by Jill Shalvis
“Yes. In a few days,” Lanie said. “You didn’t know?”
River closed her eyes as if pained. “I think he might’ve tried to tell me this morning, but I screwed up. I’ve wasted so much time and now he’s leaving to go back to hell. I’m so confused.”
“Welcome to the club.”
River blew out a sigh and stared at the journal with her name on it. “Can you peek and tell me how bad it is?”
Lanie cautiously opened the journal and froze.
“Oh God, it is nude pics.”
“No. No, it’s okay,” Lanie said and slid an arm around River because she was suddenly looking ill. “No, I mean really. It’s not like that,” she said.
“So what is it like?”
“Well . . .” She was having a hard time believing her own eyes. “He appears to have written about each of us, meticulously and . . . with love.”
River stared at her and then grabbed the journal, opening it up to a random page dated about a year ago.
I’ve never met anyone as sweet and loving and caring as River. She’d give a perfect stranger the shirt off her back. Life hasn’t been kind to her, but you wouldn’t know it because she treats everyone who crosses her path with sweet generosity.
Including me.
The day I met her, I’d just screwed up at work and in life, big time. I was tired, frustrated, and scared. She served me lunch. I’d been sick and had just gotten off the phone with my doctor. My heart condition worsened and I didn’t know what to do with that shit news other than keep it to myself. It would’ve destroyed the people in my life and I was weak, far too weak to be strong for them.
Selfish.
But River’s the opposite of selfish. She sees me as funny and smart and on top of my world, none of which is true. But God, I love seeing myself through her eyes . . .
River looked up. “I don’t understand. He was sick? Did you know?”
Lanie shook her head, stunned. “He never said a word.” She was flipping through her book too. “It looks like he only says nice things about us all. Maybe . . . maybe he really did love us in his own sick way, the two-timing, polygamist asshat.” She pulled something else from the box. A picture of a pretty young woman wearing an apron with a popular grocery store chain logo on it. Her little badge read: Carrie, store clerk and world optimist.
Lanie turned the photo over. On the back was Kyle’s familiar scrawl: My next wife!
River stared at it. “Can you kill a dead man?” She looked into the now empty box.
No ring.
Lanie squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped it’d be here.”
Looking numb, River nodded and tried unsuccessfully to get to her feet. Lanie helped her. “You okay?”
“Yes,” River said. Clearly a big, fat lie.
Five minutes and yet another quick pee stop later, they walked silently out to the car. Lanie could tell River was hurt and angry but she had no idea how to make it better. When they were on the highway, Lanie’s place miles behind them, she tried in the only way she knew how. “I’m writing you a check.”
River turned from where she’d been staring out the window. “What?”
Lanie inhaled a deep breath. “I’m serious. I’m writing you a check. I’m writing all of you a check. We’re splitting the life insurance money.”
“Stop the car.”
Lanie glanced over. “What? Why?”
“Just stop the damn car!” River yelled.
Lanie jerked the car to the side of the road. “What’s wrong, are you sick—”
River wrenched the door open and stumbled out. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sick. And tired. I’m sick and tired of being a victim. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. And most of all, I’m sick and tired of pregnancy hormones that make me sick and tired and . . .”
“Crazy?” Lanie ventured, meaning only to tease her out of her mood.
“Yes!” River grabbed her ratty backpack and glared at Lanie with shimmering eyes. “You’re not writing me a check. I’m not some charity case.” She grimaced. “Okay, so maybe I am, but I don’t want to be!” She slammed the door and turned and started walking down the road.
Actually, it was more of a waddle, one hand holding the backpack, the other cradling her belly.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lanie drove forward to catch her, which took all of two seconds. An eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant woman moved at the pace of a sleepy snail. She rolled down the passenger window. “Get back in the car, River.”
“No. I’m taking the train back to Wildstone.”
“Are you kidding me? And what am I supposed to do?”
“Leave!”
“I can’t just leave you out here!”
“Sure, you can,” River said. “I’m absolving you from being responsible for me. You never asked for this headache and you certainly don’t want to be my friend now that you know who I am and what I did. And I get it. Believe me, I’d hate me too.”
“River—”
“I’m officially no longer your problem,” she said and kept walking. Slash waddling.
Lanie checked traffic—none—and inched her car forward. “Seriously, River. I’m not leaving you here. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You just use the long, skinny pedal on the right. It’s called the gas.”
Lanie rolled her eyes, pulled the car over behind the stubborn pregnant chick, and parked. She started to get out of the car, but there was a very clear NO PARKING sign on the side of the road.
Terrific.
River left the road and walked along the edge of a parking lot toward a dive bar called Double Down Saloon. Lanie looked at the time. Four o’clock. The bar would be open. Dammit. She pulled in and parked just as River got to the door. Lanie turned off the engine and answered an incoming call from Mark.
“How’s it going?” his deep baritone asked, just the sound of him providing a sense of comfort that she told herself she didn’t need.
“Great,” she said. “Really great. Fantastic. Awesome.”
He paused. “I’m going to ask that again. How’s it going?”
