Chapter Two
March 2016
Sierra lay on an air mattress in a cramped room in her sister’s apartment where she’d been staying for far too long. It wasn’t right to put Kaitlin out like this, not for these three weeks since Sierra had packed a bag and walked out of her home with Carter. She wondered if he’d even noticed.
Regardless, she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of seeing him while she’d been getting divorce papers drawn up. She hadn’t been able to hand him the divorce papers, even if it made her a coward. And even though it had been two weeks since Lina said she’d given them to him, she hadn’t heard a peep from him and the papers had not been filed.
She’d have to face him. She knew she’d have to face him, but every day she woke up in this tiny room that was already decorated for the little girl her sister would have any day now. She woke up and her head felt like it was full of cotton. She was exhausted and achy and sure she was coming down with some weird flu that never fully hit.
She blew out a breath and looked at the changing table where she’d set her rings last night. She’d tried to sleep without them. It had been fitful, and even this morning she desperately wanted to put them back on.
Desperately wanted to go home and find Carter and say she didn’t mean it. She’d sit quietly in the corner and never say anything just so long as they were together.
Not that he’d filed the damn papers, which meant if she really wanted to she could walk back into their house and pretend like the past three weeks apart didn’t exist.
The fact she could do that made everything harder. There was only so long she could wait. Once Kaitlin had the baby, Sierra was on her own. Which inevitably meant moving in with her parents, which…
God, she was tired of being their little failure.
A knock sounded on the door and Sierra forced herself out of bed to open it. She had to brace herself against the doorframe as a wave of dizziness came over her.
“You okay?” Kaitlin asked, eyebrows drawn together in concern.
Sierra managed a nod. “Just a little light-headed, I guess.”
Kaitlin’s concern didn’t disappear from her face, but she smiled. “I made some breakfast. You probably need to eat.”
“I should be making you breakfast,” Sierra said, feeling utterly awful for taking advantage of her pregnant sister like this.
Kaitlin waved it away as she walked, well, in fairness, waddled to the tiny kitchen. “I’m uncomfortable and need to move. I’m restless and it’s too cold to be wandering the streets—at least that’s what my husband tells me.”
“Where is Beckett?” Sierra asked, shooing Kaitlin out of the way so she could at least serve breakfast even if she hadn’t made it.
“Went in to the shop early. He’s got the next few days off for the impending arrival.” Kaitlin patted her large, rounded belly. “So today he’s trying to finish up a few projects.” She awkwardly lowered herself to a chair.
Sierra got out two plates and tried to ignore the panic at the thought of Beckett being on vacation from work and Kaitlin having her baby and the fact the only place Sierra had to go was her parents’ house.
Because she had no job and no skills and hadn’t even tried to do anything except survive the crushing weight of failure and pain of losing Carter.
“I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here so long,” Sierra managed to croak. Because what would she have done if Kaitlin hadn’t offered her this little respite? If Kaitlin hadn’t offered some semblance of friendship, which was something they hadn’t had since probably elementary school if even then.
“It’s been nice. I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but it’s been nice to…be friends. And really you’ve been indispensable around here. Helping me with baby stuff, and the whole getting up out of chairs things. If you hadn’t been here I would have been stuck on the couch day in and day out waiting for Beckett to come home.”
It wasn’t true, but it was sweet of Kaitlin to say so. They’d never been particularly close, but if Sierra had gotten anything out of this shitty few weeks it was a new camaraderie with her sister. Kaitlin wasn’t as hard as she used to be, happily married and about to pop, and Sierra knew she’d changed herself too. Matured in some ways. Or at least was in the process of maturing.
“Still no word from Carter?” Kaitlin asked carefully.
“No. He’s waiting me out.” He probably knew. That she didn’t want to lose him. That she was a coward. Probably thought he could ignore the papers and live in this horrible space of nothingness forever. Well, she wouldn’t let that happen. No. She needed to find her courage. She needed to find her spark again. “He probably doesn’t think I’ll fight dirty.” But maybe it was time.
“Surely he knows you better than that.” Kaitlin smiled, though it was immediately interrupted by a wince.
“You okay?” Sierra asked, not envious of anything her sister was going through physically, even if she’d been pestering Carter about starting a family before the whole…implosion had happened. The reality of pregnancy in front of her made the prospect of a chubby baby to cuddle a little less appealing.
