by Milly Taiden
He pulled her away from the window. A second later a large piece of the building landed in front of the glassless frame, cutting off the view to the parking lot and shutting them in from that side. Her heart raced in her chest. Dust swooshed into the room, making her cough. Wide-eyed, she stared around the low-lit room. Pieces of plaster rained down on them from the ceiling.
They ran for the other side of the room, toward the door. When Nick turned the knob and jerked the handle, she shrieked. A wall of plaster and exposed electrical wires sat in the entrance, blocking them in. Her muscles pulled tight. Fear had a chokehold on her chest. It wasn’t letting up.
“Dear God!” The words rushed out of her mouth.
He stood there for a moment. Unmoving. Watching him stare at the blocked entrance let loose a wave of hysteria inside her. “Nick what do we do?”
He didn’t say anything. Oh God. Terror made her knees weak. She leaned on the wall to stay upright. They were going to die. “Nick?”
He continued to stare at the doorway. Almost as if he’d gone off to another place. She gripped his shirt. He turned to stare at her with a blank look. Her blood ran cold through her veins. Anxiety had slowed her ability to remain calm. She threw frantic glances all around, trying to figure out what to do. It was useless. Her focus returned to Nick.
“Nick!” She snapped, tugging on his shirt.
He blinked.
“Are you okay?” She asked, worried that something was wrong with him. She was yanked back to their plight by the plaster that knocked down a painting.
The walls shook hard. Hard enough she’d swear they were made of paper. Cold fear rooted her to the spot. Christ. What if they were buried alive?
He glanced down at her with glassy eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded repeatedly. Nerves shook her to the core.
“Hello? Can anybody hear me out there?” He yelled, putting his ear to the slab of ceiling blocking their path.
“Kevin! Kevin!” She screamed and turned to Nick, her heart beating so hard it was hard to make sense of anything. “Do you think he and the others are okay?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.” He pushed at the plaster and sheet rock, grunting when it didn’t move. “Fucking hell!”
Another rumble and the lights flickered. She swayed with the movement of the ground. Plaster continued to rain down on them. Anxiety pulled her muscles tighter. She swallowed back the acid rushing up and down her throat. Her hands shook. She wanted to cry and throw up. Screeching noises came from all over, and she could hear alarms going off inside the building. Outside the car alarms were also creating all kinds of noises.
“We need to stay safe until we can get out of here,” he said and rushed away from the blocked door.
Shocked at the severity of what was happening, she stood there and stared. The ground shaking slowed until it stopped completely. She watched him start to haul the heavy conference table to the corner. It took her a moment to mentally slap herself out of her trance. She should be helping. Grabbing the other end, she pushed. Damn table weighed a ton. He continued to pull until they had the table at an angle in the corner of the room.
“Come on.” He tugged her hand and motioned for her to sit under the table.
Eyeing the space with skepticism, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, now get under the table.” His voice dripped with authority. It was something she’d never seen in him before. And it made her scoot her ass under the table much faster than she normally would have. Her heart still beating wildly, she clutched her bag in her grasp and sat on the gray, carpeted floor.
***
CHAPTER TWO
Nick crawled under the table and took a seat across from Ari, folding his legs to mimic her. The low light illuminated her features with a soft glow. Their gazes met and grief clenched around his heart with the force of a vise grip. Looking at her eyes hurt. Within them, he saw the constant reminder that love was not enough. He’d seen the pain before she’d turned away from him earlier.
“Are you okay?” Her soft question stopped him short, and a spark of something lit inside him. Something like pleasure. She sounded genuinely concerned and that shocked him. Her voice had that hint of fear whenever she was worried about something. When was the last time she’d actually shown any kind interest in him? Not since their marriage hit the rocks. Way before their separation.
“I’m fine. You?”
She gulped, nodded and glanced down at her bag. Her long dark curls fell forward covering most of her face in shadow. The spaghetti straps of her pale yellow sundress caught his attention. They slid down her arms slowly, caressing her caramel-golden skin on its way. He remembered how he loved tracing her arms after making love. She’d moan into his neck and tell him how much she loved him. Her warmth would envelope him in a wonderful feeling of perfection. That was a long time ago.
A thick, tense silence bounced back and forth between them. She averted her eyes. Her hair fell forward when she rummaged through her bag and pulled out her cell phone.
“No service!” A squeak of desperation sounded in her voice.
He felt even guiltier now. An unexpected meeting popped up on his calendar, and he’d been forced to move the lawyer’s visit to the end of the day. At least that’s what he told himself. The truth— if he were honest —was that he tried to put off signing those papers for as long as he could. It was no use. Ignoring what was clearly wrong in front of them wouldn’t stop the divorce. It wouldn’t stop Ari from leaving him fully. It wouldn’t heal the wounds in his heart over their break up.
“I imagine there’s tons of emergencies from this.” He made a pathetic attempt at pacifying her. He unclipped his heavy keychain from the loop on his jeans, handed her one of two small flash light key chains and kept the second for himself. “Here, in case the emergency lights go out.”
