Chapter Four
Sierra woke up in the bed of her youth. The dogged flu feeling, which was apparently pregnancy, seemed ever present and if not growing worse with every day, certainly not dissipating any.
And every day she was faced with the knowledge she was living at home, working on getting divorced, growing a baby and being utterly unemployable. Her work experience was a series of failed retail and waitress endeavors that had ended in her getting fired because she never could quite control her mouth.
She’d had an Etsy store for a while, of paintings and drawings and little things she’d made, but the anxiety of figuring out what to sell and how to price it hadn’t been worth it. Especially once she’d married Carter and hadn’t needed to make any money. She’d been able to volunteer here and there whenever she’d felt like it, and she had planned on that and motherhood being her life.
She’d been an idiot.
She had no doubt Carter would do whatever it took to take care of their child. She would never have to fear her child wasn’t taken care of or fed, but there was the tricky thing of having to provide for herself. Having to figure out what she could possibly do that would make her child proud of her, and support herself as best she could.
Sierra groaned and rolled over in bed. One thing was for sure—she couldn’t keep torturing herself like this. She had something like eight months before the baby was actually here, and she had to take the steps to build a life.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay here. Mom could help with the baby, and Sierra would find a way to be helpful in a way she hadn’t been as a rebellious teen. It’d give her the time and space to find some kind of job that would work around having a baby.
Determined, she flung the blankets off of her and went to the closet where she’d thrown her bag. At some point she’d have to go get the rest of her things from her home with Carter, but she wasn’t ready yet. Maybe once she could go a whole day without having her rings on.
She looked down at the glittery bands on her finger and told herself to take them off. To start now. Be strong.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Once she was feeling steadier physically it’d be easier to do. Once Carter filed the divorce papers. Once things felt more…permanent. She was sure it’d get easier and pushing herself to do it wasn’t necessary at all.
One day at a time. Self-care. Being kind to herself.
She pushed the closet door open, then simply stood there. On the top shelf, was a pile of her old sketch pads. Next to it, old canvases and paints. Once upon a time she’d fancied herself an artist.
Dad had been less than thrilled, always telling her to find a more productive hobby. Something that might land her a job. Something stable.
She’d balked at that, but now she understood, sort of. Supporting herself was far more important than she’d ever realized. Dad might have been harsh and a little closed-minded, but he’d been looking out for her welfare.
Art would never really support her, but maybe if she got back into this hobby she loved she’d find some piece of herself. She needed to find some source of strength, some source of…wanting to move forward instead of giving in to this horrible gray world that lay before her.
She pulled down a sketch pad and a pencil. She’d just sketch something. See if it all came back to her. Free her mind and let some emotion pour out. It’d be a good outlet. Cathartic even.
She settled herself cross-legged on her bed, took a deep breath in and out, and then just…let herself sketch. Just like she used to do when she was an angry teenager. She didn’t think about what she was drawing or why, she only did.
Until it started to take shape. She scowled down at the square jaw and half-smiling lips.
Why was she drawing the bastard’s face?
A knock sounded on the door and Mom popped her head in, looking fretful. “Sweetheart, Carter’s here. I thought I should let you know before your father chases him off with a hunting rifle.”
“That hunting rifle hasn’t been loaded in twenty years.”
“No, but he’s banking on Carter not knowing that.”
Sierra looked down at the sketch pad, then up at her mother. Determined, she set aside the pad. “I’ll handle Carter,” she said, getting to her feet.
“Are you sure?”
“If I’m going to…divorce him, I have to have the wherewithal to face him.” It was still hard to get that word out, divorce, but she’d made her decision. She would not let her parents fight her battles for her.
“Erm, you’re still in your pajamas.”
Sierra looked down at the baggy flannel sweatpants—his—and the shapeless sweatshirt, which she realized with a wince was also his. “All right. Have him sit down in the kitchen and I’ll be down in a few. And please keep Dad and his fake rifle away.”
Mom smiled, though it was a little sad around the edges, before she left the room.
Sierra immediately moved into action. She didn’t want Carter to think she was lying around in her—his—pajamas all day. She got dressed, put on a light coat of makeup, and fashioned her hair into a messy bun that hopefully fooled him into thinking she’d spent time on it. She even slipped her feet into her cute ankle boots and headed downstairs, chin held high.
She’d pretend she was on her way out. So busy. If her heart beat too hard and too fast, and her eyes felt a little teary, well, she’d never let him see it. She sailed into the kitchen trying to find her center of righteous fury.
Carter sat at her parents’ kitchen table. They hadn’t spent much time with her family. She hadn’t wanted to. Her parents’ house was so small compared to the McArthurs’. Shabby. She hadn’t thought much of it, but she’d been embarrassed.
Which was gross. They might not have as much money as the McArthurs, but her parents were good, kind people. They would have treated Carter far better than his parents had ever treated her.