Besides, that wish had been mostly wanting something to bind them together, and wasn’t that warped? Sure, she wanted to be a mother, and so much of that had come from wanting to see Carter as a father because she thought he’d be such a good one.
Apparently she’d been wrong. About everything.
“Just starting to get a contraction here or there. The doctor said not to get excited until they’re more regular, but God I hope this is the beginning. I want to walk normally again.”
Sierra turned to face the stove where Kaitlin had placed a pan of perfectly baked cinnamon rolls. Sierra should be happy and excited for her sister. Eager to meet her niece. But all she could think about was the fact she was about to be evicted.
Sierra shook her head and plated two rolls for each of them. She turned to put them on the table, but something in the smell hit her all wrong. She wrinkled her nose as a wave of nausea hit her. She wished this damn flu thing would just go away already.
She put Kaitlin’s plate in front of her, and sat down with her own, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of eating it.
“I know you like cinnamon rolls. What’s with the pained face?”
Sierra shook her head. “Oh just this same thing. Some weird bug I guess. Maybe I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.”
Kaitlin nodded, but she kept staring at Sierra with a speculative look on her face. “I have a weird question to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s just, maybe because I’ve got pregnancy on the brain but light-headedness, nausea, exhaustion…everything you’ve been having the past few weeks. I know it could be the stress and emotional upheaval of everything with Carter, but those can all be signs of pregnancy too.”
Sierra laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“Are you sure you couldn’t be pregnant?”
Sierra started to laugh again, because you had to have sex to get pregnant, but then her laugh died. There had been that night. No protection and she’d stopped renewing the prescription for her birth control pills in the five months of hell because it had felt like a cruel joke to bother.
Pregnant.
“So, it’s possible?”
Those words hung in the air and Sierra couldn’t truly wrap her brain around the actual reality of it. Possible seemed to echo in her head, over and over again.
“Shit,” Kaitlin said on a gasp, pressing her hand to the side of her rounded stomach.
“What? Another contraction?”
“No.” Kaitlin blew out a breath, and then sucked one in. “Well, yes, but I think… I think my water just broke.”
*
Carter had taken a few days off from the hospital. He’d ignored his mother’s phone calls. He’d holed himself up in his house to finalize his plans. He was good with plans, with schedules, with figuring out all the steps to get what he wanted.
However, the goal of staying married, wasn’t so easy as passing the MCAT or getting the right residency match. Those had steps to follow, books to read on the subject. It wasn’t foolproof science, but it was close.
There was nothing about Sierra or relationships that was foolproof science. Or had any steps to follow that made any sense to him.
Occasionally over the course of trying to figure out how to fix this mess, he’d wondered if it was worth it. If divorce was the answer. It was what Sierra wanted, and didn’t he want her to be happy most of all?
But he thought of his life without Sierra in it, and even though it didn’t make any sense, even though he was stable and methodical and laser focused and she was mercurial and spontaneous and pure fun, he loved her. With everything he had. He’d married her—this whirlwind of vivacious life—even knowing his parents disapproved, even knowing just about everyone thought it was a joke. He’d done this one rebellious, spontaneous thing in his whole life because he’d had to. There had been no other way, no other choice. She was a magnet and every particle of his being was drawn to her.
He just didn’t know what to do with it all, how to show love or care. He’d never seen it in action, not really. He knew bedside manner, though it wasn’t his best quality. He knew how to pick the right words when it came to tell someone they needed to see a specialist, or be admitted, or even that the future looked stark.
He didn’t know how to explain love, to put into words this big, horrible thing inside him. It was too messy. Too unpredictable.
He looked down at his desk. It was a mess of papers—mostly computer printouts of his calendar, though there were a few lists. Apology gifts. Second honeymoon ideas. A grand anniversary gesture.
He hated grand gestures and attention, but Sierra didn’t.
And this was where he came to at the end of every thought. Gestures and gifts didn’t solve the problem. He couldn’t think of anything that would because he didn’t know why the problem had happened. He was trying to fix symptoms of something bigger, but he didn’t know what that something bigger was.
He crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it across the room, which only frustrated him more because paper was hardly a satisfying thing to throw. So, he went about reorganizing his stacks of papers for the who-knew-what-th time.
If he kept looking, he’d find the answers there, in neatly piled stacks and organized thoughts. Lists and calendars held the answer, somewhere, because they were the things he understood.