She shook her head, slipped a dark lock behind her ear and smiled. It was a small lift of her lips. Almost as if she didn’t realize she’d done it. “You and your million and one tools.”
“A man should be prepared for anything.” He rubbed his hands on his knees. What he really wanted to do was reach out and touch her. Having her this close was pure torture. His hands itched with the need to slide over her arms and hold her tight.
She glanced up at him. The dull ache in his chest intensified when he saw glassiness in her eyes. Tears. Those were the worst. He knew Ari hated crying. He remembered the time she fell down some stairs in college and broke her ankle. She’d bitten her lip until she bled, trying to hold back the tears, but they’d slid down her cheeks without her knowledge.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, slammed her bag on the floor, and crawled from under the table.
He followed behind her. It was killing him to know his presence distressed her that much. Would he ever be able to figure her out? For the better part of their last months together, he’d been unable to help her. To fix things. He’d watched, like a visitor in his own home, how it all crumbled before him, not knowing what to do to change it.
“What’s wrong?” His throat constricted around the words. Not for the first time, he wished he could find a way to ease her pain.
“What’s wrong?” She whipped around, tears streaming down her cheeks. “How can you ask me that?” The anger and despair in her voice froze the blood in his veins. She gripped the sides of her dress in her fists.
The grief in his heart increased. “I don’t understand you, Ariana.” Nothing he did ever met her approval. Would he have ever gotten it right? “What do you want from me? You asked me for a divorce.”
“You could’ve said no!” Her voice broke on a sob. Her lips trembled, and her shoulders shook. It tore him apart to see her that way.
“Why would I, when you stopped talking to me after…” He choked at the instant knot in his throat.
More tears fell from her eyes, each one of them a new punch to his gut. It had nearly killed hi
m to see her cry before, and even though they’ve been apart for six months, it still hurt to see her look so desolate. She hugged her stomach and curled into herself.
“Go ahead, say it. After I miscarried.” She dropped her head forward, her shoulders shaking harder while she sobbed.
He stepped forward and stopped in front of her. The insecurity he’d always felt when she was upset made its appearance again. After all those years, he didn’t know how to make her feel better. How to ease her pain.
“Ariana, you wanted a divorce. You said we had nothing left.” It was hell to repeat the words she’d thrown at him on their last conversation. They’d taunted him for the past six months. Day and night, they’d replayed in his head in a loop, like a bad bit from a song he hated but couldn’t drown out.
She lifted her tear-soaked face, anguish visible in her hazel eyes. “You left me!” She screamed the words through her sobs, sobs that were tearing him to shreds all over again. The same way it had every time she’d gotten a negative result on a pregnancy test.
He couldn’t stand it any longer. Listening to her cries was like having someone stab him in his heart. Over and over again. He couldn’t think past stopping her pain, so he acted. Grabbing her by her hands, he pulled her into his arms.
“I didn’t leave you, Ari,” he whispered quietly. “You pushed me away.”
She shook her head in the curve of his shoulder. The wetness from her tears soaked his T-shirt. “No, you stopped talking to me. I thought you were having an affair.” She hiccupped. “You stopped coming home.”
Had he? Another round of agony lanced his chest, squeezing at his gut. He thought back to how much work he took on while they’d been trying to conceive. Remembered how badly he wanted to be out of the house so he wouldn’t hear the quiet sobs in the bathroom whenever she did a pregnancy test. Oh, she’d tried to hide it. Quietly muffling her pain with a running shower, but he’d heard her. Then she’d come out red-eyed and act as if the negative had been no big deal.
He knew better. Each time he saw one of those tests make an appearance, he wanted to destroy it. He wanted to tell her they didn’t need to keep doing that. That he loved her no matter what. He bit his tongue because he knew she was emotional due to all those hormones. The last thing he wanted was to add to her pain and insecurity at the time.
It was like having a bucket of iced water thrown at him. His heart stopped with the realization that he’d failed her. In every sense of the word: as a husband, as a partner, and as a friend. When she’d needed him most, he’d turned away from her and took safety in his work. He’d left her alone instead of helping her find a way to cope with the multitude of negative results.
Her sobs quieted. “I felt so low.” It was hard to make out what she said from the wobble in her words. “I wanted to be the perfect wife.” Her voice hitched again. “And you said you wanted us to have kids.”
He tightened his hold on her, hugging her soft curves into his body. “Ari, look at me.”
She glanced up, her red-rimmed eyes filled with pain. “I wanted to have babies for you.”
He shook his head at how wrong that sounded. He thought she was set on having children because that’s what she wanted. “I did want kids. Just not at the expense of losing you.”
She stepped out of his hold and sat down on one of the few office chairs not covered in dust. Emptiness filled him. Having her in his arms had been like going home. It had been the first time in so long that he had felt whole even if just for a second. She swept her hair behind her ears and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. To watch any other woman’s face crease with so much sadness would’ve been tough to swallow, but to see the woman he loved with that expression was killing him slowly. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out a folded clean tissue and passed it to her.
Slumping on a chair next to her, he watched her struggle to tamp down her tears.
