Close to Home

by Jenna Bennett

  I looked up at him, into those dark eyes, hot with passion and promises.

  Oh yes, I was sure. All the worry of the past two months melted as if it had never been. When I was with him, there was nowhere else I wanted to be. When he was here, he was all that mattered. The rest of the world disappeared. I’d brave any amount of disapproval and anger from my mother and Todd, any number of stares and whispers from strangers, for this. And because I was afraid he’d see it all in my eyes—see just how desperately I loved him at that moment—I looked away, down to his shoulder, where a small, puckered scar was still faintly pink. A chilling reminder of a bullet from Jorge Pena’s gun.

  I reached out and smoothed a hand over it.

  “I thought you died,” fell out of my mouth. A statement that said a whole lot more than I’d intended to admit, had he been listening.

  “You ain’t getting rid of me that easy, darlin’.” He grinned.

  I smiled back, and skimmed both hands up to his shoulders and around his neck to pull him down on top of me.

  “I’m hungry,” I said four hours later.

  After we exhausted ourselves the first time, I’d fallen asleep. So had he, worn out from no sleep last night and quite a lot of strenuous activity this morning. I’d woken up a couple hours later to the feeling of a hand on my skin, moving steadily south, and soon we were busy again. After two months of missing him, I found I’d lost rather a lot of my inhibitions, and it was quite a while before we came up for air.

  Now we were in bed, still tangled together under the comforter, and it was way past lunchtime. My stomach felt hollow and achy.

  Rafe grinned lecherously. “I can fix that.”

  “You’re horrible.” But I couldn’t keep back a smile, even as I blushed. “After all that, you think I still want more?”

  “I always want more,” Rafe said simply. “If I didn’t have to go back to Atlanta, I could spend a couple days right here in this bed.” He stretched, his leg sliding against mine, and the crisp hairs on his calves rubbed against my skin.

  “Do you have to leave right now?”

  “Soon. I wanna be back there by tonight.” He tossed off the blankets and got out of bed. I watched as he padded toward the door: naked, gorgeous, and totally comfortable with himself, all smooth golden skin and hard muscles. “But first, I’m gonna see what I can find to eat. Gotta keep my strength up.” He winked at me over his shoulder before slipping through the door into the living room. I snuggled back down under the blankets, smiling.

  It was just a minute or two before he came back. I opened my eyes when something hit the bed a few inches from my face.

  “Better take that as soon as possible,” Rafe said.

  There was something wrong with his voice, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that there was something wrong with the rest of him, too. He was getting dressed, for one thing. He’d already pulled the Henley over his head, and was in the process of fastening his jeans. And his eyes were hard, and his mouth tight, and when he looked at me, it was without any of the heat or desire from earlier.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, my heart starting to beat faster.

  “What makes you think something’s wrong, darlin’?” He finished zipping up the jeans and started pulling on his boots.

  “I thought you didn’t have to go yet.”

  I sat up, clutching the blankets to myself. The expression in his eyes made me feel like I was something slimy that had crawled out from under a rock, and all I wanted to do was to cover myself. That judgment in his eyes hurt, especially after the way he’d been looking at me earlier, like I was beautiful and precious and worthy of being worshiped.

  As I snugged the blankets closer to my body, something rustled, and I looked down at the thing he’d tossed on the bed earlier. I felt all the blood leave my face when I recognized the wrapping on the abortion pill from the kitchen counter.

  “You don’t wanna wait too long before you take that,” Rafe said. “We don’t want no little accidents.”

  We didn’t?

  “Nice girl like you can’t be having babies with somebody like me.”

  “I told you before,” I said, “I’m not that nice.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I got that. Loud and clear.”

  “No...” That wasn’t what I’d meant.

  But how could I blame him, really? He must think I’d bought the pill to take after sleeping with him, to make sure I wouldn’t get pregnant. The morning-after pill. Have your cake and eat it too. All the fun and none of the consequences.

