A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  He wrapped his fingers around her firmly, offering comfort. Just like he always had. And after a long moment and a giant sigh, she relaxed again, though he could feel her hand tremble in his own.

  “I told you Estelle took me to a home for unwed mothers in New Mexico.” Ellie looked across the room as she spoke. Gabe wished she would look at him, but understood why she needed the distance.

  She paused, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t waiting for a prompt from him. And he was afraid to speak, to break the spell, lest she run out the door leaving him with more questions than answers.

  “They were nice enough, but I didn’t really participate in anything. They had classes to help us... how to care for the babies, how to write resumes, schooling for those of us who hadn’t finished. But even though I was shell shocked, both from discovering that I was pregnant and from losing everything I’d known, I still had that attitude. Part was the same old—holding back because caring for someone gave them power over you, and I’d just been thoroughly schooled in that.”

  The words were bitter, and Gabe could taste them on his tongue, too.

  “But part of it... I didn’t think I belonged there. Thought I was above it all. I didn’t need these remedial classes in math and spelling. Some of the girls there didn’t even know how to read. I’d been educated. I was smart, when I applied myself. I was different from all of them, because I’d been in love with you.” She smiled humorlessly, daring to glance at him. “I’m not a nice person, you know.”

  Gabe couldn’t help it; he barked out a laugh. Ellie blinked in surprise. “That’s not news for me, El. I’ve always liked your mean streak.”

  Ellie let out a forced chuckle. Swallowing thickly, she continued.

  “The pregnancy itself was pretty uneventful. I had really bad morning sickness, well past the first trimester. They told me that happened for some women, but I thought it meant something was wrong with the baby. And I clung to that notion, that maybe something was wrong, and that it would all go away.” Lifting her chin, she stared him right in the eyes, defiance written in every line of her body, daring him to condemn her for it.

  And part of him wanted to. Part of him still wanted to be angry, because if he was angry he didn’t have to deal with anything else.

  But he kept that to himself, and, holding her gaze, waited for her to continue.

  “I felt that way right up to my due date. Then past my due date. I was terrified.” Ellie resumed looking off into space.

  “I think... I think I knew something was wrong. Before I went to the doctor that day. When you’re that far along you do these counts every few hours, tallying up the number of movements that you can feel. And they were there—I’m still sure I didn’t imagine that. I mean, he was still in there, right? Nudging against me, even though he was... gone.” She swallowed hugely, and Gabe felt pain, physical pain, as he tensed, waiting for the rest.

  “I was due to be induced that day. They checked me in at the hospital, put me in the gown, gave me a bed. A nurse came in with a... it’s called a Doppler... it’s how they hear the heartbeat. She couldn’t find it, but she wasn’t too worried, so I wasn’t either. Apart from, you know, the terror over thinking I’d be leaving the hospital with a small human.”

  “She went and got another nurse, who couldn’t find the heartbeat either. Then the doctor came in. He was still pretty reassuring, but he said they were going to send me for an ultrasound to see what was going on. I still didn’t realize... didn’t fully realize what was happening. But then when I watched the face of the tech... I knew. She had this really good game face, you know? But there was just this split second where her expression faltered, and I just knew.”

  Gabe wondered if Ellie was aware that her voice had thickened, grown hoarse, though her eyes were still dry as bone. How was she holding it together, when each of these words was like a blade in his own heart?

  “But even then, I just... I pushed it away. Retreated, I guess. Full-on denial. I was sent to this room to wait for the doctor. A nurse came in, brought me some water, and gave me this sad little half smile. And I just looked at her like I was high. I just sat there. For almost two hours. Finally the doctor came in, and he looked rough. I could tell he’d been running around trying to figure out what the hell had happened, but I still... I just didn’t feel anything. Not even when he told me. The baby has died. That’s exactly what he said. I’m so sorry, the baby has died.”

  Ellie’s voice cracked. Gabe fought the urge to gather her in his arms, for his comfort as much as for hers.

  “After that, it’s kind of a blur. I thought they would just... cut me open. Take him out. But apparently that would hurt my chances of... of delivering a baby naturally, at some later date, so they wouldn’t. So I was induced. Not with a drip, but with these tablets that they insert. It starts these muscle contractions. All the books, they say that labour is slow, and long, warming your body up. But this... it was zero to sixty. Not feeling anything at all, to screaming because it hurt so bad, begging for drugs, for anything that would make it stop.”

  “Oh, Ellie.” Gabe couldn’t stay quiet. Jesus. He’d done this to her. He had. And he hadn’t been there to help her through it. He should have tried harder. He should have... he should have done something.

  He opened his mouth, to say what, he wasn’t sure. But then Ellie continued.

  “It happened in the bathroom. I was sitting down to... to go to the bathroom, I thought. Just an hour before I’d barely been dilated at all. But when I sat... it just happened. I felt his pressure and then this awful, tearing pain, like I was being split in two. I looked down and saw...”

  Here, finally, her voice broke. She pressed her lips together, shook her head when he leaned closer.

  After a moment she sucked in a deep, shaky breath.

  “I saw the crown of this tiny little head, these damp swirls of dark hair. Same color as yours.”

