Breathe Into Me

by Michelle Betham

  Her eyes met his, for just the briefest of seconds, causing Quinn to look away, she had to. On-set, in front of the cameras, she could control it. She could control everything when she was pretending to be somebody else. But once she was out of that zone – once she was back to being Quinn Baxter she was finding it harder to control anything.

  “I’m going to go find Aaron. Unless you need me for something?”

  “No.” Lukas shook his head, and Quinn had to suppress a sigh of relief. “No, you’re done for the day.”

  “OK. Thanks. I’ll go get changed then get out of here.”

  She turned to leave, but his voice stopped her in her tracks. “Quinn? Hold up a second, sweetheart.” She slowly turned back around, praying this wasn’t something that was going to take long. She wanted to find Aaron. She needed to find Aaron. Aaron was like her shot of safety, her normality. And right now, she needed him. “Can I just have a quick word?”

  “Something up?”

  He jerked his head back and she followed him out behind the sound stage, slightly agitated by his need to delay her leaving.

  “What do you want, Lukas?”

  “What happened, at the party… We need to talk, Quinn. Properly.”

  “What happened at the party was a mistake. You, up in my face like that, telling me crap you had no right to tell me, and that, mixed with alcohol… It was a mistake. A drunken kiss. That’s all.”

  He laughed quietly, which only served to irritate her more than she already was. “It didn’t feel like a mistake to me. And I don’t drink anymore, remember?”

  “Did you want me for something, Lukas?”

  She felt his arm slide around her waist and her hand was on his wrist in an instant, pulling it away from her, but his strength was way more than hers. His arm was like a lead weight, refusing to go anywhere.

  “Let me go, Lukas.”

  Jesus! What did she have to do to make him realize how hard this was for her?

  “We need to talk, Quinn.”

  “I think we’ve done all the talking we have to do…” His mouth was on hers before she could finish the sentence, his lips soft and warm against hers, moving slowly, drawing her in, pulling her back to a time when they’d lie in bed for hours just doing this; kissing. Days when they’d all but told the outside world to fuck off and leave them alone. Days she’d loved; ached for. Days that had gotten fewer and fewer as he’d spiraled out of control, left her behind, and she felt her heart break all over again with a fresh wave of pain. She couldn’t let him do this to her, not again. “I have to go,” she said, gently pushing him away, but he grabbed her hand and swung her back into his arms, pulling her against him, and she felt every ounce of strength drain from her. It was flooding out of her so fast she could barely catch her breath. “Lukas…”

  He pressed his fingers to her lips, shaking his head. “Meet me, tonight. I’ve still got the house in Venice…”

  “What are we doing?” she whispered, because if she didn’t say the words out loud she’d feel as though she were in some kind of terrifyingly real bad dream.

  “What we always knew we’d do again, one day.”

  She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, his fingers intertwining with hers up beside her head as he kissed her; as she kissed him. A kiss that opened every floodgate she’d fought so hard to keep shut. But she was losing that fight now. She was losing it. She was losing everything…

  ***

  “Can we talk, Quinn? Please? Before you go out.”

  Quinn spun around to see Aaron standing in the doorway, a dark-gray T-shirt clinging to his toned torso, his hands in the pockets of his favorite battered jeans. “Yeah. Yeah, sure we can, baby.” It seemed like everyone wanted to talk today, and that only made the sick, guilty feeling in her gut grow stronger. “Everything OK?”

  “Something went on, Quinn. Between you and Lukas. Something you haven’t told me; something you probably haven’t told anyone. Something nobody else knows about. Except Harry, maybe. And Lukas.”

  Quinn felt her stomach dip even lower as that now-familiar wave of panic swept over her once again. She couldn’t go on like this, couldn’t keep on living this lie because Lukas was right – secrets hurt. “What’s Harry said?” Her voice was quiet, and she couldn’t keep it steady, the fear of what was happening here, it was too much.

