“How can we help you?” Gabe asked, keeping his tone measured even though he wished the woman hadn’t come in. He couldn’t leave the conversation dangling on a thread like that.
The woman started rattling off a list of things she needed printed for a fundraiser, but he was having a hard time paying attention. His focus kept being stolen by Kenzie and the adorable way she played with the baby, who laughed up a storm every time Kenzie made a silly face and said, “Boo!”
If anyone on the planet was made to have babies, it was his wife. And yet…
He had sworn he wouldn’t think about shit like that anymore. Thinking that way only led to emotions, and he knew emotions were bad. Emotions hurt. Emotions broke marriages.
The baby reached out and touched Kenzie’s cheek, chanting, “Mama, Mama, Mama,” before grabbing Kenzie’s hair. He found the whole thing adorable until he noticed the sadness in Kenzie’s bright eyes.
He hurried through the order so the woman would leave. She kept fumbling through her phone looking for a list of things she had forgotten, and Kenzie’s look grew sadder the longer she smiled at the baby.
“Here, why don’t you finish this up and I’ll hold the baby?” He held his arms out, expecting Kenzie to hand the baby over with gratitude.
Once again, she blasted him with her eyes.
“We’re playing.” She glared at him and then resumed tickling the baby’s chubby neck, delighting the child and stabbing Gabe’s heart.
What the hell had he done wrong this time?
By the time the frenzied woman completed her order and had the baby strapped into the stroller, Gabe had worked himself into his own kind of frenzy.
Kenzie owed him an explanation as to why she was being such a bitch. As soon as she explained herself he would accept her apology and sneak her away to his office for a replay of the last ride on the desk.
He watched as Kenzie put away the papers she had been working on, put on her hat and scarf, and tossed her jacket over her arm.
“Where are you going?”
His mind desperately attempted to make sense of the change in air pressure in the room.
“I suddenly feel the need for some time off.”
“Are you okay?” He reached over to touch her forehead to check for a fever. Illness would explain so much.
She jerked away from him and swatted at his hand.
“I’m not your child, Gabe.”
He was the one to flinch that time.
“And you know what? I like my job. The one I got by myself. I cut my hours there to accommodate you, but I’m not quitting.”
She stormed to the door—a show of temper he never thought he’d see from her—and shot him one last glare as she invited the winter breeze in to chill the part of the room she hadn’t managed to already freeze over.
“I’m perfectly capable of knowing what I can and can’t handle, and I’m not going to fall apart if I don’t get enough sleep. But thank you for your concern.”
She didn’t seem thankful as the door blew shut behind her.
He spent the next hour trying to focus on work. Everything he touched seemed to go to complete shit. He managed to break the business card printer, make the custom order software crash, and spill his coffee all over the order he had jotted down from the lady with the baby.
He couldn’t work like this. Not while wondering if Kenzie was preparing to leave him all over again.
For the first time ever, Gabe sent his employees home (promising full pay) and closed the shop for the day.
He wasn’t letting her run away again.
Chapter Sixteen
Mackenzie wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t scream, she wouldn’t make a scene, and she wouldn’t lose her shit over the scene she had made at the print shop.
If it killed her, she’d keep the damn tears at bay.
Her days of being weak were over. She had grown and changed and if things were ever going to work out with Gabe, he had to accept the new version of her.
She pulled into the driveway and rested her arms and head on the steering wheel, forcing herself to take deep breaths, grateful for the soothing lavender air freshener she had picked up at Miss Molly’s shop downtown.
Once upon a time, the promise of a white picket fence and resting under Gabe’s protective wing with their two point five children was enough.
They had their version of the fence. She couldn’t give him the kids. And being protected under Gabe’s wing was no longer what she needed.
But she wanted him. Though pain and self-doubt nearly crippled her each day, she never questioned her love for Gabe. Nor did she question his love for her.
She wanted him in her life. But she didn’t need him—not in the way she used to need him. She could do things on her own—had managed to carve out some competence and independence when she was away. And he needed to know that.
But was it fair of her to keep him saddled to a woman who couldn’t give him the one thing she was made to give? When he so clearly wanted the gift she couldn’t offer?
A familiar ache started in her uterus and throbbed in her breasts. To bear children was her dream. Her mission. Each time they had successfully managed to fill her womb in the past, they had celebrated. And each time her body had been unable to bring the pregnancy to completion.
After a long year away, she had thought she could get past it. She had thought their love would be strong enough to work past the issues. To come up with a different plan.
She had thought a year had been enough time and she had given him enough space. She had managed to convince herself he’d be ready to talk about it. That they’d come up with another plan.
The look in Gabe’s eyes when he watched her play with the baby had told her that he needed to have babies. That he wanted them with her.
The comment about being barefoot and pregnant had been more than just a cliché—it was a Freudian slip.
