by Crowe, Liz
At one point, as he explained to Evan and Julie’s girls what the flowers were and why they were using them, he looked up and met Lila’s eyes. He gulped, remembering how close he’d come more than once, to losing everything he held dear. She smiled at him, nodded, reminding him all was well. Jack knelt down to meet Katie’s eyes and spoke to her. She took her little brother’s hand and brought him to the group gathered around Rob. They all wore shirts emblazoned with the emblem of a new soccer team. An expansion one Jack had put the money together for with the help of a downtown casino and two car companies. The little boys grabbed a couple of the distinctive black and red team soccer balls and raced around like maniacs.
Rob shook his head at his old friend’s ability to latch on to the oddest concept and give it life. He knew things were more than strained between Jack and Sara because of it. Jack spent many hours away from home, meeting with money people and with the Major League Soccer conference, convincing them to hand over the expansion franchise rights. For the moment, they had reached a détente. But Sara had lost weight and the haunted look in her eyes made Rob’s chest ache all over again, practically hearing Blake’s worried voice in his ear over his sister.
He gulped and handed Katie a handful of the aromatic, green, leafy flowers. She frowned at them, then up at him. “I’m mad at you Uncle Rob. Daddy tells me not to be. But I am.” He took her hand, letting the dried hops fall to the sand.
“I’m mad at me sometimes, too Katie.” Her lip quivered, and she swiped at the tears forming in her huge green eyes. He kept talking, distracting her as she moved slightly closer to him. “The thing is, I know your Uncle Blake isn’t mad at either of us. If anything, he’s glad. What happened to him was an accident. A terrible thing, but not a waste.” She reached out a trembling hand, touched his chest. Then sucked in a breath, nearly falling to the sand as a sob broke from her lips. Rob held her close, his heart crumbling as if there were anything left. He held up a hand to keep Jack and Sara back.
Katie’s brother Brandis had taken his boat and was wading out too deep, yelling and splashing, finding trouble where there wasn’t any, as usual. His father’s son. Rob smiled, then guided Katie’s hand to her boat. She’d stuck a picture in it, one of her and Blake when she was two at a birthday party on Sara’s old back patio. She was in her high chair, her small mouth wide open with laughter as Blake stared at her adoringly. The sum total of her relationship with the man who had worshipped her from the moment she had been born.
A hand settled on his shoulder as he held onto Katie and they watched the sun set on the small flotilla disappearing into the Lake Michigan gloom. He looked up and met Suzanne’s steady gaze. A tear slipped down her cheek and he stood and clutched her close absorbing her sobs into his newly healthy chest. So damn many people the man he loved left behind. So fucking unfair.
An unwelcome and familiar fury slammed into his forehead. But he shut his eyes, willing it away. He opened his eyes when Katie touched his cheek. “It’s okay Uncle Rob. Don’t be mad anymore. I won’t be, either.” He kissed her cheek, accepting a beer bottle from Jack.
He gripped Lila’s hand and held on to her as if his life depended on it. Because frankly, it did. He kissed her, whispered in her ear as everyone lifted their glasses, cheering Blake along. The beer was Rob’s gift to him. “Blake’s Brew” was his super-secret IPA recipe and had, in the last year, become one of the most popular bottled craft beers in the Midwest. His legacy. Rob sucked in a breath at the memory of that conversation.
“I’m sorry.” He said his voice surprisingly strong, and Lila nodded, her hand over her mouth, tears still drying on her cheeks.
She turned to him, put her arms around his waist shut out the crowd. “I know Rob. I am too.” Settling her face against his chest, she sighed. “Let him go. He wants us to.” He tilted her chin up.
“I will never let go, but I will let him move on.” He closed his eyes against a pain as bright as the day he woke to find himself alive, and Blake dead. “I love you. Marry me.”
The cool air chilled as the fire Jack had built snapped and crackled, lighting everyone’s faces.
Suddenly, arms encircled him, Sara, Suzanne, Maddie, all his friends. He sighed. “Good bye, Blake.” They all whispered.