  And from where he was standing, it made perfect sense. In his position, I’d probably believe the same thing.

  “It’s not what you think...” I tried.

  “Sure.” He nodded. “No worries, darlin’. I get it. Fun and games. Last fling before you marry Satterfield and become that woman you told me about, who spent two years faking orgasms for her ex-husband.”

  Both boots were on now, and he was facing me, hands curled at his sides and his eyes simmering with something other than desire. Right now, I could see what other people saw in him: that edge of danger, of violence, lurking just underneath the surface. He looked like he was ready to put his fist through the nearest wall.

  “I’m sure glad I was able to help you get over that little hang-up, darlin’. Wouldn’t want another husband of yours to be unsatisfied in bed because his wife was frigid.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  “I understand just fine, darlin’. You said it from the start. That night you came to me after Satterfield proposed? I asked if I could look forward to you thinking about me every time you needed to fake another orgasm.”

  And I hadn’t answered because the idea had been so shocking. And, I suspected, true.

  He added, “Don’t worry about it. Ain’t like I’m all that eager to get fitted for a ball and chain myself, you know.”

  “I’m sure.” He’d certainly never led me to believe that he was interested in anything more than just the occasional roll in the hay. I was frankly surprised he was back for more. I’d thought I might not see him again after the first time.

  “I’m just gonna head out now. Maybe I’ll stop by next time I’m in town, see if your legs are still open. If you ain’t married by then.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away.

  “Rafe,” I called after him. “Wait a second. Rafe!”

  The only answer was the sound of the front door slamming shut.

  It took me a second to get over the shock. Had he really just walked out on me?

  And then it took another few seconds to get out of bed and throw a dress over my head. I ran out in the hallway and down the stairs, half hoping he’d already come to his senses and was on his way back, but by the time I got downstairs, there was no sign of him. From down the street I could hear the sound of an engine, a deep angry growl, catching and then fading into the distance.

  I cried myself to sleep. By the time I woke up again, it was turning dark outside, and the lighted display on the alarm clock on top of the bureau told me it was going on for seven.

  The first thing I noticed was that I was in pain.

  Not the pain from earlier, like a dull ache in my chest and my head from too many tears. This was physical pain. Sharp pain, stabbing through my body, causing me to curl up on my side and moan. The bed was wet, warm and sort of sticky.

  It had been warm and sticky before too, but those stains had dried while I slept. I could feel them, sort of hard and a little scratchy. This was different.

  Another stronger wave of pain knifed through me, along with a ripple of panic, and I scrambled out of bed, waiting for the expected surge of nausea that always came with getting up, and instead found myself bent double, supporting myself on the night table until the pain passed. Something wet trickled down the inside of my leg. When I raised a shaking hand to turn on the light on the bedside table, it took three tries to find the switch. In the soft amber glow of the lamp, the splotches
of bright blood glistened wetly against the white cotton sheets.

  “No!”

  I knew what was happening. It had happened before, and I recognized the symptoms. But this time it wouldn’t happen without a fight. Losing Bradley’s baby had been one thing. Losing Rafe’s was something totally different. After all the agonizing I’d done over this pregnancy, after all the back and forth and the anguish I’d felt before finally making a decision, there was no way I’d allow fate to take my baby without fighting tooth and nail to keep it.

  I staggered over to where I’d dropped my dress earlier, and pulled it over my head. It covered the worst of the bloodstains, and it was the best I could do. I had made it into the bathroom and was on my hands and knees with my head under the sink looking for a pad I could use to contain some of the bleeding when there was a knock on the door.

  “Savannah!”

  Abandoning the bathroom and the pad, I headed for the door, supporting myself on walls and furniture as I went, staggering through the living room and down the hallway to the front door.

  It took another few tries to get the lock turned and the chain unhooked. When I pulled the door toward me, I had to hold on to the knob to keep on my feet. Rafe opened his mouth, took one look at me, and turned pale, or as pale as I’d ever seen him. “What happened?”

