Forsaken Trail

by Devney Perry

Stephanie simply smiled, her eyes wandering around the room. “You’ve made a lot of changes.”

  “We have.” I held my breath, hoping they wouldn’t take offense. “I truly love this space.”

  Ned turned to Brody and extended a hand. “Mr. Carmichael. Nice to see you again.”

  “A pleasure.” The easy posture from lunch was gone. Brody stood stiff, his face drawn tight.

  “What brings you to town?” Marty asked, leaning against one of the display tables. “Judging by your Instagram photos, I figured we’d never get you back from Hawaii.”

  Stephanie laughed. “We love living there. It’s so green and wonderfully humid. My skin has never felt better.”

  “We’re back for John Miller’s sixtieth birthday,” Ned said. “Then we’ll fly home.”

  “It’s been lovely to see you.” Brody gestured for the door. “May I escort you out? We’ll let Aria and Marty get back to work.”

  The smiles on Ned’s and Stephanie’s faces dropped.

  I shot Brody a scowl. Why was he being rude? “No, please. Stay. We’re not that busy. And you should catch up with Marty.”

  “Are you sure?” Stephanie asked me, giving Brody a cautious glance.

  “Yes, it would be wonderful. Please.”

  “Thanks.” She relaxed, taking another gander around the room. “We’ve missed this place. We ran this shop for twelve years. It was sort of like our third child.”

  “A third child who actually made us money.” Ned barked a laugh. “I don’t see Suzie or MJ selling for four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Not that we’d ever sell our kids.”

  Stephanie laughed. Marty laughed.

  Brody tensed.

  And my jaw dropped.

  Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

  It was tacky as hell for Ned to announce that number.

  And enlightening.

  “You said one hundred and twenty-five,” I whispered, looking up at Brody.

  His eyes were on the door, like he wanted Ned and Stephanie gone. Now I knew why he was so eager to shove them onto the sidewalk.

  Except the damage was done. They’d spilled his secret.

  “You said one hundred and twenty-five,” I repeated, crossing my arms over my chest.

  He dropped his gaze to meet mine and there wasn’t an apology on his face. No, there was only guilt.

  Tension settled like a black cloud in the room, thickening the air so much it was hard to breathe.

  “Say something,” I demanded.

  He blinked, then looked over my head at Marty. “Would you please excuse us?”

  Brody didn’t wait for Marty’s reply. He gripped my elbow and led me back through the workroom and into the adjoining office, closing the door behind us. It was a small room, taken up mostly by the wooden desk and couch. But there was just enough floor space for me to put a good three feet between us.

  “How could you?”

  “Aria, let me explain.”

  “Why? It seems fairly clear. You bought the flower shop for a half a million dollars—”

  “Not quite that much.”

  “Details,” I hissed. “Half a million dollars, then lied to me about the price. Why?”

  “Because there’s no need for you to be saddled with an enormous debt. Not when I can afford it.”

  “It’s not about the money!” I shouted, my voice bouncing off the walls. “You came to Oregon and told me you had a flower shop. Did you?”

  His silence was the only answer I needed.

  It slashed through my heart. It nearly dropped me to my knees.

  All this time and I’d had such faith that Brody had always been honest. What else had he lied to me about?

  “You lied to me.”

  “I had to.”

  I shook my head. “No, you didn’t. I would have moved. Without the flower shop, I still would have moved.”

  “I couldn’t take that chance.” He waved to my belly. “I needed you here.”

  And I would have been here. Simply because he’d asked to be involved in our child’s life. But he hadn’t given me that chance. He hadn’t given me his trust or his faith.

  My chin began to quiver as my eyes flooded with hot, angry tears. Goddamn hormones. They were stealing my edge. “I am so mad at you right now. You don’t get to decide the course of my life. You don’t get to keep secrets from me. You’ve had months to tell me the truth. Months.”

  “We didn’t think it was worth upset—”

  “We?”

  Brody flinched, realizing he’d just fucked up.

  “Clara. She knew.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded.

  “Get out.” I turned my back to him before he could see the first tear fall.

  “Aria—”

  “I said get out.”

  He stood there, for minutes, waiting. But when I didn’t turn, he blew out a long breath and left.

  It wasn’t until the door’s bell jingled that I breathed. Then I let myself cry the unshed tears, for just a moment, before pulling myself together and wiping my face dry.

  Nothing good came from crying. I’d learned that after my parents had died. Clara and I had been ten when our parents had been stolen from us. The pain never did go away. It had dulled with time, but like the junkyard, it was unforgettable.

  Rivers of tears hadn’t brought them back to life. Rivers of tears hadn’t kept my uncle away. Rivers of tears hadn’t saved me from living in a junkyard at fifteen.

  Tears were pointless.

  Tears wouldn’t make Brody change.

  Dirt. “I need dirt.”

  I needed work. So I stormed out of the office to find Marty alone in the shop, a look of worry etched on his face.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m fine.” I marched to one of the pots that we’d ordered a few weeks ago. I’d left it empty because it would need the right plant. Well, that snake plant was it.