  “Talk to you – that’s what Harry said. I told him I thought you were still hiding something, and he said I should talk to you.”

  She sat down on the edge of their bed, the nausea rising up in her throat.

  “What did he do, Quinn? What did he do that was so bad you couldn’t tell me?”

  She closed her eyes and pushed both hands back through her hair, sighing quietly.

  “Quinn?”

  She stood up and headed into their walk-in closet, crouching down to retrieve a small white box from the back of her shoe cupboard. And for a second she just stared down at it as she held it in her hands, letting that familiar wave of pain wash over her before she stepped back out into the bedroom. Aaron was still standing in the doorway, he hadn’t moved. But as soon as he saw the look on her face he kicked the door shut behind him and came straight over, but Quinn shook her head. She needed a minute, to get her head together, before he touched her. Because, the second he touched her she was going to crumble. She was going to break down, so she needed a minute.

  Aaron stopped in his tracks, his hands still in his pockets as he looked at her, his face a mask of confusion. “Quinn? Baby, you’re scaring me now.”

  She raised her gaze and her eyes met his, and she could already feel it happening but she was trying so hard to swallow it back, to shut it down. “I’m sorry, Aaron.”

  “What… what are you sorry for? Quinn, honey, what’s…?”

  “Lukas and me, we…” She swallowed hard again, breathing out slowly, throwing her head back as she took another second to ready herself for a truth she should have told this man a long time ago. “We had a child, Aaron.” Her eyes once more locked on his, and the look on his face, it broke her heart. “We had a baby. But he… he died. In my womb. At twenty-two weeks, he died. And I had to give birth to him…”

  “Jesus Christ, Quinn…” Aaron ran a hand through his hair, and Quinn could see the confusion on his face still evident, it was still there. “I don’t… Jesus! When… when did this…?”

  “I knew, that I was pregnant, when I walked out on him. I knew, and I didn’t tell him, because he was in no fit state to even know I existed, at that point. And telling him about the baby…” She once more dropped her gaze and shook her head, as though that would rid her of these memories, but they were never going to leave her. They were never going to go away. “I didn’t want him there, Aaron. He’d pushed me too far, kicked me down until I was so low I could barely get back up again and I was exhausted. All I’d ever done was love him and he’d…” She stopped, because she really didn’t want to go over this again, but Aaron, he deserved to know. The truth. Not some kind of truth, the real truth. Everything she should have told him before, because, if she’d done that, if she’d told him this all those years ago then she knew that everything that was happening now, it could have been avoided. “I walked out. I left him. I finally made that break and he – he didn’t even know I’d gone.”

  “Jesus, Quinn… Where did you…?”

  “Harry.” She looked back up at Aaron, her beautiful, wonderful, incredible husband. A man who didn’t deserve to inherit all this baggage she still carried with her. “I went to Harry. And I shut myself away in his Pacific Palisades home; cut myself off from the world because I was pregnant and tired and sick of all the crap that Lukas had put me through. And Harry, he dealt with it all. Everything. He spun shit to make it look like I needed nothing more than a break from the limelight, to get over the very public separation I was going through from Lukas. Which wasn’t exactly a lie. But the baby – I didn’t want anyone to know about him.”

  She sa
t back down on the bed, still clutching the box, and Aaron sat down beside her, clasping his hands together in his lap.

  “Quinn, I… How did…?”

  “How did he die?” She shrugged and pulled the box a little closer to herself, grasping it tight. “Nobody could say for sure. Nobody really knew why it happened. I mean, I was twenty-two weeks gone, and I hadn’t felt like anything was wrong, not until that morning…” She looked up at Aaron, and his eyes – the look in his eyes was making it so hard for her to keep it together. Why had she kept this from him for so long? Why had she kept this from Lukas, for so long? Who was really the selfish one here? “It had nothing to do with what me and Lukas were going through. That didn’t cause anything, I don’t think stress was to blame in any way, it was… it was just one of those sad, cruel things that can happen sometimes.”