How did he do that? Read her from a hundred miles away? “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said, eyes on River as the bar door shut behind her. “I’ve got to go.”
“Just tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” Crazy for doing this, but okay. “I’ll see you later,” she said.
“Promise?”
Her heart did a happy little wiggle that should’ve set alarm bells off in her brain, but apparently her brain was on overload. “Promise.” She disconnected and went in after River.
RIVER CROUCHED IN the bar bathroom and threw up everything she’d eaten that day. Which had been an unfortunate lot. Her throat burned, her eyes watered, her back hurt like a bitch, and . . . she was exhausted. So fucking exhausted . . .
“Here.” Someone came in behind her and pressed a wad of damp paper towels in her hand.
Lanie. Of course.
“Go away,” she moaned miserably. “Please. I know you want to.”
“Actually . . .” Lanie pulled River’s loose, sweat-dampened hair back from her face and fastened it with something. “I’d like to. But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re . . .”
River arched a brow, daring her to say crazy.
Lanie wisely said nothing and helped her up.
Together they stood at the sink and stared at their reflection. Lanie’s hair was loose and a little wild. She’d clearly given River her own hair tie. River wasn’t pale as a ghost. She was positively green.
But there was something else, something River had never noticed before. They actually looked a bit alike. In fact, they could’ve been sisters. At this thought, her eyes filled again because she’d had many daydreams that they were sisters. That they were a real family.
But that wasn’t ever going to happen. She’d screwed that up, and even worse than
that, she and the baby were an everyday reminder to Lanie of how badly Kyle had hurt her. Lanie had paid enough, and as for River’s own problems, well, they were just that—her own problems. It was time, past time, to finally, once and for all, learn to stand on her own two feet.
“Think you can make it back to the car?” Lanie asked. “Or do you need a few minutes?”
She needed more than a few minutes. She needed about a year to hole up and process all of this, but she didn’t have a year. Given the way her body felt, she had a day or two at most to prove to herself and everyone else she was a grown-up.
“River?”
God help her, but she was going to lie to Lanie one more time. “I need a few minutes,” she said. “Alone.”
Lanie stared at her for a beat and then nodded. “I’ll be at the bar. You need a lemonade or a Coke, something with some sugar in it. I’ll get each of us a drink to go and wait for you.”
River nodded.
When Lanie left, River straightened and eyeballed herself in the mirror. “You’re doing the right thing,” she whispered.
And hoped it was true.
She sneaked out of the bathroom, but instead of going right down the hall to the bar, she went left and out the back door.
LANIE SAT AT the bar for ten minutes nursing her lemonade and watching the ice melt in River’s. Something was wrong. She could feel it and went back to the bathroom.
The empty bathroom.
“Dammit!”
Five minutes later she was at the train station, standing next to the tracks watching the Amtrak take off.
She’d run inside to find out where the train was going and if anyone had sold a ticket to a pregnant woman in the last ten minutes. The train was heading north to San Francisco with many stops along the route, Wildstone being one of them.
And yes, a pregnant woman had boarded.
Lanie had missed River by a minute, tops. Pissed, she went back to her car and followed the damn train.
It turned out the train was a lot slower than a car. Lanie followed it to make sure that River didn’t get off before Wildstone. The return trip took six hours instead of two and a half, and it was dark as sin and near midnight by the time Lanie got out of her car to watch the passengers unload at the Wildstone station.
There was only one.
Lanie blew out a relieved sigh and stepped forward.
Chapter 27
I can be spontaneous, but first I must carefully plan everything and imagine all that could go wrong.
At the sight of Lanie waiting for her, River sighed as she got off the train. She was exhausted, nauseous, starving, and still all kinds of crazy. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you kidding me?” Lanie asked. “You deserted me in a dive bar, sneaked onto a damn train when you’re sick as a dog, and you want to know what I’m doing here? Trying to look after your ungrateful ass, that’s what I’m doing here!”
River felt her eyes fill at that. “You think I’m ungrateful?”
Lanie tossed up her hands. “What else would you call making me climb out the bathroom window of that bar to follow your footsteps?”
River blinked. “You climbed out the bathroom window?”
Lanie dropped her arms and blinked. “You didn’t?”
“Hell, no. Do I look like I’d fit out that window? I could barely fit onto the train. I went out the back exit.”
Lanie stared at her for a beat and then let out a long breath. “Yeah. That would’ve been easier . . .” She sighed. “Why did you do it?”
“Because you deserve better than to be saddled with me,” River said.
“I’m not saddled with you. I chose to go on this trip, remember? But I can’t keep doing this, this see-saw thing we have going. I didn’t want to like you and then I did. And then you weren’t who you said you were and I didn’t like you again. And now . . .”
“You’re confused,” River said softly.
“Yeah, and honestly it was a lot easier to just hate you.”
“I get that,” River said. “I’d hate me too.”
“See?” Lanie asked. “But then you say stuff like that and I feel like Cruella de Vil kicking puppies.”
“Who?”
