Arrest (A Disarm Novel) (6 page)

“You still need to eat,” I said with my eyes closed.

“I’ll grab a sandwich on the way out. There’s no way you’re getting me out of the tub right now.” He paused and twisted around, reaching for something outside the bathtub. “Oh, I wanted to give you this,” he said, pulling out a small book from his pants on the floor.

“
The Little Book of Baby Names
,” I read, studying the tiny book in my hands and noticing a few of the pink pages were folded in.

“I marked the names I liked.”

I flipped open to one page and saw he’d drawn an asterisk next to a girl’s name. “Hope,” I said. “So you’re
hoping
for a girl, I take it?”

I felt him shrug. “I’ve just always liked that name. It’s very optimistic, and I like to think our child will be full of dreams and conviction.”

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” I said, nuzzling my head into his neck.

“Els,” Henry said, his voice taking on an uncertain edge. “Have you ever . . . I just want to know, is this the first time you’ve been pregnant?”

I sat up and twisted around. “Of course!”

His face relaxed.

“Though there was one time in my junior year in college, when the condom broke and I thought for a few weeks that I might be pregnant.”

His muscles turned to stone beneath me. “Who?”

“Some guy in my HTML class named Scott Kersey. He and I had been dating for a few weeks when we finally had sex. Wouldn’t you know it, the condom broke on the first time.” When Henry didn’t say anything, I continued. “My period was always unpredictable so for a while there I was seriously worried that I had gotten pregnant. I took the morning-after pill and had an STD screening and everything, but still, the worry was always there. I was only able to breathe a sigh of relief when my period finally came.”

“What did
he
do?”

“He was a nice guy and stood by me. Offered to marry me if I was truly pregnant.”

“Like hell,” Henry growled.

I laughed and touched his thigh for reassurance. “I told him thanks, but that I wasn’t going to marry someone just because I’d gotten pregnant. We broke up about a month after because he didn’t want to stay in a relationship with someone who didn’t really want to be with him. Not in the long run anyway.”

And God, wasn’t that the story of my life? All of my previous relationships had been placeholders until Henry came along and claimed his place beside me. Even back then, every single one of my boyfriends had been able to sense that, even if I hadn’t.

“How come I didn’t know about it?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t tell you.”

“Did Jason know?”

“No. I never told him. Nobody knew.”

“Huh, who’s keeping secrets now?”

I twisted around, sitting on my legs, and faced him. “Nothing happened, at least nothing significant enough to worry my family.” He opened his mouth, most likely to argue that it was no different from his Korea secret, when I put a finger on his lips. “The difference is that I’m telling you willingly.”

He turned his head and said, “I wasn’t going to argue that. I was just about to say that there’s so much about you that I still don’t know.”

“Oh. Well, ditto.”

His eyes flicked across my face. “I’m glad you weren’t pregnant back then,” he said after some time.

I pressed a kiss on the tip of his nose. “Me too. Otherwise I might be Elsie Kersey right now.”

He snickered, pulling me close. “Over my dead body.”

“What would you have done?”

“Married you immediately.”

“No,” I laughed. “I mean, if I’d been pregnant with Scott’s baby.”

He was quiet as he mulled it over. “I would have tried my best to talk you out of marrying him, that’s for sure.”

“Would you have tried to talk me into an abortion?” I asked.

His eyebrows furrowed. “No. Hell no,” he said. “That’s not my call to make.”

“Then what?”

“I would have stepped up and helped you raise that baby the best I could.”

I pressed a soft kiss to his lips, in awe of this man before me.

Late one Saturday morning, Henry came home a few hours later than normal. I was already awake, worrying the edges of my sweater, when he came in the front door, dropping the bag with his uniform by the front door.

I threw my phone onto the couch and made my way to him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Thank God.” I pulled away, immediately noticing the dark bruise on his cheek. “What happened?”

