Overflow: The Carpino Series

by Asher, Brynne

  I remotely realize he has a cut lip and his t-shirt is ripped at the neck. I can’t concentrate on the result of his scuffle because the tears start flowing again and I bring my hands up to my hair and say, “I don’t want to talk to you right now. I want to be by myself. Just go…I don’t know, go somewhere.”

  “Sugar, I’m not going anywhere. Get out of the shower. Now.”

  “You can’t be bossy with me, Jude! Not anymore! Leave me alone!” I shout.

  With that he reaches in and flips the shower off. Grabbing a towel off the rack, he steps into the shower with me and wraps me up in the towel and starts drying me off. I struggle against him, push him away but he’s just too big and he wraps me up with my arms pinned inside the towel. And damn it all to hell, my tears won’t stop. Resigned, I realize that there is nothing I can do to stop him. Mostly dried, he wraps the towel around me and leaves the shower for a nanosecond, coming back with a big flannel plaid shirt. Ripping the towel off me he slips it up my arms and buttons a couple buttons. Putting an arm behind my back and before I realize what’s happening, I am up and he is walking out of the shower carrying me to the bedroom.

  “Jude!” I yell and struggle again, because this is a different form of bossy. “Put me down!”

  Using his soft raspy voice through my wet hair into my ear, he says, “Quiet Gabby, you’re gonna get cold.” He puts a knee to the bed, deposits me with my back to the pillows, covering me up tight even though my hair’s dripping. Not foreseeing his next move, I pull my knees to my chest and scoot back as far as I can away from him with the covers tucked tight, but he proceeds to sit close in front of me, straddling me with his legs bent, essentially boxing me in.

  Shit and damn.

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone? You can’t just carry me around putting me where you want me, Jude.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone. Even if I have to tie you down, you’re gonna listen to what I have to say.”

  Starting to feel my ire once again at the thought of him tying me down to listen to him, I say, “Fine! Let me have it, Jude. This can’t get any worse, can it? I mean, I’ve learned a lot tonight. I must be really good, huh? Not only am I one of many in a long line of pussy, but I must be good enough for you to keep around for a while. Well, good for me,” I bite out, breathing hard. I’m so pissed, my tears have even dried up.

  “Gabrielle,” Jude growls with a warning. “You know that’s not that way it is between us. You know.”

  “I thought I knew, Jude. I thought I knew a lot of things. But maybe you should tell me. Tell me all about your past now that someone else has let it out of the bag. But when you’re done, I’d like to know why you’ve kept things from me, important things. Like the most important things, Jude. You know everything there is to know about me. Everything! Why do I not know that you had a wife?”

  “And two children.”

  I again hear my breath being pulled in and I push back into the pillows as far as I can. I scarcely get out the word, “What?”

  There’s something working in Jude’s eyes, something between pain and anguish. “I was married, Gabby. It seems like a lifetime ago. We met in high school, Julia was Conner’s younger sister. Conner, Mike and I were tight and Julia and I started dating when I was a senior and she was a sophomore,” he takes in air. This is obviously hard for him to talk about.

  “Jude, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m sorry,” I whisper, now feeling bad for being a demanding bitch. I, of all people, know how it feels to have to dredge up the past and relive a nightmare.

  “No, Gabby. You need to know, I shouldn’t have waited so long,” he says, pulling in another breath. “We were so young, but we knew what we wanted and had a plan. I went to the Academy, she got in a couple years of college and I married her as soon as I could, the week after I graduated. I was twenty two and she was just twenty. Her parents weren’t happy about her marrying so young, but back then we felt like we’d waited a lifetime and they knew they couldn’t stop us. I was assigned to the base in San Antonio, continued my flight training, we lived on base and she took classes while working part time. We were so young, we had nothing, but felt like we had everything.”