Except once he’d finished making everything look neat and organized, and he stared down at his desk that had all the right electronics and pens and things, he didn’t feel any of the ordered relief.
Because Sierra still wasn’t here.
He frowned, broken from that horrible train of thought by the creak of a door, and the soft sound of what had to be footsteps.
When Sierra appeared in the doorway to his office, he briefly considered the possibility he’d had a break with reality. Except she looked a little too pale for a fantasy, and her expression was grim rather than happy. Surely if he was losing his mind, it’d at least be with a happy Sierra.
“Hey,” she said, and her voice sounded raw. In fact, everything about her looked a little raw. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, which was rare for her—she didn’t like to leave the house without it. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants and her golden hair was pulled back into a haphazard ponytail. But the most disorienting thing was the utter flatness in her brown eyes. A complete lack of spark, which had always been that thing that had drawn him to her.
“You’re back.”
“No.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I’m not back, Carter. You haven’t filed your answer, and I have a life to move on with.”
Carter ignored that and gestured to the armchair in the corner. “Sit. We should talk.” He settled himself at the seat behind his desk. This was perfect, really. A calm, rational sit-down to work this all out.
She stared at his desk, his perfectly arranged papers, but she didn’t sit. She just stood there and stared at his desk as if it was some horrifying foreign object.
“Sit,” he repeated, because maybe she hadn’t heard him. Maybe she needed to be encouraged. “Please.”
“No.” She shook her head, that bitter laugh escaping her mouth again, making him frown. “No, I won’t be doing that.”
“We need to talk,” he emphasized, changing the should to need, because it was a need, not a request.
Her eyes flicked to his, still so flat and blank, and no matter that her laugh was bitter and her frown harsh, her eyes were just…empty. “No, we don’t need to talk. Not anymore. You had months to talk and you didn’t and I’m not going to sit here and having a meeting with you, Dr. McArthur. I won’t be lectured or talked at.”
“Sierra—”
“No.” She hugged her arms around herself and shook her head vigorously. “I won’t do this. Not when you use your father’s exasperated, condescending voice on me. That heavy sigh as you say my name.” Her gaze held his, and there was a tiny spark. Something he didn’t recognize though. Not her usual light. “That isn’t love.”
“I’m not talking about love,” he replied, very calmly and reasonably if he did say so himself.
“Yes, I’m very well aware.”
He closed his eyes in pain for a moment. “That isn’t what I—”
“I’m pregnant,” she said, not giving him a chance to explain anything. She cut off all rational thought with that…bomb.
Pregnant.
He opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t have words. Throughout his residency and his, albeit still rather short, career as a doctor, he’d had to break all manner of horrible news, and he knew the right words for that.
What words were there for this?
“That night…” She swallowed and it was the first sign of something like nerves. Sierra. Nervous. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her that way. “Well, I hadn’t been taking my pills for a while. There wasn’t much point, was there?”
“That night was a mistake,” he said reflexively. She looked stricken, and he realized she didn’t understand that either. If she’d only give him more time, he wouldn’t be ruining all this. “I didn’t—”
“Well, regardless, I still want the divorce. You’re the baby’s father, so you’ll be involved once he or she is born, but there’s no point in being married while we do it.”
“No…point.” Anger sparked, cautious at first but growing rapidly as if every second that ticked by was a steady dose of oxygen for the blaze. For once, the numbness didn’t win. “Of course there’s a point, damn it. We’re going to have a baby, a child.” A child. His child. He was going to be a father. A father. “Marriage is the point.”
“I’m not your mother, Carter. I have no interest in being miserable for the sake of the children, or whatever her whole life has been about. I didn’t marry you to be a McArthur or to be ignored or silenced or… No. So, I’m going to build a life I love.” She met his gaze, chin tilted, determination in her shoulders-back stance. “Which means not being a McArthur.”
I’m not a McArthur, he wanted to say, but none of this made sense. A child. Divorce. A future. An ending.
“I’m not signing those papers.” It was the one piece of truth in all this chaos. The one stark, black fact in all this gray area. “Filing. Whatever. I’m not divorcing you.”
“I didn’t want to make this ugly, Carter. But I will.”
“We are not getting divorced,” he said, standing so he could have those inches above her. So he could look down at her and make certain she understood. This was his proclamation. They would not do this awful thing she was suggesting.
But she laughed in his face. “Watch us,” she said, and then turned on a heel and walked out of his office.