He ducked his head and walked past me, shaking his head wearily. I followed him upstairs and watched as he methodically took off his civilian clothes. When he bent down to untie his boots, I saw that his knuckles were swollen and red, with a few scabbed gashes.

Not asking him what happened was a hard task, but experience had taught me that I would push him further away if I pried. So I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him awkwardly try to undo the buttons on his shirt. “Do you want some help?” I finally asked.

“I got it,” he said, gritting his teeth as he stubbornly made his way through the first two buttons.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I stood before him and undid the buttons myself. “You should put ice on that,” I said, pushing the shirt off his shoulders. I yanked the hem of his undershirt from his pants and he lifted his arms to allow me to pull it over his head.

I gasped when I saw a large dark purple bruise on the side of his rib and reached out to touch it. Henry flinched at the contact. Swallowing down my agonizing concern, I turned away from the bruise and undid his pants, pushing them down to his ankles. When he stood in his boxer briefs, I did the nearly unbearable and turned around, ready to walk away without asking him what happened.

Still, I took my time getting to the door in hopes that he’d somehow speak up, but the man retained his stony silence. I closed the door behind me and simply tried to breathe through the hurt in my chest, feeling as if all of my worries had come to life.

I realized my hands were shaking in the kitchen as I made my second cup of coffee for the day. To hell with doctor’s advice. My husband had just come home several hours late, beat up and tight-lipped. I needed some damn caffeine.

As I lifted the mug up to my lips, Henry walked into the kitchen and sat down, setting his elbows on the table and hanging his head. “Jones and I were on patrol when we tried to pull this car over. The driver decided to run, so we gave chase. We must have tailed him for ten whole minutes before he hit a curb and blew a tire.” Henry looked up at me and it was then I realized I was holding my breath. “He jumped out and we pursued him on foot, jumping over fences and all that crap they show on cop shows. Only this ended with the guy turning and attacking me. We went at it before Jones Tased him. Apparently the perp was a former mixed martial arts fighter.”

I couldn’t speak, and even if I could, my brain was in no condition to form coherent sentences. So I fetched the ice pack from the freezer, wrapped it in a dish towel, and pressed it onto the hand of my wretched-looking husband.

“I got in a few hits myself,” he said gruffly, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “The Krav Maga really helped.”

I went back to my coffee, filling my mouth with the bitter liquid to keep from screaming.

“I’m fine, Els. The doc looked me over and said it was just bruising, though I could have done without all the extra paperwork.”

Underneath my sweater sleeves, I fingered the sapphire ring. I didn’t know how to act, how to feel. Relief and worry and anger and nausea roiled inside me. I had seen Henry with mental wounds before, but never with physical injuries, and honestly, I couldn’t say which was worse right now.

“Say something.”

“I can’t,” I said, pulling on my sleeves to hide my trembling fingers.

Henry stood up and wrapped me in his arms, kissing my forehead. “I’m sorry I worried you. I should have called. I didn’t realize I’d be so late.”

I pressed my face into his chest, taking in his day-old scent, and nodded.

“This is the nature of the job. I’ll get roughed up once in a while,” he said into my hair. “But at the end of the day, I come home knowing I’ve taken one more crack-selling, house-robbing asshole off the streets. Don’t you think that’s worth it?”

God, I wanted to say yes. Of course the answer was yes, but when faced with my bruised and battered husband, it was hard to remember why. He’d already given up so much for his country; did he need to give this too?

With his swollen hands, he tilted my face up to meet his. “Talk to me.”

“You’re too valiant for your own good,” I finally said, but didn’t add that I thought it wasn’t an asset but rather his failing.

—

On Saturday night, Henry and I attended a cocktail party at his FTO’s place. Sondra Jones and her husband lived in a third-story condo in the affluent Cherry Creek North neighborhood.

Sondra was tall—only a few inches shy of Henry’s six-two—and wore a one-strap dress that encased her curvaceous body. Her features, especially her lips, seemed too bold, too big, and yet all put together, they created an aggressively compelling face. She wasn’t attractive in the traditional sense, but she had sex appeal in spades.

