, and cut me in half. It came between us in ways we couldn’t seem to solve. We were still married when I first came to River’s End. I ran. I left. He was stuck with the house and all the reminders of our pink fantasy. I never wanted to see any of it again. So I came here. He found Sandy and tried to move on. I can’t really fault him for that. He… he loved me, Shane. I mean, we loved each other. We were fully intending to start a family, raise kids, and keep our jobs… all that ordinary stuff. We were going to do it. Together. And then, in one horrible moment, it all crumbled.”

  Shane shut his eyes while taking a long, deep breath. It horrified him to realize how he had treated the man she suffered so much with. The man who came to see her in grim acknowledgement of the life they created and lost together. Shane appreciated the respect he showed her while trying to convey the news he was having another child with as little pain as possible.

  “He cared as much and hurt as deeply as me. We lost a daughter together, and our grief ripped us apart. So you see? Revenge or jealousy don’t apply to us. What we suffered created a bond so much deeper, it goes beyond that. Yet, it also destroyed what we once had. When we both agreed we could not get it back, it was kinder, gentler, and less cruel to let it all go.”

  “I thought…”

  A small, tiny laugh escaped her mouth. “There is no mistaking what you thought.”

  He softly replied, “I didn’t understand. I’m sorry. For all of it.”

  She shrugged her shoulders under his hands. “I know. You couldn’t have known. But… why were you acting almost jealous?”

  “Because I was,” he said simply. He was being honest and open with a female that he was sleeping with for the first time in his life. Why shouldn’t he? She just exposed her entire soul. He wanted to give her something back. But he knew there was no way she was ready for that from him.

  “You don’t get jealous.”

  “Well, I do now.”

  She slid up and her mouth just barely touched his chin. She kissed it. “I didn’t expect to ever tell you.”

  He took her chin in his hand and stared hard into her eyes. “I’m glad you did.”

  “No one can be glad to hear that.”

  “No. But I’m glad to be the person you chose to tell. The person who is here with you now.” Her eyebrows shifted down. He was confusing her. She didn’t know what to make of his statement, and he couldn’t let go of her stare.

  She shifted her legs until she was straddling him. His stupid, immature dick missed the memo that said this was a very serious and heartfelt conversation. His dick had no business reacting on such a basic level when it started to harden, and he could not pry his eyes off her as she squirmed around. No. Not now. He was here to hold her. To care for Allison. Not…

  Unexpectedly, she began kissing his mouth. Her kiss was soft and sweet as she cupped his face. She touched his chin, and outlined his mouth. He finally let his lips fall open when the very tip of her tongue oh-so-softly licked the seam of his mouth as if asking to gain entrance. He groaned as he shifted his arms before bringing her closer and tighter to his chest.

  She seemed to like it. Her body was over his and she was kissing him. He was shocked, and did not expect that. Not after what she said in this room; although there seemed to be something tender and almost needy in her touch.

  He just barely separated their mouths and held her face so he could look into her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” She slowly slid off his chest until she was upright, and sitting on him. She tugged her shirt up and over her head. Her hands sought his and she pushed it towards his neck, where he grabbed his shirt and took it off. She followed the outline of the bike tattoo with one finger. “Where did you get this done?”

  “New Mexico. Every year I went back for a little more. Same guy. Took almost four years.”

  “You’ve lived a very different life than I have,” she said, staring at her hand and not at his gaze, which was intense on her.

  “I know we have.”

  “We don’t match.”

  “Not at all.”

  She was biting her lip. Her eyes were dry and she seemed unsure how to say something. “I—I feel completely frumpy and uncool around you.”

  “I feel completely boorish and uneducated with you.”

  Her eyes sought his. He shrugged and smiled with chagrin. “I don’t want you to feel that way with me. I find you interesting and you’re the only one who can verbally spar with me in a way that I consider even remotely engaging.”

  “I don’t want you to feel uncool with me,” he countered.

  “And frumpy,” she added.

  He shook his head and ran his hand over her bra strap as he spoke, “I only wish you saw what I see when I look at you. I see every attractive, sexy attribute I could want in a woman. Inside and out.”

  “I don’t know why I want you here. It confuses me.”

  “Good, because I’m confused why I want to be here.
”

  “But you want to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even after… this?”

  His heart squeezed at her unsure, soft statement as her gaze skittered off in all different directions. “I want to be here even more because of this. I can’t stand to know you’re hurting.”

  “You can’t stop it.”

  He shrugged. “But I can understand it. And I can be here.”

  She scoffed. “For how long, Shane? How long before you’re off on one of those infamous bike trips? Wait. Are you part of a motorcycle gang or anything?”

  “If I am, are you done with me?”

  Her eyes grew big and fearful as she visibly swallowed. “Uh. I don’t know. It would scare me.”

  He smiled. “No. I’m not. I’m not a joiner of anything. Especially, gangs. I have friends who are in them though. I have friends in rival gangs actually. Some you would probably turn your nose up at, but they’d lay down their lives for me if I asked.”

  Her nose crinkled up. “You’re not… doing anything that would give you need to ask, are you?”

  “No. No drugs. No crimes. I simply like to take off. I know a lot of people and stay with them sometimes. I drink. I won’t lie about it. I go off and live in ways I’m sure you’d probably disapprove of. But I don’t do anything that’s particularly dangerous or illegal.”

  “There are rumors…”

  “I won’t hurt you, Allison,” he said softly as he brushed through the ends of her hair. For the first time, perhaps in his whole life, he was sure of that one thing.

  She frowned and shook her head. “I didn’t say you would.”

  “You want to know if I’m going to disappear someday, or be hauled away to jail. I won’t be.”

  “You do get how epically mismatched we are.”

  “I get that.” He nodded and she nodded back. He had no idea where that left them. But when she slid her hands up his chest and leaned her head down, a jolt of joy traveled over his skin at the sensation of her silky tongue on his chest.