Shame

“WHAT’S WRONG?” HE ASKED, one hand braced on the doorjamb.

He felt somewhat better and thought that if he could just get some Tylenol for his headache, maybe a couple of liters of water down his throat, he’d be okay. They were all overreacting, he figured. He’d gotten some sort of infection from that dickhead’s dirty knife, but that was all.

Then he found Charli, leaning against the counter as if it was all that held her up, with her face in her hands and her shoulders slumped.

She jumped at the sound of his voice and he scowled as she raised a pale, strained face to his.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again, hand tightening on the doorjamb.

“Dr. Josh just called,” she said, waving toward the phone. “I thought you were still asleep. You need to call him back.”

She went to pick up the phone, but he brushed it off. “Just tell me what he said.”

“I did,” she responded tartly. “He’s not going to give your personal medical information to me, Max. I’m not your doctor. Hell, we’re barely even friends.”

“That’s bullshit.” He eyed her narrowly. They were friends. Weren’t they?

But she stared him down. “You don’t treat me like a friend, Max. And I think you know it.” She grabbed the phone and punched in a series of number before turning it over to him.

He took it out of reflex and almost stabbed the disconnect button, but at her hard look, he put the phone to his ear. It was crazy how such a look from her, such a little bit of a thing, had him caving the way he so often did. She didn’t know it, of course, but Charli had always had him wrapped around her finger.

She couldn’t ever know it, either.

She was talking about moving, right?

Well, that was good. She’d move on, get past this idea that the two of them had something.

Everything in him rebelled at the idea, but he shoved it all down and focused as a man’s voice came on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Doc. It’s Sh...Max Schaeffer.” He glared at Charli as if it was her fault he felt bad going by the name he’d used for so long. It might as well be on his birth certificate and driver’s license. Shame was who he was.

It’s not who you want to be around her, a sly voice needled him.

“Max...I just tried to contact you. Listen...I’ve got some results in. Some good news, but some...not.”

A few minutes later, he passed the phone over to Charli. “I don’t understand shit all of what he was talking about,” he said, getting up. “He’s going to tell you. You’re translating.”

Then he got up, went to the fridge and opened it.

There was beer inside.

Not strong enough.

Okay.

Moving over to the cabinet next to the fridge, he checked it. Jack Daniels. It would work. He opened the bottle and drank. It burned a fire down his throat and it splashed into his very much-neglected belly. For a second, he thought he might puke it all up, but everything stayed down.

Lowering the bottle, he stared at it.

He didn’t have very long to ponder it, though, because a slim hand closed around it. As a tug of war ensued, Charli’s voice, sharp and commanding, filled his ears. “Okay, I get the gist of it. I’ll get back to you soon. I gotta go.” She tossed the phone in the direction of the table. It missed.

The battery popped out but she didn’t even look toward it as she said, “Give me the damn bottle.”

“I need to get good and drunk right now, Charli,” he said.

“You can’t.” She jabbed him in the ribs.

Reflexively, he curled up, then hissed as it pulled the stitches in his side. “You mean little bitch,” he yelped, letting go of the bottle.

“Your liver will thank me,” she said in a snide tone, carrying the bottle over to the sink and dumping every last drop.

“Apparently my liver is in okay shape.” He remembered that much from that fucking scary conversation.

“It won’t be if you go mixing the antibiotics, the meds for your fever, and the booze you were guzzling, genius.” She spun around and faced him, arms crossed over her chest. It forced her very delectable tits into a very delectable position.

Shame decided he couldn’t be too sick, because things inside him stood up to take notice.

But the muscles in his legs, his arms, his everywhere, were fucking weak.

“Do you have any idea what he told you on the phone?” She met his eyes, challenge in her own.

“I know he wants me to come in for more tests,” he said, shrugging it off. “I don’t—”

“Don’t you dare tell me you’re not going to go in,” she shouted, fury erupting out of her. “I won’t have it, Max, do you fucking understand me?”