  “Did Lukas… did he know? I mean, did you tell him…?”

  “He’d checked into rehab, not long after I walked out on him. He was trying to get better, and I didn’t…” She looked down at the box, closing her eyes for a brief second as, once more, she tried to compose herself; tried to stop the tears from falling. “I couldn’t have him near me, Aaron. It was too painful because I… I…”

  “You still loved him.”

  She nodded, closing her eyes again. She’d still loved him. So fucking much she could still feel that ache; that longing. “But I couldn’t have him near me. I couldn’t risk it all happening again so… so Harry, he was there. He was the one holding me, when I gave birth to my son.” She raised her gaze to meet Aaron’s. “Noah James Drake…” Her eyes dropped down to the box as she slowly removed the lid. “And he was beautiful, Aaron. He was so beautiful.” She picked up the photograph that was lying on the top of the pile – a photograph of Noah. The photograph she’d been going to take to Lukas tonight. A photograph of their son lying in her arms. She picked it up and handed it to Aaron, who took it, and looked at it, then closed his eyes as he breathed in deep and Quinn felt a pull on her heart so strong and so painful as she watched him. “I’m so sorry, Aaron. For keeping this from you.”

  “Does Lukas know now?”

  “Yes. He knows.”

  “You kept it from him all this time?”

  “I had to move on, Aaron. I had to put him behind me, you knew that.”

  He looked at her, and Quinn wasn’t sure what she was seeing in his eyes now. “But you never really did put him behind you, did you? I mean, you couldn’t. You had his baby, in circumstances I can’t even begin to get my head around, and you’ve carried that around with you for all this time, so, I don’t think you ever really put him behind you.”

  “I did. Believe me, Aaron, I did.”

  He shook his head, and there were tears in his eyes, and Quinn felt her heart break that little bit more. “You couldn’t have, Quinn. And I understand that, I do.” He handed her back the photograph, and she took it, grasping it tight between her fingers. “But this… what happened… that was always there, it must’ve been. All this time and you didn’t tell him he’d had a son…”

  “I shouldn’t have kept it from him, I know that now, I was wrong…”

  “But I understand why you did.”

  She blinked a few times, mainly to keep her own tears from falling because she didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to be that weak. “I was wrong. Harry wanted me to tell him – to tell you. And I know now I was just being stubborn; selfish. Because there were ways I could’ve let him know without me actually having to…”

  “Don’t you see, Quinn? Don’t you see what you’re doing?”

  She frowned slightly, her hands still clutching the box tight against her stomach.

  “You knew, back then, that if you saw him you’d want him again, despite everything.”

  She was hearing the words, and every single one of them pierced her heart with a raw and very real pain. Because they were true. He was right.

  “And you’ve always known that. You’ve always known, Quinn, that the very second you saw Lukas Drake again, you’d want him.”

  “No, Aaron…”

  “And this… You couldn’t see him again, after all this time, and not tell him this. And you didn’t think that would bring you closer? That it would dig up old memories? That it would tear us apart?”

  He stood up and Quinn watched as he paced the floor, raking a hand back and forth through his hair. She didn’t know what to think anymore. So much of what he’d said was true, but the reality she was living in now…

  She put the box down on the bed and stood up, walking over to Aaron. He’d stopped pacing now; leaned back against the dressing table, his arms crossed over his chest. But she could see it in his eyes – he was confused. He was angry, and he had every right to be. All these secrets she’d been keeping, they’d hurt people. And she’d been wrong, every step of the way she’d been wrong.

  “I didn’t know what else to do, Aaron. Lukas he… Living with him – loving him was so hard sometimes. And maybe I should have walked away sooner, been stronger, but he was my whole fucking world back then. My life here started with him, and I loved him in a way I’d never loved anyone before. I arrived here, in L.A., alone and frightened but determined to make something of myself because going back home, that wasn’t an option.”

