Chapter 14 Forgetting How to Swim Emmett #2
“It’s harder than I thought.” I scrape a hand over the nape of my neck, the knotted muscles stiff and sore.
“We can’t hit pause just because I’m not in town.
We have to keep going, and I’m…” I hang my head, the admission quiet, rough.
“Tired. I’m tired, and I hate being tired when I’m not the one loading my body with hormones every day, dragging myself to appointment after appointment, getting bloodwork done a hundred times a month…
” I shake my head. “I don’t have a right to be tired. ”
Carter shakes his head. “I don’t know how to say this without it coming off shitty, but, buddy, we’re tired.” He gestures around the table, all the faces watching me. “We’re tired just watching you two. Watching everything you’re going through, everything you shouldn’t have to go through.”
Adam nods. “The way you’re chasing this with your whole hearts.”
“Getting your hopes up just to be knocked down again,” Garrett adds quietly.
“Wondering why,” Jaxon murmurs. “Why you two, when you deserve it so much? Wondering when it’ll be your turn.”
Lennon looks down at her phone, at a thread of messages between her and the girls—the group chat they’ve lovingly named Coochie Gang: The Chamber of Secrets. Named by my wife, I know, and yet the screen I can see shows that she barely gives more than a one-word answer nowadays.
When Lennon looks up at me, it’s with a worry etched so deep in those brown eyes.
“Watching our best friends go through something so impossible and just… not knowing how to help.” Her words catch in her throat, and she blinks away tears, looking away as Jaxon’s hand finds her back.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s not about us. We just want to help, and we don’t know how. ”
I squeeze her shoulder, swallowing against the emotion clogging my throat.
The same emotion I see reflected back at me in every set of eyes at this booth.
But the truth is… I don’t know how to help either.
I used to think just being there was enough.
Me, tall and steady at Cara’s side. It’s always been enough, because she’s never needed a knight in shining armor. She always saves herself.
But now… now I feel like I’m standing on the shoreline, watching her drown, and I don’t know how to swim. I don’t know how to save her.
I’ll try anyway. Throw myself headfirst into the water and figure it the fuck out. Because I’m not letting her go down.
“You do enough,” I tell everyone, the words quiet but certain.
“You’re here, day in and day out. We never doubt that.
” I shrug, standing and shuffling out of the booth, tossing my jacket over my arm.
“I don’t think there’s anything else you can do for us.
We just… we have to get through it.” I manage a smile.
“I know it might not seem like it right now, but… your presence means more than anything. Texts checking in, missed phone calls, her favorite snacks on the front porch when she’s not up for talking…
those are the things that make us feel loved.
That remind us we’re not alone. So just… don’t stop. Don’t stop showing up.”
IN MY ROOM FIVE MINUTES later, I hit the FaceTime button next to Cara’s name. It rings so long I’m afraid she’s not going to answer, but then the video connects as I’m turning on the bedside lamp.
“Firefly.” I grin as her face fills my screen, tired gray-blue eyes looking back at me as I peel back the covers and slip into bed. “Hi, baby.”
Fuck, she’s exhausted. I can see it in her droopy lids, the shadows beneath her red-rimmed eyes.
And still, the smile she gives me is pure magic.
Sometimes I think seeing me brings her back to life, the same way it does for me when I see her.
I can’t look at her without being reminded that my heart continues to pound in my chest for her and her alone.
It’s that steady ba-bum that races when she’s in my line of vision, the way I didn’t notice my heart at all before that, before her, and now it’s the only thing I can hear.
Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.
“Hi, baby,” she whispers into the darkness, and from over three thousand miles away, I feel the way her words kiss my lips, roll down my neck, slide across my collarbone, and press themselves right to my heart.
Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you so much,” she admits, fingers curling around the blankets she holds to her chest as her gaze slides to her right, where I’m normally wrapped around her. “More than I think I ever have.”
My eyes rake over her, dark blonde hair wet and combed, straight all the way down to the ends where they wind themselves into a single ringlet, soaking her blue shirt. Unless we’ve finished our night together in the shower, Cara never goes to bed with wet hair.
I cock my head, smiling at the Vipers Hockey logo across her chest, the 88 on the cuff of her too-big sleeve. “You’re wearing my hoodie.”
Burrowing deeper into my sweater, she dips her nose to the neck of it. “It smells like you.”
Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.
“Makes me feel like you’re here with me, instead of… not.” Her eyes drop. “I don’t want to be alone anymore, Emmett.”
My heart skids to a stop. “What?”
She shakes her head, eyes squeezed closed like she regrets the words.
“Sorry. Never mind. That was… I don’t know why I said that.
I know you have to… that you have to go.
I’m just…” She shakes her head again, and I don’t know what kills me more: the fact that she won’t look at me or that she won’t talk to me. “Never mind.”
“No, not never mind. Talk to me, Care. What’s going on in your head right now?”
She laughs, the exhaustion in it so palpable it scrapes down my chest. “What’s not going on in my head right now?
It never stops anymore, just one string of thoughts after another, falling down a hole of worst-case scenarios, until I’m stuck down a fucking well without a ladder, drowning.
” She swallows, fiddling with the strings of my hoodie. “Sorry. That was… a lot.”
“Don’t ever apologize for telling me how you’re feeling. It’s what we’re supposed to do, confide in each other. You’re safe to do that here.”
Sitting up straight, I take a breath, her words rolling around in my head. The embryo transfer is first thing tomorrow morning. It’s our first, and I’m not there with her. She’s nervous, and she’s all alone. Or she feels like it, at least.
I watch her pick at the blanket, avoiding my gaze.
“Care. Look at me, baby. Talk to me. I’m here.”
Eventually, her eyes rise, slow as molasses, and the unshed tears shining in them have me halfway out of bed, heart pounding ferociously in my chest, ready to hurt whoever put those goddamn tears there.
“The clinic called today.”
I blink. “The clinic?”
She nods. “After lunch.”
“But… I thought they only call with updates on day three. Today’s day four, because yesterday was three, and tomorrow is five.”
The tears in her eyes drown out the blue, until they overflow. She looks to the ceiling, a desperate attempt to stop them, but they spill down her cheeks like rain anyway.
“Baby,” I whisper, my heart cracking in two. “What’s wrong?”
“Another embryo arrested. We only have… we only have…” Her chest heaves, up and down, as she struggles to breathe. “Two,” she chokes out. “We only have two viable embryos left, and they were calling because… because…”
Ba-bum.
Ba-bum.
Ba-bum.
“Why, baby?”
She drags the sleeve of my sweater across her eyes, but it’s no use. The tears aren’t even slowing; they’re sure as fuck not stopping.
“They suggested we freeze the embryos and try another egg retrieval at a later date. They told me I should cancel the transfer tomorrow, and fought with me when I told them no. And I… I just really need you, and you’re not here, and I feel so alone, and it’s not your fault, and I… I…”
“Cara—”
The last thing I see as the phone falls from her hand is the way she buries her face in her hands while she sobs.
The last thing I hear before my screen goes blank is the fractured truth she doesn’t want to give voice to.
“I don’t know how to do this without you.”