  There was no use taking it to Brody’s home. There was no use making myself comfortable there when I couldn’t possibly stay. Not now. I’d let myself get swept away with the idea of what if.

  This baby didn’t need a mother with her head stuck in romance novels. It was time for a reality check.

  I wouldn’t stay with a man who refused to listen to me. I wouldn’t live with a man who didn’t respect why I needed to control my own destiny.

  After all I’d confided in him, all the pain I’d dredged up so he could understand. He still hadn’t told me the truth.

  That hurt the worst. In all the nights he’d held me in his arms, he hadn’t found the courage to admit he’d lied.

  The tears threatened to return but I blinked them away. Then I crouched, ready to haul the pot to the back room, when a sharp zing raced through my abdomen.

  “Ow!” I cried, letting go of the pot as I clung to my belly.

  “What?” Marty was at my side in a flash.

  “I don’t know.” I gripped his arm, using him for balance. “It hurts. Just . . . give me a second.”

  “What are you doing lifting that?”

  “It’s not heavy.” It wasn’t heavy. Maybe ten pounds. I’d put it in this very spot just three days ago. “It’s not heavy.”

  “Breathe.” He clutched my arm, just as another pang raced through my side. The pain was so sharp, it was like someone had hold of my stomach and was ripping it in two.

  “Ah!” I gasped, dragging in some air. Please, let the baby be okay. Please. Please. Please.

  “Aria, what do I do?”

  I met his worried gaze. “Take me to the hospital.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brody

  “Aria Saint-James.” I braced my hands on the counter as the nurse behind it looked over the rim of her clear-framed glasses.

  “She’s my sister,” Clara blurted from beside me. “We’re family.”

  The nurse opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Marty rushed to my side.

  “Brody.” His face
was pale. A sheen of sweat clung to his bald head. “She’s down here.”

  Clara and I followed him, the three of us jogging down the hospital hallway, dodging carts pushed against the walls and a wheelchair outside of an open door.

  When Marty reached Aria’s room, he stood aside and let us rush in first.

  Aria was in the narrow bed, her hair draped over her shoulders. Her hands rubbed circles on her belly, and when she spotted Clara, the worry lines on her forehead relaxed. She spared me a brief glance.

  She was pissed. She had a right to be. But I didn’t care.

  I rushed to her side and took her hand.

  She ripped it free.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “The baby?”

  “Fine.” She sighed and focused on her sister as Clara sat on the opposite side.

  “What happened?”

  “I was at the shop and I bent to pick up a pot.”

  “You should have let Marty—”

  She shot me a glare so pointed that it shut me up. “It wasn’t heavy. I lifted it three days ago.”

  I would still be having a word with Marty about what Aria lifted at work.

  “I got these sharp pains.” She ran a hand over her stomach, indicating the spot. “It freaked me out, so I had Marty bring me here. The doctor said it was round ligament pain.”

  “Is it serious?” I asked.

  Aria shook her head. “No, it’s normal. The round ligament just got stretched too far and too fast when I moved.”

  “Good.” Clara sighed. “When Marty called . . . God, you had us worried.”

  When Marty had called, I’d nearly come out of my skin. I’d never driven so fast in my life. Clara had barely hopped into the passenger seat before I’d sped away from the house.

  I’d gone home after Aria had kicked me out of the shop. Work had been pointless, and what I should have done was stay there and watch over her.

  “How long do you need to stay?” I asked.

  “The doctor said I could go home soon. The nurse was here a few minutes ago. She said they’re getting my discharge papers ready.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Rest.” She lifted a shoulder. “It will go away. If it doesn’t, then I need to come back.”

  Clara leaned in and pulled Aria into a hug. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.” Aria closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around Clara. “It scared me.”

  Scared was too mild a word. Terrified. Panicked. Those weren’t right either.

  Never in my life had I felt such a deep, endless fear. If Aria had been hurt. If the baby . . .

  They were my life. Both of them.

  Aria was my heart.

  “Can we have a minute?” I asked as Clara let Aria go.

  “Sure.” She gave me a sad smile, then kissed her sister’s forehead. “I love you.”

  “Love you too. Later we’re going to talk about you keeping secrets from me. You know, like how much the flower shop actually cost.”

  Clara cringed. “You found out.”

  “I found out.”

  “Sorry. You can yell at me later. For now, I just want you out of this hospital.”

  “You and me both,” I muttered.

  Clara slipped into the hallway where Marty hovered. When the door closed, I sank to the edge of the bed.

  Aria turned her gaze to the wall.

  “I’m sorry.” I clutched her hand with both of mine. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “You should have told me about the shop.”

  “Yes, I should have told you.”

  She slumped deeper into the bed. “We can’t keep doing this. Having the same argument. My heart can’t take it, Brody. I think . . . maybe this was never going to work.”

  “Don’t.”

  “This was about the baby. You know that if I wasn’t pregnant, we never would have gotten together. I think we need to call this what it is. We’re trying to make something that isn’t meant to be.”

  Aria was giving up on me.

  She was giving up on us.

  But there was so much to fight for. Too much to lose the battle of my lifetime.

