Air, even when stagnant and still, changed whenever Asher Coleson was near. His mere presence, powerful and commanding, relayed electromagnetic waves. It sent a charged buzz of excitement into the room, sparking attention from those nearby. Nobody was immune.
But not today.
Today, the air didn’t change. It hung heavy, clogged by windows and doors closed to fresh air too long, and the overpowering stench of grief seeping from Olivia’s pores.
She’d been waiting five days for him. One hundred and twenty excruciating hours. Walked through the bowels of hell while doing so. Nearly died while doing so. Wishing, in fact, that she had.
Body broken and mind beaten black and blue by cruel fate, she couldn’t look at him, standing in the doorway of their bedroom. She’d never withstand the pity, the accusation in his eyes. The mirror’s reflection was bad enough.
“What’d you do, take a slow boat from China?” Voice raw and flat, she stared unseeingly out the window, the busy marina below a watery blur in her periphery.
“A Blackhawk to Bagram, a C-130 to Germany, and three different commercial flights home.”
The sound of that rough, cherished voice, missing from her life for long periods of time, could wrap her in warmth and send her launching into his arms on most days. But not this day. Not now. Maybe not ever again.
“I hope The Unit sprang for first-class.” Where she found the energy for monotone sarcasm was beyond her. Breathing was a chore. “Did they tell you? She’s dead. The doctors don’t know why.”
“Yeah. I—” He tripped over the word, clearing his throat. “I know.”
“She was kicking. I went to bed, and she was kicking. I counted them. The nurses said to keep track, so I always counted, every day. The next morning, no kicking.” Her leaden chest heaved, the racking sob dry and painful. “Why did this happen to me?”
“My God, Livvy. I don’t know.”
He took a step into the room, and she threw up her arm, stopping him in his tracks. “No. Stay there.”
If he touched her, she’d break into a million pieces. When he left, there’d be no putting her back together again.
“How long?” she finally asked, measuring his silence in the harsh sound of her broken breath.
When she couldn’t stand hearing the proof of her life any longer, she pushed lank strands of hair away from her face, angling her head toward the door where her husband stood.
She hadn’t seen him, hadn’t breathed the same air as him, in seven months.
Not meeting his gaze, she stared at the carpet near his booted feet. “Ash. How long?” As always, the clock was ticking.
“Six.”
“Days?”
The heavy silence was telling. She didn’t need his words to get her answer.
“Hours?” The needy, high-pitched whine in her voice made her cringe.
When she looked him in the eye, the guilt in his blue gaze made the only thing yet unbroken in her—her mind—snap.
Moving before she could think better, the sharp pain radiating out from her center had her clutching her abdomen with a groan. He reached for her, but froze when she held up her hand again, stopping him once more. Arms wrapped around her middle, she bit her lip against the pain coming at her from all directions.
The grief was overwhelming.
The reality was unimaginable.
The anger was easy.
“Six fucking hours? Are you kidding me right now? Good thing Rosa’s not roasting a turkey for dinner or you’d go hungry. Six hours,” she repeated, shaking her head. “I was in labor for twice that.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to get more time.” He propped one hand on his hip, palming the top of his head with the other, a long, exhausted sigh leaving his big body. “I was lucky to get away this long. It took me thirty-six hours just to get here, and that’s as fast as I could make it.”
“Oh. That sounds like a travel nightmare. Too bad you had to endure that.” Her knees wobbled, close to giving out. “I’m sorry I interrupted your fun day playing war games with my medical emergency. Be glad you weren’t here to see me push a dead fetus out of my body.”
He winced, looking away.
“But there is good news,” she added, a small sob escaping her. Grabbing his forearm, she tapped his black Rolex. “You don’t have to set a reminder to head back to The Unit in six goddamn hours,” she emphasized, yanking his arm with each word. “You can just go back right now. Maybe a slutty flight attendant will give you a hot towel, mix you a stiff drink, and ask you to join the mile-high club. You can put all this behind you. The bad news is—” Another sob escaped, not stemming the flow of words or the involuntary blows of her fists against his hard torso. “—no tax deduction for Asher and Olivia Coleson. We gotta pay them full price now.”
“Christ, Liv. Stop.” He wrangled her arms and pulled her in tight, securing her against his body with little effort. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“I’m already hurt!” Her hoarse cry was tortured, and she buried her wet face in his shirt, sluggishly punching and clawing at his back. Unable to stop the keening, desperate wails as they erupted from her vacant body.
“I’m already hurt, already hurt, already hurt,” she chanted, despite her raw and aching throat. Despite the weakness in her recrimination. Despite it only making her hurt more.
Because goddamn him, he needed to know.
Rational thought left her, along with her steadfast composure. The weight of enormous loss and blatant despair was compounded the second she laid eyes on her husband. Her dead baby’s father.
And when he cradled her and slid to the floor, she wrapped herself around him, holding on tight to the only anchor she had left in this world.
