Always and Forever

by Soraya Lane

  She wiped away the tears that were pouring down her cheeks. “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “I’m not going to pretend like I did the wrong thing, because I didn’t. I married you. I love you. What the hell did you want me to do? Did you honestly think that I was going to choose a baby I’d never met over my wife? That I’d want to raise a baby alone without you? Haven’t we already had this conversation?” He folded his arms across his chest, shook his head. “I lost something too that day, Lisa. I lost our baby, in case you’ve forgotten. I was his goddamn dad! But I was so damn happy that I still had you, and I wish you were more damn grateful that you’re alive. Because I lived the flipside of that when I lost my mom, and I don’t ever want to live through that again.”

  “Fuck you,” she muttered, hating him for being so honest, for speaking the truth. “I am grateful that I’m alive, but you weren’t the one with a child growing inside of you. I know you lost your mom— I can’t imagine what that must have been like, but I can’t think about anything other than what I lost right now. You won’t ever understand. And if you’d loved him like I did . . .”

  “If you hadn’t shut me out since it happened, then maybe I would understand! And don’t you dare try to tell me I didn’t love him, because I did. That’s bullshit.”

  “I’m grieving, Matt. How can you not see that? Just because he wasn’t born doesn’t mean that it hurts any less. I want a family, and I’m never going to have one. And it makes me a shitty wife because I can’t ever give you a family either.”

  “For Christ’s sake! There are plenty of babies out there in the world we could adopt, and then there’s surrogacy and fostering. Why won’t you even talk to me about all that?”

  “Stop!” she yelled at him. “I don’t want to adopt. I don’t want another baby. I want my baby! You can’t just fix this, Matt. You can’t just offer me another baby and give me a pat on the head and think everything’s going to be okay! Don’t you dare mention adoption again!”

  “You know what? I wish we had our baby, too. Every goddamn day I wonder what he would have looked like. Did you even know that I still carry our scan photo in my wallet? That I think about him?”

  Lisa gulped, eyes burning, hands shaking.

  “No, of course you don’t,” Matt yelled. “Because you’ve been acting like you’re the only one who’s lost something.”

  Matt turned to go, then stormed back toward her.

  “You want to know the difference?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice. “I can live with what happened because I still have you. But don’t you dare act like I don’t care or like I didn’t want our child.”

  Lisa sucked back air, gulped it down, felt like she was going to be sick. Her entire body was shaking, bile rising in her throat. She frantically swallowed it down.

  “I thought bringing you here would help, that we could talk and move on,” Matt told her, his voice quiet now. He shook his head, his gaze impossibly sad. “I’ve been so scared of losing you, but it’s like the good parts of you left me anyway the day you were wheeled into that operating room. And I’m not talking about the parts of you that’ve stopped you from being a mom.”

  Her heart ached. Every part of her body seemed to be screaming out, telling her to throw her arms around him and say sorry, but she couldn’t. She was frozen solid to the spot.

  “I wanted you to fight,” Lisa whispered. “I just wanted you to demand a way to save our baby.”

  “I was too damn busy trying to save you instead,” he ground out, turning away this time and not looking back.

  Lisa’s hands were shaking violently now, her lips were trembling, tears were still dripping down her cheeks, and she fell, dropped to her knees. She was powerless to move, to do anything but collapse and let silent screams fight to be heard as she broke down and watched her husband walk away.

  Maybe it was what she’d wanted, to blame him and push him away. To make him feel her hurt. Only now she’d done it, she didn’t feel any better. She’d been so self-involved, so lost in her own thoughts and unable to see anything else but her own pain, but Matt wasn’t wrong. Not about everything. Maybe not about anything.

  She felt as bad as she had that day her baby had been taken from her. Because if she didn’t have her baby and she didn’t have Matt either, then what was she left with?

  16.

  Matt turned on the faucet and stripped off his clothes. He stood naked in front of the vanity, waiting for the water in the shower to go hot. He stared into the mirror, into eyes that didn’t look like his anymore. What had he done? Why had he exploded like that? Why couldn’t he have just kept his shit together, let her vent, then tried to pick up the pieces?

  Instead, he’d said everything he’d been trying so hard to keep in.

  He braced his hands on either side of the ceramic bowl, wondering if he should shave, wondering . . . He stopped thinking and turned to step into the shower, letting the hot water blast over his body. The run had done him good, cleared his head and made him just focus on the pounding of his shoes with every step he made. And then he’d seen Lisa and everything had crashed around him. He’d known it was coming, that one day she was going to get it all out, all the things that were trapped inside of her, but he hadn’t expected that. It was like she hated him and it scared the hell out of him.

  He ran his fingers through his hair, soaked it through and reached for the shampoo bottle. He washed it, rinsed it out, tried to stop thinking . . . A sob escaped from his mouth, an animal-like, guttural sound that he couldn’t stop. His entire body shuddered, the air choking in his lungs, the pain so real it was like a knife to his stomach, twisting and turning. Stabbing deep.

  He’d kept it in for so long, been so determined that he’d be able to save her, that he wouldn’t lose her just like he’d lost his mom, but he couldn’t. Because he’d lost Lisa, too, just in a different way. He’d been so sure coming to Napa would change things, but the way she’d looked at him before . . . It was like they were already a lost cause.