“It’s not up to you!”

She crossed the floor and rose onto her toes, glaring at him. “Your immune system is in the toilet. You have next to no white blood cells working to fight the infection you’ve got going on. We need to know why!”

“There is no why! I’m sick! It’s not a big deal.” Something that might have been fear chewed its way up his throat, but he swallowed it back down. He would deal with this the same way he dealt with every other ugly aspect of his life. If he didn’t think about it, it wasn’t real.

Charli must have read what he was thinking, because she poked him in the chest, her candy-apple-red nail drilling into his skin. “There’s no avoiding this, Max. Something is making you sick, and we’ll damn well find out what it is,” she said.

“Maybe I don’t want to know.”

“If we don’t know, we can’t fight it.” Steel coated her words and he knew she wasn’t going to back down, but he wasn’t, either.

“If I’m sick, then I’m sick,” he said in a low voice. “I get to decide if I fight it or not. It’s not your call.”

She slapped him.

“You son of a bitch,” she said, breathing hard. “I lost your baby. I’m not losing you, too.”

* * * * *

IT TURNED OUT THAT she had another bottle of booze in the house.

It was peach schnapps, nothing he’d drink, but she liberally laced her sweet tea with it before finally sitting down across from him at the kitchen table.

He’d been there for almost ten minutes, ever since she’d dropped that bomb on his head.

I lost your baby.

“You maybe want to try running that by me again, Charli?”

She eyed him over the glass. “Why?” she asked in a tone laced with acid. “So you can take off and run away?”

“Charli...”

She smiled sweetly at him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to run. The baby didn’t make it, so it’s not like you have any responsibilities toward me.” Then she toasted him with the glass of schnapps and tea. “And hell, the way you’re going, you might well just end up six feet under, so even if I hadn’t lost the baby—”

“Would you fucking tell me?” he roared, coming up off the chair with a speed that set his head to spinning.

She blinked, looking as if she’d been caught off guard.

He didn’t know why.

Everybody knew he had a temper.

Granted, he rarely let it out around her.

She inclined her head and gestured to the seat. “You shouldn’t be on your feet. You still look wobbly.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if I end up passing out, so long as you tell me.”

“How about you sit down,” she suggested. “Then I’ll tell you. It seems like it would make more sense that way.”

Slowly, he lowered himself into the chair, but he was ready to get up and grab her, shake her silly this time, if she didn’t start talking.

To his relief, he didn’t have to put himself to the test and see if he could even walk over there just yet. Charli started to talk.

“As you likely know, no birth control is one-hundred-percent foolproof,” she said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “The condom must have leaked, or something. I have no idea. But the week before I left for Mexico, I had...spontaneously aborted. The baby was yours.”

“I’m not questioning that,” he said in a low voice. He remembered how tight she’d been. How hot. How sweet. He remembered everything—how she’d begged, how she’d pleaded for him not to stop even though everything in him told him that was what he needed to do. “What happened? You’re holding back.”

Her lashes drifted down. After a moment, she hitched a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not anything you need to worry about. I was having cramps—had been having them for several days, but that day they were getting worse. We had a...difficult patient come into the ER. Psych admit. He was violent. I was trying to give him some medication to help with the hallucinations he was having and he managed to get an arm free. He punched me.” She swallowed, looking away. “I had to go get checked out. Halfway through the exam, the cramping got worse. I...I lost the baby.”

“What else?” He tightened the hand that lay in his lap into a fist as he watched her. He’d always watched Charli and he knew when she was keeping secrets. There were secrets in her eyes now.

Those steely blue eyes flashed at him. “You know enough.”

“I don’t know it all, Charli,” he said implacably. “I want it all.”

“You always have,” she whispered, looking away.

He frowned, not sure what she meant by that, but before he could ask, she started to talk again. “I had to have surgery, okay?” She got up and pulled her sweatshirt up, tugging down the waistband of her jeans at the same time. There it was, a bright pink, slightly puckered scar on the lower left side of her abdomen. “It was an ectopic pregnancy and the ovary had ruptured. They don’t know if it was the trouble from the fall or what.”