Fast and furious, the sobs racked her body and stole her dignity, an indeterminate amount of time passing during the grueling, uncontrollable tide, her biological grief refusing to be denied. Fiercely raw and deeply cellular, much like a wounded wild animal roaming the forest, her cries were the harrowing, heartbroken sounds of a mother with no baby.
Not recognizing herself in the tormented purge, she grasped onto Ash with what little energy she had left, nails digging in before she fell off the cliff and lost her mind entirely.
Once the sobs began to subside, she inhaled him into her lungs, breathing in the familiar scent of industrial laundry detergent, days of nonstop travel, and the masculine, inherent strength he wore like a second skin.
His arms tightened to the point of pain. “I don’t know what to say. I—” His voice broke, a single shudder running through him. “I would move heaven and earth to make this better for you. To take away your pain. You’re breaking my heart.”
“I don’t understand,” she croaked. “What happened to her? I-I have to understand.”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. It’s just fucking unfair, that’s all. But we’re in this together, Liv. We’re gonna get through this. I know it hurts. It hurts me, too. But we’ll figure it out. We’ll—” Easing his grip, he cleared his throat, unable to speak.
“You promised.” Her voice was weak, but the accusation was strong. “You promised me you’d be here. That you’d hold her.”
“I know.” Stroking her unwashed hair, he wiped tears from her cheeks with callused thumbs. “I know.”
“You lied. You didn’t see her.” Hiccupping, she bunched his shirt in her fists and tugged. “You didn’t see how perfect she was.”
“I know. I’ll never forgive myself. You’re right to be mad. You should be furious at me.” He laid his cheek against hers, his strong arms enveloping her. “I am.”
If he cried, she saw no sign of it.
“I’m here now, though. We’re in this together,” he repeated, his breath warm, smelling faintly of peppermint.
And that pissed her off. Where the hell had he found the presence of mind to pop a mint into his mouth? Rosa had been force-feeding her applesauce for the last week, lucky to get a spoonful down.
They stayed that way, huddled on the floor of their bedroom, with bags of brand new baby clothes and a pink bassinet at the foot of the bed. Ash whispered incoherent words of comfort in a voice that often cracked while Olivia pondered his ability to pop Tic Tacs in the aftermath of his full-term child’s sudden death. The room grew dark as the hours dwindled.
Like a ticking time bomb, the clock was her enemy. Anger, her friend.
“I’m so sorry, Liv.” He lifted her chin with a finger, breaking the oppressive silence. “I should’ve been here for you. I should’ve done something. Tell me what I can do now. Help me make this better.”
“Don’t go. Don’t leave.”
He hesitated, her request an impossible one. “They need me.”
“I need you.” She gripped him tighter, as if she possessed the physical strength to hold him hostage.
“I have to get back to my team. You know that.”
“Why? Why can’t they handle things without you?” Voice just shy of a shriek, the cringe-worthy whine was back.
“It doesn’t work that way. I’m obligated.”
Struggling to stand up, she batted his arms away, leaving him no choice but to release her. Distancing herself, she dug for any vestige of strength. There was precious little.
“You need to be with your wife, not your team. That’s the duty you should put first. I should be first.”
He looked away, rubbing his temples before standing. “I have to go. Things are happening. Things I can’t tell you about. Events are escalating rapidly, and I’m needed—”
“No! You’re needed here,” she yelled, not caring that Rosa was hovering in the living room, playing self-appointed nursemaid. “Good Lord, who are these heartless people you take orders from? Don’t they know what happened to me? What happened to us?”
“I wouldn’t be here right now if they didn’t. I got the call, and I had to tell them. I can’t just walk away and hop on the next flight. It’s not that easy.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You had to tell them? Did they even know I was pregnant to begin with?” She choked out a laugh before he could answer. “Oh, my God. Well, this worked out well for you then, didn’t it? No more wife and kid cramping your lifestyle. No pesky, snot-nosed brat asking some strange guy who shows up every few months and goes by the name Daddy why his job always comes first.”
His jaw locked, and he took a step toward her, voice razor sharp. “I’m gonna forget you ever said that. I’m gonna tell myself that’s the pain talking and not my beloved wife. And I’m gonna trust she knows how much I wanted our little girl.”
“Not enough for you to stick around though, right?” Olivia would hate herself in about ten seconds, but right now, the anger felt too good to let go of. “Not enough for you to choose us over them. Maybe if you’d been here…”
The accusation hung in the thick air. Maybe she wouldn’t have died.
“Jesus Christ, you don’t think I’ve been asking myself that same question since the call came through? That I haven’t berated myself for not being here for you? For her? It’s my fucking job to save people”—he thumped his chest with a hard fist—“to protect them, keep them safe, and I can’t even do that for my own goddamn family. That’s a helluva kick to the balls.”
“Then stay. If that’s how you truly feel, then stay.”
“You don’t understand. The missions we run are highly dangerous. Every op is a life-or-death situation, including the one in progress. I could never live with myself if another operator went down while I was away. If one of them shed blood because I sent them into a volatile situation short a man. You don’t understand,” he repeated. “Somebody could die.”