  “Fuck!” he cursed, trying to stop crying, trying to stop the sobs that kept shattering his body.

  Matt dropped, slid against the tiled wall of the shower and slumped on the floor. Water slid around him, ran down his face and into his mouth as he sobbed. The shudders had stopped, replaced by a steady stream of tears that fell from him like they’d been waiting a lifetime to be shed.

  He’d lost his mom to cancer, memories that he’d buried with everything else he’d been through all those years ago; then his wife had gotten cancer, then his baby had been killed to save her . . . The tears wouldn’t stop, the burning in his throat almost impossible to bear.

  “Matt?”

  “Shit,” he swore, trying to get a hold on himself, wanting to pull himself up but feeling like he didn’t have any strength left.

  “Matt?” Lisa’s voice was louder now, echoing out.

  He sniffed, wiped at his face, tried to get it together.

  “Matt!” Lisa ran to him across the bathroom. “Matt!”

  When he saw her through the foggy glass, his eyes meeting hers, he lost it again. Matt hated himself for being so weak, for crying in front of his wife, but he’d lost all ability to pull it together.

  It took her only seconds to fling the glass shower door open and drop in front of him, arms tight around him as she cradled his head to her chest. She was still wearing her dress, the one she’d been sunbathing in, but she didn’t seem to give a damn and neither did he.

  “I’m sorry,” he heard her whisper as she held him. “I’m so sorry.”

  Matt moved, put his legs out straight so Lisa could straddle him. She never let go of him, held him and rocked his head like he was a baby she was trying to comfort.

  “I’m sorry too,” he managed to say once he’d started to get a hold on his emotions.

  “Shhh, it’s fine,” she said, her wet hair stuck to his face.

  “I shouldn’t have said those things . . .” he started.

>   “No,” she muttered. “We both needed to get it all out.”

  Matt knew he shouldn’t feel guilty, but he did. He wanted to be there for her, didn’t want her to see his pain, but there was only so long he could hold it all in. He cleared his throat and sat up a bit, arms around her so he could move her with him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, wiping at his face now that he’d managed to pull himself together.

  “It’s about time you had a damn good cry,” she said in a low voice. “All this time I just thought you didn’t care like I did.”

  Matt listened to her words, hated that he’d done the same thing that he’d despised so much about his dad all those years ago. Seeing his father stand stoically, like everything was okay, had hurt him as much as seeing his mom suffer and then die. But he got it now: everyone coped differently. But knowing that wasn’t about to save his marriage.

  “I don’t know if I can be here,” Lisa confessed, pulling back and leaning against the glass.

  “I know,” he replied, watching her, thinking how damn beautiful she was sitting there all wet.

  Lisa gave him a small smile, but it was enough to make a difference to him. They were both miserable, both suffering, but sitting here with her in the shower, he could almost pretend like they were going to be okay.

  “You’re wet,” he said, stating the obvious.

  Lisa gave a small laugh and held up her arms, attempting to pull her dress over her head. Only it was completely plastered to her body, and she didn’t have any luck.

  “Here,” he said, helping and managing to peel the fabric off her skin. He tugged until it finally came off, and then she was sitting in her underwear, legs still connected with his.

  They stared at one another. Matt wanted her. The only thing he was sure of right now was that he wanted his wife, wanted to be distracted by her body so he could forget about all the shit they’d said, all the crap they’d been through.

  “You look good wet,” he said, hesitating before leaning forward and cupping the back of her head, softly kissing her.

  Lisa moaned and he kissed her again, the water falling between them and around them from the faucet above.

  “So do you,” she whispered back, reaching for him, pulling him close, mouth covering his.

  Lisa wrapped her arms tight around him and he kissed her some more, ran his hands through her tangled wet hair. He skimmed his hands down her body, undid her bra, cupped her breasts and groaned as she brushed her wet lips back and forth over his. She reached for him, pulled herself up and onto his lap again, hair catching on his damp skin, her hands on his face as she rose above him, lips still locked.

  “Lisa . . .” he started.

  “Make me forget, Matty. Just make me forget,” she begged, voice whisper-quiet.

  He could do that. He hadn’t been able to do much for her, but this he could do.

  Lisa kept her fingers interlinked with Matt’s as they walked barefoot across the grass. There had been a wedding that day, and the fairy lights that had been strung up through the vines closest to the restaurant were glowing and casting a twinkling web around them. It only made her nostalgia worse, the feeling of intense suffocation that kept coming over her in waves, but she was trying so hard to forget their fight, the hurtful things they’d said to each that were so painful but so truthful at the same time.

  “It feels like only yesterday,” she said.

  “I know.” Matt pulled her closer and she let him. “It was a great day.”

  The sky was inky dark now and Lisa tipped her head back to look up at it. “I love it here,” she confessed. “I always thought that if we could move anywhere in the world, I’d choose right here. A house overlooking a vineyard, so I could open the windows each morning and watch our kids run across the grass, filthy dirty and having the time of their lives.”

  “We still can,” he said firmly. “We can still do all those things; you know we can.”