“Hell,” Lanie said with a grimace. “How is it that I’m only thirty and feel old?”
“Do I have to answer that?” River asked and then broke off with a startled groan as a pain ripped through her lower back.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Lanie said.
She’d been in damn pain all day, and it’d made her cranky as hell. River shook her head. “Just stop being nice to me.”
“Fine, then. Sit the fuck down before you fall down,” Lanie snapped. “See? That’s me being not nice, but bitchy as hell.”
River felt the tears coming and sniffled. “Well, you’re the nicest bitchy person I ever met,” she said soggily, swiping her nose on her sleeve.
“Just get in the damn car, River. Please.”
So River got in the car. Lanie had to help her. It was humiliating. Her body had become as cumbersome as navigating a wide load on a busy freeway, and she felt like she had an alien in her belly. But worse, far worse, was the silence between her and Lanie.
Lanie parked and turned off the engine. She turned to River in the dark interior of the car. “He didn’t deserve either of us,” she said quietly.
“No,” River agreed. “What are you going to do with his things?”
“I don’t want the box. It’s yours. That’s why I put it in the trunk.”
“If you give it to me, I’ll burn everything,” River said grimly, shifting her weight in the seat, trying to get comfortable. Which was impossible. “I’ll make a bonfire, toss his things in it, and then roast marshmallows over the remnants of his life. I’d go tap-dance on his grave if I didn’t weigh as much as a house.”
Lanie opened her door. “Come on.”
The night was warm and balmy. Lanie brought River through the winery and out the back door to the deck there. There was a fire pit and chairs. Beyond that was a hidden lake that River hadn’t ventured out to.
“Wait here,” Lanie said.
So River waited in the night, trying to ignore her unbearable back pain.
Lanie returned five minutes later and River went on pretending that she was fine, even managing a small smile through the pain.
Lanie squatted before the fire pit and began to build a fire. When it was roaring, she vanished again, returning with Kyle’s box.
River found a laugh on this shitty night, and together they tossed the contents of the box into the fire.
Lanie then pulled out the makings for s’mores—marshmallows, Nutella, and graham crackers—which she’d apparently confiscated from the winery. “With Nutella, ’cuz you can’t eat chocolate when you’re pregnant apparently, which, by the way, sucks golf balls.”
She was one hundred percent River’s hero. They still weren’t speaking much, but the silence was no longer seething with bad tempers.
Progress.
The next pain came so suddenly it stole River’s breath, and she bent over into herself. Vaguely she heard Lanie swear and run over, dropping to her knees at River’s side.
“What is it, River? A cramp? Are you going to be sick again?”
She literally couldn’t catch her breath enough to answer. The pain rolled over her, into her, through her, wrapping around her torso and squeezing like a vise. When it finally passed, she was shaken and sweating.
“Talk to me,” Lanie said tightly.
River realized they were holding hands and she was gripping Lanie’s hard enough to bruise. She forced herself to let go. “I’m fine.”
“Uh, you’re pretty far from fine.”
“I think . . . I think I might be having contractions.”
Lanie’s eyes widened. “For how long?”
“All day,” River admitted. “I think I’m in labor.”
“Now?”
“No, last week! J
esus,” she gasped, bending over to catch her breath. “Dr. Rodriguez and my birthing class didn’t tell me it was going to feel like I was being slowly murdered.”
Lanie leapt to her feet. “Okay. Okay, it’s going to be okay.” She turned in a circle and then stopped short. “You’re early, right?”
“Two weeks.”
“Maybe it’s false labor.”
River was gripped by another all-encompassing pain, and when she came out of it, Lanie looked upset.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have dragged you on the road trip. That was dumb. I should’ve left you here and—”
“I wanted to go.”
“But we fought. All that unhappiness made you go into labor.”
“Or maybe the baby’s just ready,” River managed.
Lanie nodded, clearly hoping that was it. “We need to get you to the hospital.” She gasped again, like it’d just occurred to her. “Oh my God, you’re going to have a baby!”
Strange as it was, the more panicked Lanie looked—and she looked very, very panicked—the calmer River felt. “Not yet,” she said. “The pains need to be closer together. I—”
The next contraction hit unexpectedly, insidiously squeezing her from the inside out so that she couldn’t do anything but cry out. It felt like it took forever, but when she could breathe again, she sucked in air like she’d just run a mile. “How long was that?”
Lanie looked worse than River felt. Flushed and damp with sweat, eyes filled with fear. “Maybe a minute.”
“No problem,” River said with only the smallest of doubts. “And like ten minutes from the previous one, right?”
“Also only a minute,” Lanie said. “This isn’t false labor.” She jumped back up and pointed at River. “Don’t move. I’m going for help.”
Lanie ran off into the night and River lay back with a short little laugh. Don’t move. As if she could. She was stuck in this lounger until the cows came home—or someone came along that was strong enough to hoist her out. And they were going to need a crane.
Another pain began from deep inside and she placed her hands on her belly and tried to breathe through it the way she’d been taught in the classes Cora had brought her to. In the middle of it, the baby kicked hard and she managed a smile.