She searched his tired blue eyes, as turbulent as a tropical sea during a hurricane, and saw the many noble men residing within him. A son. A soldier. A husband. And almost, a father. She saw the heavy family burden, the massive patriotic responsibility, the torn desire to be all to too many.
And she saw the instant he connected the dots, hearing the brutal truth in his own words.
“No, you don’t understand, Ash. Somebody already died.”
Her gut-wrenching whisper was louder than anything she’d shouted earlier, and once said, she turned away, unable to look at the man with peppermint breath and one foot out the door. The man she loved with every fiber of her being and now hated with every painful beat radiating from her empty womb.
“If you leave again, then…” Voice trembling, mind overcome with grief and unraveling, Olivia came completely undone. “Then I’ll leave, too. And I won’t come back.”
“You’re gonna leave me?” he asked, incredulous. “You’re gonna walk away from our marriage because of my job? Because I’m doing what I’ve always done? I’m contractually obligated, Liv.”
Dropping her chin, she caught a glimpse of the empty bassinet, sitting at the foot of their empty marriage bed. Then looked deep within herself, to the hollowness inside. No baby. No husband. Just a dark, unfulfilled void.
And Olivia did something she never thought she could do. She let go of Asher Coleson.
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he fired back, the admonishment reverberating against the walls. “The government doesn’t take kindly to desertion.”
“Neither does your wife.”
“You’ve been through a lot. You’re not thinking straight. Hormones and pain pills and—” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “—every fucking thing else. I spoke to your doctor. He said you need time to heal. To recover. But eventually, you’ll be back to yourself. We can try again.”
“Yeah, Ash. That’s my problem. My hormones are outta whack. Go shoot some guns and blow some shit up for a few more months and once you decide to meander on home, I’ll be back to myself again. I’ll be Olivia, pre-dead-baby days.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean. And I won’t try again. I’ll never get pregnant again.”
“The doctor said you could. He said—”
“I don’t give a shit what a doctor said!” She pointed to her stomach, one week postpartum. “This was the baby I wanted. I don’t want a replacement.”
“For fuck’s sake, I’m not talking about a replacement. Give me a little credit, will you? And stop saying things you’ll regret. A few months down the road, you’ll be ready.”
“Try me,” she dared, turning her back to him. “Never again.”
He heaved a sigh, his frustration evident, but when she peeked at him, he was looking at his watch.
“I have to go. I’ll call you from the plane, okay? We’ll work this out. I’ll put in for some leave. Take a few weeks to—” His gaze snagged on the bassinet, guilt crossing his face. He swallowed before looking back at her. “—to regroup. We’ll lie on a beach in Mexico and drown ourselves in tequila. I’ll fix you. I’ll make you better. We’ll be us again, okay?”
Hands wrapped around her middle, she stood ramrod straight and stared out the window, waiting.
Waiting for her husband to stay or go.
Waiting for the razor-sharp pain to kill her.
Waiting for someone to remove the bassinet before she hurled it six stories to the marina below, undecided whether she’d let go of the precious item or plummet to a concrete death along with it.
But the only sound that followed Ash’s master plan to fix her was the click of the front door closing behind him.
It could have been minutes or hours before she moved a muscle, the sky darkening and the water turning inky black as she stared out the window, the ocean view slowly changing, morphing into the haunted reflection of a broken woman Olivia had never met before.
The twinkling of bells sounded endlessly from the nightstand, cheerful and condescending, the cell phone ringing over and over until the battery gave out. Until her knees gave out and she collapsed, Rosa ushering in and using superhuman strength to get her into bed.
“Breathe, mija. In and out. Do it again. Good girl.” A cold compress was laid against her forehead, then a mother’s kiss to her sunken cheek. “He’ll be back. He loves you greatly, but he grieves, too, and he cannot do that while in witness of others. His pride won’t allow him.”
Refusing the sedative Rosa held to her mouth, she curled into a ball, enjoying the painful tug in her lower body. A cool sheet settled over her, tucked tight to her chin, and the lamp clicked off. Rubbing her back in small circles, Rosa recited a litany of prayers in soft, rapid Spanish, repeating several before humming a song meant to put her to sleep.
A sweet lullaby her child would never hear.
Caring, arthritic hands turned the compress over. “A woman becomes a mother the moment she learns she is pregnant. A man does not become a father until the moment he sees his baby. My mijo must mourn the loss of his child, but also the loss of his wife as he knew her. This is a difficult task. He is not a man used to losing.”
Adding a blanket over the sheet, Rosa sighed wearily, the religious woman’s faith tested beyond measure. “Breathe, Olivia, in and out. Now rest. Sleep is the best medicine.”
Olivia laid alone in the quiet hush of darkness, tears leaking down to soak the sheet as she clutched her vacant stomach, dawn breaking before merciful sleep could come.
In the stuttered wake of her shallow sobs, she heard the echoes of his absence. It was a harsh reminder that she’d married a ghost, a man who disappeared into the night without a trace, leaving behind the scrape of razor burn on her skin and the lash of abandonment on her heart.