  I refused to let her give up.

  “I met Heather at a party.”

  That won her attention. She turned away from the wall to face me.

  “It was a company Christmas party. She came as the date of one of our employees. She left with me.” Maybe that was why I hadn’t been truly shocked when she cheated with Alastair.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  So she’d understand something I’d realized earlier today when she’d kicked me out of her flower shop. Something I suspected Clara had figured out a long, long time ago and was the reason she’d never objected to my gifts.

  She’d known why.

  “Heather and I dated for a while, then she started to hint at wanting a ring. I bought one. I gave it to her. I didn’t even ask. One day, she didn’t have a ring. The next, she did and she could tell everyone she was engaged to Brody Carmichael. That’s all she’d really wanted. Bragging rights.”

  Heather had cared more for my name than she had for me. And I hadn’t really cared at all. She’d been a companion. I hadn’t had to search for dates for company functions or business meetings. She was beautiful and absent.

  That was what I’d liked best about Heather. She’d left me alone to do my work. She hadn’t bulldozed her way past my guards like Aria, not that Heather would have stood a chance.

  She wasn’t Aria.

  “I didn’t buy her things,” I said. “Yeah, I got her birthday and Christmas gifts. I’d pay for a vacation. But otherwise, she was on her own.”

  Heather had begun to resent me when I hadn’t let her move into my place. While the rest of her friends who’d landed rich fiancés had been able to quit their jobs, Heather had needed to keep working.

  When Alastair came around, she must have seen him as her ticket to financial freedom.

  All she’d had to do was time it so that I’d catch the two of them in bed. Heather had to have known that Alastair would want her simply because it had been another way to one-up me.

  “I don’t understand,” Aria said. “You didn’t buy her things?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t love her.”

  Aria’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  “My parents. My grandparents. They didn’t hug me. They didn’t tell me they loved me. I watch you and Clara together and it’s . . . I never had that. When I was a kid, my birthday meant a mountain of gifts, all wrapped and purchased by my mom’s assistant. The nanny watched me open them. When I turned sixteen, my grandfather had a car sent to my school. They bought me things.”

  “That’s not love, Brody.”

  “Isn’t it? Because that’s the only kind of love I know.”

  Aria shifted, sitting up straighter. “Not anymore.”

  “No.” Not anymore. I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I love you. Damn, but I love you, woman.”

  “And that’s why you buy me things.”

  I nodded. “That’s why I’ll try to stop.”

  She stared at me, those mesmerizing eyes glassy with tears. “I love you too.”

  I closed my eyes and let the words sink past the skin and into my heart. Had anyone ever told me they loved me? I think Heather had, probably before she’d asked for something. Maybe my mother, a long, long time ago.

  They’d been empty words.

  From Aria, they were magic. They were the future.

  I leaned down, dropping my forehead to hers. “It was never about the baby.”

  “Sure it was.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I fell in love with you the moment you stole that vase of flowers.”

  “They were really pretty flowers.” She let out a quiet laugh and the sound filled my chest so full I could barely breathe.

&nb
sp; “I love you,” I whispered.

  “You said that already.”

  “It’s worth repeating.”

  She took my face in her hands, her thumbs stroking my beard. Then she pulled my lips down to hers, kissing me with so much tenderness and promise, I knew that for the rest of my life, I’d hold on to her. Above all else, Aria was the endgame.

  “Take me home,” she said against my mouth.

  “I’ll go find the doctor.”

  An hour later, after one last check from the doctor and a string of nurses bearing pamphlets on pregnancy—the Welcome hospital was nothing if not thorough—Aria was home. Clara had ridden to the shop with Marty to pick up the Cadillac.

  “I think I’m going to lie down.” Aria yawned as I led her inside.

  “Good idea. Your bed? Or mine?”

  “Mine’s closer.”

  “How about tomorrow we pick one and just call it ours?”

  “Deal. As long as you let me pay for the entire flower shop.”

  “No.” I shook my head as we walked into the bedroom. “It’s not worth that price.”

  “But you paid it anyway.”

  “For you? I’d buy the moon.”

  “Brody, this is . . . it’s too much. You know why it bugs me.”

  I led her to the bed and pulled back the covers. Then after she slid beneath the sheet, I settled in behind her, holding her close. My hands rested on her belly, hoping to feel the baby kick just to be sure he or she was okay.

  A little tap. That’s all I got. But it was enough.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Aria. I have all this money. What’s the point of it if that means we struggle?”

  “The struggle is what affirms you’re alive. Without it, the bright moments don’t shine.”

  “How about a compromise?”

  She twisted to look at me. “I’m listening.”

  “You’ll pay the one twenty-five for the shop. And you agree to drive the BMW. It’s safer than the Cadillac.”

  “Do you actually understand what compromise means?”

  I chuckled. “Shh. Listen. I’m getting to the part you’re going to like. In exchange for that, I won’t buy you anything new for six months.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Nine.”

  “Twelve. And once that time is up, we’ll put a limit on the size of future gifts.”

  “Christ, you are stubborn.”