Chapter 19
Alow moan roused me, followed by a familiar voice saying my name with a hint of hope. Someone moaned again, and I realized it was me. I forced my lids open, squinting against the soft light that seared my eyes.
“Ian?” I had to be dreaming. Why would he be here? I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where here was.
“Hey.” His gentle voice came from my left.
I swerved my head and blinked the room into focus.
A small and windowless area, partitioned by curtains, enclosed us.
Ian sat at my bedside, and I noticed a monitor behind him.
“Why…” God, why did talking grate my throat like sandpaper?
And why was I in the hospital? At least, I assumed it was a hospital. Sure smelled like one. “Why am I here?”
“How much do you remember?”
“Um…” Driving. Crying. Pain. “I was driving. We were stopped in traffic…” I drew a blank after that, though the feeling I should recall something—a voice assuring me everything would be okay—remained.
And crying. I remembered Eve crying.
“You were on the 405 when you passed out,” he said, fingers folding around mine. “Another motorist called 9-1-1.”
I squeezed his hand, mainly because I needed to hold onto something, and he just happened to be there. “What happened? Where’s Eve?”
His gaze fell. “Did you know you were pregnant?”
Were.
I sucked in a quick breath. “The baby?”
“I’m sorry. Your pregnancy was ectopic.” He pulled his hand from mine and wiped both palms down his face, and I realized how exhausted he seemed. “Your tube ruptured. I was the attending when they brought you in. I’ve never been so scared in my life. They had to rush you into surgery.”
I comprehended his words, but mostly I felt numb. “Am I gonna be okay?”
He slumped into the chair. “The internal bleeding wasn’t as bad as they feared. You lost some blood, and they couldn’t save the tube, but you should recover fine.”
“Where’s Eve?”
He clenched his jaw. “She’s in the waiting room with Gage.”
He came.
A nurse appeared from behind the curtain. “Good, you’re awake,” she said. “They’re about to move you to a more comfortable room. Are you in any pain?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I said, though I hadn’t tried to move yet either.
She fastened a blood pressure cuff around my arm, and a machine buzzed. “You’ll probably feel woozy from the pain meds.” She took more vitals and then made notes in a chart. “I’ll leave you in Dr. Kaplan’s hands.” With a smile, she disappeared through the gap in the curtains.
Ian fell eerily silent, and I was too drowsy to ask what was on his mind. I must have dozed off, because they startled me awake when they moved me into a private room. Ian never left my side.
“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” I mumbled, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
“My shift was almost over when the ambulance brought you in. You’re stuck with me.” He settled into a chair and leaned forward. “Kayla,” he began hesitantly, resting both elbows on his knees, “we need to talk about the bruises.”
“What?”
“On your backside. You’re black and”—he cut off and swallowed—“You’re black and blue, and I’m pretty sure I know why.”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not the only one concerned. The staff here mentioned abuse.”
“And you helped them with their assumptions, didn’t you?”
“I can’t keep quiet about this anymore. He’s hurting you. What are you gonna do when he starts in on Eve?”
I jerked into a sitting position, grimacing as pain seared my abdomen. “Gage would never hurt her.”
“He’s got you brainwashed—”
“You need to stop right now.” The warning in my voice must have registered because he gaped at me. “I’m not blind to his ways, and I’m not a pushover either. What’s important is how he’s treated my daughter, and he’s been nothing but good to her.”
“And what about you? How does he treat you?”
The echo of Gage’s mistrust pained my heart, and I pushed the memory into a hidden compartment of my mind. “What we do in the privacy of our bedroom is none of your business.”
“You’re in denial.”
“No,” I choked. “I just lost my baby and the last thing I need is another lecture from you.”
“I know you’re hurting, but I can’t ignore this. Seeing you hurt like that…” He shook his head. “A social worker is waiting to speak with you. You need to talk to her.”
“What good is talking to some stranger about my sex life going to do?” I didn’t care if my words got under his skin; his burrowed into mine like a chigger.
He winced. “Talk to her. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I can’t believe you got a social worker involved.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t leave those bruises on your body.”
