“What does that mean?”
I close my eyes, remembering that night. Flashes of the accident come hurling back to memory. The crash. The blood. The screams. The moment I knew it was Belle and the seconds, minutes, and hours that followed when we tried everything we could to save her. I open my eyes and look at Noah, noticing his face sobers as he takes in my expression.
“I was on shift the night of her sister’s wreck,” I whisper, unsure if he can even hear me over the music. “I was just getting ready to leave when the station got the call. There was an accident up the canyon. It was really bad. I told the crew I would ride along with them to help, even though I was supposed to leave to meet Gwen. By the time we got there, Belle had lost so much blood. I still remember the look in her eyes when she saw me. The frantic way she cried for help, asking if she was going to be alright. If she was going to die. I held her and told her I would do everything I could to save her, free her, and get her home. She kept saying she didn’t mean it. That she was sorry and she didn’t mean to crash. She didn’t want to die, not like that. When she was taking her last breath, she told me something she made me promise never to tell Gwen.”
“What was it?”
I fight with my conscience. I know I shouldn’t say it, but damn it - after all these years, I need to get it off my chest.
“She told me her cancer was back,” my hushed voice finally admits a confession I’ve held for ten years. I know Noah hears because his eyes grow wide.
“She had just come from the doctors, and there was no saving her this time.” I look over Noah’s shoulder to make sure the girls are not on their way back to the table, and continue only when I know I am in the clear. “She said she crashed the car on purpose, Noah. She couldn’t face her family. Not when they had hoped for so long that her chemo was working. She made me promise to love Gwen and never stop. That was fucking easy. But then she told me something I never expected. She told me Gwen was pregnant.
“She told me she had seen the test in the trash and noticed her getting sick. She made me promise not to tell her sister about her cancer, her suicide attempt, or the fact that she told me Gwen’s secret. Fuck, I was stunned, man. I mean, what do you say when you are hit with all that information at once? Not only that, but the girl I loved sister was dying in my arms. Fuck, before that night, I had never seen anyone die before, and there was Gwen’s sister, lying in my arms, taking her last breath and making me swear never to tell a soul some crazy shit she just told me.
“I couldn’t stay at the hospital after we got her there. I sat in darkness for over an hour when I returned to the station. The guys kept checking on me, but I wasn’t ready to talk. It was summer, and I was leaving for college in a little over a month. I didn’t see Gwen again until the funeral. I tried calling. I even showed up at her house twice, but she wouldn’t talk to me. When she finally would, she gave me the cold shoulder. She told me I was dead to her, just like her dead sister. I tried to reason with her. I tried to get her to talk. To say what, I don’t know. Maybe just admit about the baby, if it was true. But she wouldn’t budge.”
I take a deep breath before I continue. Noah is stunned to silence. I sit with my thoughts, remembering how much I knew I had messed up. How much I realized I had pushed her away instead of letting her in for months. If I hadn’t done that, she would have come to me earlier about the baby instead of hiding it. Shit, I was scared to death realizing the way I felt about her, but I truly believe I would have been ready to face it if she had.
“About a week after the funeral, I tried again,” I say, Noah sits back in his seat, and I turn my eyes to the table, picking away at the label on my beer bottle. “But her mom answered the door when I showed up and told me she had gone away for the summer to live with her aunt somewhere out of state, and wouldn’t tell me where. That was it. Nothing more. I tried to track her down, but I couldn’t. This was before cell phones, and social media. So, I left for Mississippi. Two damn years went by until I saw her again. I finally bumped into her with Eva in L.A. Shit, I was so happy to see her…” I trail off, remembering the hurt I felt when she rejected me once again. Rejected me, just like I feared she always would.
“But she wouldn’t budge, and wouldn’t talk to me. To tell you the truth, she hasn’t really talked to me since. Not until about a month ago, and fuck, it was tough as shit breaking down that damn wall. But well fucking worth it.”
I glance up and can tell Noah has no clue how to respond. He slowly takes a sip of beer. Finally, he says, “Well, are you going to tell her?”
“Fuck, I have to,” I sigh. “Not just because if we are going to move forward, there can’t be these kinds of secrets in our past. But I have to know. Was she really pregnant? Do I have a son or daughter somewhere in the world, and she gave them up for adoption without telling me? Or did she get rid of it? Just like she got rid of us. Fuck, I’ll admit the thought has made me hate her some days and nights over the last decade, but I honestly don’t think she’d be that shallow. Plus, she deserves to know the truth about her sister.”
“When are you planning on telling her?” Noah asks as our eyes drift to the left, and we find the girls walking through the crowd towards us. Both of them are carrying two drinks and giggling with each other.
“Soon,” I whisper as they approach the table. “Very soon.”
Eva drops her drink and takes Noah his. She slides onto his lap, and he kisses her cheek. Gwen eyes me with a smile and hands me another beer. I give her a wink and pull on her hand. For the first time in front of company, she doesn’t fight me. She leans down and places her lips against mine, shocking the hell out of me, and sure as shit shocking the company at our table.
I’m even more surprised when she slips her tongue between my lips and deepens the kiss. Pulling away, she winks at me, and I hope to God what I have to tell her doesn’t ruin our future before it even has a chance to get started.
22
Gwen
My feet hit the sidewalk in large strides. Finally kicking into my runner’s high, I jog along the banks of the Mississippi River and think about everything that changed in my life in just a few months. It’s something I never expected. Not just the move to New Orleans to finish up a project with the hopes of a promotion - but the man I never thought I would ever let close again.
Pounding the pavement harder, I try to release the stress and tension that nothing has been able to ease all day. Not just from Rex, but the job, too. The cool breeze blows in from the river, and I try to will my mind to go blank. But it’s no use.
Rex is arrogant, cocky, smart-mouthed, and sexy as fuck. And hell, he totally knows it. His “sure of himself” demeanor is one of the things that instantly attracted me to him all those years ago. His dirty mouth and the way he knows how to use it are a bonus. When he thinks no one is looking, the sweet way he lets me know I’m his is ultimately the one thing that leaves me always coming back for more.
But all that isn’t enough to make a go of things again. Or is it?
Better yet, what about when I tell him my secret? The baby I never got a chance to tell him about before the stress of losing my sister forced my body to have a miscarriage. I still remember sitting on the floor of the bathtub, willing my body to stop bleeding. The pain of losing my sister and a baby I was growing attached to was too much to bear. So, I called my aunt in Texas and left to spend the summer with her.
When I got back, Rex was gone. My parents were separated, and the sister I once had was only a stone I walked to and sat with for hours a couple days a week.
I cried endlessly at her grave, and poured my heart out to her ghostly memory.
I still remember asking God why. Why did he take her and then steal the joy of motherhood from me? Why did he start to heal my sister only to have a car crash steal her away from us? Why did he let me know the life that grew inside me if he was only going to steal it away from me just like her? And why did I let myself fall for a man that could never give me what I wanted and always left me when I needed him most?
My feet hit the ground hard and fast as everything comes rushing back to me. The hospital the night my sister died. The ambulance ride to the ER a few days later when I couldn’t stop the bleeding and told my parents the news that I was pregnant. The fear that Rex would find out and hate me for losing our child because the stress of it all was too much.
I know I ran away. I know I didn’t face him. But I couldn’t.