“Sierra,” Carter offered, his tone giving no hint as to why he was here. He was dressed casually, though crisply, and he’d clearly shaved this morning as no golden whiskers glinted in the morning light streaming through the window above the sink. His hair was a little long, but he’d brushed it.
He looked very polished and together. The perfect Dr. McArthur. She wanted to put her head into his lap and ask him to forget about everything. She’d go home with him and they’d pretend the past few months were a bad dream.
But that wouldn’t make her life better. It’d only make her miserable even if it gave her a few moments of relief.
“Have you filed your answer?” she asked by way of greeting.
“No,” he said, watching her with a gaze she didn’t quite recognize. There was something too…assessing. As though he’d woken up from his months-long fog. But even if that were possible, she couldn’t let it change her mind.
They were getting divorced. It was the best, happiest route for both of them, even if it hurt like hell.
The bottom line was her father had always been right. Love and dreams didn’t solve real-world problems.
“Then I don’t know what on earth you could be here for.”
“I’d like to talk,” he said, and luckily he kept that continually maddening calm because it made her angry.
“Yes, well, we’ve been over that.”
“Right. I suppose it’s your right to not want to talk.”
“You suppo—”
“But you have to understand, Sierra. I don’t get this.” There was enough bald emotion in his tone to make her freeze. “I don’t know why you left. Why you’re so angry. I’m lost. Maybe it makes me a fool, but I have to know. What went wrong?”
Sierra sank into the seat across from him. Exhausted and nauseous and incapable of mustering any more righteous indignation. “If I have to tell you, does it even matter? If I have to spell it out then it wasn’t working, was it?”
His eyebrows furrowed and she had to link her fingers together on the table to keep from reaching out and smoothing the tips against the line that wedged there. She always called it his McArthur line and kissed it away.
She couldn’t do this. Not this. Not just sit here and talk. It hurt exponentially to sit across from him and feel that ache of how much she wanted to be with him.
It was a horrible feeling to want something you knew was toxic, something you knew hurt you, just because it felt good in the moment. There were good moments in her marriage with Carter, but in the end she’d emerged less than a year later a duller, quieter, less sure version of herself, knowing he saw through everything to the parts of her he’d never love.
“Please go. Please file the papers. You can’t stop the divorce, Carter, but it’d be so much easier if you just did this. Please. If you care about me at all. Please make this easy.”
He stared at her across the table. Not at her exactly, but at her hands. She curled her right hand over her left and looked away from him.
“Five minutes a day,” he said, his voice soft but certain.
“What?” she replied, wrinkling her nose at him.
But he had that McArthur look about him. Driven and sure, except… She couldn’t explain it, but it was different. Maybe it wasn’t sure so much as determined. She couldn’t work that out, and there was no point in working it out. She had to move on from figuring Carter out.
“Five minutes a day for a month. You give me five minutes a day for a month to win you back.”
She wanted to scream, or lean forward and bang her head against the table a few times. Instead she sighed heavily. “There’s no winning, Carter. It just didn’t work.”
But he kept on like she didn’t exist, just as he always did. “Five minutes a day for a month. If you’re still determined to end it—end this thing… You know, you know it’s right. I know you do.” He reached across the table and took her right hand away from her left, exposing her rings still there on her finger. He brushed his thumb across the bands.
She used every last ounce of energy to keep the tears from spilling over. “You don’t know everything, Carter.”
He met her gaze then, and it wasn’t anything she recognized. “No, I don’t,” he said gravely. “You’re saying if I care about you that I should make this easy, and I’m saying if you care about me, you’ll give me a month. Five minutes out of your day for a month. That’s it.”
“Why should we prolong the inevitable?”
“Are you so certain? There’s not an ounce of doubt that you might regret this at some point?”
She wanted to tell him she was that certain. Maybe he even loved her the way she loved him, but the love they had for each other wasn’t enough to make a life together work. Their lives didn’t work together, regardless of love.
“Shouldn’t we be sure?” he asked, his hand closing over hers and giving it a squeeze. “If for nothing else, for the sake of the baby,” he whispered, as if he knew her parents were probably eavesdropping but wouldn’t hear that.
She pulled her hand away, placing both of them in her lap. He was mixing it all up and she should be stronger than this, but part of her wanted… Well, she wanted him to find a way to convince her otherwise.
She couldn’t think it was going to happen, but maybe she could hope. “Fine. Your five minutes starts now.”
Oh, she was going to regret this.
*
He’d expected her to agree, but he hadn’t expected her to jump right into it. He wasn’t quite prepared, but he couldn’t let her see that. He had to seem certain and sure of everything so she believed him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, because she didn’t look 100 percent. She was more put together than she had been the other day, but she seemed…off.
“Gross,” she said emphatically. Because Sierra was brash and not backing off and not worried about what she was supposed to say.
Maybe that’s what drew him to her. That she had an independence to her that he’d never be able to emulate, but was attracted to nonetheless.
But the clock was ticking and he had to figure out the answer. The fix. Five minutes even for thirty days wasn’t much, but it gave him till their anniversary to find the answer to why she wanted to leave.
