Wild, Wounded Hearts

by Wild, Wounded Hearts (epub)

  Ilsa sighed before continuing. “According to Z, that’s what made things all that much more difficult tonight. He wasn’t saying it like an excuse; he was just trying to explain his anger as best he could. First, he heard the shocking news that Stephen was a Beckett, and then, he found out that a Beckett had crossed that invisible boundary. I think he felt angry because he couldn’t understand why or how Stephen had broken that barrier—enacted what must have seemed like a taboo, at least to him and Jude—so blithely.”

  Ursa just stared, her mind spinning. Z wasn’t only upset about Stephen and Ilsa. He was struggling because Stephen and her mom were like a mirror of what was happening between them—Ursa and Z.

  The known world is crumbling. None of the former rules apply anymore.

  Ursa and Z weren’t only involved; Ursa had mentioned that she’d move to Z’s home base this afternoon. Yes, he’d been regularly piercing that imagined barrier with Ursa. But what she’d suggested must have seemed like a whole new level of crossing that invisible divide, at least to Z. No wonder he was so twisted up and bitter.

  It didn’t excuse his outburst this evening, or some of the biting things he’d said to her mother. But he’d bared his soul to Ilsa afterward, and about an uncomfortable, longstanding conflict. He’d apologized to her mom.

  “Why do you think Z and Jude got so mad at each other? It sounded like they knew something about you and Stephen, before tonight?” Ursa asked her Mom.

  Her mom’s cheeks deepened in color. “I’m not exactly sure, but it seems like one or both of them noticed something about Stephen and me. They didn’t say anything to you? Or your sisters?”

  “Not to me, no. And if they told Sadie and Esme anything, they never mentioned it to me.”

  Why didn’t you tell me, Z?

  Ilsa sighed. “I suppose Z and Jude were trying to protect you girls from the knowledge. They both can be downright chivalrous, without even realizing their doing it,” her mother said, as if she’d heard Ursa’s silent question. “Given everything I’ve learned tonight, I’m guessing they both had suspicions about Stephen and me being involved, and were struggling with it, each in his own way, and without full understanding or support.” Her mom looked at her with big, shining eyes and gave Ursa a sad smile. “Who knew that falling in love with someone could cause so much conflict in a family?”

  “Yeah,” Ursa whispered, reaching for her mom’s hand. “Who knew?”

  “But it’ll end up okay, eventually. Love is a powerful thing,” Ilsa said, squeezing Ursa’s hand reassuringly.

  But could love conquer all? Ursa suddenly wasn’t sure. Even if it could, she wasn’t sure Z felt the same way about her as Stephen clearly felt about her mother. He certainly wasn’t ready to speak openly about them.

  She felt heart sore thinking about Z’s struggle with the news about his family tonight, and what it meant for them—Z and Ursa.

  Or even if there even was a them anymore.

  If Z had been this bitter at the idea of Stephen becoming involved with her mom, didn’t it follow that he’d resent himself, as well, for carrying on with Ursa in secret?

  The one thing she knew for certain is that unlike this afternoon, when he’d texted and tried to call her, she hadn’t heard a peep from him after everything had blown up tonight.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ursa wanted to talk to Sadie or Esme about the shocking events of the evening, and also about what Ilsa had just revealed to her about Z and Jude’s near fight that night. But Sadie’s light was out when she went past her room. Esme was awake when she knocked, but sounded distracted. Ursa was left with the impression that her sisters definitely weren’t interested in having any deep conversations at the moment about their mother remarrying a man they all considered as an uncle figure and very good friend.

  Despite the fact that she had to get up early for the hospital fundraiser in the morning, she couldn’t get to sleep. She tossed and turned. She wondered where Z had gone tonight, and whether or not he wanted to see her. Whether or not he even was interested in making up.

