Pucker Up

by Seimas, Valerie

  “Dustin – ”

  “Why did you even come? Why didn’t you just send your lawyer in the first place so we didn’t even need to see each other again?” His voice was harsh, and she felt his words cut her deep.

  “I wanted a better memory. You had the image of me walking away, but all I had was a voice, saying things that made my heart break into a million pieces. I wanted to replace it – erase the hospital room and the beeping and the sadness with a sunny afternoon and a lemon tree. Find any image that wouldn’t break my heart.” She stopped for a moment and turned, trying to compose herself. “I didn’t know you were going to be there. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You don’t believe me? How much of a heartless bitch do you think I am, really?”

  “No,” he said, waving that away, “what do you mean you had a voice breaking your heart?”

  Faith brought a hand up to her head, trying to massage away this whole conversation. The one she’d fled in the middle of the night so they’d never have to have. “Dustin, I really don’t want to talk about this. Please don’t,” she pleaded, tears clear in her voice.

  “Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me who broke your heart.”

  “The only person that could. You did.”

  “How?”

  “How?” she asked, her voice rising in agitation. “How?” she screamed. “Cut the crap, Dustin. It’s only you and me here. You don’t have to pretend.”

  “I’m not pretending – I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, an unamused bark of laughter escaping her, “this is ridiculous. You’ve spent so much time hating me you can’t even tell the truth. You want me to say it? You really want me to say it?”

  Dustin propped himself against the table and folded his arms. “Please, enlighten me.”

  “Dustin, I heard you, okay. I heard you.”

  “Heard what?” he asked in exasperation.

  She bit her lip, not able to stop the tear running down her cheek. It had been ten years, and the thought still destroyed her. “I heard you tell your brother that… that it was a mistake. That everything, including our wedding, was a mistake.” Her voice caught on a sob, but she didn’t stop. “That you found yourself in a nightmare, and you wished none of it was true. I heard all of that, from you, when I was laying ten feet behind you in a hospital bed.”

  She looked down, tears flowing freely, but now that she’d started talking, couldn’t stop. “And you took me home and kept telling me that you loved me and everything was going to be all right, but I’d heard you. I knew that was all lies. You weren’t all in anymore. You regretted it, but you were too… honorable to do anything about it. So I did it for you. I set you free.”

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and met his gaze. “My God Dustin, you’re such a bastard for making me say that. I’m leaving. Don’t even try to follow me.”

  Chapter 21

  Dustin was too stunned to go after her. He didn’t think it was possible for his heart to break even more, but her words shattered it. Had he really said that? That their relationship was a nightmare? If he had, he hadn’t meant it. Their relationship had been the only thing keeping him standing. It’s why he fell so hard after she left.

  The door opened, and he turned, but it wasn’t Faith. “You okay?” his twin asked, clamping a hand on his shoulder.

  “Peter, what did I do?”

  “What?” he asked, his eyebrows drawn in confusion.

  “That day when Faith was in the hospital. Did I tell you I was living a nightmare?”

  “You were having a hard day.”

  Dustin cringed and dropped his head into his hands. “Oh my God, she’s right. This was all my fault.” It didn’t matter that the mistake he’d made hadn’t been marrying Faith; all that mattered was that’s what she’d heard. She lost their child and thought he was abandoning her. He’d have run for far less.

  But no, she didn’t even call it running. She’d said “set you free.” She was trying to be gracious and magnanimous. He remembered them having a conversation once about guys trying so hard to be nice that instead of breaking a girl’s heart they decide aloof is the way to go, forcing her to do the breaking. She thought that was him, trying hard not to break her heart even more. How could she think that was him? Easy – she’d heard him practically admit to it. And she had no idea he’d run after her.

  “She heard me, Peter. She heard me and thought I meant marrying her was the mistake.”

  “Shit,” Peter murmured. “Well, it all makes much more sense now.”

  “Fat lot of good that is.” Dustin let the weight of their conversation register, and a tear ran slowly down his face. “Peter, what did I do? What the hell did I do?”

  “You – ”

  “I fucked it up. Me!” He jumped up, needing to pace the floor as reality shattered around him. “And I’ve been blaming her for ten damn years. And it was all my fucking fault. Every last piece of it.”

  “Take it easy,” Peter said in his most soothing voice. “She –”

  “She didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Don’t you blame her, Peter!” He felt a surge of anger at his brother and knew that he was lost.

  “Calm down. This is a lot to process. You need to take some time, take a step back.”

  “What I need to do is find Faith.”

  “No,” Peter said in his most commanding teacher voice, placing a hand on Dustin’s chest to stop him from tearing across the room. “You need some distance. She needs some distance.” Dustin opened his mouth to protest, but Peter leaned in to whisper to his brother. “Take a moment to think this time so the outcome won’t be the same.”

  Faith sat in her driveway, sobbing and shaking. This was why she didn’t think about that day without gin or a guitar. It really did wreck her. Ten years should have provided her distance, but the heartbreak hadn’t gotten any weaker with time. He was the love of her life, and she’d lost him. Part of her knew she’d done the right thing; part of her still regretted not fighting for him. She’d seen too many relationships implode, before and since, to think that her feelings could have saved them. Maybe she could have gotten a softer landing though.

