Fighting to Stay (Fighting Madly Book 2)

by Ziegler, S. L.

  “Needed to make sure the sun was still in the sky.” I glance up and soak in the vitamin D.

  “Word on the street is you’re knocked up.”

  “Matt has a big mouth.”

  “Well, as your brother, I thought I should know.”

  “Or dad.”

  “Are you always going to think that?”

  “Who knows?”

  “But seriously, are you okay?” We have grown leaps and bounds now that he’s concerned about my well-being.

  “As well as can be expected. Reed won’t talk about anything, and I have the urge to vomit more times than not, but other than that, it could be worse.”

  “You got yourself checked?”

  “Yep, this morning.”

  “That’s good.”

  I pick at my food but never actually put it in my mouth, never chew any of it. But Mark stays right next to me. Because my thoughts of this baby and where Reed will be does its own sort of chewing.

  “Mother fucking shit. You would think this would be easier by now, God dammit,” Reed screams from the kitchen as the sound of glass shatters.

  His shouts cause me to jump and I quietly move into the kitchen. He stands there waving a crutch in the air as some kind of rig to get a cup from the top cabinet.

  “All you have to do is ask and I would do it for you.”

  “I don’t need any more fucking help. None. I can’t shit without you wiping my ass, so let me do this one damn thing without you.”

  “Oookkkaaay.”

  Reed’s face tenses as he apologizes, but like each and every apology he’s delivered, it’s pointless. He doesn’t mean it; it’s simply hollow words from his mouth. But the harshness is almost too much. He’s been home from the hospital for a month, thirty days spent inside the confines of these walls, only leaving when another checkup is scheduled. And a new type of frustration brews within him each day, and the brunt of the focal point of it is usually me.

  Today we are leaving the house for yet another doctor’s appointment, but this one I want; this one I hope helps pull Reed from the funk he’s stuck in. It marks my twelve-week appointment, and the first time we get to see our little shrimp together.

  He doesn’t really speak anymore, only snaps, and the distance grows between us each day that passes. It seems to break him. But even this morning, when he woke up to the ding of the reminder on his phone going off, Reed seemed, dare I say, happy—well, if not happy, maybe content.

  But it was short lived. All sense of light went up in a cloud of smoke when I had to help him get dressed, when I had to button his shirt, pull his pants up, tie his shoes. Nasty, mad, red scars from the road rashes cover his whole side, his arm and leg still in a cast. He can’t do anything. I have to do it all, and I would forever. We aren’t married, and who knows when or if we ever will be, but it’s what I will do. I’ll pull up those clothes, I’ll brush his teeth. Because the alternative to not doing any of it isn’t an option.

  He’s alive.

  Even if the person that survived isn’t the same, because I will learn to love this one with the same amount of passion and madness. I thought it was his pain that crushed him, but now, that only lingers. It’s his pride, his stubborn streak that now stands in his way.

  I recognize it.

  I get it. Yet sometimes I want to scream and shout at the top of my lungs, slap him in the forehead with some sense so maybe he will get that me helping him doesn’t make him weak.

  “Do you see that right there? That’s your baby. He or she is measuring right at twelve weeks.” The ultrasound tech points up to the screen. She moves the wand with her other hand over my stomach. And with a turn of the dial, a loud, fast beat fills the room. The air leaves me in a whoosh. “And that is the heartbeat. It’s about 150 beats a minute.”

  My eyes burn as the tears form, a totally different kind to my normal ones that fall. This time, it’s joyful tears, happiness leaking out. In the sea of all of this, from the beginning of this new journey of pregnancy, we’ve had nothing but chaos brewing, yet here, we have our own miracle.

  Our child, made not from the accident, not from the pins or surgeries, or the bitterness that is around Reed now, but from before, when all we had was immeasurable passion and crazy love.

  I’m in awe. I’m completely and utterly in love with this baby. This baby grows inside me and I’ll move heaven and earth to make sure he or she stays safe.

  I spare a look over at Reed. He has his back against the wall and he shows more emotion than he has in weeks. No worry lines creasing his forehead, no pained gaze.