  Maybe he was sick of all the drama and confusion associated with her family, not to mention with Ursa herself. Maybe with all the stress, he’d decided he needed to get to an AA meeting, or see his sponsor. Ursa would be glad if he’d done that, of course. But she couldn’t help but feel bad that she was in any way connected to him feeling overwhelmed.

  By the time her alarm went off at five thirty, she’d only slept a total of two hours. She felt headachy and nauseous, like she was coming down with the flu. When she got out of bed and stood, she groaned loudly and raced to the bathroom.

  She threw up violently.

  Oh no, I’ve caught the flu, she thought miserably after she flushed the toilet and cleaned up. I can’t miss the fundraiser. I’m in charge of it this year!

  But miraculously, by the time she’d brushed her teeth, her stomach had settled. She felt completely fine. Despite her quick recovery, she made a mental note to schedule an appointment with her primary doctor today at the hospital.

  Later that afternoon, Ursa walked out of her doctor’s office and into the waiting room, her vision blurred and her heartbeat throbbing loudly in her ears. She almost walked straight past her mom, only pausing when Ilsa reached out and grabbed her hand.

  “Honey? What is it?”

  Ursa blinked, and forced herself to focus on her mother’s upturned, anxious face. Her mother, Esme, Sadie, and herself had been finishing up things at the fundraiser this afternoon when Ursa’s doctor’s office had called and said that Dr. Frasier could see Ursa immediately due to a cancellation.

  Ursa almost hadn’t gone, as she’d felt fine all day while she managed the busy thrift store. But when she told her mother how violently and unexpectedly she’d vomited, her mom insisted she go for the appointment. Esme and Sadie had gone to the hospital coffee shop while Ilsa accompanied Ursa for what she’d assumed would be a quick, simple, in-and-out doctor’s appointment.

  “Honey?” her mom prompted, her expression growing tenser. She stood and peered at Ursa. “What is it? You act like you’ve just gotten some bad news.”

  “No,” Ursa blurted out. “No, there’s no bad news at all.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Ursa swallowed convulsively. A roaring sound had started up in her ears. “It’s… Dr. Frasier said it’s likely the flu,” she lied. “It’s been spreading like wildfire among hospital employees.”

  Ilsa looked relieved. “I’m glad it’s just that. You looked like a zombie walking out of there.”

  “I hardly slept last night,” Ursa mumbled as her mom took her arm.

  “Well, let’s get you home where you can get some TLC and rest. Hopefully, you’ll feel well enough to come with me tomorrow to get my wedding dress,” her mom said as she ushered Ursa out of the waiting room.

  She experienced a flash of relief that her mother seemed to believe her. Her mom had a long history of worrying about Ursa’s health. She grew tense every time Ursa got a sniffle.

  But Dr. Frasier’s diagnosis hadn’t been a cold or flu. No, it’d been something so serious, so utterly unbelievable, so earth-shaking, Ursa was having trouble walking straight and talking coherently.

  Dr. Frasier had told her that she was one hundred percent certain Ursa was pregnant.

  When they arrived at home in Tahoe Shores, the first thing Ursa noticed was that Z’s car sat in the Lodge’s driveway.

  “Z’s back,” she mumbled to herself without thinking. Anxiety penetrated the numb, disbelieving state that had encapsulated her for the entire trip from Reno to Tahoe Shores.

  “Was he ever gone?” Esme asked from where she sat in the backseat, next to Ursa.

  “I think he took off last night, after the meeting,” Ursa replied evasively.

  She immediately started up to her room when they got insi
de, completely in a daze.

  “Ursa honey, are you going to feel well enough to come down for dinner?” her mom called from behind her.

  “Uh… yeah, I guess.”

  “Oh good, because Stephen is coming over for a late dinner at seven thirty. I thought it’d be nice for the five of us to spend some time together.”

  Ursa glanced briefly at Esme, and then Sadie. Both her sisters looked like they dreaded the idea about as much as Ursa did at the moment. Her mom was telling them that she wanted the Esterbrook girls to start seeing Stephen in this whole new light: as her lover, life partner, and future husband.