  “You should’ve told him, Quinn. About the baby.”

  She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Aaron. “You have no idea how hard it was, being with him. In the end every day was a struggle, pretending to the outside world that everything was fine when even they knew we were a mess. And when I found out I was pregnant I got scared, because bringing a baby into that mess... So I didn’t tell him. Because I needed time to think. And yes, in hindsight, I should have told him, but I didn’t. At the time I thought walking away – it had to be final.”

  “You were pregnant! And you kept it from him – from me…”

  “It had nothing to do with you, Aaron.”

  “It does now, Quinn. It has everything to do with me, now, because he’s back in your life, and he knows what happened, and you honestly think that hasn’t affected anything?”

  She shook her head as she stood up, pain and confusion sweeping over her. “I was wrong, to keep it from him. To keep it from you, to keep everything, from you…”

  “I could’ve helped you, Quinn. I could’ve been there for you… Jesus Christ, baby…”

  He pulled her into his arms and he held her, and she clung onto him, she didn’t want to let him go. Because she was terrified of what was going to happen when she did.

  “You should’ve told me, Quinn. You should’ve told me.”

  “Would you have told me that Lukas should know? About Noah?” She pulled away slightly so she could look at him. “If I’d told you, back then, in the beginning, just months after Noah had died; if I’d told you, would you have said the same thing? Would you have told me to tell Lukas?”

  Aaron said nothing for a couple of beats, his eyes still burning into hers. “Yeah. Jesus, yeah, of course I would.”

  “Then we would never have existed, Aaron. You and me would never have happened.”

  “You don’t know that, Quinn.”

  “Yes. I do. I know that. If I’d told him, back then, and he was sober and clean and making me all kinds of promises about a new life together I’d have fallen for it all. I’d have fallen for him, all over again, and you and me would never have stood a chance.”

  “Do you know how weak that makes you sound?”

  She backed out of his arms, walking over to the window. “I loved him, to the point of obsession, Aaron. I loved him that much. I ached for him, every cell in my body cried out for him, every second of every day. When he was fucking other women, lying sprawled in some gutter in West Hollywood, wasted and broken, I still loved him.” She turned around to face her husband. “I loved him, too fucking much. So yes, I’m weak. I’m weak.”

  “Jesus…” Aaron breathed in deep, turning his head away from her, and Q
uinn felt her stomach dip even lower, her insides twisted, knotted up so tight she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to breathe steadily again. And then his eyes were back on hers, burning just as deep, just as hard. “And now? What do you feel now, Quinn? When you told him, about the baby, which was… When did you tell him, huh?”

  “The day we started filming.”

  “Christ…” He threw his head back, sighing heavily, and the atmosphere in the room – it was thick with tension, rife with secrets and truths that were, as Quinn had always feared, about to change her world all over again. And she’d never been more scared. “How did you feel, Quinn?” His eyes were on her again, staring so deep into hers she couldn’t look away. “When you told him, about Noah? How did you feel, then? How do you feel now?”

  She took another step back, finally breaking the stare, her head turning slightly as she caught sight of the little white box open on the bed, the photograph of Noah lying there, and that almost constant empty feeling she’d had ever since she’d given birth to him filled her back up, drowning her with its intensity. “This is so hard, Aaron.”

  “I know. Baby, I know how hard this must be, but I… I need to know, Quinn. I need to know how you feel because this – this could change everything.”

  She closed her eyes, squeezing them tight shut to try and stop those tears from falling. She wasn’t going to let that happen, she wasn’t going to cry. She’d done that, she’d cried over this so many times and she was tired, of crying.

  And then she felt his hand brush hers, and she reached out to take it, curling her fingers around his as he pulled her back into his arms, holding her close, squeezing her tight against him and for a second neither of them said anything. She just closed her eyes and held onto her husband, listening to his heart beat; feeling him breathe, his chest rising and falling against hers.