by Watson, Gina
They drove back to the office in silence. When Dan Archer entered the office later that afternoon, Cash’s eyes went wide. “Please tell me you have a lead.”
“I’ve stumbled upon a promising connection in Hattiesburg.”
“Hattiesburg,” Cash echoed.
Cash wasn’t crazy about Dan but if he could help him find Isa, he’d send him a fucking yearly holiday card. Cash took the piece of paper that Dan offered. HSI Foundation Testing and Consulting. Cash stood and kissed Dan square on the mouth, and then he rushed out the door leaving a dumbfounded Mr. Archer asking Camp what the hell had just happened.
Cash drove the two and a half hours to Hattiesburg uncommonly clear-headed. When he reached the outskirts of town, he put HSI’s address into his GPS. He didn’t really have a plan, just to connect with Isa and convince her to come back. He thought that sounded too easy, but he had to start with something.
Cash drove to the building that housed HSI. His luck was holding—Isa’s black Camaro was parked in the lot.
He walked through the door, and a scrawny receptionist with a high-pitched voice greeted him.
“May I get you coffee or water?” she added.
“No. I have a meeting with Isabela Petrovich.”
After doing the standard rove of his body from head to toe, she smiled and said, “Right this way.”
The offices were made of glass. He spotted Isa before she saw him.
Two men were seated at her desk. The receptionist stuck her head into the doorway and said, “Miss Petrovich? Mr. uh…” She looked back to Cash.
“She knows.”
The receptionist shrugged and bounced away, popping her gum. Cash would bet money Isa couldn’t stand the girl. He stood in the hallway while Isa finished up her meeting. Occasionally she would eye him nervously.
When the men exited her office, Isa stood. Cash walked inside. “Isa.” He bent and kissed her chastely on the cheek.
“Did you read my letter?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Her eyes searched his. He didn’t mind. He wanted her to see, to know, what he was feeling.
Cash sat in a chair and motioned for her to take the other one. “God, Isa.” He choked back a sob. “I’m sorry. Sorry for everything.” Tears flooded his eyes but he kept them in check. “You gave birth to our son.”
She took her purse out of her desk drawer and tugged his arm. “Let’s go.” Cash didn’t argue. He stood and let her lead him out. She put him in her car and drove to an apartment building.
Cash followed her up the steps. Once inside her apartment, she set him at the combined breakfast-dining table and started the kettle for tea. He relaxed a bit, not quite smiling—trust Isa to heat water the old-fashioned way rather than using the microwave.
She dropped peppermint teabags into mugs and fussed around while she waited for the water to heat. She carried their tea to the table and joined him. Then Isa put her hands over his.
“Cash, you saw the grave.”
He heard her say something, but he couldn’t get his body to respond.
“Talk to me please.”
She wanted him to talk, but he couldn’t. The pain was too new. Too fresh. Too big.
“If you won’t talk, then I’ll talk to you.” She squeezed his fingers. “When I found out I was pregnant, I was completely freaked out. I had just graduated and had my first job. You had left. I was frantic. But then I started to think about what it meant to have a child, and I became so unbelievably happy. I would finally have someone I could love who’d love me back. We’d be a family of two. We’d have that bond, that connection, the one where no matter what happens, no matter what you do, if you can just get back home, everything will be fine.”
She inhaled a ragged breath, and Cash lifted his head. Searched her face.
“But I didn’t get any of that.” Huge tears spilled from her eyes. She wiped them away with her fingertips.
Silence hung between them. Each breath was torture. Then she said, “I painted his room blue.”
The harsh whisper of her last words brought him around. The haunting pain in her eyes had Cash flinching.
“I painted it blue.”
The tears fell nonstop, and she just sat there, not blinking.
“Isa?”
She didn’t move. Cash lifted her from the chair and took her to the bedroom. He stripped them both bare, and they climbed into bed.
“You painted his room blue?”
“I used a choo choo train theme.”
Cash knew from Camp that she hadn’t spoken about this to anyone. Nothing about their son. Nothing about his death. But all the restrained emotion was now pouring out. Isa’s voice was scratchy, her cheeks pale, her body quivering. He held her tight.
“I bought a rug shaped like a caboose and a lamp that had a train that went around on a track.”
Cash kissed her lips. “Did you give him a name?”
Isa blinked. “I did, but I couldn’t use it on the headstone.” She grabbed his hand. “I couldn’t do that, Cash.”
He kissed her again. “Why not?” he whispered. He guessed he wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing a name on the stone either.
“Because I named him Markos, after my father, and the thought of so much loss around me…” Her voice strained as she swallowed down a sob. “… I couldn’t bear it. So on the stone I wrote baby boy.”
Cash kissed her shoulder, offering comfort. Seeking it. “I like baby boy. I like the message on the stone too.”
Isa nodded and more tears fell. Cash kissed them away. He kissed down her neck and to her breast, taking the taut nipple into his mouth and grazing lightly with his teeth. He moved over to the other nipple and suckled tenderly. Then he nuzzled between her breasts, just holding her. They listened to the sounds outside the apartment, the cars driving along the street and the faint murmurs of voices. He caught the sound of a clock ticking somewhere in the apartment, but he also heard, or maybe felt, Isa’s heart beating.