  Her stomach seemed to roll over inside her. She clutched at it, swallowing back an urge to hurl. How many more weird twists is my life going to take?

  “Honey?” Ilsa called.

  “I’ll be down for dinner,” Ursa assured before she hurried up the stairs.

  Once she’d gotten into her room and shut the door, she thought she might have to vomit again. But the wave of nausea fled as quickly as it’d come. She lay down on her bed, her shoes still on and her purse still draped across her shoulder. She exhaled, feeling cold and sweaty all at once.

  If this is what being pregnant feels like, it’s going to be a horrible. But Dr. Frasier said that the nausea would probably ease off by week fourteen or so. That’s if I make it to week fourteen. This whole thing wasn’t even supposed to be medically possible. If it wasn’t even supposed to happen, then isn’t there a good chance I’ll miscarry?

  For a few alarming seconds, Ursa experienced pure, blind panic.

  She’d felt something similar in the doctor’s office earlier, when Dr. Frasier had given her the news. The first thing she’d said was that it was a mistake. She’d flatly told Dr. Frasier it was an utter impossibility.

  She’d only been seeing Dr. Frasier for a year and a half now. All of her extensive medical records and history had been transferred to Dr. Frasier’s office. But Ursa had been in such good health since she’d started seeing the new physician. They’d had no reason for them to talk extensively about her complicated medical issues as a child.

  Dr. Frasier had been a little nonplussed by Ursa’s absolute denial of the lab test. She’d agreed to run another test, at Ursa’s insistence. But of course, that had come out just as positive as the first one had.

  “Your ovaries may not have had the juice to develop fully years ago, but they clearly do now,” Dr. Frasier had said. “Because there’s absolutely no doubt. You’re pregnant, Ursa.”

  Pregnant. The impossible had occurred. She placed her hand on her flat stomach, trying to imagine new life growing inside her, and finding it hard to do so. Dr. Frasier’s nurse had set up an appointment for her in a few weeks for an ultrasound. Maybe seeing an image of the baby would help to make it seem real. The nurse had said the father could come for the appointment, as well.

  Ursa twitched reflexively on the bed. Wonder penetrated her numb shock.

  A baby. Z and she had made a baby together.

  Tears swelled up in her eyes. It can’t be possible. But it is. It’s happening. What if…what if she was actually capable of carrying the baby to full term? She’d be a mother.

  The idea had been denied to her since adolescence. It pounced upon her now with shocking clarity, the reality so powerful and visceral, tears shot out of her eyes. Not only would she be a mother.

  Z would be a father.

  She gasped so loudly in dawning awe, that when she heard movement in the hall, she put her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. Her mother’s room was at this end of the hallway. Ursa didn’t want her mom hearing her emotional reaction as she passed. When the footsteps stopped just outside her door, she hastily swiped at her cheeks and sat up in bed. Her mother would be stopping by to check on her.

  But instead of her mother’s knock, the door just swung inward, and Z stepped into the room.

  Z climbed the Esterbrook staircase two steps at a time. Thankfully, he hadn’t run in to any of the Esterbrooks in the great hall.

  He hadn’t been up this staircase since he was ten years old, since the day Ursa had been born. He’d been in Sadie’s and Esme’s rooms occasionally as a kid. Esme had a room on the second floor at the opposite end of the house, and Sadie’s room was on the first floor. He knew that Ursa’s room was upstairs, even though he’d never been in it. He’d find her, one way or another.

  So just like when he’d been a kid, worrying about Mrs. Esterbrook, he dared to storm that staircase once again.

  Except this time, it was Ursa he couldn’t bear to not see for another second.

  He knew that the master suite was at the end of the hall, so he ruled that door out. He headed for the door on the right immediately, and opened it without knocking.

  Jackpot.

  Ursa sat on the edge of her bed, her eyes huge and shining in her pale face. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he actually went weak with relief and…something he couldn’t quite identify, something powerful, upon seeing her sitting there, so present and touchable.