He wanted her to still fit in the box of a life they had designed when they were younger. When the world had been full of possibilities. When being unable to bear children wasn’t even on the radar.
Needing to feel close to the life she was trying to come to terms with losing, Mackenzie took herself to the nursery. She unpacked everything she could find, carefully unfolding the clothing. Rocking in the rocking chair. Studying the ultrasound picture.
Refusing to cry over the photo of her and Gabe and Ariana.
The only photo she’d ever have of a child made by the two of them.
A child who had never even taken a breath.
Mackenzie clutched the photo to her heart, hoping to stave off the sharp pain that cut off her breathing and reminded her that she was alive while her child was dead.
Buried.
She had never imagined a coffin so tiny.
A special box made for babies who didn’t make it to full-term.
If she had miscarried a few weeks earlier, the hospital would have disposed of the body.
They might not have even had a funeral.
Mackenzie couldn’t stand the thought of her baby going from her warm womb to the cold ground, but it was a better thought than her being thrown away with the medical waste.
Ariana had been wanted. Desperately, passionately wanted. She represented everything sacred about Mackenzie’s marriage to Gabe.
The jingle of Gabe’s keys hitting the ceramic dish startled Mackenzie. She couldn’t put the things away—his heavy footsteps were already closing in.
What was he doing home?
He never left work early. Or late. Always on time.
She had thought she’d have the day to process her feelings. To learn to move on. To figure out how to make things work with her husband.
His face was tight with anger when he found her.
When he saw her surrounded by the baby things they had carefully picked out together, the things he had meticulously packed away in her absence, his face softened.
“What are you doing home?” she ask
ed, loosening her grip on the baby blanket on her lap when she realized her fingers had dug into it.
“I was worried about you. We’ve never fought like that before.”
He was right. They hadn’t. She had never been one to raise her voice. Or to even argue with him.
She had never not wanted his protection before.
She couldn’t blame him for being confused.
She had grown and changed and he hadn’t been there to witness it. Because of the decisions she had made. Without his input.
He knelt on the floor and started filling the boxes she had emptied. He didn’t ask if she was done. He didn’t ask why she had taken them out. He didn’t offer to talk about it.
He simply swept away the evidence of how close they had come to dream fulfillment.
“I was thinking we could leave town for the afternoon.” He folded up the little green striped outfit as if folding something as benign as the washcloths and buried it in the box. “Have lunch someplace nice.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her anger at his careless disregard for her need to process things—preferably with him—gated her throat, making passage of words impossible.
“Why aren’t you speaking to me?” His eyes blazed into her face, burning jagged holes that released bits of her shame into the atmosphere, but she couldn’t look up. All she could do was stare at the flaws in the blanket she had made for their baby.
“Kenzie. What is going on? Things have been good. Why are you freezing up on me?”
She carefully and precisely folded the blanket and placed it back in the zoo animal box along with the take-home outfit she had snuggled earlier. She tucked the photos between the folds of the blanket. Then she brushed her lap off and stood to leave the room.
“Don’t walk away. Please, Kenzie. Don’t do this.”
She paused at the door. The torment in his voice matched the torment in her heart. She ached for him. Hated what she had put him through. Hated everything about the things they couldn’t control, and also the things she didn’t know how to control.
He was right. She couldn’t expect him to open up to her about the past if she kept walking away from the present.
“I don’t like how I’m feeling again.” She turned toward him, forcing herself to look into his eyes. His tender, warm, compassionate eyes. Eyes that could make her body burn before he touched her. Eyes that studied her and knew her inside and out. Eyes that betrayed how he felt despite his attempts to hide. “I hate who I’m becoming again. How I feel.”
Gabe ran a hand through his hair, clearly exasperated.
“You don’t like the way I make you feel? Jesus, Kenzie.”
She approached him and reached out to grab his hand. She hated the hurt in his eyes. On his face. His handsome, caring face.
“No—I love how you make me feel. Gabe, you make me feel like a woman. A lovable, desirable woman.”
He turned his eyes back to her and clutched her hand tight.
“It’s just—I don’t know. I feel like I’m losing who I became when I was away. While I was away I became someone who was okay with not being a mom.”
Damn tears. They formed a smog that could rival the pollution she had read about in Los Angeles. The world became blurry and her voice became choked.
“Come on, let’s go get some lunch.” Gabe brought her hand to his face and kissed her knuckles. “A little food will do us wonders.”
“Food can’t fix this, Gabe.”
“Fix what? It was a little fight. Aren’t we supposed to have make up sex now?” He wiggled his eyebrows and lifted one side of his lips into a pseudo-smile that didn’t fool her one bit.
She closed her eyes to keep from saying something hurtful. He was trying to lighten the tone, to keep things from going dark. That was his talent—to turn darkness into light.
But for a little while she needed to walk in the darkness. And she needed him to hold her hand through the darkest parts.
