Chapter 30 #2
Her body fits against mine exactly the way I remember, and the relief of it nearly breaks me.
But she's trembling. The tremors that travel through her and into me are violent and uncontrollable, like everything is crashing down in this moment.
The weight of the secret, the week we spent apart, the news of our baby.
All of it is colliding into these seconds, and she's not strong enough to hold it anymore.
I feel her heartbeat against my chest, too hard as her sobs come in gasps she can't contain. My hand finds the back of her head, and my fingers tangle in her wet hair before I press my lips to her temple and breathe her in, holding her through it, because there’s no other way.
I pull back just enough to shrug off the lightweight coat I'd grabbed on my way out the door. My hands are shaking as I drape it over her shoulders. She's soaked through and freezing.
And that's when my eyes drift past her. That's when I see it, and my blood runs cold.
Fresh dirt. Dark and wet and piled beside a headstone I can't quite read from this angle. The earth looks freshly turned, as if someone had been digging…like she'd been digging.
Fear claws its way up my throat, sharp and choking.
"I'm so sorry," she mumbles against my chest, the words vibrating through my ribs.
My blood turns to ice. "Asha." I pull back, gripping her shoulders, needing to see her face. "What did you do?"
Her eyes, the same ones that have haunted me for a week, are red-rimmed and lost.
"Why are you here? Why are we standing beside a grave? Asha, tell me." My voice comes out harder than I mean it to. "Tell me why I'm standing beside a grave. And not just any grave, one with freshly dug dirt."
It's been one week. Seven days she's been gone.
I never found the truck when I drove through town.
She didn't stay with friends. She could have easily driven to Illinois in that time.
Could have walked into some clinic where nobody knew her name.
Where they wouldn't ask questions. Where she could make it all go away and come back here to bury the truth beside her mother.
The thought finishes itself in my mind, and I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything but feel the ground dropping out from under me.
She shakes her head, and the tears come faster and harder.
"No." The word rips out of me, raw and broken, as I drop to my knees beside the grave. My vision blurs as I look at the ground and shove my hands into the dirt. "Tell me this isn't our baby." My voice shatters into pieces.
"Tell me you didn't—" I can't even say it, can't force the words through my lips because they hurt too fucking much. "Tell me you didn't get rid of our baby."
"What?" The word falls from her mouth like she's been struck. She drops beside me, her knees hitting the wet earth, and her hands circle my arm.
She trembles as rain mists between us, her eyes wide with the same fear that grips me. But she doesn't retreat. "Why would you think that?"
"You disappeared," I choke out, the words jagged. "You were gone. And now you're here, standing beside a grave with fresh dirt, and you're saying you're sorry..." I can't finish. Can't say it out loud again. My hand gestures helplessly at the fresh dirt. "I thought I’d lost everything."
She makes a sound that’s a half sob, half gasp, and then her hands are moving. She takes my hand in both of hers and presses my palm flat against her stomach.
"Our baby is still right here."
Her voice cracks on the words, but they land like a lifeline. I freeze as my hand rests against the cold, wet fabric of her dress. But beneath the rain-soaked material and the chill, there's warmth. Life. Still growing. Still real. Still ours.
The relief doesn't just wash over me; it devastates me.
My hand spreads wider across her stomach, fingers splaying as if I can cover more of her, I can protect more of them.
Like I can hold this moment and never let it slip away again.
The warmth beneath my palm feels like the only real thing in the world.
Like everything else, the rain, the grave, the week of hell, is just noise, and this is the truth. This steady, impossible warmth.
"Right here," she says again, and she's crying harder now, her hands pressing mine tighter against her. "I would never... I could never."
I love her. God, I love her so much it's breaking me apart and putting me back together all at once.
Every piece of me that shattered this past week is reforming around this single point of warmth beneath my hand.
The relief crashes over me so hard it steals what's left of my breath, and I pull her against me.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry I ever made you doubt…that you thought for one second I could ever do that to you—to us."