  The sadness in his eyes seeped out into his face. Sitting so close, Jude boxing me in with his hands at my waist, I’ve never seen that look on his face before and it tore through me. I can tell this is hard for him, but he continues, “We were happy, so happy that it didn’t matter what we had. Julia wanted to start having babies right away, but I held her off. As happy as we were, I wasn’t blind to the fact that we were young and I wanted her to be able to finish college so she wouldn’t regret it later. I held her off for two years, enough for her to get a degree then we started trying. It took a couple months, her period was always irregular, but she was over the moon and I never saw her as happy as the day she told me she was carrying my baby.”

  The tears were streaming down my face again, knowing that however the end of Jude’s story turned out it was going to be tragic. He brought his hands up to my face, his thumbs swiping my tears, but they just kept coming. His fingers tensed in my hair and continued in his quiet raspy voice, “We had about five weeks of happy. I was away on a two day training mission and by the beginning of the second day, I couldn’t get ahold of her which was unusual. She was teaching at the time, but she never went more than an hour or two without calling me back. I finally had a friend on base go to check on her,” Jude pulled in another gulp of air. Letting it out he finished on a whisper, “They found her in our bathroom, so much blood and she’d been dead for hours. I wasn’t there, Gabby. She was by herself and she couldn’t get help.”

  My chest is rising violently with my breathing and my heart is beating wildly while Jude is still holding my head in his big hands. It is all so overwhelming but I had to ask, “Miscarriage?”

  Shaking his head no, answering, “Not a normal miscarriage, the autopsy showed she had an ectopic pregnancy. She was farther along than we thought because her periods were irregular, the embryo had split giving us twins and they were planted in one of her fallopian tubes. It was rare, but with her being farther along than we thought and two babies growing inside of her, they didn’t catch it early like they normally do. It caused her tube to burst, she was by herself and probably in so much pain she couldn’t even get to a phone to call for help. She bled out and died in our fucking bathroom, alone, with my babies inside of her. I lost all three of them in one day. And I don’t care that they were only weeks old and it was an ectopic pregnancy, they were mine and always will be. I had a wife, two babies and then I had nothing.”

  It is at this moment I realize I love him. It hurts that he didn’t tell me about his past, so bad that I can literally feel it in my heart. And if I’m just another woman to him and he doesn’t feel the same about me, it will rip me to shreds. But I can’t help it, I love him. I know the look in his eyes, I’ve experienced that look and I can’t stand it that I see it on his beautiful face.

  Jude is blurry now from the tears in my eyes and I’m shaking my head back forth. Not being able to take it another second, I climb out from under the covers and crawl into his lap, straddling him. He pulls me into his arms, stuffing my face in his neck, one hand at my head and the other at my ass. “I’m so sorry,” I mumble into his neck, not being able to stop my tears. “I’m sorry you lost them and I’m sorry I was such a bitch.”

  His fingers tense on me and he says into my hair, “Sugar, you weren’t a bitch. I should have told you sooner. It’s been nine years and I’ve gotten used to keeping it to myself, buried deep. As time went on, I didn’t know how to tell you or when to bring it up. It’s not fun telling people you were a widower at the age of twenty four. The more time that passed made it harder. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner and I’m really sorry all that happened out there. That shouldn’t have been the way you found out, it should have come from me. Conner is a mean drunk and always has been. I could fucking kil
l him for what he said to you.”

  Not knowing what to say to all that, I hold on tighter. Yes, he should have told me sooner, but I know as well as anyone that there is never a good time to have to explain death and heartache. But as much as I hurt for Jude, for what he lost, the two children he never got to hold in his hands, the wife that he clearly loved more than anything, I’m now more conflicted than ever about what I mean to Jude.

  And I’m exhausted.

  Emotionally drained.

  Trying to catch my breath from my latest crying jag, all I can do is hold on to him because I don’t know how to ask him about what all this means for us. Do I even want to know? I don’t know how I feel about being lumped into the large category of ‘women’ and that other awful word that Jude has clearly had in the past nine years. I feel the fear and panic starting to take over, to the point that I can’t learn anymore tonight. I don’t even want to know about the last nine years of his life since he lost his family that he loved deeply and completely.