She’d been through so much alone. He closed his eyes. And he’d missed so much, the good and the bad. He needed…
Would she understand what he needed? That he needed to touch her, to love her? To celebrate life with her at the same time he mourned their child?
He kissed his way down her body, dipping his tongue into her navel. When he reached the juncture of her thighs, Cash spread her legs, pinning her hips back and into the mattress. He rubbed his whiskers and his tongue along her seam, using a thrusting motion. Isa cried out his name. He nipped at her clit with his teeth and rolled the bud between his lips. Isa moaned. He spread her pussy lips with his fingers and drove his tongue as deep as it would go. Isa’s hips came up, and she squeezed his head between her legs. Cash pushed her legs open with his hands and held her knees back as he lapped up her juices.
“Cash, please.”
“Please what, baby?”
“Please… I need you inside me.”
He set her legs down and used his knees to push between her thighs.
He sensed her need, knew she needed to feel alive, that she needed him to hold her, to touch her inside and out—knew that’s what he needed—and so he grasped her waist and pulled her down aggressively so that her ass and sex slammed into his groin. “How do you want it?”
“Hard. Rough. Make the pain go away.”
Cash’s breath caught and he had to bite back a cry. He tipped his head against hers until he could breathe again, and then he pushed a pillow under Isa’s ass so her entrance was angled up toward his waiting cock. He grasped her hips tight, aligned the tip of his dick with her entrance, and slammed into her hard. Isa screamed his name.
“Harder, baby?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He pulled out and rammed her again with force. “Again?”
“Yes.” Isa cried through the tears.
Cash pulled all the way out and pressed in again. Isa was weeping, and he couldn’t take it. He leaned forward and, sliding his
hands around her back, he cradled her and pulled her up to straddle his legs. He pumped into her with moderate force and held her close to his chest. He whispered into her ear, “Isa, I love you. I want you to marry me.” Tears fell from his eyes, from hers, and rolled down their bodies and to the sheets. He needed to know that he could spend the rest of his life giving back everything she’d given to him. It would take him a lifetime. “Please marry me.”
No other words were spoken. They made love long into the night and fell asleep entangled with one another.
9
When she awoke, Isa remembered the words Cash had whispered into her ear. Marry me. Isa wanted nothing more than to marry Cash and have his baby, but she only wanted it if she knew he wouldn’t leave her again. Life would get harder, it always did, and where would she be if he abandoned not only her, but his child? There was no way to be certain that he’d stay this time and therefore, no way she could accept his proposal. Oh God! She didn’t know how to tell him no. Isa didn’t want to tell Cash she didn’t trust him to be her husband. He’d been hurt enough by his father and others who didn’t trust him. She felt sick just thinking about what she had to do, so she padded to the bathroom. Morning sickness had arrived.
“Isa?”
“Don’t come in here.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Cash walked into the bathroom just as she vomited. She sagged down to the floor and leaned against the wall. Cash sat next to her on the floor and wiped her face with a cool cloth he grabbed from the sink.
“Baby, are you sick?” He placed his hand to her forehead. “You don’t feel feverish.”
“I think it was something I ate.”
Cash frowned. “Do you want a bath?”
“A bath sounds nice.” She smiled. A bath sounded like heaven.
Cash ran the bath and scented the water with Isa’s perfume. She’d explained to him when they first met that her mother used to do that. The apartment-sized tub was too small to accommodate them both, so he helped her step in and kept her company while she bathed. She smiled at him, liking his attentiveness.
He crossed his arms and smirked. “Like seeing me as your personal slave, do you?” She nodded. He flicked water toward her face. “So when are you going to marry me?”
Her smile faded. Of course he’d want to talk about it now. She should have been prepared. “I think we should wait.”
“Wait! What on earth are we waiting for?”
“Cash, I can’t marry you.”
Isa stood and reached for a towel. As she stepped out of the tub, Cash focused on the feather-light marks on her stomach that had once been home to their child. The marks were barely noticeable, but he saw. And his fingers reached out to trace them.
“So we should wait and then you’ll marry me, or you won’t marry me period?”
Isa took a deep breath. “I won’t marry you period.”
Cash sat back on his heels. “Why?”
“Don’t do this, don’t ask. I love you and I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t marry you. Let’s just leave it at that.” She dried her body, then hung the towel on the back of the door. She walked to her closet and dressed in faded jeans and a soft white T-shirt. Cash was still on the floor in the bathroom.
“I need some space.”
“I get it, Isa.”
Cash’s low raspy voice drifted on the air. He stood and walked to his clothes on the floor. His steps were slow, his movements jerky. “I wouldn’t marry me either. The things I’ve done to you… All I can do is apologize.” He pulled his shirt over his head. “If you ever need anything, even if it’s years from now, you know all you have to do is call.” He kissed her forehead, hugged her tight, then they broke apart.
“Cash, can I give you a lift?”
“No, I’ll manage.” He opened the door and was gone.