  Emotion rose so fast inside of him that Gabe thought he might vomit.

  “But it hurt. It hurt so much. I was alone—the nurses had left me to get some sleep—and I couldn’t reach a call button. So I just screamed. I screamed until someone came, this blonde nurse who knelt at my feet. And then the room was full of people, and I was still screaming, and right then I didn’t care if the baby was dead or alive, I just needed him out. And then finally he was, and I just sagged. Right there on the toilet. A doctor came skidding into the room after he—the baby—was already out. It felt like forever to me, because it hurt so bad, but it had been just a few minutes. It wasn’t even my doctor, just the one who was nearest in the hospital.”

  “One nurse took him away to get him cleaned up before I saw him. I thought that was weird, but now I understand. He’d... he’d been dead for a few days, and they... they wanted to make sure the picture I carried of him, in my head, was as perfect as it could be.”

  Horror. Pure horror slammed into him. He hadn’t even thought about that.

  “Other people cleaned me up. There’s so much blood when you give birth. And I had to be... it rips you, you see. The baby. So I had to be... sewn back up.”

  Gabe winced, which at least got a wry half smile from Ellie.

  “I didn’t see him until the next morning. I was so exhausted, all I wanted to do was sleep. But... in the morning, they brought him to me. All wrapped up in a blanket, everything but his little face. They didn’t want me to unwrap him to see his fingers or toes, but I did anyway. He was... he was just perfect. In a way that I never understood until I held him in my arms.”

  She looked at Gabe then, and he knew then, that he would never be as connected to another living person as he was to this woman. They now shared something that would bind them forever, even if... more likely when... they went their separate ways.

  “I named him James Gabriel Kendrick. I hadn’t planned to name him after you at all, I was so hurt, so goddamn mad, but it just... it seemed like the right thing to do. I would have called him Jamie.”


  “Jamie.” Gabe swallowed, realized that the fingers that clutched Ellie’s were clammy.

  He had had a son. That sweet baby may not have ever had a chance to live, but for a brief moment in time, he had had a son. And his name was Jamie.

  “I went back to the women’s home. I... I didn’t have anywhere else to go. They’d never gone through anything quite like this, and they didn’t know what to do for me besides let me have a place to be while I grieved.”

  “I stayed for another year, until I was seventeen. Then I lied about my age, got a job at a restaurant, lived at a hostel for a bit. I was fired really quickly. I’m not meant for customer service.” Her lips quirked, and though Gabe was still mired in the story he’d just heard, he allowed himself to rise from the heaviness with her. Wherever she wanted to go.

  “You can be a bit... abrasive.” He smiled softly, so she’d know he didn’t mean it as an insult.

  She chuckled. “Yes. Well. I worked a lot of other jobs. Got fired from a lot of them. Moved to California. Got a job at a crappy discount florist at a mall. After Estelle, I hadn’t wanted anything to do with flowers. But... it was a job I was good at, and at that point, I’d take any scrap of pride that I could find. And I built a portfolio, got a job at a slightly classier florist. And then a bit nicer one still. And then I met someone who owned a fancy shop in a hotel in Colorado who asked me to come work for her. And that was three years ago.”

  “And you never thought about coming back?” Gabe couldn’t help it; he add to ask. Ellie’s eyes flashed with—temper? Sorrow?

  But she gave voice to neither, instead slowly shaking her head. “No. No, there was nothing left for me here.”

  Gabe broke.

  “Damn it, Ellie.” He had a split second to register the look of shock on her face as he grasped her by the back of her head. Then he pulled her to him, right into his lap, and wrapped his arms around her tighter than he’d ever held her before.

  A squeak of surprise escaped her, but he muffled it against his shoulder. He buried his face in her hair, inhaled the wildflower scent, and rocked her back and forth.

  She squirmed in his arms, and he thought she was going to push him away. But she was just trying to get her arms free, and then she wrapped them around him just as tight.

  A moment later he felt her back heave beneath his fingertips, hear a muffled wail, and knew that she was sobbing—Ellie Kendrick, the girl he’d never once seen cry.

  He held on, trying to offer as much comfort as his big arms were able to give. And it wasn’t until he moved his head, found his cheek resting on a wet patch of her hair, that he realized he was crying too, silently, but with a steady stream of scalding tears that held the pain not just of losing their child, but of everything that had been ripped away from them when they’d been too young to know how to fix it.

  They stayed like that, locked together, trembling, crying, sniffling, and crying again, until the set that had been slanting in through Gabe’s kitchen window melted away, giving rise to a twilight the color of blackberries. Only then did Ellie unfold herself from his lap, brushing at her swollen eyes, padding off to the bathroom to wash her face.

  Something between them had changed. Gabe had no idea what it meant going forward, but now...

  This was no longer just Ellie’s story. It was theirs.

  He heard the sound of the toilet flushing, the rush of the tap, the splashing of water. When she came back into the kitchen, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, her hair loose, curling damply around her face.

  She looked at him, and he felt it right down to his soul.

  He knew what she wanted, what she was asking for—a reaffirmation of life. And some kind of closure.

  But he’d caused her enough pain. He knew what he wanted, too.