  “I’m tired, Jude,” I whisper in to his neck, doing my best to control my tears. I need to go to sleep, escape all of this for a few hours and think about it again tomorrow. I start to pull away from him, needing sleep since it is the only escape I’m going to find.

  Not letting me pull away, he says, “Gabby. Look at me,” holding my face to his. “Are you okay?”

  Knowing I can’t handle this tonight, I can’t handle the thought of what his answers could be about us. Learning that he was married and he loved his Julia so much and not knowing how I fit into the big picture of Jude’s life is painful. No, it’s more the fear that he might never love that way again that is so painful it cuts through me. Needing to do anything to get him to stop talking, I try, “You’re asking if I’m okay after you just had to share all that?”

  He narrows his eyes at me slightly saying, “Gabby, that scene was intense and ugly. You were upset to say the least. Are you okay?”

  Physically slumping in his arms because I literally feel tapped of all my energy, I answer evasively, yet as honestly as I can, “Jude, I’m just so tired. Can we please just go to sleep?”

  Jude, still holding my head sweeps my face with his eyes. Sighing, he whispers back, “Yeah, sugar. We can go to sleep. I’ve gotta go clean up glass and a broken lamp in the other room. Will you be okay?”

  “Yes,” I answer honestly this time, because I just need to be by myself, so yes, I’m okay with him cleaning up the other room. He pulls me in for slow soft kiss, making my eyes burn with tears again. Doing my best to fight them back, he releases me, searches my face again and I wonder what he’s looking for.

  I crawl off his lap, not caring that I’m naked under his big soft shirt, climb into bed and curl in as tight as I can. Jude covers me up, kisses my head and says, “I’ll be right back.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and pray for sleep to take over before he gets back. I hear him moving around the other room and glass being dumped into the trash. I don’t even want to think about what happened out there. My body is tense and my mind is racing, there is no way I’m going to fall asleep. Not knowing how much time has passed, Jude finally comes in and I try to feign sleep. He moves around the bathroom, then back into the bedroom and he climbs in behind me. I guess I was wrong in thinking he might leave me be. He reaches around my stomach and hauls me tight into his chest, fitting himself to me from tip to toe. Dipping his hand under his own shirt and onto my naked body, he rests his big hand on my ribs right under my breasts. I can feel his lips come to the back of my head. Because I can’t help it and it feels so good, I snuggle my ass in tight. He doesn’t want anything else, he just wants me close. I let the heat of his body seep into mine as we lay here, not saying a word. Thinking I will never find sleep tonight with all that I’ve learned, I find myself hoping Jude doesn’t have any more surprises for me. I don’t think I can handle one more surprise. As my thoughts get murky and I feel myself starting to drop off from emotional exhaustion, I feel Jude’s arm tighten one more time as he murmurs something into the back of my head, but I’m too tired to pay attention or remember as sleep finally takes over my body.

  Chapter 19 - This is the FB (bleeping!) I, Not Couples Counseling

  I sit the plane down smoothly on the runway and taxi close to the terminal. Looking over, I see Gabby staring out her window. Fuck me. I would kick my own ass if it was possible for what happened last night. I should have told her about Julia sooner. But I kept telling myself it would be hard for her since she lost her parents just a few years ago and I was trying to protect her, when really I’m a coward and it scared the shit out of me thinking how she would react because I didn’t want to lose her or scare her away. This is the first time in nine years that I’ve cared about anyone. That alone has scared me enough without the thought of having to tell her that I was married with twins on the way when my life was ripped apart. And now I’ve hurt her because I was weak. She’s been withdrawn and quiet all morning, talking to me only about closing up the cabin and details about coming home. Her eyes are swollen from crying last night and she looks as exhausted as I feel. I barely slept last night, doing my best to rest since I had to fly today and get Gabby home safely.

