Present Day, Early October
Elizabeth and I had been through so much.
Indescribable bliss and devastating sorrow.
Our love ran so deep, and yet, it seemed our wounds ran deeper.
Some of those wounds had seemed unbearable, inflictions impossible to recover from.
No doubt one came with the regrets of the greatest mistake I’d ever made, the day Elizabeth had been forced to choose between me and Lizzie before she was even born, the day I’d sent her away to live life on her own, scared and alone.
Another had been the day Lillie was taken from us. Our hearts had ruptured when she was ripped from our lives.
I once believed the other had been the day I’d walked out of Elizabeth’s house little more than three months ago. I couldn’t imagine hurting any worse than that moment, when I’d snapped the door shut to block out the overwhelming sorrow of the woman I loved, a wall put up between us because neither of us knew how to deal with the excruciating pain.
But that moment didn’t come close to the devastation that hit me now.
Elizabeth balanced just on the edge of his couch, one leg canted off to the side as if she were getting ready to slip onto the asshole’s lap. Those fingers I knew so well were tangled in his shirt while he held her perfect face between his filthy hands.
Malice curled my hands into fists as I took in the brutality happening ten feet away from me.
He was kissing her.
He was fucking kissing her and touching her.
And the bastard had the nerve to do it while she still wore my ring.
Her head spun in my direction, breaking their connection. Shock widened her brown eyes as she gaped at me from across the short span of the room. Still, it felt like I’d never been further from her than I was now. The distance so great. An impenetrable expanse.
Logan jumped to his feet, and the asshole moved to stand in front of her. Misplaced aggression coiled his muscles. As if I were in the wrong. As if he thought it his job to keep her from me. That was his intention. I knew it. Possessiveness radiated from his posture, as if he had some kind of claim on her.
But he had none.
She was mine, and she was always going to be.
Even through the barrier Logan tried to forge between us, her wary gaze held mine. A storm raged in her expression, tightened in shock, taut in anger, flashed with distinct relief and adoration. I didn’t know if Elizabeth recognized she still held it for me.
The asshole’s voice rang somewhere in my mind. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
My attention snapped up to meet his sneer.
Yes, I was most definitely out of my fucking mind.
How could she do this to me?
I said it aloud, the trauma flowing free. “How could you do this, Elizabeth?” It was an accusation, a rush of emotion squeezed from within. I looked at her with disbelieving eyes, my head slowly shaking as the pain tore through me. “How could you?”
Tears slipped down her face, her lips quivering.
And I knew she had been crying, even before I broke through the door. Like maybe she felt it, too, the chaos that had spun me into a complete fucking frenzy as I pounded the sidewalk outside the bastard’s house for the last fifteen minutes. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I’d tried to peer through the drapes of his window, the two silhouettes obscured, though I’d seen them leaning, pressing, moving.
There was no more standing aside.
I was taking her back.
Logan inched a little farther in front of her. He cocked his head to the side as he narrowed his eyes. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
My laughter was ragged, verging on hysterical.
Because there was no sanity in this situation.
“I’m not going anywhere without her.” I spit the words at him.
Elizabeth whimpered, grasping at the collar of her shirt as she scrambled back on his couch, climbing to her feet on unsteady legs.
I could see the line of her, her face blocked from view, her body shaking as she fumbled a few steps back. And it almost felt like relief when she came around and stood in the small open area behind the couch. Her face was downturned, and she wavered in indecision.
I made it for her.
“Go get in my car, Elizabeth.” The command slid out low.
A cry erupted from her, as if she were in physical pain. I knew she was.
Logan rushed around the other side of the couch, as if to shield her, as if he knew anything about the woman crumbling in the middle of his room. “She isn’t going anywhere with you.” He extended his arm back to keep her at bay. “Baby, stay back,” came as a quiet assault from his mouth, as if he were sharing some kind of private conversation with her, telling her without words that she didn’t have to be afraid of me.
Baby.
He called her baby.
Hostility rolled from me in waves as a sweep of possessiveness broke, taking over every cell in my body.
When he took a single step toward me, I charged him. My shoulder collided with his chest.
A horrified scream rose up from Elizabeth, blended with the cries she couldn’t seem to contain. They fed the agitation, the madness that left me unhinged. Because without Elizabeth, I was in pieces. Shattered.
Caught off guard, Logan fumbled backward before he regained his balance. On his toes, he bounced in aggression.
“You are fucking crazy,” wheezed from his lungs. He rushed in, swung wide as he aimed for my face. The punch missed as I ducked my head.