  Her front door opened, and houseguests came spewing out. She sighed, wishing they weren’t here to see her like this, but that thought fled when she registered the panic on their faces. “What’s wrong?” she asked, jumping out of the car.

  “Can you give us a ride?” Trevor asked. “We sent Barrett out for ice cream. No matter how many times he likes to remind me he’s a bodyguard and not a butler, Mady charmed him into it anyway, so now he’s gone, and we don’t have any wheels and – ”

  “We need to get to the hospital,” Madison said, her voice perfectly calm but a hand flattened against her belly.

  “What?” She looked from Madison’s pained face to Trevor’s slightly manic expression. “You’re having the baby?!” Faith asked.

  “We’re having the baby,” Trevor said.

  “I’m having the baby,” Madison corrected, placing a hand on the car to steady herself. “He’s freaking out.”

  “I am not freaking out,” Trevor said with a deep breath, giving his wife a smile and placing a kiss against her temple, “as long as Faith will give us a ride.”

  “Of course, yeah, get in!”

  They clamored into the back seat, and Faith reversed the car down the driveway. “Does Barrett know you’re on your way to the hospital?” she asked after Trevor directed her on where to take them.

  “Good idea,” Trevor said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and texting one-handed. The other remained in his wife’s deadly grip.

  “How you doing back there, Madison?” Faith asked, her voice full of the forced cheerfulness she was known for.

  “This is too soon,” Madison said, her brow creased in pain.

  “It is a bit earlier than we planned,” Trevor admitted with a sheepish grin, “but I
wouldn’t expect anything less from our kid. Gonna have her mother’s flair for the dramatic.”

  “I don’t have a flair for the dramatic,” Madison argued through clenched teeth. “And you don’t know it’s a girl.”

  “You do remember how we met, right?” Trevor winced as she squeezed his hand even harder along with the contraction, but continued smiling.

  “Vividly,” she murmured. Faith looked at them in her rearview mirror and hit the gas. “Faith, I owe you big time.”

  “For driving you to the hospital? I didn’t even turn on the meter.”

  Trevor laughed, but Madison only shook her head. “No, to get the car cleaned. I’m pretty sure my water just broke.”

  Faith put on a brave face and waved that comment away, but inside she was panicking. She didn’t have any good experiences with childbirth. “I’m not the neat freak, remember? A little water never hurt anyone. And it’s just a car – I have three more of them.”

  “Three more?” Trevor said. “I would have thought with a garage that big you’d have had a dozen.” He turned to his wife with a quizzical look. “Does she make that much more money than you? Because she has double the amount of cars we do.”

  “Do you really,” Madison asked, her breathing labored, “want to compare our modes of transportation right now?”

  “Why not?” Trevor asked. “Faith, you seem like the kind of person with a private jet. Yes or no?”

  “Trevor,” Madison warned.

  His face sobered. “Honey, I’m trying to distract you.”

  “I don’t want to be distracted. I want to be comforted.”

  Faith checked on them in the rearview mirror as she came to a stop at the light. Trevor placed a kiss against the top of her head, his free hand coming up to stroke her hair. “It’s going to all be fine, honey. You’re the strongest person I know. You got this, sweetie. You got this.”

  Faith threw the car into drive and sped away from the intersection. She hoped he was right. Dear God, she hoped he was right.

  Peter glared at his daughters as he paced in front of their car. The girls were leaning against the hood, still possessing enough sense to look chagrined at what they’d done. Dustin was across the parking lot in his own truck, ignoring them all.

  “Crap,” Harmony murmured. Peter looked up to see Jackson, buttoning his suit jacket as he made his way across the parking lot to them. After the scene they’d made in the lobby, Peter was surprised security wasn’t with him to escort them the hell away from his building.

  “Language,” Peter barked before turning his attention back to the attorney.

  “Hello again, ladies,” Jackson said. The girls nodded without looking at him, their gazes never leaving the ground.

  “That one,” Jackson said, pointing at Harmony while leaning conspiratorially towards Peter, “would make a pretty fierce lawyer one day.”

  “Arguing has always been her strong suit,” Peter grumbled in agreement.

  They fell silent for a moment before Jackson cleared his throat. “Okay ladies, are you going to tell him or should I?”

  The teenagers shared a look, and Peter’s unease ratcheted up. “What?” he asked in defeat. Harmony mumbled something under her breath. Jackson chuckled, but Peter wasn’t having any of it. “Again. So the people in the back can hear you.”

  “I recorded everything that happened when Jackson was in our house.”

  Peter’s eyes bugged out so far he was sure he looked like a cartoon character; the girls were smart enough not to laugh. “What?”

  “I – ”

  “No, uh uh. No talking,” Peter said, interrupting her response. He placed a hand over his mouth, trying to stop the curse words from spilling out. He closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. “And you listened to it? All of it?”

  “Oh they listened to it,” Jackson piped in. “The future DA thought threatening me with the information was a good tactic.”

