I consider pulling the covers over my head and ignoring my visitor, but I already have a good idea who it is.
And I should see him.
No matter how nauseated I am.
“Hold on,” I shout, pulling on a pair of sweats to go with my sleep tank, and then I drag myself to the front door.
I check the peephole, and my breath catches when I see him. It’s amazing how he does that to me every time I catch sight of him. He looks ragged, like he had a restless night’s sleep. Still better than I look, I’m sure. I don’t need a mirror to see that my eyes are puffy and red rimmed, and though I don’t need to throw up, I’m probably pale from the morning sickness.
Well, this is me. No use pretending it’s not.
I’ve barely opened the door when he’s pleading with me.
“Don’t shut the door. Please. I need to talk to you.”
I never planned on shutting the door, but his desperation pulls at pieces of my heart that are weary from being pulled at. It makes me hesitate. Maybe meeting with him right now isn’t the best idea.
Except, that’s not fair. Because even though this conversation is going to be hard, he deserves to have it. He deserves to say whatever he needs to say and hear me tell him directly that I’m leaving.
“I need to say things too. Come in.” I open the door wider and step aside for him to walk past.
I lead him into the living room where the curtains are open and people can see in. I know that windows and an audience are probably not deterrents to getting my panties off, but it’s a nice façade. It’s also unnecessary. There’s no way I’ll end up wrapped around him today. It’s not right to lead him on, and anyway, each time we’re together it’s harder for me to let him go.
Though I gesture for him to take a seat on the couch, he doesn’t sit so we’re both standing, our bodies fidgeting awkwardly. It’s a small space, and the tense emotions between us don’t have any room to dissipate. They gather tightly around us making the air thick and hard to breathe. My chest aches with how much I want to run and hide from this. It’s almost as strong as the desire to wrap myself in his arms and let him tell me everything can be okay.
But I know he can’t tell me that. He can’t know everything will be okay.
Which is why I have to move.
I start to tell him. “Chase, I’m—”
“Please,” he interrupts. “Let me go first.”
It would be easier if he would just let me nip this in the bud, but it’s too late for that, I suppose.
“Okay.” I curl up on my armchair and tuck my feet underneath me. “Go ahead.”
He’s quiet for a while, seeming to study the titles of my books stacked in piles at the window. Though I’ve never felt uncomfortable in silence with Chase, I do now. I find myself wanting to fill it with apologies and explanations, and part of me wonders if this was his plan or if he’s just trying to decide what to say.
Finally he talks. “I was in patrol before I was in traffic,” he starts. “Two years. It’s exactly the kind of job that you think it will be. Standard 9-1-1 calls. Checks on the elderly. Domestic violence. Lots of home burglaries and car burglaries. Every time you show up at a call, you know you’re going to see the worst of people.”
I’m not sure why he wants me to know this about him, but I give him my full attention, imagining how hard it would be to do the kind of work he’s describing.
He wanders over to the window and looks outside. “Even when you’re checking on a senior, if the person’s not dead when you get there—which they sometimes are—there’s still a reason why the cops have been called. The house smells. The yard’s neglected. It’s pretty grim when a person’s gotten too old or demented to care for him or herself and there’s no one to step in and figure out the next step but us.”
After glancing at me, he points somewhere down the street. “I used to check on a senior that lived over there. Mrs. Heisdorffer. I helped her shovel snow. And I was the one who went in and found her body when the neighbor told us they hadn’t seen her in a week.”
My eyes burn, and I have to blink fast. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
“The first time I came here, you asked me what was wrong. Do you remember that?”
I nod.
“That was who I was thinking about. Mrs. Heisdorffer.”
“You should have told me,” I say, wishing sincerely that he had.
“There’s that kind of story everywhere, though. Every street, every corner of the city holds an imprint. I couldn’t unload all of that on you.”
I want to argue, but it’s probably pointless now. Still, I hate the hollow ache in my chest discovering he’s kept a part of himself closed off from me. “It’s not good for you to carry this all by yourself all the time,” I say. “Please don’t think you always have to.”
“I talk to Pop sometimes,” he says, and while I’m glad he has that comfort, the ache inside me intensifies knowing that it should have been me he leaned on. “It does start to wear on you. It gets under your skin and in your blood. You start to think it’s all you are and all you’re worth—the awful things you see, the terrible things that people do.”
I uncurl, animated in my protest. “That’s not all you are, Chase.” There’s not a bone of awful in him. Not a bit of awful, and I can’t stand the thought that he thinks any different.
But he puts a hand out, silencing me. “You’re right. And I’m getting there. I promise.”
I frown and sigh. Then fold my knees up under me again, waiting for him to go on.
“It’s better in traffic, I should tell you. But you’re never pulling someone over to tell them they’re an excellent driver. And there’s a lot of accidents, Liv.” He lowers his voice, soberly. “You see a lot of death.”
