Fighting to Stay (Fighting Madly Book 2)

by Ziegler, S. L.

  But for the seven years that have passed since that fateful night, it seems like that’s all I’ve had around me—my own personal shadow glued to my side. I’ve known craziness, the type of relentlessness that grew inside of me. The not knowing kills you.

  I was happy, though. For a year, I was at peace. Moving on. I was at my better place in life, righting all my wrongs. Reed and I were one.

  Then bam, the blows came flying at us from all sides. Reed’s accident and the side effects from that tilted the axis.

  And right now, right this moment—it’s for our precious child that I would sell my soul, my life for this baby to have a heartbeat on the screen.

  Yet that may not be my fate. Could be having a child isn’t in my cards. Perhaps Reed and I aren’t meant to be. It’s feasible that I’m meant to be alone.

  Maybe.

  Someone has to know, because I certainly don’t.

  This time it’s different, though. This time, my mother isn’t holding my hand; my mother was the voice of reason, the one who saw light in the darkness. Now, she’s absent. She will never be here again.

  But Reed is here.

  Where last time, the walls had all my loved ones lined up for me to announce my news. Now, they wait too far away to give me any comfort.

  But Reed is here.

  The same man who didn’t walk through this journey last time, is here with me. The one who’s so lost himself. The one who looks broken in his own way.

  My rock is shattered, so how can he be the base when I can’t stand on it?

  But Reed is here, his hand locked in mine, his fingers laced through mine as time slips by, as my stomach cramps with each beat of my heart, where my pants darken with blood. But the moment stills, on hold waiting for our doctor, the only one Reed trusts to come within steps of my stomach.

  I pray.

  He stares off into the distance.

  But we both wait.

  And he still stays.

  The door creaks open and Dr. Lewis walks in, his face set in a hard line. I know that feeling, I know how awful it is to rock someone’s world. He’s prepping himself, setting himself in that mindset. A nurse trails behind him with a portable machine. And Reed’s grip only tightens on me as Dr. Lewis and the nurse set up on the other side.

  “Hadley, let’s get you checked. The other nurses said you wouldn’t have anyone else check you?”

  “I didn’t mind, but Reed only wanted you.”

  He snaps on his gloves, his forehead creasing as he looks over at Reed. “I’m going to go ahead and do the ultrasound here. If we can’t get a good enough picture, I’ll send orders down and get you in with the better machine.”

  His fingers lift up my shirt, the rubber from the gloves sticking to my skin. A calmness comes over me, spreading a stillness of some sort. I turn my head away and distance myself mentally from everyone, from everything. I look up at the florescent lights above and I close my eyes, so tightly, not a speck of light comes through. I exhale my fear, exhale the doubt, the despair, every last inch of the negative. I inhale confidence, inhale the hope. This time it’s different. This time, when I take a peek at the screen, I won’t have to will a heartbeat because it never stopped.

  I have my hope.

  Our trust.

  The bright side.

  My desire to have this.

  In a room where dreams shatter every day, it won’t crash mine. In the depths of my soul, I have my reason.

  The faith, my faith, from the bottom of the soles on my feet to the top of my skull. The same faith I promised my mother I would never lose. But did. I let it leave me for so long, almost forgotten in all the troubles of yesterday, yet here, right here when I need it again.

  Need it the most.

  It’s present.

  And by damn, I will clutch it all with iron fingers and never let it go. Ever.

  The coldness from the gel sends shivers down my spine. And Reed’s other hand plays with my hair, his fingers knotting through the mess of waves. He needs my touch, the touch he’s shied away from the whole pregnancy until now. His breath flows across my skin, with the constant reminder he’s close.

  I squint through half-closed eyelids and Reed’s breath hitches as Dr. Lewis presses in on my abdomen and I barely open my lids and my baby is on the screen.

  A baby that’s dancing around.

  My baby is alive, I see with my own eyes. There it is, the little butterfly fluttering around.