  “What I wanted hasn’t changed—that’s the problem,” she told him. “And no amount of pretending that you have a solution is going to change that.”

  “So you do want to move or you don’t?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused. “Because I’m perfectly happy where we live. It’s just the whole lifestyle thing here that I love the idea of.”

  “I want what I can’t have,” she said bitterly. “I wish I could get past it, but I can’t. And it wouldn’t matter where the hell we were living; that wouldn’t change.”

  “It will,” Matt said, stopping and staring down at her. “I know it will.”

  “Don’t tell me to give it time,” she muttered. “Because I seriously doubt time alone is going to heal me.”

  “Never,” he said, a harshness to his tone that surprised her. “Because I heard that a million times after my mom died and it’s bullshit. You learn to live with it, but it never gets easier.”

  Lisa watched him, looked into his eyes and saw a pain there she hadn’t recognized before, or maybe she just hadn’t known what she was looking for.

  “You’ve never really talked about your mom, not properly,” Lisa said.

  “Because it’s something I’d rather not talk about,” he said gruffly, starting to walk again.

  She stayed still, waited for him to stop when he realized she wasn’t following.

  “Why don’t we ever talk about it? Why have we just cruised through the past ten years like everything was perfectly fine?”

  “Maybe because it has been fine.” Matt had turned, was looking back at her now. He slowly started to walk toward her. “We’ve been happy. What was there to dwell on?”

  “Talk to me about her, about what you went through,” Lisa said, needing to know. “Maybe I was too immature in the beginning to understand, but I need to know. I need to know what happened and how you felt. What it did to you. Why everyone acts like I saved you.”

  “Lisa, don’t push me on this. I buried it all a hell of a long time ago.”

  “Like you’re trying to make me bury this? Acting like adopting a new baby will make me forget? Like that will make me feel less guilty for robbing you of being a biological father?”

  Matt shook his head, fists clenched at his sides. “Don’t throw words around like that.”

  Lisa wrapped her arms around herself. Things were going from bad to worse again. But the hurtful things they’d said earlier couldn’t just be erased, just like what had happened to her couldn’t be forgotten. Their moment of closeness in the shower seemed like a lifetime ago.

  She started to walk, stopping when she came to a table placed amongst the vines, surrounded by twinkling fairy lights that made the ones she’d been smiling over earlier look insignificant. “Oh . . . my . . . god,” she whispered, hardly able to expel the words, each one coming out slowly.

  “It’s the exact same place we were married, the same place we had that bottle of champagne, too,” Matt told her, following not far behind her. “I wanted to do something to surprise you.”

  “You organized this today?” she choked out, looking from the table back to him again.

  “Before we even arrived,” he told her, hands thrust into his jeans pockets now as she turned to look at him again. “My lame attempt at doing something romantic, and I can see that I’ve screwed up again.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She wished it was enough, that there weren’t so many thoughts running through her head, that they didn’t have so many issues to work through. But she couldn’t deal with this.

  “Is it the wrong thing?” His voice was gruff and starting to choke up, but she didn’t want to look at him again, her eyes stuck on the beautiful table now and the waiter making his way toward them, a smile on his face that should have been replicated on hers.

  “Matt, I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.

  He came up behind her. She heard him but still didn’t turn, even as his hands closed over her shoulders.

  “Tell me this is enough, that we can get past this,” h
e said into her ear. “Tell me we can forget all those things we said.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, finally spinning so she was facing him. She fisted her palms, twisted in his arms and pressed them to his chest. “I can’t do this, Matt.”

  “Can’t do what?” he asked.

  “This. Us,” she whispered. “I hate the person I’ve become. I need . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Just tell me what to do.”

  “Let me go,” she said, unable to disguise the sorrow in her voice. “Please,” she begged, “just let me go.”

  Matt stared at her and she looked back at him, blinking through her tears. “I’ll tell the waiter we’re not staying for dinner then.”

  “No, Matt, I mean I need to go,” she said, finding a strength she didn’t even know she had. Matt had been her love, her life, for so long. “I need to be alone for a while, away from you.”

  “You’re breaking up with me? You’re calling time out on our marriage?” he asked.

  She nodded, biting down hard on her bottom lip. Sadness engulfed her, but she knew she’d said the right thing, that there was no way she was going to get past how she was feeling by not being honest.

  “Lisa, come on. All because I keep bringing up adoption? Because I won’t talk about the shit I went through after my mom died?”

  “No,” she said, knowing that he was angry and lashing out, that he hadn’t been expecting her to say she wanted out. “It’s everything that’s happened; it’s me needing to spend some time alone and find my way back. It’s me dealing with the person I’ve become.” And hating her. She couldn’t say that to him out aloud, but it was true. She didn’t want to be this person but she had no idea how to get the old Lisa back.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked, shaking his head.

  “No,” she admitted. “But I think it’s for the best. I’ll find my own way out of here in the morning.”

  “Fuck that,” Matt swore.

  “Please Matt, just let me go.”

  “Fine,” he ground out. “I’ll leave for home now. If you change your mind, pack your stuff and meet me at the car. Otherwise, I’m getting the hell out of here.”