Chapter 29
Ryan
“Good news,” I call out as I enter my apartment laden with grocery bags. “The design team is mocking up a new cover, and they’re sending it over to us tomorrow morning to approve.”
After the cover debacle yesterday, I invited Scarlett over for dinner to make it up to her. Thinking it might be nice for her to get out of her apartment for a little while, I had told her where I leave my spare key, and she had texted me a few hours ago telling me she was headed to my place for a change of scenery.
I dump the bags onto the kitchen counter before I realize that the whole place is kind of dark. The shades are drawn, there aren’t any lights on, and it’s silent. I don’t even hear her telltale keyboard tapping from the bedroom.
That’s strange. Her car is parked outside, so I know she’s here.
“Hello?” I call, coming around the counter to peek in the bedroom to see if maybe she fell asleep or something. The bed is empty, but she’s sitting cross-legged on the chair, her hands in her lap, and her eyes fixed on a black computer screen.
My heart thuds in my chest. She’s so still. The rhythmic rising and falling of her chest is the only reason I know she’s not a statue. Casey’s warning rings through my consciousness, but I shake my head to dispel it. She seemed fine on the phone. There’s nothing that could have put her over the edge, as far as I know. The cover issue was inconvenient but not insurmountable, and she told me she didn’t have any difficult scenes coming up.
“Scarlett?” I ask cautiously from the doorway. “Is everything okay?”
She takes in a shaky breath, then lets it out through pursed lips. “No.”
In an instant, I’m on my knees in front of her, my hands resting comfortingly on her thighs just under the hem of her shorts. Now that I’m close to her, I can see her cheeks are shining with tears. “Beautiful, what’s wrong?”
Scarlett presses her eyes closed, her face still turned to the screen. Why won’t she look at me? What the hell is going on?
“There was a baby,” she says finally, not opening her eyes. “Not a baby. An embryo, probably. They’re called embryos for the first eight weeks. I looked that up because I was trying to feel better about it. I thought that if I didn’t call it a baby, it wouldn’t be as confusing for me, I guess. I don’t know. It felt like something one of my characters would have done, but it didn’t really work. How could I be upset about a cluster of cells? But I was, even though I didn’t want to be.”
She’s rambling, her eyes still pressed closed. Is she trying to work out a scene? Is she so lost in her words that she doesn’t know I’m here? That wouldn’t be unlike her. Maybe I misunderstood what this new book is about.
I rub her thighs with a little more pressure, trying to draw her out of whatever trance she’s in. “Scarlett, look at me.”
She furrows her brows and squeezes her eyes shut further. “I can’t.”
Okay, so she does know I’m here. I can work with that. “Why not, beautiful? Is this about your story?”
“No. It’s about me. Us? I’ve been alone with it for so long, I don’t even know anymore.”
My hands go still on her legs. I blink a few times, trying to get my brain to catch up to her words.
Alone with it for so long…
Baby… Embryo…
“You were pregnant?” I whisper, afraid that speaking it aloud will make it more true than it already is. My stomach drops as a pit of anger forms like dead weight in my belly. Is that what kept her away for all those years? “Whose?”
She finally looks at me, her blue eyes flying open, her frown intensifying in her own offense. “Yours.”
I jump to my feet and move away from her. Right away, I know it’s a mistake, but I can’t think. I can’t breathe. Space. I need space.
Running a hand through my hair, I pace a few steps, then stop. “When?” I manage to choke out.
“I miscarried in New York.” Unlike her earlier ramblings, she says those words plainly. They’re flat. Factual. As if she is familiar with these. She must be, if she’s lived with it for five years.
Realizing my hand is lodged painfully in my hair, I drop it to my side with an angry slap. “You went to New York pregnant, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know. I found out in New York when I realized my period was late, and then I wanted to tell you in person.”
There was a phone call. It comes rushing back to me, the memory of it weakening my knees enough that I sink to the edge of the bed.