Epilogue
One Month Later
Lila stared down at her hands, then out the window, and back down again, trying to quell the nervousness in her chest. The day was perfect - a classic Southeast Michigan summer, just touching seventy five degrees, a light breeze sending clouds scudding across the blue sky. She closed her eyes tight, wishing for the millionth time to have that day back. The day they’d lost him. She touched her swelling belly, absently stroking and loving the feel of new life under her hands. A tear slipped down her face. Funny how a person never seems to run out of tears.
“I can’t do this.” She whispered.
Sara turned from the window where she had been standing. Her green eyes, so like her brother’s, were hard, angry. Lila flinched, looked away. Sara knelt in front of her. “What are you talking about?”
Lila tried to pull her hands out of Sara’s grasp but the other woman wouldn’t let go. “This…this farce. He doesn’t want me. He thinks he has to or something, I don’t know. It’s…not right this way and you know it.”
Lila stood. Sara let go of her, but followed her to the large window overlooking the grassy area beside the old chapel. They’d thrown this thing together, but it looked perfect. Lila bit her lip and leaned into Sara when she put an arm around Lila’s shoulder. Rows of white chairs, arranged facing a small, flower-covered arbor mocked her miserable state. She spotted Katie and Maddie, handing out small packets of birdseed to the guests. Jack stood next to Evan, his son Brandis on his shoulders, and her own son, Gabe, hanging onto Jack’s hand.
Her heart stuttered in her chest at the sight of the boy. Quiet and serious, his deep brown eyes taking in everything around him, his shock of white-blond hair combed down, dressed in a tiny adult outfit complete with a real tie and brown loafers. As if sensing her distress, he looked over and, she imagined, straight at her. He was Rob, in perfect miniature. She sank into a chair, hands over her eyes.
As the sounds of a harp and flute floated through the window, Sara pulled her to her feet, holding her hands in a vise once more. “Listen to me, dammit.”
Lila shook her head, tried to walk away, desperate to escape the nightmare that had consumed them all.
Sara took her shoulders and shook her. “I don’t know what in the hell has gotten into you but you have to stop. He needs you. Why would you think he doesn’t want this?”
“Because it’s wrong,” the vehemence in her voice startled them both. “I mean, it’s Blake he wants. Blake he loves…still. I’m not Blake. I never will be and… oh shit.”
Sara sighed and pulled them both back down onto chairs facing each other. “Blake is dead, Lila.” Lila watched the agony pass over her friend’s face at the words. “Rob loved him, yes. So did you. Shit, I loved him longer than either of you. But now we all have to let him go. Blake won’t come between you, if you don’t let him. He loved you both. And, Rob… he loves you, just as much as he loved Blake. Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself and move on, be happy. He…” her voice broke and her eyes shone with unshed tears. “Blake wants this. You know he does.” She turned Lila’s face to hers when Lila tried to look away, to rise, to get the hell away from this day, another in a long, fucked up string of nightmares she’d endured for the last two years.
When he woke from his medically induced coma after the transplant Rob had blinked, and then smiled, clutched her hand. Wanting to know immediately where Blake was.
She would never forget it as long as she lived. She’d had to bolt from the room, blinded by tears, unable to tell the man she loved that the other part of them, the one they both adored, had been killed in a stupid car accident. That he, Rob, now breathed, free of cancer, because of it.
Jack had caught h
er in the hallway, turned her around and gone back in the room with her to tell his friend the horrific news.
Sara’s voice broke through her fog of memory. “Listen to me Lila. He needs you. I need you to be together. You are my family now, goddammit, and I won’t let you talk yourself out of this. You are worthy of this life, worthy of his love.” She put a hand on Lila’s belly, smiling when the baby kicked against her hand. “This is your proof.”
Lila started at the knock on the door. Sara stood and let Suzanne in then left, after shooting Lila a pointed look. The slight, red headed woman stared at her. Lila looked away.
“Hey,” Suzanne said, walking around to face her. “I just wanted to check on you. I know how hard this must be.”
“No, actually you don’t.” Lila knew this woman’s entire horrible story. But for now all she represented was a connection to Blake that Lila could not handle.