  The sound of a strong heartbeat fills the room. Tears, a waterfall of tears drops down my face, blocking my view of everything. But it doesn’t matter to me, nope not even a little. Everything is where it should be.

  Everything is right where is should be.

  “Good news, the baby is good. Healthy and looks to be perfect size for nineteen weeks. Now the bad news, it looks like you had a cyst rupture. And the cyst grew between your twelve-week ultrasound and now. That’s quite a large growth in such a short amount of time and somewhat concerns me. I’m going to go ahead and admit you for tonight and do some more tests tomorrow morning. As of now, no moving around. I’ll have a nurse come in, change you, and clean you up. I’m going to go put in the orders to get you into a different room.”

  Reed’s presence surrounds me. I can’t shake him even if I want to. He’s attached to me, like he stapled us together. “What could it be, Doc?” Reed questions as he moves our joined hands over my belly.

  “More than likely, it’s a corpus luteum cyst that we didn’t see during the other ultrasounds.”

  “What causes them?” Reed questions.

  A cyst, a common cyst, that’s all. Hope will lead me over the next hurdle, too. But for now, my baby is healthy and grows, that’s what matters.

  “A lot of it has to do with the extra hormones the body makes while pregnant. And I can tell you the gender now, too, if you want that?”

  I nod my head so fast and joy fills me. Court may have wanted her gender-reveal party, but this way fits us, eases this chaos of today. Reed slides our hands off and drops them to the bed, he’s ready too.

  “All right, let me see…well, you have yourself a stubborn baby.” Dr. Lewis moves the transducer along my stomach, pressing harder. “Here it is. Looks like you’ve got yourself a boy.”

  I do a double take at the screen.

  Reed tilts his head to the side, totally dumbfounded by what our baby is doing.

  It’s a boy.

  We are having a boy.

  My boy.

  “Reed, okay please, dear Lord, you have to stop hovering.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. Build some wings and you can be a damn the hovercraft.”

  “Babe, I just want to make sure you are okay.”

  Like I was to him when he yelled at me. “I am, thanks. Now, please leave me alone so I can sleep,” I snap. He was mentally vacant for over four months. Like he just checked out on me. I had to fend for myself emotionally the whole time. Now he’s back, never wanting to leave my side. Won’t change, won’t shower, and won’t do anything if it takes him ten feet away from me.

  “Hads, just eat.” Reed sticks the fork in front of my mouth, like I was some kind of child.

  “Get that thing out of my face. I’m not hungry and I’m fine.”

  “What did I tell you about using the word ‘fine’?”

  An exasperated sigh exits my mouth. “That ‘fine’ is just the same thing as bad.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  This has to stop. I smash the button on the controls and the bed hums as it lifts me to the position where I can actually be eye level with Reed. “Okay, I’m not supposed to stress, but sitting here, laying here, and now you actually wanting to be here—that stresses me out. It feels awkward. We are strained. You haven’t wanted to be around me in months yet I have this problem, and now I can’t fart without you near me. I understand your need to be here for our boy. Get it, got it. But that doesn’t mean you need to be up my ass. I’
ve done fine since you’ve been gone. Or well, not gone, just not present in my life.”

  Reed retreats from me and the back of his legs hit the chair and he falls into the seat. “You have no clue what I’ve been doing, Hads, none. But I promise you when the cards fall, you’ll understand.”

  My face tightens with my heart. He’s hiding things from me. I knew he was, the late nights away, the distance he put between us. But to hear the confession, and for him not to lie, not to change the topic again is something else entirely.

  “Stop hiding, Reed. We are merely roommates. You haven’t touched me in so long, too long. And you know what? I’m not saying I need sex with you, but Lord, it hasn’t happened since you got in your accident. That’s not us. It’s the intimacy I crave. But a touch would be a good thing, and not one of those little chicken pecks you do when you leave. It’s a damn good thing I at least trust you not to stick your dick in another woman, because if I didn’t know better, that’s what you’re doing.”

