Chapter 4 #2
"What if we push the wedding?" he said. "Wait until after the baby comes. One less thing to juggle."
"But all the planning—"
"Can wait." He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles. "You and the baby are more important than a party."
I leaned into him across the center console. "If we delay it until after I give birth... that means I can wear the dress I actually want."
He laughed softly. "You'd look beautiful in anything."
"Sweet talker."
"Truth teller."
I believed him.
I was sixteen weeks when I felt the first cramp.
Garrett was on shift.
I told myself it was nothing. Braxton Hicks, maybe. Normal pregnancy discomfort.
I made tea. Sat on the couch. Tried to focus on the article I was editing.
The cramp became a wave. The wave became a flood.
I made it to the bathroom before the blood started.
I called him. Barely got the words out.
"Something's wrong. There's blood. There's so much—"
He broke every speed limit to get to me.
He found me on the bathroom floor. Phone still clutched in my hand. Shaking so hard I couldn't stand.
He didn't hesitate. Didn't panic. Just pulled me into his arms, called 911, and held me while we waited.
"Stay with me." His voice in my ear—steady, calm. The voice he used on calls when people were dying. "Stay with me. I've got you. I've got you."
The ambulance came. The hospital. The cold gel on my stomach. The ultrasound wand pressing down. The technician's face going carefully blank.
The doctor's voice was gentle in that horrible way that meant nothing good was coming.
"I'm so sorry. There's no heartbeat."
The sound I made wasn't human.
I don't remember making it, but I remember the way Garrett's arms tightened around me. The way he held me while I fell apart.
He stayed through the procedure. Through the discharge paperwork. Through the silent drive home to an apartment that was supposed to hold three.
And now held only two.
"We'll get through this," he said, helping me into bed. His voice cracked on the words, but he kept going. "Together. We'll get through this together."
I tried so hard to believe him.
But something broke that I couldn't name.
The days blurred together.
Garrett went back to work—he had to, he'd already taken a week off, and the bills didn't stop just because our world had ended. He moved through life like nothing had changed. Made me coffee in the morning. Came home with flowers. Looked at me like I was still his whole world.
And every bit of his love felt like a weight I couldn't carry.
Why aren't you grieving? I wanted to scream. Why are you okay while I'm dying inside?
I didn't say it. I couldn't explain what I didn't understand myself.
The depression crept in like fog.
I stopped writing because I couldn't find the words. Couldn't find the point. Stopped eating regular meals. Stopped sleeping through the night. Moved through my days like a ghost in my own life, going through motions without feeling any of them.
Garrett noticed. Of course, he noticed.
He started coming home earlier, checking on me, suggesting walks, movies, and dinner with friends. Everything he did was kind. Patient. Loving.
Everything he did made me feel worse.
I'm broken, I thought. And he doesn't see it. He's trying to love someone who doesn't exist anymore.
Two months after. Sunday morning.
Garrett wrapped his hands around his coffee cup—careful, hopeful—and said:
"I was thinking... maybe we could start talking about the wedding again? Not right away, but just—starting to think about it. When you're ready."
Something in me snapped.
"How can you think about that?" My voice came out raw. "How can you just... move on? Like nothing happened?"
"I'm not moving on." His face was confused, hurt. "I'm trying to move forward. With you."
"While I'm—" I couldn't finish. Couldn't say while I'm still mourning our baby. Couldn't admit that his normalcy felt like betrayal, that his love felt like pressure, that being around him reminded me of everything we'd lost.
He reached for me. I flinched away.
The hurt in his eyes almost broke me.
"I need space." The words scraped out of my throat like broken glass.
"Sloane—"
"I'm not well, Garrett." I was crying now. Ugly crying, the kind I'd been holding back for months. "I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't—I can't keep dragging you down with me. You deserve better than this. Than me."
"You're not dragging me anywhere." He moved toward me again, slowly, like I was something fragile that might shatter. "I want to be here. Let me be here."
"I know you do." The words were barely a whisper. "That's why I have to go."
He held me while I cried. Even then. Even when I was pushing him away, even when I was breaking both our hearts.
He held me like I was precious. Like I was worth holding onto.
"Okay," he said finally. His voice was steady, but I could hear it cracking underneath. "If you need time, I'll give you time. But I'll be here. Waiting. However long it takes."
I left for Washington DC the next week.
Therapy three times a week. Medication that took months to calibrate. The slow, brutal work of learning that what I'd experienced had a name—postpartum depression, the doctor said.
Even though I'd never gotten to hold my baby.
Even though the term felt like it belonged to someone else.
By the time I was whole again, three years had passed.
My letters to Garrett had thinned to nothing during the worst of it. I'd meant to write. Meant to call. But the depression had swallowed me so completely that reaching out felt impossible—like screaming underwater. Like trying to touch someone through glass.
And then, when I finally surfaced, I looked at the silence I'd created and felt too ashamed to break it.
What would I even say? It's been three years. I'm sorry I disappeared. I'm sorry I left you waiting for someone who forgot how to reach for you.
And then I was offered a position at the Times.
A reason to go back to New York.
The night I came back, I was going to find him. Explain everything.
See if there was anything left to salvage.
I found him at a restaurant in the Village.
Through the window, I could see him at a table near the back. Across from a woman—pretty, dark-haired, laughing at something he said.
He was smiling. That rare, real smile I'd thought belonged to me.
I stood on the sidewalk in the October cold and watched him live the life I'd walked away from.
I could have gone in. Could have crossed that restaurant and said I'm sorry and I'm better now, and please, can we try again?
I didn't.
I turned and walked away.
Told myself it was too late. Told myself I'd lost my chance. Told myself I didn't deserve him anyway—not after the silence, not after the way I'd left.
I'd spent five years believing that lie.
And now I was sitting in his firehouse parking lot, about to walk in and pretend none of it had ever happened.
I grabbed my bag. Squared my shoulders. Opened the car door.
Maybe they'll assign someone else to be the liaison.
Maybe I'll get lucky.
But I already knew I wouldn't get lucky.
I'd used up all my luck a long time ago, on a rooftop in Brooklyn, saying yes to a man who deserved so much better than the woman I'd become.