My arm cocked back, insanity flooding from me unlike anything I’d ever known. All I knew was I wouldn’t let him have her. I wouldn’t, and I couldn’t fucking stand the thought, knowing that the two of them had been together.
Was she sleeping with him? Had she been curled up with him in his bed?
Blinded with fury, I slammed my fist into the underside of his jaw. His head rocked back.
A guttural groan roared from his throat.
Her undying presence nipped at my soul, teased and taunted as I bore down on this asshole who for even a second thought she could somehow be his.
I hit him again, the strike landing on his cheek.
He stumbled back, his own fury mounting a resistance as he surged forward.
Elizabeth screamed.
My attention darted to her, to the one I wasn’t sure I knew any longer.
Sadness poured from her as she witnessed me coming unglued.
Unprepared, distracted by her, his fist connected with my nose. Pain exploded, splitting my vision.
Blood gushed, and I saw red.
I lost it, losing myself in the pent-up rage that I’d harbored for so long. I unleashed it on him, the anger for her, the anger for me, the anger at the injustice of this fucked up world.
Her desperate voice hit my ears. “Christian, please, stop.”
I stumbled back, aggression still curling through my senses as I glared down at the piece of shit who was trying to steal her from me.
I swiped the back of my hand beneath my nose and across my mouth. Blood smeared. Sniffing, I turned my attention to Elizabeth. She was crying, lost, just as fucking lost as me.
“Go get in my car, Elizabeth.” It was hard, harsh with the anger. I realized most of it was directed at her.
She vacillated, shifting, so obviously drawn to the door and drawn to this place where she hid, where she hid behind lies and pretended she didn’t have to face what we’d gone through. Her unsteady gaze met with the intensity of mine.
“Go,” I said.
The brown of her eyes flamed and dimmed, a roil of confusion, harboring a disturbance unlike anything I’d ever witnessed, a disturbance as severe as the one boiling inside of me.
Anger and regret.
Revulsion.
Pain, prominent and suffocating.
Underneath it all was the love that would ever let us go.
She dropped her gaze and shuffled around me, quietly slipping out the door.
I stared at Logan who was trying to pick himself up off the floor, my entire body rocking with hatred. Blood dripped from my nose. Harshly, I wiped it with the back of my hand.
“Stay away from her. Do you understand me? This is my family. Did you see that ring on her finger? Do you think this is a game? That woman belongs to me. She always has and she always will. Don’t think for a second you can take her from me. She will love me until the day she dies.”
I’d told a million lies in my lifetime.
That statement was one I knew as the truth.
“Fuck you,” he sneered, roughing the heel of his hand across his bleeding face.
Derisive laughter flooded from me. I backed up, lifting an accusatory finger at him as he straightened. “I’m not joking. Stay away from her. You don’t know her…not for a second…don’t pretend like you do.”
Then I turned and ran out the door I’d barreled through not five minutes before.
Maybe I’d fucked up and maybe there’d be consequences to pay, my actions lawless as I’d lost myself in my rage. But that mattered none. I’d made a promise to fight for her, and I’d pay whatever cost.
She was worth everything.
Night had completely taken hold, the darkness thick, a blanket of clouds squatting heavily over the city. My silver Audi sat at the curb. The tinted windows concealed Elizabeth waiting inside.
I fought against the anger still burning through my blood, fought against the image of the two of them on his couch. I was sure I’d never be able to purge it from my mind. It blinded me. Scrubbing my palm over my face, I opened the door. The overhead light glowed to life, illuminating Elizabeth in the passenger seat. With her head downcast, she twisted her fingers in knots on her lap.
I sat down, started my car, and put it in drive. Tension stretched between us, the tightest band, something explosive threatening to snap. Anger and fury and unanswered questions bounced between us as I seethed in the silence.
I glanced at her, my lip curling as I swiped the residual of blood from my lip. She didn’t look at me. She just slowly rocked and cried, silent tears gleaming in the street lights that flashed through the windows.
God, I loved her so much. I wanted to hold her, tell her it was going to be okay in the same second I wanted to lash out at her.
It took me all of thirty seconds to get back to her house.
I pulled into the drive and cut the engine. It ticked and hummed. We just sat there, me looking ahead, Elizabeth staring at her hands. The air was so thick, and I could almost hear the heavy thud of her heart. Nausea swirled in my raw stomach.
How would we ever get past this?
With her head down, Elizabeth fumbled blindly with the handle, a sob escaping her as she clambered from my car.
