25. Ellie
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ellie
“ELLIE?”
The voice was distant, like it was calling to me from outside a dream.
Or a nightmare.
A door closed firmly, shaking the foundation of the house. Of the floor I was lying on, rousing me. Jolting me further into awareness.
But not enough to move. I was too exhausted, too confused, too shattered.
“Ellie?” the voice called again, and it was so close. So close to the one that would make everything better.
Heavy footfalls echoed in the empty house.
Empty.
Empty.
Empty.
I was so empty now.
They stopped—the footsteps.
Not the feeling, nor the pain.
The door creaked, opening wider, and then there was a rough exhale.
A curse beneath quickening breath. A rustle of fabric as a large body crouched over me.
I could hear the silent, rapid calculations being made as I lay in the fetal position, surrounded by illogical pregnancy tests.
They were positive, but I knew that didn’t mean anything.
Still, I’d taken them because I’d wanted to cling to some twisted form of hope.
“Ellie Bellie,” came the voice, tender and low. “Oh, fuck, Ellie.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, too afraid to look at him. To see the bits of Sully that were in all the Londons.
All I could do was shake my head, denying…I don’t know, this. All of this. And then I curled deeper into myself. My hands were tucked between my legs, and my chin pressed against my chest. A shiver racked my body, but I didn’t feel cold. More pain sliced through me.
“Come on,” Theo breathed, and I felt his strong arms jostle beneath my body, wrapping around me. “Come on, Ellie Bellie. Let’s get you off this floor.”
And then I was. I was off the floor, in the air, pressed to Theo’s broad chest.
“Do we need to get you to a doctor?” he asked, his voice level, calm. Always calm.
“No,” I croaked, hoarse from crying.
Theo hesitated. We were in the hall now, and I could read his indecision—about whether to bring me elsewhere in the house or to the car.
“I called the nurse line,” I added—to help him. “She said if anything gets worse…”
I trailed off, not having the energy to detail exactly what that might look like.
I didn’t want to go in, didn’t want to admit that this wasn’t all in my head, didn’t want a confirmation.
I’d rather live in denial a little while longer, rather not think about it.
I didn’t really want to think about anything.
Theo remained in a buffering state.
Seconds passed, maybe minutes.
Eventually, he turned and walked me up the stairs. The creak of the steps and the cadence of his footfalls gave it away. He hesitated again at the top, and I peeked around enough to see the direction he eventually decided to take me—to Natalie’s room.
But that felt wrong.
“No, I want—”
Theo immediately turned on his heel, kicking open a different door, and before I knew it, I was sinking beneath a plaid red comforter that was pulled up to my shoulder as I buried my head in a soft, recognizable pillow. Lumpy, just the way I remembered.
“What time is it?” I asked, unaware of how much of the world had moved on while I’d been on that bathroom floor.
“Eight o’clock.”
“At night?”
“Yes, Ellie. It’s Saturday night.”
I nodded, feeling pressure build behind my eyelids. I wished it were Saturday morning again. I wished I were on the couch with Sully, thinking about baby names.
I longed for a reason to still think about baby names.
“What can I get you?” he asked, but I just shook my head. Nothing. There was nothing. So he murmured, “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
His heavy footsteps retreated, and I closed my eyes.
It was hard to say for sure how much time had passed before Theo returned, but I jolted a little when the mattress dipped with his weight.
“Ellie Bellie.” His voice was barely audible, like he was afraid he might spook me. Theo brushed my hair back, trying to beckon me to look at him. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. “Can you tell me about the pregnancy tests on the bathroom floor?”
“They’re…nothing.” My voice sounded wooden to my own ears. “They’re wrong. I know they’re wrong.”
There was a long pause. Silence rang, loud. Buzzing. Painful.
“Did they used to be right?” he finally asked.
I couldn’t move for a long moment.
They used to be right. They used to feel right. As early as this morning, they used to be the only thing right in my world, the only thing I knew for certain I wanted.
Finally, I forced a nod.
Theo’s deep, sad sigh felt like a weighted blanket as it fell over me. “I’m so sorry, Ellie.” He was petting my back now, touching me like I was fragile. Like I was broken, which was exactly what I felt like. “Is that why you came back?”
I nodded again, and through my tears, I saw that Theo was nodding, too. Like everything made sense now, all the dots connecting. Why I was here. Why Sully had been ignoring his calls. Why Sully was okay with me living here. Because I was pregnant with his child.
But I didn’t think I was anymore.
And what happened—what happened to us, to this, to everything…when I wasn’t?
“Does he know?”
“He knows that I was, but not…”
“Okay,” Theo reassured softly, letting me know I didn’t have to verbalize it. It killed me—the way I could hear his heart break for his brother and what he didn’t know yet. “Boston?”