Regardless of how much Gage had hurt me, he’d stopped when I said the safe word. That had to mean something, right? Or was I so far gone from logic and reason that I didn’t recognize good from bad anymore? “I told you I was wrong for you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I did listen!” He sprang to his feet. “I’ve done my best to move on,” he continued, lowering his voice, “but when you’re brought into my ER, nearly dead and covered in bruises…
I can’t handle that. I’m not sorry for loving you, and I won’t apologize for saying what you don’t want to hear. You need help.”
“You need to stay out of this.”
His body tensed. “You’re a smart, courageous woman, and you’ve always put Eve first. If I know nothing else about the person you’ve become, I know that’s still true. You can’t go back to him. If not for yourself, do it for her.”
The sting of fresh tears threatened, but I refused to let them spill. “He doesn’t want me anymore.”
“What?” He sounded incredulous.
I let out a bitter laugh. “He thinks the baby is…was…yours. He says he can’t have kids.” I glanced up at him. “Did you know Liz was pregnant?”
The question hit him like a punch to the gut. He stumbled back. “No, she wasn’t.”
“Gage says she was. He also says the baby was yours.”
“That’s…nuts. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“I don’t know.” I absently played with the edge of the blanket wrapped around my body. “Did he ask to see me?”
“I suspect you know as well as I do that Gage doesn’t ask—he demands.”
“I want to see him.”
“I can’t change your mind, can I?”
“We already went over this in Texas. I made my choice.” Well, it’d been made for me, but I wouldn’t tell him that. “I care about you, but you need to let me go.” I narrowed my eyes. “And you never should have gotten a social worker involved.”
“I didn’t. Gage’s abuse did.”
I gritted my teeth. “It’s unnecessary. If anyone asks, tell them the truth. I like kinky sex.”
“Jesus, Kayla…”
“Can you please send him in? I need to see Eve.”
“Fine,” he said in a clipped tone. “I’ll send the bastard in.” He stormed from the room, and not two minutes later, Gage stood in the doorway.
I looked behind him, hoping to spot my daughter’s short auburn curls, but she was nowhere in sight. “Where’s Eve?”
“Ian took her to the cafeteria,” he said as he closed the door. He stepped to my bedside and sank into a chair. “She’ll be back in a while. I wanted to speak with you alone first.”
“Why? You hate me, remember?”
I jumped when his hand settled over mine. “You need me.”
“I needed you yesterday.”
He dropped his head onto the thin mattress, next to my hip, and kissed the palm he held. “I don’t hate you.”
“But you don’t trust me.”
“We’re not doing this now. You just got out of surgery.”
“Why not? Ian didn’t hold back.”
“What are you talking about?”
I snorted. “Apparently, the hospital staff thinks you’re abusing me. He wants me to talk to a social worker.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe you should tell them everything. You could easily send me back to jail.”
“I was willing, Gage.”
“That’s not entirely true. I kidnapped you, and last night…”
My breath hitched, then shuddered out. “What you did and said hurt, but I knew what I was getting into when I stayed. You gave me the option of leaving, but I stayed.” I caught his gaze. “I was willing. You made me admit it, remember?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “I remember. I molded you into what I wanted, and then I threw you out at the first sign of trouble.”
“Why’d you do it?”
He fell quiet for a few long moments. “It was deja vu, Kayla. I should have punished you for lying to me, but demanding marriage and then making you leave was wrong.” He held his mother’s ring between two fingers.
“This belongs on your finger. No matter what, you are and always will be mine.” My mouth gaped as he slid the diamond onto my finger—as if he’d never demanded it back to begin with.
“I was scared of hurting you,” he said. “Really hurting you.” He paused, avoiding my eyes.
“Did I cause your miscarriage? I don’t care that it was his, if I made you lose your baby—”
“The baby wasn’t his!” I yanked my hand from his grasp.
“You refuse to believe me, but it’s the truth.
” Sorrow welled in my throat. “The baby was ours.” Turning away, I buried my face in the pillow and muffled my sobs.
I formed a ball, bringing about pain from the incision but instead of recoiling from it, I held on to it, breathed through it until I could think of nothing else.
His voice called to me through my despair, and I tensed when his arms came around me. Gage wasn’t the comforting kind.