I was barely able to contain my excitement. The ink wasn’t even dry on the draft of the contract yet. But the desire to see the look on her face when she saw it was stronger than my need to tell her. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day. I have some amazing news.
“Oh yeah? Well…I have news, too.” She sounded more nervous than excited, but that was okay. I was nervous, too.
“I want to wait to tell you in person, though.”
A pause. Was she disappointed? But then she said, “Same.”
I try to fill my lungs with oxygen, to no avail. “You had news.”
She twists around in the chair so she can face me, and she presses her chest into the back of it as she nods. The position is so similar to the one she took the first time she told me she loved me that my heart aches at that memory, too.
So many memories between us. They’re almost unbearable.
“I didn’t know how you’d feel about it,” she says. “It was an accident, obviously. So I wanted to tell you in person. I was so tired. I couldn’t think.”
She had been exhausted. Every time I saw her, the purple under her eyes was more prominent. Just before she left, we had gone through her closet to donate some clothes that had gotten too big. We joked about it then, both of us too uncomfortable with the fact that she was wasting away to talk about it. I had tried to cook for her when she was home, but there was only so much I could do when she was on the road. And she always seemed to be on the road. But a few weeks before she left for New York, we had spent almost every minute together. Then one more set of interviews, and she was supposed to have months off. Trina and I protected that time off for her, even as the book club and appearance requests kept rolling in.
I was so fucking stupid. Why the hell did I think more money would have made any of that better? Of course it wouldn’t have. The love of my life was drowning in the middle of an ocean, and I sent her what I thought was a lifeboat but was actually a measly piece of wood.
And she was pregnant on top of it all.
Rubbing my aching eyes under my glasses, I huff incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“When, Ryan?” She sounds irritated. When I look at her again, her expression confirms it. “I sat in that room, actively bleeding while people talked over me. No one asked me what I wanted. No one bothered to check in with me. I had gone from a flight to a conference room with no time in between. I was still bleeding . How long was I supposed to be paraded around like a commodity? In perpetuity? Until my books stopped selling? No one was worried about anything but dollar signs.” Her eyes fill with tears again, glittering in the fading light filtering in through a crack in the curtains. “Not even you.” She whispers that last part, like it hurts her too much to say.
“I didn’t tell you to leave me.” I fight to keep my own irritation out of my voice. It seems like we’re going to have it all out right now, so I might as well say it. “You didn’t have to be alone with this. I tried calling, messaging, stopping by.”
She makes a pained noise, and her nostrils flare. “In retrospect, I know I made a huge mistake. I was young and stupid and confused as fuck. But in my defense, why the hell would you want me anymore?” Almost shouting now, she stands and leans forward, almost on her toes. “I couldn’t hack it. I blew up your deal. I got myself blacklisted from JMP. And I couldn’t even have your baby.” Her voice cracks on the last sentence, as if it can’t hold the pain anymore.
Involuntarily, I reel backward. “Is that how you think of it? That you did something wrong? That you caused it?”
Her shoulders curl into herself, and she drops her gaze to the ground. “I didn’t want it. Not at first. I didn’t see how it would fit into my life. And as soon as I started to warm up to the idea, it was over.”
I sit on the edge of the bed again with my head in my hands. She can’t think this way. I won’t allow it. “That’s not how it works,” I tell her. “You don’t cause a miscarriage by not wanting a baby.”
She gives me a half shrug, her gaze still trained on the ground. “The rest of it is still true.”
“I never cared about any of that. I only ever cared about you. Why didn’t you let me help you?”
The anguish is apparent in her eyes as they slide to meet mine. “There wasn’t anything you could do. You can’t fix everything for me, Ryan.”
Her words echo Casey’s, but somehow it hurts more coming from her. I might not be able to fix everything, but I can help. I wish she’d just let me help. Standing again, I walk to the window and throw it open. If only I could get some air, maybe I could think.
But gulping in the fresh, spring air does nothing to clear my mind. And when I turn around to face Scarlett again, hoping that seeing her face will help me find the right words to say to her, the space she had been occupying is empty.
She’s gone.