  But it had to come from her.

  Chapter Eight

  Ellie didn’t believe in inevitability. For her, it ranked right up there with fate, and she and the powers that be were still on uncertain terms, even after so many years. But there was an undeniable rightness in the way that Gabe was looking at her right now, like nothing existed in this world besides her.

  She remembered that look well, but it had intensified, boy to man. And she knew that, though he stayed still in his chair, he wanted the same thing she did.

  She crossed the kitchen, stood in front of him. Held her hands out for him to join her.

  He did, his fingers finding her hips, soft but sure, then pulling her toward him. The light touch sent a shudder through her a million times more potent than anything she’d felt with any other man, ever, and she had a moment’s foreboding, a wondering of if she would be able to walk out of her with her heart intact.

  But when he leaned in close, when she smelled his skin, sensed his warmth, she knew that she wanted this. She wasn’t giving in, she wasn’t trying to right old wrongs. She, the woman she was now, wanted the man that he had become.

  Their lips touched, the brush of a butterfly’s wings. Ellie shuddered out a sigh when she felt the warmth of his breath fanning out over her lips.

  Just that small connection, and the spark between them flared as bright as it had so long ago.

  He cupped her face in his hands, the rough pads of his fingers bringing the nerves in her skin to life as he delicately explored the planes of her face. She could feel the thud of his heartbeat under the heel of her palm, matching her own, and the realization nearly brought her to her knees.

  Pulling back, Gabe gently stroked his fingers through the loose waves of hair that were falling wild around her face. They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, telling each other what they couldn’t manage to put into words.

  She wasn’t stupid. This didn’t change anything. Too much had passed between them for this to ever word. But she wanted him anyway.

  Their lips came together again, and this time she could taste the heat. His tongue stroked over the seam of her lips, but no sooner had she parted them then he was moving, trailing kisses over her jaw, down her neck.

  Her heart raced when he kissed his way back up. She opened for him, and his tongue stroked hers, and the movement was somehow darker, dirtier than anything she remembered happening between them before.

  One of those strong hands danced over her scalp, then gently fisted a handful of the long strands, making her gasp when he tugged her head back to give him better access to her mouth. The other hand travelled to her waist, settled there, pulled her flush against his body.

  Ellie gasped into his mouth when she felt the hard ridge of his erection, pressing into the softness of her belly.

  A fever broke out over her skin when he smiled wickedly at her gasp and pressed his hips forward, rocking into her.

  Gabe hadn’t been the first that Ellie had been with. And he hadn’t been the last. But no one else had ever made her feel this much from so very little, as if he could give her the world with just one kiss.

  After so many years spent frozen inside, Ellie found herself surrendering completely, something she hadn’t been capable of at fifteen. He wouldn’t have quite known what to do with it either, but here, now...

  She may not trust anyone fully with heart, not anymore, but Gabe? She could trust him to take care of her body.

  Standing on her tiptoes, she threaded her fingers through that thick mass of dark hair and, feeling very enthusiastic about the notion, took over the kiss. He huffed out a surprised breath, taken off guard as she sealed her lips to his and pressed herself against him, but the next moment he’d caught up, cupping her ass in his hands, lifting her to the counter so that she could wrap her legs around him, could get closer and yet not close enough.

  His hands were on her hips, drawing her into him, and hers were on his shoulder, his neck, making sure that the slow, filthy kisses never stopped. When she clasped her ankles behind his muscled back he thrust forward slowly, pressing his solid length against the crease of her thigh, and Ellie felt liquid heat pool between her legs, dampening th
e denim.

  She moved restlessly against him, open to him as he thrust softly, taunting them both, grunting quietly every time her legs tightened around his hips. And always kissing, kissing, kissing, sometimes a slow glide of lips over lips, sometimes that demanding press of his tongue into her mouth, and always promising all the dark things that were to come.

  Gabe had never been this confident before, always content to let her take the lead—to be corrupted by the bad girl. Now the tables had turned, and it made Ellie want to tease him past the point of that rigid control. Wanted to imprint herself anew on his skin, on his brain, by making him want her more than he would ever want another woman in his life.

  Was that fair? Probably not. But something primal was driving over, this need to possess him, to be possessed.

  Her fingernails dug into his shoulders, biting through the thin cotton, urging him to take more. The kiss breaking, he pulled her so close that she thought they just might melt together, their bodies straining, pushing, almost fighting.

  Pulling back, he smiled down at her, the curve of his lips playful, yet still full of dark intent. It made Ellie’s pulse skitter, and when she kissed him again, he kissed her back, his tongue doing things that made her eyes roll back in her head.

  She barely noticed when he lifted her, his hands filled with the curves of her butt. She twined herself around him, a monkey on a tree, burying her face in the curve of her neck to settle herself.

  It’s just sex, she reminded herself. Just proving that, no matter what else, the attraction is still there.

  And yet she felt a little wobble around her heart as Gabe cradled her in his arms, one hand sliding up her back to stroke through her hair, carrying her like a child.

  Setting her gently down on the bed. Smoothing her hair back from her face, rubbing his thumb over her lower lip.

  Taking care of her. No one had ever done that. Not since… well, since him.