And then he could fix it. Maybe he’d fail a few days along the way. Maybe it’d be hard and more of a challenge than he was used to, but Cole had been right. It was either stumble a little but keep trying, or lose her.
He wasn’t ready to lose her. Even if she pulled her hand away from him like they were strangers or enemies instead of man and wife.
He cleared his throat, willing himself to focus. “Who’s your doctor?”
“No. I’m not having you McArthur your way into that.”
He wanted to argue, even opened his mouth to lecture her about privacy laws and this and that, but what was the point? Making her mad was not the point. “All right.” He thought about her hand under his and the glimmer of hope that he’d hold on to this entire thirty days…assuming it took that long. “Why are you still wearing your rings?”
She inhaled loudly, then looked down beneath the table, presumably at her hands in her lap. “I take them off sometimes, but I guess they start to feel like a limb. Something is missing when I take them off.” She looked back up, fixing him with a rebellious glare. “That doesn’t mean anything. I’ll get used to having them off eventually. It’s habit, not symbolic.”
“Okay,” he said carefully. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to her, but it meant something to him. He looked at his ring on his finger. A simple gold band. “I remember when you put this ring on my finger,” he said, more to himself than to her. It was visceral. The happiness he’d felt when they’d slid their rings onto each other’s fingers in front of their friends and family. He hadn’t cared at all that his parents didn’t approve or that hers questioned the timing. He hadn’t cared about anything except her being his. “I remember our vows.”
Sierra rolled her eyes. “Vows, like promises, are apparently meant to be broken.”
“I haven’t broken mine,” he replied, trying to keep his temper from lighting.
“Haven’t you?” she retorted.
“I loved you. I was there for you.”
“There for me? No, Carter. You were there for you, and you were there for your mother.” She stood, her chair scraping loudly at the jerking, violent movement. “You were always happy to be there for everyone, but you never once—”
It was his turn to stand violently. “I love you. I supported you. I gave you a very nice life and we were together. What more did you want?”
She shook her head, and it pained him that tears shimmered in her eyes, but he didn’t understand why all the blame was being heaped on his shoulders when he didn’t see things the way she did. At all apparently.
“I’m not going to have a screaming match with you. I’m not going down this pointless road of blame and memories. We don’t work, Carter. I had to accept that. Now you do.”
“You always do this,” he said, realizing it so much in the moment he couldn’t even make his tone sound less accusatory. “Any conflict and you say you’re not going to do it. You shut down and walk away.”
“I shut down? How can we even get to the conflict? You haven’t engaged with me in months. Months.” She fisted her hand on her heart and if he wasn’t so damn angry he might have kept his mouth shut. Instead, he did what he almost never did. Made a nasty, sarcastic remark.
“The baby you’re carrying seems to say otherwise.”
She paled, her hand going to her stomach. Some kind of hurt flashed in her eyes before she blinked it away and lifted her arm. “Get out,” she ordered, pointing to the door.
“Sierra.” He took a step toward her, but she turned her back to him.
“You had your five minutes. Now go.”
“This was different. We never fight. We never yell. Not at each other. Not like this.”
“Why would anyone want this?” she asked, and she didn’t even wait for his reply or anything else before she walked away, down a hallway.
Carter let out a slow breath. That was…something. Something new. No, it wasn’t any fun, and no it wasn’t the stuff good marriages were made from: blame and anger and nasty comments.
But it was different. Something like that trying hard Cole had been talking about. Which maybe meant it was the right step.
Someone cleared their throat and Carter looked up to see a furious-looking Mr. Shuller and a blank-expressioned Mrs. Shuller.
“Don’t come back here. You understand me?” Mr. Shuller said gruffly.
Carter managed his professionally blank doctor smile. “Yes, sir.” He walked through the small living room and to the front door, letting himself out as he stepped into the cold winter air.
He tugged his gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on just as the front door squeaked open. He looked back expecting to see Sierra, hoping to chase that strange feeling the fight had given him.
Instead, Mrs. Shuller stood there without a coat on, hugging herself against the cold. “Maybe I could have Sierra meet you somewhere for your five minutes tomorrow?”
Carter raised his eyebrows. Clearly Mrs. Shuller had been listening. “You listened?” Had she heard about the baby?
Mrs. Shuller looked a little abashed at that. “I happened to overhear a few things. Not everything.”
It didn’t answer his question, exactly, but it didn’t matter. Everyone would know eventually. “And…” He tried to wrap his head around what she was offering. “You’re going to help me?”
“No, I’m going to help my daughter,” Mrs. Shuller said firmly. “I don’t know about fixing your marriage, Carter. I’m not sure I ever had much belief in that. But I think you two should discuss why it’s ending.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He wanted her belief and her support, anyone’s really, but he’d settle for her help. “If you could have her meet me at Java at noon?”
Mrs. Shuller nodded. “She’ll be there.”