Focusing on the party gave her something else to think about, and then she felt mostly normal. She’d felt good while they were away, picking up the ‘Cuda and getting married. She’d had fun and had been able to relax a little, like she’d left her worries and fears at the Signal Bend border. She and Isaac had been focused on each other, and the days had passed swiftly. It was in Reno that she’d finally been able to seek out his touch, to be comfortable skin to skin with him, and even sleep with him behind her, without having to psych herself up like a fucking drill sergeant. But the trip had been a short one, and they’d come back to their life, where the worries and fears awaited her.
Now, she was standing in the middle of the Hall, managing Dom and the new Prospect, Omen (his given name was Damien, and Lilli had been in the clubhouse when Bart and Havoc, thinking themselves quite brilliant, had laid the name on him), while they put up the massive real Christmas tree. It was Christmas Eve, the party was later that evening, and the decorations, including the tree, were supposed to have gone up while she and Isaac were away, but they’d gotten home the day before to learn that Len had not been able not bring himself to deal with the decorations, not even enough to convey to one of the club girls, or a town woman, what Lilli wanted. He’d managed food and everything else, but the thought of evergreen garlands, red velvet bows, and colored lights had apparently been more than his macho, inked heart could take.
She’d seen the trailer he called home. She understood. His barn, where he bred and raised his horses, was a thing of gleaming, efficient beauty, but his house was a trash bin with a roof. Decorating was far beyond his abilities. So she’d given him a punch in the ribs and taken back over. The Hall was going to look fucking festive if she had to string Len’s intestines around the room and hang mistletoe from his severed fingers.
Which she’d said to him. In so many words. He’d grinned, kissed her cheek, and made himself scarce, muttering something about hormones.
And she’d felt a pang of loss. Which was crazy. She was pregnant. Why couldn’t she believe it?
When the tree was up, she and a couple of club girls put up the decorations, while Dom and Omen moved on to stringing the lights and garland. C.J. and Havoc sat at the bar pelting them with peanuts, while Badger—still on restricted activity but recovering well from a bullet to the back—stacked clean barware under the bar. She’d tried to get the peanut-throwing to stop, but they’d ignored her. So she’d have somebody sweep once they got their middle school mania out of their system.
She stepped back to take a look at the tree as Candy, one of the perkier girls, stood on tiptoes at the top of the ladder to put the glittery, flaming horse, which somebody had made for the Horde at some point, on the top of the tree. Candy, at the top of the ladder in her teeny little skirt, had all the guys’ attention.
All but one.
“Me, Sport.” Lilli felt Isaac’s hands come around her waist and rest on her belly. He’d taken to announcing himself when he came up on her from behind, because she leapt out of her damn skin if she wasn’t expecting to be touched. She could relax into his body now, but not unawares. Maybe never again unawares. But knowing he was there, she was fine, and she leaned back against him as he nuzzled her neck. “You two doing okay?”
Her and the baby, he meant. God, he was so sweet and attentive, so much in love with the idea of this baby. So much in love with her. She wanted so much for it to be real, for it to be right. The thought that something was wrong scared her more than maybe anything ever had.
No. Stop. Jesus, what was wrong with her head? Why couldn’t she just relax and be happy? With a breath for strength, she smiled and tipped her head to his. “We’re good. About done here, I think. I want to lie down for a while before tonight. If you think I can leave the cavemen unattended for an hour or two without them destroying all this hard work.”
Isaac turned her in his arms. “They’ll behave. Want some company?” He kissed her, and she hooked her arms around his back.
“Sure.” It was good to be able to enjoy being close to him again, even if that was all they had. She hoped she’d be able to do more before he was no longer able to be patient with her.
He grinned and took her hand. On their way past the bar, Isaac dropped a heavy hand on Havoc’s shoulder. “Don’t fuck up the party shit, boys, or you’re getting ass-kickings for Christmas. We’ll be in my office. Emergencies only.”
~oOo~
Lilli didn’t dream when she napped, so she woke after almost two hours feeling rested, her head on Isaac’s chest. There was something strangely cozy about napping on the sofa bed in his office, hearing the vague sounds of the clubhouse around them.
“You awake?” Isaac’s deep voice rumbled in his chest.
She stretched. “Yeah. That was nice.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, it was.” Her left hand was on his belly, and he picked it up, playing with the rings he’d given her. In the few days they’d been married, he’d already taken up the habit of playing with her rings.
They’d gotten lucky with their rings. Neither of them had had heirloom rings to give each other—their parents’ marriages had been tragic in one way or another—and they’d not had a lot of time to think about rings before they’d arrived in Reno. But Nevada was a state that catered to the unprepared bride and groom, especially in the larger cities, so there were four jewelry stores within a block of their hotel—including one inside the hotel. They’d separated, and within two hours of arriving in Reno and realizing they needed rings, they had made perfect choices for each other.
Even though they’d never been officially “engaged,” it had been important to Isaac that she have two rings, and that they make a statement—a declaration, even. Lilli had been worried that he’d saddle her with some kind of blingy atrocity, but he’d picked a perfect set. He’d chosen for her a large but simple amethyst solitaire in a platinum setting, square cut and bounded by small, pavé diamonds. The bands of the solitaire and of the matching wedding band were also set by pavé diamonds. Amethyst was her birthstone, and she loved the nontraditional choice. She liked to see the rings on her finger, and so did he.