Climbing out, I trailed her up the walkway toward the front door. In the stagnant silence that twisted us tight, there was no room to breathe.
The air was thick, heavy, dense as I hovered right behind her while she fumbled to produce her keys. She trembled as she slid it into the lock and let us into the house that was supposed to be our home.
The door swung open.
She stepped inside, stopping in the entry with her back to me.
Quietly I latched the door behind us, and I edged forward, my chest an inch from her back. A single light burned from deep within the kitchen. It cast a faint glow into the dim-lit room. The walls enclosed around us, a stir of anger and a rush of need. I could smell her, her hair brushing against me as she inhaled, her body palpitating with the ragged breath.
“Did you fuck him?” The words dropped from me in a slow accusation. It was laced with all the hurt of finding the two of them together.
I sensed every one of her muscles tighten, the slow sway of her body as she shook her head.
“No.”
It was a whisper, enough to weaken my knees with the rush of relief, still stoked the fury for what she had given into.
My fingers weaved through her hair, and I barely tugged her back, her jaw lifting as I brought my mouth to her ear. “Is that what you want, Elizabeth? Someone else to touch you?”
A tortured whimper escaped her throat. “No.”
Slowly I turned her around and pushed her up against the wall beside the door. Her back hit it with a thud. A whine rose from deep within her, escaped as agony into the room, something akin to the torture eating me alive. Brown eyes flashed to mine, and she lifted her chin, rigid, this broken girl who looked at me with bitterness and need.
I fluttered my fingertips down the slope of her neck. Every ounce of the pain she’d caused me squeezed into the words that I forced from my mouth.
“Tell me you don’t love me anymore.”
She clenched her jaw.
I erased all the space separating us, flattening myself to her as she shrank against the wall. Still she said nothing.
I curved my fingers around her neck, my thumb pressing under her jaw as I forced her to look at me. “Tell me you don’t love me anymore, Elizabeth.”
A strangled sob broke loose from her, bounced around the strained tension of the tiny room.
I gripped her face between my hands. My mouth descended on hers. Her lips were chapped, pouty and full, all wrong and perfectly right. And I wanted to erase it, expunge the asshole from her lips, delete the past.
Elizabeth kissed me desperately as she clawed at my neck, fingers sinking deep, cutting me more as she struggled to bring me closer.
More fucking pain.
“Tell me…tell me you don’t love me.”
Her hands fisted in my shirt, and she hit me, pounded my chest. “I hate you,” she whispered hard, tortured, her fingers curling into the skin at my jaw.
She kissed me harder as she locked her fingers in my hair.
We lit. A frenzy took us over as we gripped and clutched, as she bit and hit and begged.
The anger we’d left unresolved the day I’d walked out pulsed between us, a force that neither of us could stop.
My kiss was demanding, urgent as I consumed her. Hers, desperate.
I ripped her shirt over her head. “Tell me to stop,” I pleaded. My body strained, clashed with the fury of what she’d done, the pain she’d caused, collided with the grief that devoured Elizabeth.
Another sob.
My arm wound around her waist, and I dropped us to our knees and laid her on the floor. Her chest heaved as tears streamed.
She tore at my skin, claimed it again. “I hate you.”
I caged her, raked my nose up her jaw and to her ear. “Tell me you don’t love me.” It came harsh, acute and severe.
She slapped me across the face, before her fingers locked on the back of my neck, pulling me back to her. She forced her mouth against mine, and I lost it, kissed her and kissed her, tore at her clothes, desperate to feel her against me. I needed her. Oh my God, I needed her. And yet she’d hurt me, cut me so deep, I didn’t know how to see, had no clue how to make sense of any of this except I refused to let her go.
My pleas changed as I ripped the panties from her body and fumbled with the button on my jeans. “Tell me to stop, Elizabeth. Tell me to stop," I ordered as I shed my clothes.
“Don’t you dare stop.” She raked her nails down my back, drawing blood, her body begging for mine. “Don’t ever stop.”
I slammed into her.
I cried out in pleasured relief.
And I fucked her. I fucked her and fucked her, because I was angry. Angry she’d let that bastard kiss her. Angry that I had let her slip away. Angry that Lillie had been stolen from us. Angry that I hadn’t been strong enough to hold her together when she’d fallen apart.
And she was crying, crying as I claimed her. Marked her. Took back what was mine. I felt her convulse around me, her body gripping my cock as she came. Still, she cried, she cried and raged and pounded out all of her pain against my chest.