  He shut the door behind him, never removing his stare from her stunned face.

  “Z,” she mouthed. “What are you—”

  He crossed the room in four long strides and came down next to her on the bed. He took her into his arms and kissed the top of her head, inhaling her unique scent.

  “I’m sorry. For everything,” he muttered next to her hair. “I know I was an ass last night. And yesterday.”

  She pulled back in his arms and looked up at him searchingly. His throat tightened at the vision of her beautiful face and the silent question in her eyes. He knew she was waiting for an answer…something to make her understand his uncertainty yesterday afternoon, and his rudeness last night.

  “I don’t have any good excuse,” he admitted, wincing slightly at the truth. “I guess I’ve been feeling kind of… ”

  “Overwhelmed?” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, a wave of guilt and inadequacy sweeping through him. The news that Stephen was Grandpa Joe’s son, and then that he planned to marry Ursa’s mom on Christmas, had hit like a one-two punch. He’d already been dealing with his own insecurities about a future with Ursa, about what increasingly felt like the inevitable moment they would tell family about their involvement.

  Now, he’d discovered that Stephen—the man who’d always been a father figure to Jude and him—was in reality their father’s brother. Yet Grandpa Joe and Stephen had made the executive decision to keep Jude and him in the dark about it. Knowing that Stephen was a blood relative might have made it easier on Jude and him, to accept Stephen during their troubled, rebellious years. Instead, Jude and he had often struggled with guilt and resentment about accepting Stephen’s love and authority…about accepting him as the father figure for which they’d hungered for most of their lives…

  In truth, even while their real father had been alive. Maybe that’s what bothered Z the most.

  “You’ve known about Mom and Stephen for a while now. Haven’t you?” Ursa asked him.

  He exhaled in frustration. “Yeah. I know you’re going to ask why I didn’t tell you. The truth was, I didn’t know exactly what was going on between them. I just knew there was something. I didn’t want to tell you, in case it wasn’t serious. It might have been a fleeting thing between them, and in that case—”

  “It would have been better I never knew?”

  He shut his eyes briefly to avoid her condemning stare.

  “I didn’t want to—”

  “Hurt me? I know,” she said.

  He blinked open his eyelids at her calmness.

  “You do?”

  She sighed. “I realize you kept it from me because you didn’t want to cause me any undue pain, yeah. I get that. The fact that you kept the truth about Mom and Stephen from me is the least of what’s botherin
g me,” she said, her tone sounding weary. He searched her expression, but found no clue as to what she was thinking or feeling. It drove him crazy, not being able to read her at that moment. He cupped her face with his hand, his thumb feathering her soft cheek. Her skin felt moist.

  “The thing you’re most upset about is how I reacted at the beach, isn’t it? Have you been crying?” he asked her gruffly. She shrugged, her immobile, masklike expression making him grind his teeth together in frustration.

  “Ursa…I’m sorry I didn’t react well when you told me about the respite home and…”

  “The fact that I was thinking about Columbia as a location for it?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “At first, I was sideswiped by the idea of you starting such a big project so far away from me. All I could think about was how hard it’s been lately, seeing each other for such stingy little periods of time, always knowing we’d have to say goodbye just hours after saying hello.” Cupping her jaw with his hand, he placed his forehead next to hers. He shut his eyes and inhaled the scent of her, the feel of her. God, he hated when he couldn’t breathe her into his lungs, when she was so far away, he couldn’t reach out and touch her.

  Without telling himself to move, his mouth found hers. She sighed against his lips, her mouth softening beneath his. For a few charged seconds, he kissed her, every cell in his body going on high alert at her taste, at the sweetness of her response to him.

  “I’m greedy, Ursa,” he said against her lips a stretched moment later. “You know that. I want more of you. When you suddenly announced you were going to build the facility—now—I sort of lost it, imagining yet another thing separating us.”