She didn’t need him to protect her from the fierceness of the world, or to shield her from the difficulties in life. But she did need his company as she maneuvered the graveyard of their shared dreams if they were ever going to move beyond them.
“I need to talk about the babies. The pregnancies. The infertility.”
He flinched at her words. Normally his reaction would make her stop—not that the old her would have had the nerve to say any of this. But if their relationship stood a chance, they had to clear the gravel and pave the way for a healthy foundation. Communication was part of that health.
“You’re not infertile,” he snapped.
“I need to talk about it, Gabe. And I need to talk about it with you.”
He grabbed her other hand and held both close to his chest. She could feel the wild thumping of his heart through his flannel shirt.
“Kenzie. Love.” He leaned down to kiss her nose, then captured one of her escaped tears on his lips. “Talking about the hurt isn’t going to make it better. We need to move on. I’ve closed the door on the past. I suggest you do the same.”
Though her throat felt like it was coated in Super Glue, the words finally slipped out like they had been dipped in honey.
“You closed the door before I even stepped over the threshold.”
She didn’t hide the anger behind her words. Nor did she try to stop the tears.
He had to see her pain as clearly as she had to live with it.
If they couldn’t fix this, they couldn’t go on.
His mouth tightened and a muscle in his jaw flexed.
His look was final.
He was done talking, and nothing she said was going to get him to communicate.
With a sob that made her want to gouge her own eyes out, she jerked away from him, out of his grasp, and fled the room. She slipped back into her boots and grabbed her purse and keys.
He met her at the door.
“So that’s it, huh? You’re just going to take off again. Why not take your whole bag? You know you’ve been planning to leave me again.”
She paused, shocked that he could believe that of her.
When her response finally came to her, she was shocked at how deeply she felt, and how desperately she wanted him to hurt as bad as she was hurting.
“You left me emotionally long before I left you physically.”
His mouth opened as if to respond, then clamped shut.
She took his silence as an invitation for her to leave.
***
When the last of her tears had been cried and the warm February sun began to cool, Mackenzie weighed her options. She didn’t want to go to work. She didn’t want to face Gabe. She didn’t want to go to her mother’s and have to explain anything to her family.
She wanted to cease existing. Not permanently, but at least for a little while.
She pulled her coat around her and huddled into the corner of the playhouse. Not knowing where to go, she had fled to the place she felt the most carefree. The playground where she and Gabe had first reconnected so recently.
Since this was a residential area playground and the kids were in school, she knew she’d have privacy. She had been right—not a soul entered the area.
Good thing, too, since it would have been awkward to explain why a full grown adult was having a sob fest on the playground equipment with no kid in sight.
She had left her cell phone in the car, not wanting to know whether Gabe tried to call her. Not even wanting to take the chance that she’d be called into work on her night off.
Not wanting any connection to the outside world.
The cold cut through her layers. She tightened her scarf around her face and zipped her coat up as high as it would go.
She started to drift off, exhausted from emotions and life.
A few moments later, footsteps startled her.
Somehow, without looking, she knew it was Gabe.
A few seconds later, he was climbing into the fort and sitting across from her, his sh
oulders too big for the small space and his knees tucked up near his chest.
She almost giggled at the sight, but she was too broken.
And cold.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” she asked after several long, quiet beats. She watched the steam from her mouth swirl between them.
“Your car wasn’t at the nursing home or your mom’s house. I knew you had to be here.”
She nibbled her bottom lip. He knew her better than anyone.
“I need some space to figure out how to process my feelings, Gabe.” She sounded so grown up. Guess reading those self-help blogs was paying off.
“I know.” He did the opposite of giving her space. He squeezed next to her and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t push him away. He was warm. Very warm. She could melt in his arms in more ways than one.
Surely there were relationships that survived without communication. Surely she could talk about her feelings of loss with someone else—Sabrina, her mom, a therapist. Why would she even think of throwing away a perfectly good relationship over one need? He fulfilled everything else. If he could accept her and her faulty womb, she should be able to accept his lack of communication skills.
But could he accept her faulty womb? That was the big question.
“Let’s go home.”
She didn’t argue, she just watched him descend the ladder and allowed him to catch her when she jumped down.
Slipping into her old skin was a whole lot easier than continuously growing new layers.
He drove her home, leaving her car in the lot. Good thing, probably, since she couldn’t feel her feet.
When they got home, he drew her a warm bath, poured some soothing bath salts in, and undressed her so she could get in.
She was emotionally dead, but every time his fingers brushed against her skin, she became a little more alive.
He didn’t try anything sexually, though. He stayed fully clothed, brought her tea in the tub, and offered her a book.
She shook her head, hungry for him to touch her. To make things better.
He knelt beside the tub. “I’ll wash your hair.”
Can't Lose Me Page 11