  I tried talking to her this morning, making sure she was okay after all she learned about me last night. She lied, saying she was fine when she’s obviously not fine at all. Gabby was focused on the tasks at hand, cleaning up, helping me winterize the cabin and locking it up until the next trip. She was quick and efficient with packing, even packing up the damn hiking shoes I bought her that she knew I had planned on keeping at the cabin for her future trips.

  I closed the plane down and we are making our way through the terminal to the parking lot when I look up and stop in my tracks. Tony’s Explorer is parked at the curb and he is standing there in a suit, leaning against the passenger door with his arms crossed glaring at me, obviously pissed. Our plans were for me to take Gabby home, drop our stuff so we could both get in an afternoon of work and catch up from being away. I turn my head and look down at her, finding she has stopped next to me. She’s turned to me but is looking at the pavement, worrying her hands in front of her.

  “Gabby?” I can barely get her name out, fearful of what she will say or why Tony is here. She gives me her tired blue eyes and that beautiful face which looks worn with worry and stress.

  “Jude,” she starts and looks over to Tony then back to me. “I think we should take a little time, figure some things out,” she takes in a big breath before commencing to rock my world in the worst way. “You know, think about things.”

  “What?” I bite back but it barely comes out as a whisper.

  “Please, I need some time,” she whispers back, her tired eyes looking into mine in a way I never wanted to see.

  I look to Tony standing there, waiting for us to finish whatever this is, his eyes narrow on me. I drop her suitcase, look back at Gabby and close the distance between us. I hook her behind the neck and her hands come up to my chest, leaning her forehead in between her hands. I kiss the top of her head and leave my lips there to whisper, “Sugar, what are you doing?”

  She fists her hands in my shirt and gives her head a shake and says, “Just give me a couple of hours, we can talk tonight, okay?”

  “Sugar--” but I don’t get a chance to finish, she pulls away, cutting me off. “Just a couple of hours, Jude. Please.”

  At that moment Tony, done being patient, walks up to take her suitcase while saying, “Come on, Gabby. I’ll take you home.”

  This is not fucking happening. “Gabby?” I call after her one more time as she makes the short trek to Tony’s car.

  She turns around saying, “Tonight. We’ll talk tonight. Okay?”

  I pull in a breath to calm myself down because what I really want to do is take her home myself, make her listen to me, make her tell me what she’s worried about, or fuck me, tell her I want her forever. Finding myself speechless with my own thoughts, all I manage to do
is lift my chin to her indicating that I’ll see her tonight, watch her walk away from me and feel my chest tighten with pain. Standing here, feeling destitute and not being able to do anything but watch her cousin take her away, I think about the future. The future isn’t something I’ve thought about in nine years. Thinking of what was missing in the future was too agonizing and only made me think of my past. As amazing as my time with Gabby has been, I’ve only allowed myself to live in the present.

  “Fuck!” I yell at no one, turn and stride to my truck, get in, slam the door and go to work because there is nowhere else for me to go.

  *****

  “Boy. You know what you need to do. I’ve known you since you were a Cadet, you’re no weakling and it’s time. Quit pussy footin’ around. I know you’ve been through hell and back losing Julia and the babies, but if this is your second chance at a life, take it. I know her road hasn’t been easy either, but you’re a good man and she’s lucky to have you. She’s gotta know that by now. I can only hope my three girls find a man like you someday. That is, after you get your head out of your ass,” Mac says in earnest. Mac doesn’t screw around with words, I’ve known him since I was in the Academy and he was an instructor. He’s always been a good mentor and we stayed in touch when he left the Force for a job with the FBI and he helped me through the hiring process. He knows me well, so well, that once I got to the office and he saw my mood, he marched my ass into the conference room making me spill like a girl.

  “Don’t sugar coat it or anything, Mac,” I mutter, staring out the window with my back to him.

  “Shit,” he rumbles. “Do you want her or not?”

  Frowning, I turn to him crossing my arms to answer, “Well, yeah. I want her.”

  “Then get the hell out of here and go get her. This is the FB fucking I, not couples counseling,” he responds, turning to storm out of the room slamming the door behind him.