“Great to meet you, Elsie,” she said, giving my hand a shake, and even though I usually try to give a firm handshake with people I wanted to impress, Sondra’s grip nearly made me wince. Somehow I got the feeling she wasn’t trying to impress me. “Henry has told me all about you.”

“I hope good things,” I said, squeezing back a little harder.

One corner of her mouth curled up as she raised an eyebrow, a look that made me put up my guard. “Of course.”

She led the way into her beautiful home, stopping to introduce us to a few people, because apparently, when the woman wasn’t busy chasing and Tasing bad guys, she was throwing lavish parties in a fancy-dancy condo. I met a few other police officers and their wives. Most of them referred to Henry as “Rookie.”

“How much do you really tell her?” I whispered to Henry sometime during the night.

Henry glanced down at me. “What do you mean?”

“Have you told her everything? Does she know about—”

A loud clinking grabbed our attention and we turned, as did the rest of the guests, to the source of the noise. “I just wanted to make a toast,” Sondra said, laying the bread knife back on the table and lifting her champagne flute. “To Rookie and his wife, who are expecting their first child together, even if Elsie wasn’t sure about it at first. Congratulations, you two!”

I tried to keep from glaring at Henry, but I wasn’t sure if I was successful. When everyone’s heads turned, I wiped my expression clean and pasted a smile on my mouth as people congratulated us. Henry wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kissed my head, his chest swelling with pride.

—

“I didn’t realize we were telling people yet,” I said to him after we got back from the party. “Only our family until we’re past the twelve-week mark, remember?”

Henry pulled me close, unconcerned by my irritation. “I can’t help it. I want to stop and tell strangers on the street.”

I shook my head in disbelief, my irritation in full bloom now that we were in the privacy of our home.

“I spend a lot of time with Jones. How was I not supposed to tell her?”

“And what about my hesitation about having a baby? Did you have to tell her about that?”

He pursed his lips, unable to say a thing.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “She’s judging me for it.”

“She’s not.”

“She is. I can feel it.” How could I explain the strange way Sondra’s eyes followed me, the way she practically sneered at everything I said? Henry would just say I was being paranoid. “That woman doesn’t like me.”

He bent down and kissed my neck. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t. There’s nothing to dislike about you.”

“There’s plenty to dislike about me. Like that I’m a moody bitch. I bet you’ve told her that.”

“Hey,” he said suddenly, his eyebrows drawing together. “I don’t know where this is coming from, but I would never say that about you.”

“But you think it.”

He closed his eyes as his jaw muscles worked. When he looked at me again, he said, “This is just pregnancy hormones talking, right?”

“Right, because every time a woman gets mad it’s due to hormonal imbalance, not because she actually has something legitimate to be angry about.” I refrained from stomping my feet, even if what I really felt like doing was to throw an all-out tantrum.

“It’s not . . . that’s not . . .” Henry shook his head and held out his hand. “Come with me. I have something that might cheer you up.”

Still seething, I allowed him to lead me up the stairs and down the hall, to the closed office door.

“I was going to wait until it’s done, but I think you need cheering up right now,” he said. He opened the door, but the nursery I’d been picturing was not the sight that greeted me. The computer table was still pushed up against the far wall, books still lying in piles all over it. Only the bookshelf was missing.

I took a step inside, opening my mouth to ask what the surprise was, when he grabbed me by the shoulders and pivoted me to the left, toward the wall where the bookshelf had once stood.

There, taking up the entire wall, was a mural of gray-blue, rendered darker around the edges to give it depth. To the right was a large, bright moon and to its left was the silhouette of a small child—with a skirt and pigtails—lit only by the golden glow of the moon. The gauzy horizon cut the wall halfway down, and the entire scene was reflected below in softer brushstrokes, making it look as if the child was standing on the water’s edge.

The painting before me stole the anger from my lungs and replaced it with awe.