Lilli had gone to all four shops before she found the right ring for him: a wide, heavy band of hammered platinum. His hands were huge, so she’d had to ask them to set it aside so she could bring him in and make sure they had one sized well. Miraculously, they did. It looked perfect on his finger. His wedding ring had displaced a heavy silver ring with a runic “H,” like a signet. He’d moved that to his right ring finger and no longer wore the horse head ring he’d worn there. That horse head could put some hurt down in a fight, so Lilli had been surprised to see him choose the signet over it. He’d told her he was hoping to live a life in which being able to take a guy’s eye out with a punch wasn’t something he really had to plan for anymore.
That would be nice. A quiet life. Lilli thought she’d like to try that.
Isaac lifted her hand to his lips. “You ready to get your party on, Sport?”
Curling her fingers around his, she pulled his hand to her lips, too. “Yep. Let’s make merry.”
~oOo~
The party didn’t exactly go off without a hitch, but it was a success nevertheless. Badger’s friend, Billy, was in a country band that was just getting started, and the Signal Bend Christmas party was their first paying gig. There had been a lot of hitches getting them finally playing, but they weren’t so bad, once they started. Lilli hated country music, but the crowd got to dancing almost right away.
The food turned out well. The club girls wandered around as servers, something they were used to, and C.J. played a particularly rough-looking Santa, handing out gifts to the kids. People were laughing and dancing, and having a good time. Lilli felt proud.
About ten o’clock or so, when the families had almost all left, and Billy and the Kids (Lilli had rolled her eyes when she’d heard that name) were packing up, the mood changed, and the holiday party began to take on the features of
a regular drunken orgy at the clubhouse. Lilli headed to the kitchen to check on the cleanup and stay out of the way.
Isaac found her there and took her hand. “Leave the girls to do all this, Sport. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.” He winked at Gwen, who was turning on the dishwasher. “But you are. Time to go home. I want to be alone with my wife.”
“Isaac.” She hesitated, pulling back a bit on her hand, hoping he didn’t mean he wanted sex for Christmas.
He met her eyes when he felt her pull and smiled a little, shaking his head, reassuring her. “It’s okay.”
Hating that she needed that reassurance, hating herself for not being able to put her shit behind her, she smiled and said, “Okay. Gotta get my bag, then let’s go.”
~oOo~
The dreams were so much worse now. The first couple of days, when she’d been taking the painkillers, she’d been able to sleep without dreaming, but she’d gotten off the Percocet as fast as she could, because of the baby, trying to make the right choices despite her head’s crazy ideas about the pregnancy. Before, the dreams had been bad, and had driven her to tense wakefulness, but, even after Hobson, she’d been able to push them away almost instantly and go back to sleep.
Now, she almost never woke up alarmed, because she wasn’t able to wake up in the middle of the dreams. They played themselves out to their bitter, brutal ends, and she would come awake slowly, beset by phantom pain and a cloying sense of death and doom. Unable to shake it or face sleeping again, she’d get up and sit in the dark living room, or, sometimes, walk out to see the horses. Isaac let her go, or he didn’t wake, and she was glad. The heavy blackness she was feeling was not something she could share.
In the early hours of Christmas morning, Lilli came awake, the brittle pain and fear of the nightmare still acute in her body. Isaac’s heavy leg was hooked over hers, and she lay still for a moment, trying to find that strength she’d once had to shove the dreams away. It was Christmas. Isaac hated to be alone in bed. She should stay.
She couldn’t. She eased her leg from under his and got up. Pip, who’d been sleeping on a bottom corner of the bed, stretched and went to curl in the middle of her pillow. Wearing one of his t-shirts over a pair of boy-cut underwear, she left the room. She thought she’d go into the living room and just sit, but when she got there, she turned and went upstairs instead. She put her hand on the knob of the door into her office, but, again, she turned, and instead went into the room across the hall, the room Isaac was turning into a nursery.
The room had been locked up and neglected since his sister, Martha, had left home at sixteen, when Isaac was twelve. He’d be forty in March, so “stale and dusty” hadn’t begun to describe what they’d found in here. Isaac had stripped decomposing wallpaper from the walls and hauled an old, narrow wrought-iron bed out to the shed. He’d stripped the paint from the floors and had pulled the built-in shelves, weak from dry rot, down from the walls. Currently, the room was in the clutches of chaos—stacks of decaying boards from the shelves Isaac had pulled down right before they’d left for their trip, used buckets of paper stripper, a ladder, piles of rags—all the disarray that comes from renovation. Stacked against one wall were the supplies for the improvements—wood for new shelves and a window seat, stain for the newly bare floors, paint for the stripped walls.
It was wrong. All wrong. It was…a bad omen, or bad luck, or just plain bad news. Bad. There was no baby. She’d lost the baby in that fucking cold room, when those bastards had—that thought would not fit into words, what they’d done. But she hadn’t fought, not enough. She let them do it, and they’d taken everything. She’d thought she was being smart, not fighting, trying to live. But she hadn’t been smart. She’d been weak. She’d let them.