  “Hads, babe, that’s not one—”

  “Stop, I know that, I know you would never do that to me. I do, but this thing you’re hiding triggers stuff. Makes me feel insecure, and insecure leads me to messed-up thoughts. Crazy ideas swirl in my mind. But, Reed, this—” I point to my belly, wave my hand around, and rest it on my stomach. “I love you, with everything in me, but something’s gotta give. I can’t bring—I mean we—we can’t bring a baby into a home where the parents are stuck in some strange time warp. Depending on how the tests come back, we have twenty weeks to fix it, and we will. Do you understand that? We will.”

  “I wake every morning, thankful like hell you are alive, that you didn’t die. You get that, right? Be the man about this. Be the damn man, Reed. Please. Because guess what? I don’t have to stay. We aren’t married, and nothing’s tying me here. Nothing but my feelings for you. So, I stay. Yes, the baby is ours, but single people have babies all the time. For now, I’m staying here, yet I can’t do my job as your fiancée if you don’t let me in. So, let me in.”

  Reed shifts to the edge of his seat, his knees bouncing up and down. He moves his arm to reach for me, only to retract it right back. “Hads, I’m being a man. For the first time, I’m thinking of something other than me, other than you. Let’s press pause on this shit till you get sprung from the hospital. It’s not the best place to delve into details. But listen, I’ll tell you, it may not be tomorrow or the next. But I fucking will. I pinky that shit. I’ll let you in.”

  “It’s depressing and utterly insane that we had to think something was wrong with the baby to hold a conversation longer than two minutes. I mean, it’s the most we’ve talked since you have gotten injured. Do you get that, Reed? We made the pact to not hold anything back. And that’s all you’ve been doing. All, Reed.”

  “Babe.” He’s frustrated. I am, too. No more shuffling around. No more stepping over it, like it’s not in the way. Now, it’s dead on, with full force.

  A slight knock on the door interrupts our conversation. My dad and Mark walk in without any answer from us. Both only offer a small nod to Reed before they make themselves at home in the hospital room, and with each step the space in the room grows smaller and smaller. The tension in the air can be cut with a knife.

  My father bends down and places a soft kiss on my forehead. “Baby girl, no scaring me like that, anymore. You have to take care of my grandbaby. Did they tell you anything else about him or her? Because I can’t call ‘it’ it for much longer.”

  I glance over at Reed. We have our problems, but the decision on who I tell and when will be both of ours. He gives a slight nod before looking down at his boots, and rising to his feet. “I have to go make some calls. Hadley, please, for the love of God, stay in the damn bed.” Reed bends down, and the veins in his neck strain when he places his forehead on mine. His voice is so low, so deep it vibrates my lips. “We’ll figure it out. I just want things on point before I tell you.” A soft kiss on my mouth and he rises again.

  We all stare at his back as he exits, and with one look over his shoulder he walks out. The slam of the door hits me hard, much like the conversation we just had. And for the first time in twenty-four hours, Reed isn’t next to me. I don’t want us to be like this. We crawled through shit and came out stained but the stains matched. Now, they don’t.

  Dad coughs, calling my attention to him. His brows are raised, waiting for me to speak.

  “Guess what we found out last night? Another grandson for you.”

  My father’s mouth turns up, his smile so big and bright. “Thank Jesus, don’t think I can handle a granddaughter.”

  “Your humor is one in a million, Dad.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told. Why’d you text us?”

  I look toward the door. One minute is all it’s going to take, but Reed can’t know. “Okay, this has to be fast because he won’t leave me for long. I want to find Andrea.”

  Mark holds onto the arm of my bed, his grip so hard he could rip it off. “No, you don’t need that now.”

  “I do. I have to get the answers from her mouth…the answers only she can give me. After last night, about to lose another child when they were wheeling me up here, I knew it had to be done, and soon. Before my son is born. Please, I have to.”

  “Nope, not giving it to you.”