≈
Cash drove the two and a half hours to Whiskey Cove in silence. When he returned to Camp’s house, he went straight to his bed and plopped down face first, still dressed.
Camp walked into the bedroom. “Did you find her?”
“I found her.”
“What happened?”
Cash rolled over. “What happened was I proposed and she said no.”
“You proposed?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe she’s just not ready.”
“I asked her that.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said she wouldn’t marry me. Not ever.” A killer headache was coming on so Cash put his forearm over his eyes and shut out the world.
10
The next week Isa was plagued with all sorts of weird pregnancy cravings. She spent the mornings throwing up her guts, and by lunchtime she’d be starving. On Wednesday, when the starving part kicked in, she decided to take a look at the offerings of the food truck parked across the street.
Several construction workers were seated at the tables that surrounded the truck. Isa ordered a cheeseburger. While she waited, she noticed a preadolescent boy with light eyes and dark hair clearing the tables. She wondered why he wasn’t in school. Where were his parents? She offered a greeting. “Hey, you eat here much?”
The boy nodded at Isa. “Yeah, I’ve had it all. That’s my mom.” He indicated the woman in the kitchen of the truck with a head nod.
“That works out good for you.”
“Not really.” With one finger he traced a gouge in the wooden table.
Isa cocked her head and considered his response. “It’s not good for you? Don’t you get to eat for free?”
“Yeah, but I ate free at school and didn’t have to work.”
“You work here?”
“Yeah, I hafta help my mom.”
“So what about school?”
The boy shrugged. “What about it?”
His mom yelled from the kitchen, “Get off that damned table and get in here and help me!”
Isa watched as the boy jumped up into the food truck and dropped a basket into the fryer. His mother told him she was going to take a break.
Isa watched his mother walk around to the back of the trailer that was butted up against the garbage alley. When Isa took a few steps back, she saw the woman pinned up against the truck while she and one of the construction workers went at it.
She looked around to see if there were any witnesses. There weren’t. She walked to the counter to get her burger from the boy. “Hey, thanks, kiddo. So what does your dad do?”
The kid looked up at Isa. “I don’t have a father. My mom fucks around. That’s how she got stuck with me.” His gaze swept in the direction of the back of the trailer.
Another customer walked up, and the kid took the order. Isa took her burger back to the office and threw it in the trash. Instead of eating lunch, she thought she’d throw up.
She wondered what would become of the boy. Would things have been different if he’d had a father? Isa wasn’t clear on that line of thinking because she’d had no parents, mother or father, to speak of, and she’d still made her life work.
She didn’t know why some people seemed to be born lucky while others struggled. Cash had always been lucky. He’d played Russian roulette with life and walked away again and again. Isa hoped the baby in her belly would be as lucky as Cash. She patted the still slim spot where she imagined he was cradled.
“I hope you’ll be just like him, that you’ll be lucky and loving and…”
It suddenly dawned on Isa that her child would have no father to emulate, no man to compare himself to, because she’d been too selfish to take a chance. She patted her belly again. And she looked across the street. She couldn’t see the boy anymore, but she’d seen enough. She couldn’t keep her baby from his or her father because of her insecurities. She didn’t have to marry Cash, but she would tell him about the baby. And then she thought of the St. Martin clan. Even if Cash were to leave, their child would always have Camp, Logan, Cory, Cal, Clay, and Clara. How wonderful to have so many pe
ople to love you when you hadn’t even been born yet.
Isa had made a serious mistake. She needed to go home.
She got back to Baton Rouge on Saturday. On Sunday morning she got up and drove to the cemetery. She planned to speak to Cash on Monday.
She parked under a shade tree and picked up the flowers from the front seat. She always followed the same pattern, walking past other gravestones, honoring not only her child but those who surrounded him. She was happy with his resting place. It was peaceful here with the old oaks. Their arms created a canopy of shade on even the hottest of days.
Isa found Cash sitting on a stone bench next to the grave. He held a teddy bear in his hands, and she could hear the nuances of his low voice, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She felt like an intruder on his very private moment, so she turned to walk away.
He called her name.
She turned to him.
He stood and walked to her. “Are you here to visit?”
“Yeah.” Isa held up the flowers. Cash grasped her free hand and led them back to the grave. He lowered his teddy bear and she, her flowers. They stood long moments in silence. When a car horn honked on an unseen road behind them, Cash reached for her hand and they turned away, strolling arm in arm under the canopy of trees.
“Dad and Camp came after me in Las Vegas. They told me what you said, that you stood up to Dad on my behalf. You knew I’d changed, and you made them realize it too. I have, Isa. I’m not the boy I was years ago. But I did mess up again. Yet I came straight back for you. I know I told you I wouldn’t hurt you again and I meant that. I don’t expect you to forgive me again, but I wanted you to know the changes you observed in me were all because of you. You were there with me at every bender. You were there when I woke up. Every damned time. It was your face always that came to me. During detox, I survived because of this.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her the love letter she’d given him when she gave him the bracelet he still wore. “And this.” He handed her the picture his sister had taken of them the Christmas they’d gifted Clara with a digital camera. Both items were dog-eared and worn.