“What fall?” Shame demanded.

“I...” She huffed out a breath. “When that bastard hit me, it was hard enough to knock me down. I tripped over a table and fell down, banged myself up, okay? He was a big guy.” She let go of her shirt and pants, letting her clothes settle back into place as she slid into her seat. With a deprecating sweep of her hand, she added, “As you already know, I am not particularly big. He might as well have been throwing punches at a rag doll. I went down pretty hard.”

His mind was spinning. How much of it had to do with his ever-present headache and how much had to do with what Charli was telling him, Shame didn’t know, but it was like somebody had put his brain on the Tilt-A-Whirl. He’d very much like to get off, but that wasn’t happening.

Slowly, he got to his feet and paced away, over to the kitchen counter where he could brace himself if he had to. “What’s an ectopic pregnancy... Is that one of those tubal pregnancies?” he asked, voice gritty.

She’d been pregnant.

He hadn’t known.

“Yes,” she said, her voice soft. “I didn’t even know until it happened.”

“Guess that’s why you didn’t tell me,” he said, keeping the bitterness out of his tone by sheer will alone.

“I tried.” She threw her hair back over one shoulder, her blue eyes cutting into his. “There was a day when I called you three times in under an hour. You never called me back. I called you because I wanted you there—I needed you. But you didn’t answer, and they couldn’t wait on the surgery.”

He half stumbled. Forced to grip the counter to stay upright, he gaped at her, searching for words. He remembered, of course, the day she was talking about. He’d been hung over, shit-faced to be exact, and when the phone had rung, he’d thrown it away from him as if it had been a snake about to attack.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re always sorry, Max, you know that?” She sighed, and when he turned to look at her, she was staring out one of the windows into the backyard. “It wasn’t a real pregnancy. Part of me knows that in here...” She touched her head. Then she moved her hand to her heart. “Here’s a different story. Tubal pregnancies never survive. They can’t. But that doesn’t change what could have been.”

“You wouldn’t want my baby, Charli,” he said gruffly.

Oh, was that the wrong thing to say.

She erupted out of the chair—a supernova ready to explode.

Storming toward him, hair streaming back from her face, she glared at him with snapping eyes. “You don’t get to tell me what I’d want, Max.” She jabbed him in the chest, leaning up so she could all but sneer the words into his face. “You hear me? You don’t know shit about what I want. What I’ve always wanted. And you don’t know shit about what I lost that day, so just shut the fuck up already.”

She turned away and moved off before he could reach out for her. He damned the clumsiness of his mouth, the slowness of his hands. It was obvious the loss of the pregnancy had hurt her. He could see that. But...

Who would want his baby?

His DNA was beyond fucked up.

“You can get pregnant again, Charli.”

She laughed, the sound high and wild. “You think it’s that easy?” She turned to glare at him, her eyes full of tears and misery. “No, Shame. It’s not that fucking easy. My right ovary is messed up, thank you. It’s covered in cysts and it might have to be removed. I lost the left one the day I had surgery—they had to take it out. So...no, getting pregnant isn’t just that easy. And contrary to what you think, it’s not like I’m just going to go out and shack up with anybody. You don’t get it. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“Charli...” He lifted a hand, floundering now as he so often did with her.

You’re wrong, he wanted to say.

Tell me again.

You can’t love me.

Please don’t stop.

But he didn’t say any of those things and Charli didn’t wait for him to decide on what to say.

“Now...you are going to get your sorry ass dressed, Max.” She smoothed her hands over her hair, then down her sides. “You and I are going to the hospital. I think it’s safe to say you owe me after all of this, don’t you agree?”

“You always did know how to twist the knife, didn’t you, Char?”

She said nothing, just sat down at the table and looked at her watch. “You’ve got twenty minutes. If you fall on your face, I’m calling Con.”