  My eyes dance between them. “I came to both of you out of respect and understanding, but you better believe if you don’t give me the information, I will get it from Bash and Gus. I don’t want it to come to that, but I will.” This urge at first was absent, but not anymore. It’s wide awake in the front of my mind.

  My dad turns his back to me and hides his face, and I’m at a loss for what he thinks, how he’s processing this, but as he stomps out of the room, I know it’s not good. I know this isn’t what he wants for me. He’s protected me from the world around me, but his protection can’t save me anymore.

  But Mark stays with me, the same man that for the first twenty-something years would sell his left arm not to be within twenty feet of me. But after the party, after a peace was forged in our relationship, we are building it up. He’s getting to know me, and I’m getting to know him.

  And the man in front of me, my brother’s tightly wound, he rocks on the heels of his feet, his mouth is wide open. “Hads… Listen, you have to understand that she hasn’t been good. The girl I loved is lost in the years of damage. Give me some credit, please. I’m not doing it to be controlling. She’s a mess.”

  “When’s the last time you’ve checked on her?”

  “Dad did, when I got serious with Sarah. I needed that behind me, no baggage to take with me into this one. Andrea’s drug use was at an all-time high.”

  “After the funeral, when you knew she showed up, you didn’t look for her afterwards?”

  Mark sighs and runs his hand over his chest, as if talking about this makes him hurt physically. “Yes. I did my research. But I only know where she lives. I didn’t dig too deep. I was wrapped up in Sarah and you. And it’s too much—she hurts everything she touches. You have to understand that.”

  I reach for his hand. “I want the address. I need the answers. I can’t tell you how it feels, or this undying drive that’s willing me to get the answers. When I find it all out, I’ll have all the old demons out and be able to move forward.”

  “If you don’t like what you find out, are you going into self-destructive mode? Because you can’t, Hadley. That son of yours deserves someone that doesn’t flake when things get tough.”

  “No, I’ll walk back here and never look back. Same if I like what I find out.”

  “I don’t like it, I don’t agree with it, and the whole mess is hurting Dad. Your relationship is fragile with him.”

  And there it is. I knew, I know it’s going to be awful and difficult for my father. Yet I still need it, I have this place in my heart, inside my soul that needs things to be resolved. I don’t answer Mark, not a nod or a word. But he gets it. For
the first time in my life, he understands me.

  “How are you going to do it from a hospital bed?”

  “It was a cyst, so I should be leaving later today. If Dr. Lewis gives me the okay I’m doing it. And I’ll get an ultrasound before I would ever leave. ”

  “You would have gone to Gus, wouldn’t you?”

  I squeeze his hand as my heart dances in my chest. “I went to you first. My family first. But yes, I would have. I gotta know what she was thinking and then I’m done. She wasn’t my mom just like you weren’t my dad. But I have your answers. I came to terms with them, and regardless how I feel about them, it was the best decision for me. Hers are still up in the air.”

  Mark creases his forehead and runs his fingers through his hair. “You will get it then. But if she hurts you, remember, I warned you. This time, though, I’ll be there.”

  I reach for the door only to bring my hand back, to reach for the handle again, yet I still bring it back again. I glance down at the folder in my lap and open the file for the hundredth time. I shouldn’t be feeling that this is the wrong step after getting the courage to find out. But as the doubt creeps into my bones, something feels off.

  Fishy.

  Wrong.

  My knowledge is minimal about her. Andrea Markus married Joseph Markus in 2010. They had a four-year-old son together and she’s the stepmother to Joseph, twelve years old. Andrea stays at home while her husband is the gym teacher and football coach at the local private school.

  Now, that’s a normal life, as cookie cutter as it seems.

  Could be looks can be deceiving, but I don’t know.

  Maybe that perfection is why I have my doubts.

  This is the information I have at my disposal, literally at my fingertips. I’m sure my dad’s folder is full of details. He has all the vast knowledge on her in his office under lock and key, and every little dirty secret of hers is hidden there.