  This baby is helping him return back to who he was.

  “Reed, please talk to me.” Hadley urges me, but she doesn’t move from her spot at the table.

  “It’s over, that’s all. Doc said my nerves are too shot and my range of motion is gone. I can’t do any kind of fighting, let alone in the cage.” I knew it was a big fucking chance after my last surgery two weeks ago and the long pins gone and just my plates in place. I bumped into the doctor after a session of physical therapy and all hope was shattered. I didn’t have muscle damage in my legs, so at least I didn’t have to walk with a damn limp. But to move my arm around, to have normal range, is near impossible, let alone trying to throw a punch or a hold or do anything. It’s pointless to try.

  Hads’s face reveals no surprise or shock, of course. Hads has known since she was told about my injuries in the hospital. That’s the bad part of having a relationship with a nurse. And she can’t lie for shit, so she tried to hide away when the best doctors in the nation were flown in to look over my case.

  She stayed silent when I went in for another surgery she didn’t agree with. It was to try to repair bones that weren’t there anymore.

  I wanted her to be wrong, I wanted to prove to her this didn’t kill my chance. I wanted the casts to come off and to be fucking cured. I needed to be able to still have my outlet.

  But it’s not going to happen.

  Her belly gets rounder each morning with my fucking kid growing in there, the only thing that semi-grounds me. It’s not enough, though. I just can’t let go of this shit that happened. I can’t break the damn hold that grips me now that I have nothing bigger, nothing wiser to do with my life.

  Nothing.

  A part of me dies a little more each day when I wake up with nothing to do, nothing long to do. But it doesn’t matter to Hads; she still loves me, still stands next to me with hope for a bigger picture. But the picture I have, the picture I face, is too damn small to see what it is. And because she’s here, because I’m too weak, I pick fights with her for no fucking reason, yet Hads stays. She’s here, and with all her positive thinking and all her wisdom, she holds true to who she is.

  But I still fight, I still pick, I still snap.

  Incessantly.

  I see with my own eyes, I feel in my bones her fighting for me, trying to pull me from the destruction inside of me. But the harder she tries, the more I push her away even harder. I can’t be who she thinks I am, who I once was, not till I can see what my life will hold now. But I can’t walk away, either. I can’t turn away. It’s not an option.

  So I make us both miserable. Over and over again. Each day I stay drowning in my damn injuries. I need the light at the end of the tunnel to shine and tell me where the fuck to go next.

  I look at myself in the mirror each day and I see nothing of who I was. My muscles are deteriorating from not working out. My once artful tats on my body are a mess with scars that will never go away. How can she love to look at me when I can’t stand the fucking sight of me?

  It’s fucking stupid, too, and I’m being a dumbass and I know it down to my bones. That’s what I don’t get, what that part of me doesn’t see that I am more than that. I was told my whole life growing up that I was a failure at pretty much everything, and now, that’s what I am. Yet, I was going to throw in the towel and walk away, but to go out like this sucks.

  Fucking sucks ball
s.

  “Look at the bright side.”

  “What bright side, Hadley? Where the fuck is the bright side to all this, huh? What am I going to do now?”

  “I don’t know, Reed, but if anyone can find it, it’s you. We can find it.” I can see it in her eyes that Hads believes what she says. She doesn’t fault me on that. If only I can do the same.

  “Whatever you say, dear.” My tone is too harsh for her, I know it, but the cycle won’t break.

  “Reed, stop, please. Just stop with this.”

  “Hadley, what do you want me to do? All I have ever done is fight. I don’t have school to fall back on, and everything I have surrounds my career, the gyms, the clothing line. All of it. Now tell me, who’s going to train at a gym that a has-been loser owns, or buy workout clothes from someone that can’t even wear them because he can’t even lift a weight above his head? The answer is no one, Hads. No one. I gave up everything for something that won’t love me back. I fucked my way through it all. Threw you away like trash, and only got you back after I got my foot out of my ass, and that shit is gone now. I let you figure your shit out without me being the damn hovercraft. Ever think maybe that’s what I need right now?”