She’d given up. There was no baby, not anymore. Her hand on her damnably flat belly, she felt sure it was true. She was supposed to be more than eight weeks now, almost ten, mostly through the first trimester—shouldn’t something be different, if there was still somebody in there?
With a jolt, Lilli was overcome by a violent compulsion. No fixing this room up. It was wrong. It made a mockery of everything to make a room for a baby that was just a hope. She started gathering up the new boards, thinking she’d carry them outside to the fire pit and burn them away. She bobbled and dropped a board, giving herself a fucker of a splinter in the process, but she ignored that and picked up the errant piece of wood.
As she stepped out into the hallway, Isaac came up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, his Beretta in his hand. He pulled up short at the landing, face to face with Lilli and her burden.
Decocking his handgun and tucking it into the back of his jeans—all he was wearing—he said, “Jesus fuck, Sport. What the hell are you doing?” Lilli could hear relief, concern, and more than a hint of irritation in his voice.
She found herself unable to put on her sanity face. He’d caught her naked in her turmoil, and she blurted out, “This room is wrong. I’m not pregnant. This room is wrong.” The words confused even her as she heard them leave her lips.
“What?” He leapt at her, ripping the load of boards from her arms, throwing them to the floor with a crash, and yanking her t-shirt up to her waist. Confusion wrinkled his brow as he took in her unharmed, unbloody, unswollen state. “Baby, are you hurt? Come on—I’ll get you to the hospital. It’s okay.”
“No!” She pulled back hard, feeling frantic, and overbalanced, landing on her ass in the middle of the dim hallway. And then she was crying. Fuck, she was sobbing. She was so tired. She couldn’t find the strength to hide all this from him.
He dropped to his knees and tried to pull her close, but she fought him off and wrapped her arms around her legs, turning her body into a protective ball.
“Baby, I don’t understand. Why do you think you’re not pregnant? If you’re hurting, let me take you to the hospital. God, baby, please.”
“No! It’s too late. I lost it…then. I let them take it. I let them.” She dropped her head to her knees and just bawled. She had no control over her head at all.
“Lilli, what—what do you”—he paused, and then she felt his body against hers as he sat down at her side, his arms coming around the shell she’d made of herself. “Oh, baby. No. We know that’s not true. We saw that little blurry blob thing, remember? It was little, but they said it for sure was a baby. Fuck. Lilli, no. Those sons of bitches didn’t take anything from you, from us. Our kid’s as strong as its mom. And you beat them. Baby, you beat them.”
Still sobbing, she could only shake her head. Isaac moved in front of her and grabbed her head in his hands to stop her. He made her face him. “Yes, you did. You won. We won. And you fought to keep you and the squirt alive. You won, baby.”
“It can’t be true. I’m empty. I feel empty. Isaac, what they—they…” She swallowed, and her throat clicked dryly. She hadn’t even been able to think the whole thought of the thing she was about to say. She didn’t know why she was saying it now, but the words were coming. “The gun, Isaac. The fucking gun. It can’t be true after that.”
His brows drew together in a violent grimace, and when he spoke, she heard a catch of tears in his voice. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” His hands still cradling her head, he dropped his own head to her knees. “So fucking sorry.”
He knew? She hadn’t been able to talk about any of it. She couldn’t believe she was talking about any of it now. How did he—?
Bart. That damn camera. Oh, sweet Jesus. Did they all know?
Instead of freaking her out even more, that thought—that little bit of problem solving, deducing how it was that Isaac knew specifics about what had happened to her when she hadn’t been able to even think those thoughts—called back a sliver of her sense. She took a breath, and calm filled her.
“I can’t keep control of all the shit. It’s taking over in my head.” Her voice was quiet and steady. “I’m losing my mind, Isaac.”
He sat back,
his hands moving to her legs, wrapping around her calves. “No, baby. You’re not. It’s just that you keep trying to do it on your own. You need to talk to me. You lock me out, and then you’re all alone in there, and I’m all alone out here. We don’t need to be alone anymore.” He lifted her left hand and kissed her ring. “Please talk to me.”
His face was wet with his tears. She loved him more than anything. So she tried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“We’re getting a real good look today. Do you want to know?” The technician turned from the screen and smiled at them both.
“Yes. Please.” Lilli didn’t hesitate. Isaac heard the thin thread of anxiety in her voice that he’d become accustomed to over the past few months. He’d been rocked on Christmas morning to discover how scared, how scarred, his warrior woman was. He’d known she wasn’t all right—he could feel it like a low-voltage current under everything she said and did, especially when she thought he wasn’t watching—but he’d had no idea how high the voltage was in her head.
Fuck. He’d thought her dreams had been better, not worse. And he’d had no idea she couldn’t believe there was still a baby, or that she thought she was becoming sick like her mother had been. He felt like a goddamn asshole for not picking up on any of that. He’d been so wrapped up in his own guilt for what had happened to her, thinking that her distance was distrust of him, that he’d never considered that she might be tearing herself apart.
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