“Yeah.” I wiped at my face, and Theo presented me with a tissue. I hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding a box. “Boston.”
He nodded again, connecting more dots. Then quietly, “He’ll be here soon.”
I sucked in, turning over on my back so I could see him better, and plucked the tissue from his hand. Theo’s distraught, brown eyes studied me for a long moment before he began looking around the room, cataloging the changes, likely. Sully had emptied out so much the other day.
At the moment, the thought didn’t help.
Everything was so empty.
But Sully was coming.
And Sully had always known how to fill spaces that felt empty.
“What did you tell him?”
Theo looked back to me. “I told him I stopped by to get more of my things, and you weren’t feeling well. I told him he should come.”
Taking a deep breath, I pulled the covers up to my chin, debating pulling them over my entire face.
“I’m sorry if you weren’t ready, if you didn’t want me to call him…” He shook his head, expression tortured. “But fuck, finding you on the floor like that, Ellie. It scared me.”
“It’s okay, Theo.”
It wasn’t okay, but that had nothing to do with him.
I should have called Sully as soon as I’d begun cramping earlier. I’d promised to call him, but every time I picked up my phone, I’d thought about what it would be like to tell him, and I couldn’t get myself to do it.
“I’m never going to be ready to talk to him,” I whispered, and then felt myself crumbling again as I continued to think about it—about crushing Sully in this way.
I hated that I’d dangled this future in front of him, and now I had to take it away.
I hated that I felt helpless, like I didn’t have control over my own body, like it had betrayed me, and now, I was betraying him. “He’s going to be so—”
I covered my face with my hands, overcome by this new, sudden reality.
This morning, the future had carried so many possibilities, and now…
“Hey.” Theo’s face was beside mine now as he kneeled on the floor. “Hey. I don’t know what you were going to end that sentence with, but I can promise you he will not be mad. Not at you, Ellie.”
“But this was—he’s always wanted—I—”
I couldn’t finish any of my sentences, devolving into sobs. I wasn’t even sure what was terrorizing my mind more at this point: the thought of losing a child that I’d come to want so, so badly or the thought of losing Sully for a second time.
“No.” Theo was shaking his head, and I had no idea how, in his quietness, he sounded so certain. “There’s only one thing in this world that my brother has always wanted.”
“But—”
“Eleanor.”
A flicker of hope, of calm, lit my insides at the sound of that rough, familiar voice. It filled the hollow bits, the parts of me that felt so suddenly void of life, even when that wasn’t fully logical.
He was here, but I didn’t know how to look at him. How to face him.
“El,” he breathed, and he was close now, prying my cold hands off my face. His touch was the warmest it had ever been. “Baby.”
It was so tender, the way he spoke. But still, I sank further into the bed—his bed—squeezing my eyes shut. I shook my head, rejecting…this. Not him, never him. But this reality, what I had to tell him.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Sully’s hands were on my face, feeling my cheeks, my forehead, searching for clues, his tone increasingly frantic. “What’s going on?” When I didn’t immediately answer, he beckoned his brother. “Theo?”
I opened my eyes enough to see that Theo had backed away and was standing near the door.
His empathetic expression looked torn, like he was desperate to put his brother out of his spiraling misery, but he knew he couldn’t be the one to say it.
And it was that look that made me realize there was no hiding from this.
“Sawyer.” I put my hand on his arm, and he whipped back around, all his fierce attention on me again. A breath hiccuped out of me, and I’d never wanted to crumple into a ball more. “I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
His hands moved to cup my face, like he could hold me and protect me and keep away all the bad things. God, how I wished.
“Why are you apologizing, El?” Desperation dripped from his lips, and the pads of his fingertips pressed into my skin with equal amounts of it. When my tears fell, he brushed them away. “Tell me so I can fix it.”
I shook my head. He couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t fix it. No one could fix it, and I—I just didn’t know what to do about it.
Between gasps of breath, I whispered, “You can’t.”
“Try me.” He’d moved to rearranging my bangs, brushing them from my face. “Try me, baby.”
“I—” My voice caught as I stared up into Sully’s bright blue gaze—as I stared at my home. He was home, and this was home, and I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay, I wanted to stay, stay, stay. But I— “I think I’m miscarrying, Sawyer.”
I wanted to close my eyes again, but I forced them to stay open. To stay in this moment with him, even though it meant watching the blood drain from his face.
“What?”
Swallowing, I braced myself.
“This afternoon, I started cramping and spotting, and I—” I breathed, my voice breaking. “Something’s wrong. And I know…” He was shaking his head now, not wanting to believe it, so I nodded, trying to convince him. My words scraped my throat as they came out. “I know, Sawyer.”
Expression fractured with lines of grief, Sully dropped his head to mine, even while it shook.
And all I could do was whisper, “I know.”