Her name crashed from my mouth as I poured into her. It was agony. It was ecstasy. I collapsed on her, my chest to hers.
Elizabeth went limp below me, but she was clinging, weeping against my skin. “Why didn’t you love her?” Fingertips bored deep, cutting into my spirit. “Why didn’t you love her?” she asked on a muted sob.
I held my weight on my forearms as I sank my nose in the warmth of her neck. I ran my fingers through her hair, kissed her jaw, whispered at her ear. “I loved her, Elizabeth…so much…I loved her so much.” It was low, ragged, a promise for the one who would forever live in our hearts.
A little girl who had touched our lives.
A little girl who had torn it apart.
A trauma we could not sustain.
And she wept. Elizabeth wept, and I just held her.
Finally I got to my knees, gathered this broken woman in my arms, and climbed to my feet. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around my neck. I hugged her to me, kissed her forehead as I carried her upstairs.
“I love you, Christian.” I felt her words more than heard them.
“I know,” I whispered tenderly at her skin, all of mine held in the simple acceptance of what she had said.
With my foot, I nudged the bedroom door open. Crossing the room, I gently settled her in the middle of the bed. Elizabeth looked up at me with all the torment she had been unwilling to show, her eyes open wide, the darkness in the depths revealing how deep her pain really went.
My movements were measured as I climbed down beside her. I tugged her twisted sheets over us as I turned to my side and pulled her into my arms.
There was no resistance. Her arms were crossed between us as I held her whole, my hand at the back of her head while she cried out months of misery into my chest.
I held her, supported her the way I should have, even when she’d pushed me away.
“I’m so sorry,” I finally managed to murmur. I ran my fingers through the length of her hair. “I’m so sorry for everything. For everything.”
She curled her hand into the skin at my chest, fingers anchoring deep. “Don’t leave me.”
Exhaling, I somehow managed to pull her a little closer. I would never let her go.
“Never, Elizabeth. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just waiting for you to come back to me.”
In all of this, that had been my greatest mistake, my biggest failure. Leaving her alone when she needed me most.
Another sob echoed from her mouth. “It hurts,” she whimpered.
“I know, baby, I know.”
She choked over the emotion in her chest. I held her tighter. Never again would I allow enough space for a wedge to be driven between us. I’d never sit silent. I’d no longer wait.
I whispered into her hair softly, “It is time, Elizabeth.”
I said those three words again, the ones that had continually been our ruin. I wasn’t scared saying them now. “It’s time to talk about it. To talk about her. Talk about us. You have to tell me what you’re feeling.”
Elizabeth burrowed deeper, her tears wet on my flesh. “It hurts,” she said again.
“I know. It hurts me, too, but we have to.”
Hiding only ruined us, destroyed what we had.
Slowly, she lifted her face to me, and I stared down at the woman I loved, silently encouraging her to open up to me.
She swallowed hard before her face pinched and a rush of tears streamed from the creases of her eyes. “That day, Christian.” Her lids closed as if she were trying to block the memory, or maybe she was finally allowing it in. The words were rough, pained. “Going through labor…it was torture.” She glanced at me, searching for understanding. “It felt like I was rejecting her when all I wanted to do was hang onto her. But then they brought her to me…”
She wet her lips, her attention darting away before it flitted back to search my face, agony set in every line. “All that time when I was holding her, I kept begging her to breathe. She felt so whole in my arms that I kept thinking she had to. She just had to take a breath, and everything would be okay.”
I could feel her panic, the pain as it rolled through her, as it tightened in her throat and hammered furiously in her chest.
I wanted to fix it, to fix her, to shield her, but I knew we had to face it, and facing it was going to hurt. All of it, the pain in what we’d lost and the disaster we’d created in its wake.
My arms constricted around her body. She felt so frail in my arms, so delicate. Shudders wracked through her as she trembled in my hold.
“Baby, I know it hurts, but you have to tell me. We’re never going to get past this if we don’t talk to each other.”
Her fingers burrowed into my skin, as if seeking an anchor. Her words came with a crush of sorrow, unbearable as she once again broke down.
“When they took her away, it was like reality finally hit me, and that was the moment when I realized she never would, Christian. My little girl was never going to breathe, and when they walked out the door with her, she took my ability to breathe with her.”
And I was there again, with her, seeing it through her eyes. And God, it was fucking devastating.
“I felt like I was suffocating, Christian, and I thought I was going to die. And you…you were the one who made me do it. You were the one who told me it was time.” She pinched her eyes closed. “God, this is so hard to talk about, I’ve kept it inside for so long.”