  “I would like to clarify that when I woke up this morning, I was just trying to take a test,” Melody protested. But then she glanced at her sister and squared her shoulders. “And while I can’t believe she actually did that, she did it with the best of intentions. Let’s not pretend you guys don’t agree with us. We did listen to the whole thing, remember.”

  The men shared a glance. “You have to learn,” Peter finally said, “that interfering in someone else’s personal life is not how you should be spending your time, no matter how right you think you are.”

  “You mean like you, Dad?” Harmony said cheekily, a smirk on her face. Peter’s eyes narrowed at her, but she didn’t stop talking. “Because I’ve heard the story of you and Mom hundreds of times, and there is a lot of interfering in there. And that worked out pretty freaking fantastic if I do say so myself.”

  “Harmony—” Peter began, his voice full of both chiding and resignation.

  “No, Dad,” Melody murmured in a calm voice, “she’s right. We don’t go around sticking our noses in other people’s business just because we can. This is different. This is family.”

  “Everyone keeps telling me that this is what being an adult is like and there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, I’m not an adult yet, and I refuse to accept that. Especially when I know I can do something to help.”

  “Told you,” Jackson murmured. “Lawyer.”

  “Right now I’d settle for not criminal,” Peter replied, shaking his head.

  “Mr. Shaw agrees with us,” Melody said, turning her eyes to the lawyer. “He’s the one that let us see Faith in the first place, and he knew exactly what we were going to do.”

  Peter shot him a questioning stare. Jackson just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “These two make quite a convincing pair.”

  Peter’s eyes slipped across the parking lot to Dustin, sitting stone-faced in his pickup truck trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. “Okay,” he sighed in defeat. “Give it to me. Tell me what your plan was. Let’s hear it.”

  The girls smiled, and he had a feeling that this was not going to end well.

  Faith finally pulled the car into the hospital, and Trevor sprinted ahead to get a wheelchair.

  “You’re doing great,” Faith assured Madison with a smile.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she replied.

  “You most certainly can. You’re a kick-ass alien freedom fighter, remember?”

  “I don’t think the plasma guns are going to help with this problem,” Madison murmured through gritted teeth.

  “Come on, Geek Queen, you got this,” Faith whispered as she helped her out of the car. Madison graced her with a huge smile as Trevor and a couple of nurses returned with the wheelchair.

  “Stay,” Madison said as they wheeled her down the hall. “Please.”

  “Of course,” Faith assured her. Trevor had to wait while they got her checked out and stood next to Faith as they watched her disappear down the hall. “Trevor, you were so calm.”

  He turned to her, and she saw his face crumble into a state of absolute terror. “Calm? Calm?! I’m not calm, I’m freaking out!”

  He started pacing across the floor, talking a mile a minute. “We’re not ready for this. We’re practically homeless at the moment. And I haven’t finished reading any of those parenting books. They’re like the instruction manuals for babies, and I’m not done. You think I can Google that?!”

  He stopped in his tracks and focused on Faith. “Who am I kidding? I’m not ready to take care of another human being. Last week I couldn’t figure out where the laundry went, I just threw it back in the washing machine. Last time Mady went out of town without me, I ate cereal for three days, and then got my mom to cook for me. I can’t even take care of myself, how am I supposed to take care of a baby?!”

  “Trevor, come here, sit down.” Faith pulled him over to a corner of the waiting room and forced him into a chair.

  “A fish,” he said. “I could probably take care of a fish. They’re very self-containe
d, and if you forget to feed them one day, eh, they’ll survive.”

  “Listen—” Faith began.

  “A heart attack. I’m having a heart attack,” he said, clutching at his chest.

  “You’re not having a heart attack,” Faith admonished. “You’re having a panic attack. You need to calm down. Just breathe. It’s all going to be okay.”

  Faith pushed his head between his knees and tried hard not to laugh as Trevor started breathing in the same staccato rhythm Madison had as she’d been wheeled away. “There, that’s it.” She rubbed a hand against his back, trying to offer some comfort. “Isn’t that better?”

  “Yes, that’s better.” After a few minutes he sat up and leaned back in his chair. “God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said with a small laugh. “You’d think I’d be ready for this. I’m supposed to be the unflappable one.”

  “I guess babies do that to you.”

  “Yeah, I guess they can.” Trevor turned sheepish eyes to Faith. “You won’t tell Mady about this, will you? She has enough to think about without worrying that I’m going to freak out again.”

  “It’ll be our little secret,” she assured him.

  “Thanks. I can’t even imagine how she’d react if she heard me say that a fish was preferable to our child. I would never live that down.” He shook his head in disbelief. “The crazy things these hospital walls must hear. No wonder medical shows are so popular.”

  “Mr. Clark?” a nurse asked. Trevor jumped up and squeezed Faith’s hand, mouthing her a silent thank you as he followed after the nurse down the hall. Faith watched him walk towards a new chapter in his life, and wondered about the other things said in hospitals. If any of the things said there should be fueling a ten-year heartache.

  Chapter 22

  The truck was silent, not even the radio punctuating the tense atmosphere. Peter glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed both of the girls were staring at their laps, no phones in sight.

  “You, Sidekick. How many classes did you miss today?”

  Melody leaned forward to look at the clock on the dash before responding. “One.”