It’s not her fault. It’s fear. That's what fear does: it doesn't ask questions, doesn't wait for answers. It just takes your worst nightmare and convinces you it's already true.
I put a small amount of space between us, just enough so I can see her face.
My hand trembles as I push the wet hair back from her eyes.
"Don't be sorry. We've been through hell this past week.
Unimaginable hell. But Asha, I need to know…
" I pause, needing a second to breathe before continuing.
"I need to know what else you could possibly bury beside your mother's grave. "
"I should probably start at the beginning, but first I need you to hear something." Her bottom lip quivers before she bites it to find her strength. "I know there’s no way you could have known what I accused you of that day in my father’s office, but in the moment, I couldn’t see past getting out of that room.
I just needed to be alone." She exhales, like she’s releasing the weight of her choice.
"I didn’t run this time—or at least, I didn’t try to.
" My eyes search hers curiously. "I never left Bardstown.
I stayed at the B&B in town and parked the truck around back, under the carport, where no one would see it.
The owners know me. They floated my stay until I could pay, and I told them I would pay double for their discretion. "
Her voice draws off, and she pulls in a shaking breath, her fingers still circled around my arm like if she lets go, I'll disappear too.
"I'll admit..." She swallows hard, and I see the truth in her eyes before she says it. "I thought about what you're suggesting. The idea crossed my mind, but I wouldn't make that decision without you. I couldn't."
Relief and agony hit me at the same time, and I don't know if I want to pull her closer or fall apart completely.
Her hand releases my arm and finds the side of my face, cold and trembling against my cheek. She gently pulls my face toward hers until we're eye to eye, close enough that I can count the flecks of gold in her irises, see my own broken reflection there.
"I was utterly broken," she whispers. "The past few days, I wasn't me.
It felt like an out-of-body experience, like I was watching myself from somewhere else, somewhere far away.
I was overtaken with shock at first. Then denial.
And when those finally ebbed, fear and anger.
.." Her hand slides up my arm and rests on my cheek.
"They crippled me. I couldn't move. Couldn't think.
" Fresh tears well in her eyes, and I see every ounce of pain she's been carrying.
I recognize it, because I've been carrying it too.
"But it wasn't fair to let you worry like that.
I thought I'd be gone for one night. Just one, and I would come home, but then I couldn't leave the room.
I didn't plan to stay gone so long. I was so selfish—"
"Don't." I catch her wrist, holding her hand against my face.
"Don't apologize." I hear the strain in my voice as I try to hold myself together.
"You're right. I was angry—furious, even—but my hurt and pain are nothing compared to what you’ve had to endure.
You're the one who got the diagnosis. All I got was the grief.
" I force myself to hold her gaze, to let her see every raw edge of what I'm feeling.
"You're the one who might be dying. I'm just the one who has to learn how to love someone I can't save. "
The rain still mists around us, turning the world into a gray blur, but all I can see is her. All I can feel is her hand against my face and the way we're both kneeling in the mud beside this grave, holding onto each other like we're drowning. And maybe we are.
She shakes her head slowly, and water forms streams down her face.
"Aren't we all dying?" My eyes narrow on hers.
"Every day, we all grow older. We all grow one day closer to our end.
" Her eyes slide over to the freshly dug dirt.
"My days are no more numbered than yours—or at least that's how I've decided it will be. "
"What's beneath that dirt?"
"A letter." She's quiet for long moments, her eyes fixed on that patch of earth like she's saying goodbye to something I can't see.
"My father was right not to trust that my mother would keep up her end of the deal.
" Her voice is barely above a whisper. "The last letter she left me contained the results of testing she ran behind my father's back.
She admitted she hated doing it, but she hated even more that she wouldn't live to know if I would have the same fate. "
My chest tightens. The answers are right there, beneath the dirt. The answers I'm not sure I want anymore.