“I didn’t mean to do this…” he cut off, strangled.
“You didn’t. It was a tubal pregnancy. A miscarriage was inevitable.
” His embrace comforted me more than I wanted to admit, especially after what he’d said and done, but I needed his arms to live through the next second, the next minute, the next hour.
“Why can’t you trust me? You swore nothing happened with Katherine, and I took your word for it. Why can’t you do the same?”
“It’s not that simple.” He withdrew his arms, sat up, and scooted to the edge of the bed, as if he needed distance.
“Then make it simple. God, you made me love you!”
“What else do you want me to say, Kayla?”
“Everything! I want answers. I want to understand why you’re so adamant the baby wasn’t yours.”
He hung his head. “They told me back in high school I can’t have kids. I sustained a lot of damage from…it doesn’t matter.”
“Damage from what?”
“A nasty brawl with the bastard my mother married.”
A beat of heavy silence weighed on us, and I hurt for him as much as I did for myself in that moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because telling you would have led to this! You and your questions. I try not to think about the past, and I sure as hell don’t talk about it.”
“But you put me on birth control…” I shook my head as nothing about this made sense. “Why would you do that if you thought you couldn’t father children?”
“I gave you a placebo, Kayla. I can’t father children.”
“Obviously, you can,” I snapped. “Whoever diagnosed you made a mistake, or something changed—”
“I’m not discussing this with you,” he interrupted. “You need to focus on recovering.”
“I didn’t sleep with him! It’s only been you—in four fucking years, Gage, it’s been you!”
The door opened, and Ian appeared in the entrance with Eve.
Gage stood, his gaze dark and dangerous.
He was still full of rage—toward me, toward his brother.
“They tell me you’re being released tomorrow,” he said.
“Call me. I’ll come get you.” He stepped around Ian, glaring at him the whole time, and closed the door upon his exit.
“You okay?” Ian asked.
“Yeah,” I lied. I held my breath as Eve dawdled to my bedside, her head down, and told myself to get a grip.
I wasn’t about to fall apart in front of my daughter.
“I’m sorry I scared you, baby.” I scooted over and patted the space next to me, and she hopped up.
“Mommy’s okay.” I tilted her chin up. “Okay?”
She nodded. “Are we going home with Gage?”
I blinked, my lids becoming heavy from the pain meds they’d given me. Instead of answering her, I glanced at Ian. “Thanks for watching her.”
“No problem.”
Eve cuddled into my side, and almost instantly, she fell asleep. “She must have been so scared,” I said.
“She’s a trooper like her mom.” He wandered around the small room, and silence fell on us for a while. “I don’t understand why you put yourself through this.”
“It’s…complicated.”
“Don’t give me that,” he said quietly, though the vehemence in his tone hinted at frustration.
“You won’t like the truth.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “I’m sure I won’t, but I think I deserve it.”
“I love him.”
“You loved Rick at one time too.”
“It’s different. Gage and I have our issues, but he’s not Rick.”
“No, he is exactly like Rick. Abuse is abuse. You’re smart enough to know this, but you’re letting sex get in the way of your thinking.”
“I’m not talking about this with you. It’s not fair to you, and I just don’t have the energy.” I brushed my hair from my eyes, and his gaze lingered on my hand.
Shit. I’d forgotten about the ring.
He strode to my side, snatched my hand between his, and glared at the diamond, as if he could make it disappear. “I should have been the one to put this on your finger. I can’t believe you’re actually going to marry him. Are you insane?”
“Please, don’t do this.”
“He has no remorse, Kayla, and he knows nothing about loving someone.”
I pulled my hand from his. “That’s not true. I’ve seen sides of him I would have sworn didn’t exist a year ago. I can’t help the way I feel, Ian.”
“Me neither, so where does that leave us?”
“Nowhere.”
He nodded, his mouth forming a tight line.
“Okay. I get it.” He opened the door, and his face and movements spoke of resignation as he exited the room.
I’d gotten my wish—he’d given up. I’d just destroyed my first love, a decade long friendship, and I couldn’t even muster a tear. I didn’t have any left.