“Baby…take your time.”
She took a deep breath, blinking as she slowly shook her head. “I know now how crazy that was, Christian. I blamed you for something you couldn’t control, but it felt like you were against me, like you weren’t fighting for her the way I was. I hated you for it.”
Hearing her say it again punched me in the gut. I knew she had, but I also knew it’d come from trauma, from shock, that she’d been lost to skewed emotions because she didn’t know how to deal with the loss.
I cupped her cheek, my thumb making a pass over the apple of her cheek. “It’s okay, Elizabeth. Just tell me…I want to hear it. I need to hear it so I can understand.”
She looked up at me through watery eyes, her expression intense.
“You didn’t hold her.” Her mouth quivered as she said it. She glanced away, then brought her attention back to me. “I know what I said to you was selfish because I know you loved her. But that hurt me, and it just added to the anger I felt toward you. Every time I saw you, the pain almost knocked me from my feet. I couldn’t feel anything else but the pain and the hurt and the hate. And the pain is still there,” she emphasized, “I need you to know that I’m scared and I’m confused lying here with you, but the pain is not obscuring what I really feel for you anymore.”
Hope wound into her voice. “The last few weeks, I’ve been feeling it, little flashes of something that felt as if it were calling to me. It took me kissing Logan tonight for me to realize what it was. It was you.”
“Seeing that tonight…it killed me, Elizabeth. It made me insane with jealousy.” I rolled her on her back and I propped myself up, hovering over her. My fingers crawled out to splay wide across her chest, and I pressed my hand over her heart as I stared down at the brown eyes that searched me through our misery. “Because I already knew that, Elizabeth. I already knew you belonged to me just like I belong to you.” I dropped my gaze to the empty spot near her head. I tried to rein in the depth of the rage that jealousy had evoked in me. Then I sealed my eyes on hers. “You hurt me, Elizabeth. I’m not going to lie and tell you it’s okay, because it’s not. You are my life, but you have to make the decision you’re going to live it with me, even when that life brings hardships we don’t want to face.”
Grief twisted her face, but I continued.
“And I’ll never be able to express to you how sorry I am that I pushed you to let her go. It was stupid, but I thought I was protecting you and that you were just harming yourself by continuing to hang onto her all that time. I should have let you make the decision when you were ready.”
Hesitant fingers fluttered along my chest. Sadness deepened the lines on her face. She fisted her hand as if she had to work up to what she wanted to say. Her voice came quiet, ragged in its admission.
“But that’s the thing, Christian, I would never have been ready to let her go. And I think you knew that. You know me. Know me the way no one else does, in a way no one else ever will. I blamed you for what you were never responsible for. I couldn’t even look at you because you represented everything I had wanted, all of my hopes, my hopes for this little girl and for our marriage. In one day it was shattered.”
She slipped her hand up my neck, cupped my jaw, her eyes burning into mine.
“I’m scared that when you and I are together, I’m so happy. It feels like every time I give myself to you, I’m hit with the worst kind of devastation. I’m scared of what you make me feel. It’s so intense that sometimes it’s overwhelming. But tonight, with Logan…” Frantically she gathered my hand, arched her back so she could place my palm over her heart. “No one can touch this but you. My heart, it belongs to you just like every other part of me does. All of it…all of me. I’m yours.”
And I was reeling, staggered by the depth of her words. By what they meant.
“I love you, Elizabeth. Nothing can change that.”
“I’m so sorry it took someone else touching me to make me realize that, to knock me back into reality. If I’d have just held on a little longer, I would have seen, Christian. I’ve felt a change in me, a glimmer of light when I was so lost in the darkness. I know it would have lit on you.”
I brushed my lips over hers, the softest pass, an embrace.
She wound her arms around my neck and buried her face in my neck. “I’m never going to get over her.”
I ragged sigh left me, because I grasped the truth of her words. They were my truth, too.
“No one expects you to get over her, Elizabeth. Neither of us will ever completely heal from it. We lost our child. That is something we’re going to have to deal with forever. It’s never going to stop hurting, but it will get better, and we have to live through it together.”
We had to believe that our little girl was safe, free, that she wasn’t alone or feeling any of this pain we bore for her.
Elizabeth cried, hugging me tighter.
I ran my hand through her hair, whispered at her head. “People don’t always get to love like this, Elizabeth. Not the way we do. It’s a gift.”
I shifted so I could look down at her. “Please don’t ever let it go.”