Suzanne grabbed her hand. “Listen, Lila, this thing is beyond awful. But I need you to know something.”
Lila tried to pretend she didn’t care. But she looked deep into Suzanne’s eyes and saw it. The woman she’d been that Blake had saved. And the woman she was now, trying to find her way around the edges of love again, with a new man despite how bad her experience with men had been. A sob ripped from her throat as she dropped into the chair again. Suzanne crouched beside her, hand on her arm, her soft voice a comfort. “I loved him too. More than I realized. But I’m here to tell you that despite how scared you may be, you are getting a good man with Rob. Don’t be afraid. He loves you. More than you probably know.”
Lila looked up at Suzanne’s tear-streaked face. “I know you loved him. Blake was impossible not to love.” The two women put their foreheads together a moment. A soft rap on the door interrupted them.
Rob’s heart pounded. He breathed deep, trying to tamp down the familiar guilt that threatened to suffocate him. Today, of all days, he had been determined not to feel it. He would let himself be happy, truly happy, and marry Lila. Complete their family. But he was ready to puke from anxiety and despair.
“Be happy,” Sara had whispered to him earlier. He closed his eyes, and then opened them to see her. Lila, her small frame already swelling with their child. Her lovely eyes swimming with tears. Suzanne kissed him as he stood in the doorway.
He pulled Lila to her feet, held her close, loving the press of the baby between them. “No more guilt, Lila. Okay? I mean it.”
“It’s not guilt,” she pulled away, her eyes angry.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and stayed quiet. They’d spent the first year after Blake’s death in a black hole of silence, unable to emerge, or share the agony. Suffering together, but apart. Living in the same house, dealing with a new baby, and saying no more than five words to each other. Both loners, unwilling to rely on the other for the support they each so desperately needed. The ghost of a man they couldn’t let go of lay between them at night, sat with them at the kitchen table, and nearly ruined his life.
After eighteen months of half-living, he had come home from yet another excruciating day at the pub, and been shocked to see her with suitcases packed, Gabriel in her arms.
Rob had grabbed his son, kissed him, and turned to her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She’d met his stare. “I won’t live like this. I can’t. I’m… we have to figure out some kind of different arrangement.”
“Different arrangement?” Fury had pounded into his head. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
She glared at him, took Gabe from him. The boy clung to his mother and tried to reach out for Rob with the other but he kept separate. What little there was left of his heart broke into a million pieces at her next words.
“I can’t live here anymore. I won’t take Gabe from you, but we have to sort out some sort of …”
He’d grabbed her arm, pulled her close, making Gabe giggle. “You can’t leave me.” He’d been breathless with anxiety. “You just … can’t.”
But she had.
The next three months were even worse, and he’d never thought that could be possible. Gabe had bounced between them, reminiscent of the bullshit his friend Jack had endured with Sara when Katie had been that age. Then one early spring evening she’d dropped the boy off at his house, his body floppy with sleep. Rob had tucked him into his bed, kissed his cheek, and nearly run her over as she stood in the hall, watching them. “Sorry,” he’d mumbled, her sweet scent filling his nose and blinding him with remorse.
She hadn’t moved, had put her hand to his cheek. “I miss you.” Her voice had been low and something in him snapped. He yanked her close, kissed her, picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. All the stress, anger, guilt, unhappiness and misery between turned in the blink of an eye as they reconnected. She reached for the drawer that held the condoms as he lifted his head from her breasts, his body aching, on fire with a need greater than he’d ever felt. Ghosts of his past roamed around in his head. Christine, René, Kyle, and Blake. But he shoved them away and focused on his future, with Lila.
“No,” He took her hand, brought it to his lips. “Let’s try this again.”
She had sighed as he slipped into her body, and wrapped her legs around him. “I love you,” she said, holding his gaze as he thrust into her. “So much.” The moment coalesced in his soul, and they cried out together in mutual pleasure, their tears mingling as they kissed.
Rob shivered, remembering that moment. The moment that he’d narrowly avoided ruining his life even further. He squared his shoulders. Don’t be weak, Frietag. For god’s sake, do not let her go again. “Remember?” He insisted, pulling her close. “I love you. I want to be with you forever.”