“I can’t imagine.” Except, I can imagine. And that’s what scares me—that I can so clearly imagine his death. “This isn’t—”
“I know,” he says, cutting me off. “I’m rambling, but I have a point.” He turns and looks at me directly. “I was only twenty-two when I got out of the academy. I wasn’t thinking about families or kids. And when it came time, when other guys started settling down and getting married, I couldn’t understand how they were able to do that. How they could take everything awful that the job was and is and bring it home to a spouse, let alone kids.
“I decided I could never do that. I’d never have kids. I’d never have a wife. I made sure my life didn’t allow for those things to even be options.”
I inhale sharply. His declaration should make things better because we’re both on the same page, but for some reason it hurts to hear him say it.
Quickly, I look away, desperate to hide my anguish. “That was a smart decision.”
“No, that was a stupid decision, Liv.” His sharp tone draws my focus back to him. “It was the stupidest decision, because I let the job define everything I am. But like you said, I’m more than that, kitten. I have more than that to give to you and to our kid—”
“Chase—” I warn. It’s not our kid. It can’t be.
He raises his voice to speak over me. “—and I’d forgotten that until I met you. But I remember now. You make me remember that I’m a whole person, and I want to be that whole person with you.” He crosses to me and sits on the ottoman at my feet so he’s close now. Too close. “I love you.”
“Don’t say that.” But it’s too late. He’s said it and I heard it and it fills me everywhere like a light cast into a dark cellar. It’s warm, his I love you, and I want to hold it and claim it and never let it go. I’ll never unhear it now.
Still, I protest again, as if I can erase the echo still hanging in my condo. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?” he asks with patient frustration. “Because it will go away if you don’t hear the words? I love you, and you can’t change that. I love you, and it doesn’t mean I’m not afraid. It means you’re worth being afraid for.”
He stretches out his hand and rests it o
n top of mine. “Be afraid with me, baby.”
I want to. There’s nothing more that I want than to be afraid in his arms.
But even with his touch burning into my skin, his words from before burn deeper. The descriptions of his job. The ways he has to shield himself from what he sees. The reminder that he’s surrounded by death. Those words ring louder than the I love yous he’s given so freely.
I know he’s more than his job, and I yearn to be the one he can open up and share all of himself with, just...
I bolt from the chair, jumping over him to get away. To get distance. “I can’t,” I say, pacing the room.
He twists to face me. “Why not?”
“You weren’t part of the plan. You’re just a sperm donor.” I wince at the hurt flickering in his eyes. It hurts me to say it, but he has to hear it. It’s the truth.
He stands, unwilling to give up. “Can you tell me that you don’t love me?”
No. I can’t.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about just me anymore. I can’t be Jason Eaker’s wife, trying to explain to my child why Daddy’s not coming home tonight.”
He takes a step toward me. “You think that cops are the only people who die? What about my mom? What about the young couple in the accident I worked on last week? They left behind four kids, Liv. There’s no assurances no matter what.”
I shake my head again, unable to deal with the words he’s saying.
“I get it, baby. I do.” His voice is a balm, soothing and soft. “You’re scared and it’s okay to be scared. But you’re so afraid of losing the thing you want that you won’t let yourself have it in the first place.”
My face crumples, and I have to really work to fight back tears. It’s all happening so fast—this baby, him. Us. It’s too fast and I don’t know how to process all of it at this speed, like I’m in a car and the brakes have gone out. I just want to pause and think.
Chase reaches for me, and my body leans toward him like metal pulled to a magnet.
But I catch myself before falling into his arms. “Don’t. Just.” I spin so I’m not facing him directly. “I need a minute.”
I take off for the bathroom, not because I don’t think he’ll follow me there, but because it’s the only room that has a lock.
And I need to pee. Always. Stupid hormones.
So I click the lock and sit down to do my business. Holding my head in my hands, I let the tears fall.
It’s too much. All of this. Him. These emotions. This seed of a child inside me.
I can’t even really get away from him the way I need to. He’s always with me now, my pregnancy a constant reminder of Chase and what he’s been to me. I’ve been stupid to think I can ever run away from him. I’m trapped now, forever attached to him, and while a part of me thinks that being forever with Chase is all I’ve ever needed, there’s another part of me that’s stuck in this other place. This lonely, terrifying, depressing safe place.
I don’t know how to make this choice. What if I screw up? What if I choose wrong?
My head is still whirling as I finish up. I wipe and am about to flush when something catches my eye. Something very red and very bad. I wipe again to be sure it’s not just mild spotting.
It’s not mild spotting. It’s blood. Too much blood.
And suddenly the reasons for the panic and terror and anxiety I’ve been feeling seem small and ridiculous and out of place, and new panic and terror bursts out of me in a shrill scream of just one word.
“Chase!”
19
Chase
My body responds with an electric jolt, and I’m on my feet at the bathroom door in the space of a heartbeat. “Liv?”
Her voice is choked with panic when she answers. “I’m bleeding.”
My own panic thrums through my chest, metallic and whirring. I’ve read enough pregnancy books by this point to know that this is really, really bad. And all I want to do is rush in there and cradle her in my arms and also call 9-1-1 and also just fix it, because that’s what I do, I show up to a scene and fix things.
That’s what I do.