  “Baby, listen to me please. It’s just your fear talking, that’s all. It’s the fear of the unknown. I get it, I do. But guess what? Under that fear is a second chance at something new, something that could be better. And it’s okay to wallow in pity, shit I did. But don’t take all your luggage on the damn pity train and have it crush you.”

  “Yep.” Fucking train, damn metaphors she gets from all that fucking time she spends with Graham.

  “Really, did you listen to anything I said?”

  Hads’s dark circles under her eyes are too deep. She hasn’t done her hair in weeks, hasn’t gotten out of leggings and my shirts since then, either. She’s burned out, tired, sick of looking out for me. Hads needs to relax, rest and to sleep without me tossing and turning next to her. I’m going to give her that space from the shit on me, so it doesn’t rub off on her.

  “Some. Listen, Bash is in town. I’m going to go meet him for a drink.”

  Her sweet face, the face that I love, the same one that fell like I told her I killed Lucy, is the same one whose lips now says, “Okay. Love you.”

  “You too.” I place a small kiss on those lips. No matter how mad I am, how far away I am in my head, after all that accident crap, I won’t walk out of this house without a kiss.

  I step into my car. My head hits the backrest, my arm and neck feel like tiny knives are shooting through it from the physical therapy sessions. A picture catches my eyes from the visor. I take it down and an idea sparks inside the pain. Hadley’s thing about fear…my girl and her words about it leading to something better. Fucking light at the end of the tunnel.

  Hadley somehow always turns into my flashing neon light pointing me to the place I need to be.

  I got it, my plan. Now I just have to find the fucking way to do it, too.

  The weeks have passed, but time seems to be frozen. Reed and I stopped bickering the day the doctor told him the news about the damage that really happened to Reed’s arm.

  We’ve stopped everything.

  The intimacy we shared—gone.

  No cuddles on the couch, no reaching for my hand while we walk, not a single date. And much to my dismay, certainly no sex. We aren’t in a relationship, not a friendship, either. We’re merely roommates passing through the hallways. He spends late nights out of the house, too busy to come home to deal with his pregnant fiancée. Too tied up to even let me know what he’s buried himself in. The house we were building has been put on hold. The books, bridal magazines, or anything wedding related is packed away in a box placed on a shelf in the garage.

  My life is at a standstill. Indefinitely.

  Reed’s restlessness, agony, his burden, weighs on us, wears on me. But I stopped trying to pull him away from what takes his time now. I don’t want to be the nagging one, the one to ruin what has gotten him moving again.

  I remain silent.

  Next Monday, I hit the twenty-week mark and the ultrasound will tell us if we are having a boy or a girl. The only time Reed comes around, any time he shows interest in me, is when it comes down to “his baby.” I mention I want something for the baby, he gets it. I crave something, it’s on the counter before I can blink. And most of the time, it’s not even him I mention it to. He’s a spy. At least we get that in any case, in the mass of the unknown, he loves his child so much that he will do these things for the mother. Which makes me love him that much more.

  “We have to do a gender-reveal party for you. Please, it’s my job as the godmother to do it.”

  I pop a grape into my mouth. Of course this baby is already a health nut like his father. What I wouldn’t do for a juice from Columbia, and if I said that out loud, no doubt, Reed would fly one up just for me. “You aren’t the godmother yet, and we don’t want one. I don’t need balloons coming out of a box or cutting into a cake for blue or pink to tell me if I am having a girl or a boy.”

  “You only get a couple of chances at babies, Hads. Live it up, have the party. Come on, pretty please, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger for it. I’ll do all the work and you get presents, too.” Her arms start to flap just from her excitement. Too bad I see through it now; the bigger picture is so much more than parties.

  “Court, you pulled that card with the engagement party, so you’re not going over my head with this one. I’m good with the old-fashioned, find-out-during-the-ultrasound way. It’s been going on for years that way.”

  She rolls her eyes so hard, I’m surprised they didn’t get stuck. “Whatever you say, but I think it’s about your fiancé more than anything else.”