“I know,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist again. “I’m sorry. I want it too. It’s just…”
Rob tilted her chin up so he could look at her. “Let it go, Lila. Whatever it is. We have each other now. We have this,” he ran his palm around the curve of her stomach. “Us. Our family. It’s all I want, or need, in the universe.”
She nodded and he let her stay quiet, knowing that, in her own way, she had processed it. He didn’t need to say anything else. He took her hand.
“There are a lot of people out there waiting. So I’ll ask you one more time. Will you please marry me?”
The End
Escalation Clause (Stewart Realty Book 5)
Coming Soon to Sizzlin’ Books
Sara gasped, sat straight up, blinking in the pitch-black bedroom. In tune as only the mother of an infant can be to every small noise in the house, she figured the baby had cried out. She waited and heard nothing. Then put her hand down to touch Jack’s sleeping form, and found empty sheets. Again.
She sat, put her feet on the cool hardwood floor and let the reality of the day wash over her, nearly suffocating once she realized what had woken her up. Blake had been in her dream, his dancing green eyes and impish grin as real to her as if he stood in the room. If only he could. The past three weeks had been something well beyond her worst nightmare. She knew she still had yet to come to terms with the death of her brother because of all the details she had to attend to, not to mention handling her mother’s near nervous breakdown at Blake’s memorial service. The memories pounded in her brain, flashes of agony displayed by them all, but most especially Rob.
“Jack?” She called out, needing him. Then sighed, remembering their fight the night before over his slow removal from her. Or, as he put it, “her perception” of his distance.
“God dammit Sara, this is not about you, okay? I’m… busy. I’m preoccupied. I’m mourning yet another death in my fucking family.”
But there was no denying it. He’d been edging away from her, from them all, emotionally. All of the preparation for the loss of one of Jack’s closest friends, Blake’s lover, Rob, only to be annihilated by the sadistic hand fate had dealt them, had affected him in a way she wasn’t able to process. All because he was holding her at arm’s length. W
hile she dealt in her own way. She bit her lip, determined to keep the tears in check as she walked down the long hall to the kitchen.
Her own mental state was fragile at best, but she had held it together in a way that surprised even her. People needed her. Her baby, her daughter, her parents, her friends. She’d rallied into something she would swear Blake would’ve been proud of, , only to look up about a week after the accident to find Jack staring at her, his deep blue eyes flat. “Are you ever going to realize what this is, Sara? Really mourn?”
She’d risen from the couch with the finally sleeping Brandis and left the room. How he didn’t realize that the only thing holding the edges of her sanity together was the forward motion, organization and non-thinking she was doing was beyond her. They hadn’t really talked since that day.
She stopped in the door of his study, watching him pore over his latest project. Obtaining, of all things, an expansion major league soccer team for Detroit and building a state of the art facility for them downtown. It had become an obsession. One she didn’t care for at all. He ran his long fingers through his hair, making it stand on end as he turned pages of the latest book on stadium facilities. The computer had the official MLS website pulled up and sat blinking in the otherwise dark room.
She walked to him, put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to do something to reconnect. She needed him. More than the physical, she needed him to understand how she was dealing with this, to see that she was dealing with it in her own way. Mostly, though, she just needed him to talk to her.
He startled, then grabbed her hand. The touch of his lips to her skin made her tingle, and gasp with anticipation. Dear God, she had missed him on so many levels. He turned his chair around, took her other hand and yanked her down to his lap, slanting his mouth over hers, thrusting his tongue between her lips. Her body acted of its own accord, using well-worn scripts to find release at his hands.
She stood and slipped out of the shorts she’d been sleeping in, never taking her eyes from his as tears crowded the space behind her eyes. She bit them back, leaned in to unzip his jeans. He stood so she could tug them down to the floor. They stared at each other, so many words between them, so many things left unsaid. But the physical urge that crackled in the room would not be denied. He sat back down and she straddled him, taking him inside her immediately, her body already wet and ready.