And then a calm settles over me—not as detached as it would be on a call, but still rational, still capable and in control. I can handle an emergency. I’m an expert at emergencies, actually, and it’s never mattered more than in this moment, when my heart is on the other side of a bathroom door from my body, bleeding and scared.
“Liv, I need to come in there. May I?”
“Hurry,” she says, her voice quiet, and I hear the lock slide open. I open the door.
She’s on the edge of her tub across from her cabinet, which is open and spilling forth a pastel pile of wrapped pads. She has one in her fist, but she’s not moving to put it in her panties.
She’s not moving at all.
I recognize the look in her eyes at once. It’s the same look I see on the faces of people who’ve just been in car accidents, their bodies and thoughts still vibrating from the unexpected collision. The same look I see on the faces of family members when I tell them a loved one has died.
It’s shock. The numb incomprehension before a great pain.
I squat down and brush her hair away from her face. “We have to go to the ER, sweetheart. We have to go right now.”
She doesn’t respond, except the trembling in her hands increases. I cover them with my own and get all the way to my knees. “I need you to be strong for the baby right now, okay?”
And for me, I want to add. But I don’t, because it’s my turn to be strong for her.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It feels like nothing. No pain. Just blood.”
I breathe out a small sigh of relief. Bleeding is bad, but bleeding without cramping is slightly better. I’ve already mentally mapped routes to all the nearest hospitals, and decided it will actually take less time for me to take her in the Audi than to wait for an ambulance.
She finally looks at me, her eyes starting to gloss over. “What if the baby is dead?” she whispers. “What if I only got to have it for such a short time and it died?”
“Then we hold on to the feeling that we got to love a baby, no matter how briefly.” I squeeze her hands and then I stand up, helping her stand too. “But this baby’s not done fighting to live, and neither are you. Which is why we’re going to the hospital right now.”
She moves slowly, jerkily, like a marionette with tangled strings, but my words have roused her a little. “Should we call 9-1-1?” she asks as she unwraps the pad and puts it in her panties. It should feel nice that she’s doing something so private in front of me, but it worries me instead. She must be terrified if she’s letting her walls fall down, especially when she seemed so determined just five minutes ago to build even more walls between us.
“It’ll take them longer to get to us and get us to an ER than it would be for us to drive ourselves. And they won’t be able to do much for this kind of thing anyway.”
She pulls up her pants and nods slowly. “Okay then.”
I pull her into a tight hug. “Do you trust me?”
She nods against my chest. “Yeah. I do.”
“Then I’m going to make it okay.”
I take her hand and lead her out to my car, and she lets me.
I break almost every traffic law I know of on the drive to the hospital. At a safe speed, obeying all lights and stops, it would be a ten-minute drive. But with Liv silent and bleeding next to me and my hand gripping the gearshift like it’s keeping us alive, I get to the hospital in less than five minutes. This ER has valet parking, thank fuck, because there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell I’m leaving Livia alone even for as long as it takes me to park a car.
I pull up to the curb and climb out of the driver’s seat, and I as I do, I feel the light bite of something against my thigh. The bite of something cold and small and hard in my jeans pocket, something I had the boys help me pick out last night. Something I brought wi
th me to Liv’s house this morning, back when I hoped…
The feel of it now, when Livia has so thoroughly shut me out and the pregnancy is in danger, is almost too much. A dagger twisting between the ribs.
After Liv is out of the car, I give my keys to the valet in exchange for a ticket. I recognize the triage nurse when we walk in.
“Officer Kelly,” she says, surprised. “Don’t usually see you without the uniform.” And she’s right—as the closest major ER to Prairie Village, I walk through these doors pretty frequently, usually on follow-up for accidents.
“It’s not a good morning,” I say, with the kind of understatement that is the first language of cops and trauma nurses.
She nods, looking past me to Liv, who is pale and quiet. “Let’s get you triaged and in a room then.”
There is the usual process of emergency rooms—blood pressure and temperatures and dates of last menstrual cycles and Livia repeating the same information over and over again. Yes, she’s bleeding. Maybe a few tablespoons, maybe more. No, there’s no pain.
Then there’s a urine sample to leave, a short wait in the waiting room, and then the nurse comes in to bring Liv back to a room. I hesitate when we stand up from our waiting room chairs. I want nothing more than to go back with her—the need to is cell-deep, urging me to stay by the woman I love and our baby—but I have to respect Liv’s wishes. Her need for walls and privacy.
And so I’m prepared for her to insist on doing this alone, just as she always has. I’m prepared for her to reject help, to her to tell me she doesn’t need me. That’s Livia Ward—lonely and beautiful and determined to suffer rather than open herself up enough to ask for help. I try to put on a mask of stoic acceptance, because I’m here for her, to be strong for her, and if that’s what she needs, then I’ll do it, no matter how much it slashes at me.
But that’s not what happens.
Liv reaches for my hand and refuses to let go. She doesn’t say anything, but the nurse’s gaze flicks between us, assessing, and I can tell I’m already locked into the role of “baby’s father” in her mind. If Liv doesn’t say anything, the staff will assume that I’m welcome back there.
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