  I let out a deep sigh. “Nah, the way Reed’s going, he would probably want that. It seems I’m just an incubator for his baby. I don’t want the party, and I’m fine this way around.”

  “Reed is worse than that, and I’m glad you are talking about it, not just pretending it’s not happening.”

  “I even talked about it with Graham yesterday. It is what it is, and I’m going to keep pushing till he runs away.”

  “Is he? I mean do you think he’s, you know…”

  A harsh laugh erupts from my mouth. “No, it hasn’t even crossed my mind.”

  “Hadley, you just want to see the best in him. Lance even said something about how he’s never really at the gym now. If he isn’t there then where is he?”

  “Listen, Court, I get it. He’s not there when I go to work, either, but no. It seems like he’s doing some project that’s taking up all his time. He doesn’t come home smelling of alcohol, no running up straight to the shower, no cheap perfume on him. Nothing. I think he’s just lost and doing his own thing.”

  “Or sinking and taking you down with him. You and your baby.”

  I grimace as my belly clenches and I instinctively reach my arms around it.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m probably just dehydrated. Haven’t drunk as much water as I should.” I rise to my feet, my hands planted on the table to support myself as a sharp pain radiates through my stomach.

  Footsteps sound behind me. Courtney’s gentle touch lays on my back. “Mmmm… Hads, you need the hospital, now.”

  “No, it’s just a cramp.” And another wave of pain goes through me, only this time it’s not a cramp. A gush of something comes with it and trails down my legs.

  “Let’s go.” Court’s arm wraps around my back, leading me out of the house.

  “My phone, I need my phone. I have to call Reed,” I say with a wince.

  This can’t be happening.

  Not again.

  “Do it in the car and use mine. I’ll call your doctor for you. Dr. Lewis, right? He’s in your directory?”

  “Yes, Courtney. I can’t…” The entire time I waddle to the car, my hands grip my stomach. If I hold it just tight enough, my child—the second chil
d I’ve carried—won’t slip out of my grasp.

  The car starts and I slip into a trance-like state, concentrating on my child. I shift into autopilot. The phone sits in my lap. I dread calling Reed and interrupting him. If we lose this baby, if I lose this baby, he will forever be lost to me. In return, I would be lost to myself.

  I press Reed’s name, grab the phone tightly, and wait as it rings…and wait some more. I hang up and call again and again. Finally, he answers, his voice so far away, too far from me. I need him here with me, next to me. I don’t care what I have to interrupt to get him here. “Courtney, I’m in the middle of something.”

  I take a breath. My soul breaks as the words come out. “Reed, it’s me. I’m on my way to the hospital. Something’s wrong.”

  “What do you mean ‘something’s wrong’?” The stress from his voice bellows through the phone.

  “I’m cramping. Reed, please, Lord, Reed.” No use in faking steadiness. I’m a mess, yet I don’t cry. There’s not even that burn in the corner of my eyes that I’ve grown accustomed to.

  As the cramps slow, I realize I can do this. I can hold it together for just a little bit longer.

  Movement on the other line, his breath coming in short bursts. “Which hospital?”

  “Hamilton. That’s where Dr. Lewis is at.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Okay.” I grit my teeth.

  “Hads, babe. It will work out.”

  “You promise?”

  “Babe, I pinky.”

  This scene is eerily familiar.

  But not.

  My own sense is of a bizarre and erratic déjà vu.

  I was out of it last time, my mind and vision too strained on the events of the prior weeks. I was young at twenty-one, lost in my head for weeks in my own agony of losing Reed. And when they viewed my baby on the ultrasound screen, the child had already passed.

  It was the beginning of the first break of mine, a snap from reality, and my first out-of-body experience.

  I’d had a silver-spooned life, my family always treated me like glass when they’d handled my problems. So I’d never known pain, real, gut-wrenching, earth-shattering, and life-changing pain until that night. Doesn’t help, I’d blocked a lot of it out. The medicine they’d had to give me shadowed the memories, however this, this is what I’d felt.