“It’s not finished yet. I still want to add more detail to the moon. And if the baby is a boy, I can just paint over the skirt and hair,” Henry said, his hands in his pockets. He turned to me with his eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”

I looked at Henry standing almost bashfully beside his labor of love, and felt myself fall all over again. I mean, how could I stay mad when the man’s excitement was exhibited all over the wall?

I touched a finger to the girl and her pigtail. “It’s beautiful.”

—

“Kari, have you finished with that file yet?” I asked, looking over the cubicle wall to find her tapping away at her keyboard.

She held up a finger and finished typing, her fingers flying across the keys. “Sorry, I had to send off an email,” she said. “I’m done with the file. You can work on it.”

“Thanks.” I winced, feeling a strange cramp but in the next second, it was gone.

“What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just a cramp.”

“You have your period too?” Kari mouthed.

“No. Just a weird twinge, I guess.” I went back to work, opening the file from the server, rubbing my stomach and feeling a little guilty I hadn’t told her about the pregnancy yet.

After lunch, Conor held one of his monthly meetings to discuss events on the horizon. “And finally, we are trying to woo Lombart.”

“The pharmaceutical company?” James, one of the junior designers, asked.

Conor didn’t even bother hiding his excitement. “The very one,” he said, his face lit up by a wide smile. “They are looking for a brand refresher. Something to modernize their image.”

“That’s huge,” James said with a whistle.

“That it is. In a few months, we are going to be ramping up, working on a concept.” Conor looked around the room, giving each one of us a meaningful look. His eyes landed on me. “Sherman, I want you to head it.”

“Logan,” I corrected with a grin. “And thank you.”

Kari nudged my leg under the table, flashing me excited little smiles. After the meeting she said, “Please bring me into the team if he gives you the choice.”

“Of course I will,” I said as we walked to our desks. “Late nights wouldn’t be the same without your dirty jokes and Photoshop expertise.”

“Damn straight.”

Suddenly, I stopped and clutched at my stomach as intense cramps racked my insides. Short of breath, I turned on a heel and ran to the bathroom.

“No, no, no,” I whispered as I locked the stall and pulled down my pants, wondering why I hadn’t noticed the dampness before. The breath caught in my throat when I saw the blood—not a lot, but enough to send an arrow of fear straight through my heart. “No.”

I grabbed handfuls of toilet paper and wiped, horrified to find even more blood. I kept wiping with fresh toilet paper, willing away the blood.

“Elsie!” Kari yelled, her voice echoing in the small space of the bathroom. “You in here?”

“I’m here,” I said in a shaky voice.

“What the hell happened?” she asked, her voice much closer and quieter. “Are you okay?”

“C-c-could you please get me a pad?” I stammered, the tears welling up in my eyes.

“So you
do
have your period,” she said, and a second later, I heard the quarter clink as she turned the knob on the wall dispenser.

“I—I guess.” I grabbed the pad she held over the door and said, “Thanks. I think I’m good.”

When I walked out, Kari gasped. “You’re white as a sheet.”

I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, trying hard not to sniff. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”

“What? Why?” She touched my arm, looking me over for any obvious signs of injury.

“I think . . .” I swallowed hard, finding it difficult to say the words aloud. “I think I’m having a miscarriage.”

—

“I can’t believe you never told me!” Kari yelled as she drove to the Denver Health Medical Center in her truck.

I looked down at my phone, willing it to ring. I’d called Henry several times and left nearly twenty text messages but all I’d gotten was radio silence. “I’m sorry,” I said to my friend. “We were waiting until we were past the twelve-week point.”

“And how far along are you?”

I wiped at my cheeks. “Eleven.”

Kari shook her head, swerving around a driver. “Get out of the way, shithead!” she cried, flipping him off.

It took us twenty-one excruciating minutes to get to the hospital. Kari dropped me off at the ER door and went to park the truck, and I hobbled inside, trying to quell the panic that had taken hold of my muscles.