“I’m-I’m sorry.” What else could he say? His heart hammered in a sick tattoo of disgust. Anger with his own selfishness filled him. How did he explain that he’d been an idiot for the better part of a year and possibly turned what could’ve been a bump in their relationship into a full blown separation? Her fight with her body to have a baby had made him so insecure he didn’t know what to do. He’d thought to give her space to help her cope. That was clearly the last thing she needed. His mother had encouraged his time apart from Ari. Telling him she needed space. Obviously, they’d both been wrong.
Her normally bright hazel eyes were dull with pain. “Where did we go wrong?” She asked, gripping the tissue in her fists on her lap.
He gulped, unsure how to answer her. “I’m not sure. When we started trying to have a baby, I was happy.” Her face fell, her eyes turned crystalline with tears, and an immeasurable amount of vulnerability filled them. “Mostly because you seemed so excited about the prospect,” he said and placed his hand over her fisted one. “All I ever wanted was whatever made you happy. If a baby was going to do that, then I wanted a baby.”
She frowned. “You told me that you wanted children—a family. Your mom kept saying I should stop being so selfish and have a baby already. That because you were an only child you wanted a lot of kids.”
With one hand still under his, she lifted the other and wiped her nose with the tissue.
“My mom was overreacting. I wanted kids, eventually. You were so excited at the prospect of a baby. I didn’t think things would progress the way they did.” They’d taken trying to conceive and allowed it to take over their life, to destroy their marriage. “Every time you had a negative result you shut me out.”
Her brows dipped in a frown. “I did?”
He nodded, remembering how much it had hurt to see her close in on herself. She’d stop talking to him for days. Then the days increased into weeks and finally to months. “You did. I started feeling like a sperm donor.” He didn’t mean to sound so bitter, but it hurt. For a long time he’d felt like she no longer wanted him. Like she’d been so consumed with her need for a child that she’d decided that was all he was good for, to help her reach a goal.
Her eyes went wide with shock. “What?”
Maybe holding back had been their problem. Lack of communication and keeping their individual thoughts, fears, and concerns locked away from the other. An uncomfortable churning took over his stomach. They should’ve let things out long ago.
“For years, you blamed me for not communicating enough with you, but you did the same thing with me. You pushed me away every time the results were negative.”
She gasped, shaking her head. “I—”
There was nothing left to lose. Why not tell her how he’d really felt? “I didn’t want to make love to you only when your temperature was just right!”
“But— I don’t—” She frowned.
“You did. God, Ariana,” he sighed and stood. The feeling of being caged in was getting the best of him. “Do you know what that did to me? I couldn’t hold you when you were upset. We couldn’t make love when we wanted. We lost the spontaneity. We lost the ability to talk to each other. To make matters worse, I didn’t know how to fix it every time you got a negative result.” He stopped, glanced at her pale face and dove on. “The void between us grew, and grew, until we were hardly ever together. And when we were, it felt forced.”
She stood up slowly. The soft lines of her body were visible through the thin material of her dress. Even in the midst of their divorce, he still wanted her. He’d wanted her since the first time he’d seen her, waiting to tutor him at the college library. He may have failed the class, but he’d gained the only woman to touch his heart.
He studied her petite form. It was clear from looking at her that things had taken a toll on her physically as well as emotionally. One of her favorite claims had been to say she had a hard time losing weight. He could see she’d lost a lot of her natural curves. He loved her curvy body. With everything they’d been through since their marriage went downhi
ll, it was clear she’d stopped taking care of herself. Even in this smaller, more fragile version of her, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Why didn’t you tell me you felt this way?”
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “What was the point? You were consumed with your grief.” And he’d been consumed with work. “For a while when you finally got the first positive result, things seemed to have looked up.” Everyone always told him that there’s always calm before the storm. That had definitely been the case with them.
She licked her lips, but didn’t look away. “When I came out pregnant?” He heard the tremble return to her voice. After all this time, it was still hard for her to say the words.
“Yes. For those four months, it all felt so good again.” It really had. Like their life was back on track. Everything was going the way it was supposed to and their marriage had withstood a difficult moment. She’d been over the moon, and he was glad to see her smile again.
“Until I started to bleed,” she whispered and took a step in his direction, closing the distance between them.
He nodded. “It took years off my life to see you bleeding and in so much pain.”
She winced. “I didn’t realize—”
“That it would hurt me to see you like that? Have I really been that much of a jerk to give you that impression?”
At her quick shake of her head, some of his tension drained away. “No. You weren’t ever uncaring. I was so consumed in my own loss that I didn’t realize it hurt you too.”
He’d never be able to close his eyes and not see her tears or screams when she’d realized what was going on. It would haunt him forever.
***
CHAPTER THREE
The ground shook again. Ari didn’t think twice. Instinct pushed her to him when he held out a hand for her. This time when he held her, she was much more aware of his body heat surrounding her. His scent—pure male with a hint of musk she’d always identify as him—ignited a small flame inside her. He still wore the same cologne she’d favored.