  I didn’t have enough breath to spare to answer, so I hiked my skirt up high enough for him to see the blood. He turned a shade paler. “Fuck!”

  “Doctor,” I managed.

  “Right. Sure.” He swung me up in his arms. I was no feather to begin with, and I’d gained another five pounds since I’d gotten pregnant, but he had no problems carrying me down the hallway to the stairs and down the stairs and across the courtyard outside. When we reached the Volvo, he put me down for a second to open the door. I clung to him for support, and crawled into the seat as soon as the door was open. He closed it behind me and slid across the hood of the car to get to the driver’s side door faster.

  The nearest hospital to my apartment is Skyline Medical Center. On a good day, with normal traffic, it’s possible to get from one to the other in about thirteen minutes. Rafe made it in eight. We wove in and out of traffic on Ellington Parkway like it was the Indy 500, back and forth between the three lanes, laying on the horn whenever someone didn’t get out of the way fast enough. Rafe didn’t slow down for exit ramps, other cars, or anything else. We were lucky there were no accidents in our wake. When we pulled up behind the hospital, outside the entrance to the emergency room, he came to a dead stop with a squeal of brakes, and was out of the car and around to my side before I’d gotten myself together from being flung forward against the seatbelt.

  “C’mon.” He scooped me up again and carried me through the automatic doors into the lobby. “I need a doctor!”

  The next little bit was a blur, between the pain and the hustle of nurses and doctors. Rafe was left behind in the lobby, and the last thing I saw before they wheeled me into the ER itself, was him falling into a seat and leaning forward, burying his face in his hands. They were streaked with blood from lifting and carrying me, and I wanted to tell him to go wash, but I didn’t have enough breath.

  “Who’s your next of kin?” a young black nurse with braided hair asked me. “Him?” She tossed her head in the direction of the lobby, and the beads on the bottom of the braids jangled together.

  I shook my head. “My mother.”

  “You want I should call her?”

  God, no. Having my mother show up for this was the last thing I wanted.

  “We have to call someone,” the nurse said.

  I thought about asking her to call Dix, but then I realized that Dix had his hands full with Abigail and Hannah. “Fine. Call my mother.” I managed to recite the number.

  Things went a little blurry again after that. I ended up in a bed in a room with heavy shades on the windows. Someone did an ultrasound and someone else drew blood. The verdict of both tests was that my tiny blueberry had died, and now my body was in the process of getting rid of it. What they had to do now, the nurse explained to me, was give me medicine to reduce the bleeding since there was too much of it, as well as something for the pain, since I thought there was too much of that as well.

  “There’s nothing you can do to save my baby?”

  She looked sympathetic. “It’s already too late, hon. The baby died a day or two ago. By the time the bleeding starts, it’s much too late to change anything.”

  She patted my hand and bustled off. I buried my head in the pillow and had another good cry. Until the pain medicine made me woozy and I nodded off again.

  At some point they sent Rafe in to see me, because I opened my eyes and there he was, sitting in a chair next to the bed, with his head bent and two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as if his head hurt.

  I didn’t know how much time had elapsed, but it was a good bet it was at least an hour or two since we got to the hospital, and a couple of hours before that, that he walked out of my apartment. For all I knew, it might be the middle of the night. When I saw him, my eyes filled up again with tears. “You’re still here,” I managed.

  He looked up. “D’you think I’d leave you? Alone?”

  I swallowed. “I wasn’t sure what to think.” He’d walked out once, and it wasn’t that hard to imagine him doing it again. And besides, he’d told me he wanted to get back to Atlanta tonight.

  “They wouldn’t tell me nothing. Just that the danger was over and you’d be OK.” He drove a hand through his hair in frustration. “I asked if this was normal after taking one of those pills, and they said no.”

  “I didn’t take the pill,” I whispered. “I wanted this baby.”

  I could see the question in his eyes, but he didn’t ask. “If you didn’t take the pill, what was all that bleeding from?” He sounded like it was the first time he’d been faced with blood, when I knew very well it wasn’t.

  I smiled weakly. “Surely you’ve seen blood before. After Brenda Puckett, and Perry Fortunato, and Elspeth, and Jorge…”

  “That was someone else’s blood. This was yours.” His voice was flat. I felt a shiver of something frightening in the pit of my stomach. Although, with everything else that was going on down there, it might just have been the medication. Or the miscarriage. “What happened? Was it something I did?”

  I could see fear in his eyes. It was the first time I’d ever seen him show even a hint of fear. I’d seen him face death, people with guns, people sent to kill him, but I’d never seen him look afraid. Not until now.

  “Nothing happened,” I said. “Nobody did anything. It wasn’t the sex. It just happened. I’m prone to it, I guess.”

  It was a horrifying thought. I hadn’t realized, until I lost it, just how much I wanted this baby. My eyes filled again.

  “Prone to what? Stomach ulcers? Gallstones? PMS?”

  I drew a breath, willing the tears away. “I had a miscarriage.”

  He stared at me, blankly, and I added, “I was pregnant, but now I’m not. I lost the baby.”

  Rafe’s eyes widened, and he stared down at his hands. They were perfectly clean, although they’d been streaked with blood earlier, and I guess maybe the thought was enough. I reached out, with some effort, and covered one of his hands with mine, but before either of us could speak, the door opened.

  “Savannah, darling!” My mother came rushing in, and then was brought up short when she saw Rafe. “Oh!”

  I took my hand back as calmly as I could, although my first inclination had been to snatch it away in hopes that she wouldn’t notice.

  Rafe, to his credit, got to his feet before greeting her. “Evening, Miz Martin.”

  Mother nodded, her nostrils pinched as if she had smelled something unpleasant.

  Rafe turned to me, “Think I’ll go get a beer. Or something stronger. See you later, darlin’.”

  He sauntered toward the door. Mother jumped out of the way as he got closer, and he nodded politely.
“Ma’am.”

  “Call me,” I said to his back.

  Mother frowned. Rafe glanced at me over his shoulder, but didn’t answer.

  “What was that man doing here?” mother demanded, before ‘that man’ had even closed the door behind him. I had to take a breath before I answered, just so I wouldn’t scream at her.

  “He brought me to the hospital. He knocked on the door just after I started bleeding.”

  “I thought he was dead,” mother said, and sounded disappointed that he wasn’t.

  “You thought wrong. And I don’t want you to talk about him that way. He has every right to be here.”

  Mother looked nonplussed. “What right could he possibly…?” she began, and then lightning seemed to strike. She flushed a painful scarlet, from the silk scarf around her shoulders to her expensively tinted hair. “You mean… you and he…?”

  “Whose baby did you think it was?”

  Mother fluttered her hands daintily. “I assumed you and Todd had taken the honeymoon early…?”

  I shook my head. “The only man I’ve slept with since I divorced Bradley, is Rafe.”

  Mother looked stricken. “But darling… I called Todd! He’s outside in the lobby!”

  Where Rafe was also going. I struggled to sit up. “Oh, God! They’re going to kill each other.” Todd knew it wasn’t his baby, and seeing Rafe would only reinforce that fact. Rafe probably thought the baby was Todd’s, or if he didn’t think so now, he’d start thinking it when he saw Todd. “I have to get out there!”

  “Dixon is there,” mother said, pushing me back against the pillows. “He’ll take care of it.”

  Had mother brought the whole family with her? Surely Dix had more important things on his mind at the moment than his sister’s messed-up love life. And God only knew what would happen if he got in the middle of a confrontation between Rafe and Todd. Todd had been looking for an opportunity to have at Rafe for a while now, and this was just the excuse he’d been looking for. Dix would certainly not be able to stop him. Either of them. “They’ll kill him too! Get me out of here; I have to find them!”