If Forever Comes (29 page)

I could feel her panic, the pain as it rolled
through her, as it tightened in her throat and hammered furiously
in her chest.

I wanted to fix it, to fix her, to shield her,
but I knew we had to face it, and facing it was going to hurt. All
of it, the pain in what we’d lost and the disaster we’d created in
its wake.

My arms constricted around her body. She felt
so frail in my arms, so delicate. Shudders wracked through her as
she trembled in my hold.

“Baby, I know it hurts, but you have to
tell
me. We’re never going to get past this if we don’t talk
to each other.”

Her fingers burrowed into my skin, as if
seeking an anchor. Her words came with a crush of sorrow,
unbearable as she once again broke down.

“When they took her away, it was like reality
finally hit me, and that was the moment when I realized she never
would, Christian. My little girl was never going to breathe, and
when they walked out the door with her, she took my ability to
breathe with her.”

And I was there again, with her, seeing it
through her eyes. And God, it was fucking devastating.

“I felt like I was suffocating, Christian, and
I thought I was going to die. And you…you were the one who made me
do it. You were the one who told me it was time.” She pinched her
eyes closed. “God, this is so hard to talk about, I’ve kept it
inside for so long.”

“Baby…take your time.”

She took a deep breath, blinking as she slowly
shook her head. “I know now how crazy that was, Christian. I blamed
you for something you couldn’t control, but it felt like you were
against
me, like you weren’t fighting for her the way I was.
I hated you for it.”

Hearing her say it again punched me in the
gut. I knew she had, but I also knew it’d come from trauma, from
shock, that she’d been lost to skewed emotions because she didn’t
know how to deal with the loss.

I cupped her cheek, my thumb making a pass
over the apple of her cheek. “It’s okay, Elizabeth. Just tell me…I
want to hear it. I need to hear it so I can understand.”

She looked up at me through watery eyes, her
expression intense.

“You didn’t hold her.” Her mouth quivered as
she said it. She glanced away, then brought her attention back to
me. “I know what I said to you was
selfish
because I know
you loved her. But that hurt me, and it just added to the anger I
felt toward you. Every time I saw you, the pain almost knocked me
from my feet. I couldn’t feel anything else but the pain and the
hurt and the hate. And the pain is still there,” she emphasized, “I
need you to know that I’m scared and I’m confused lying here with
you, but the pain is not obscuring what I really feel for you
anymore.”

Hope wound into her voice. “The last few
weeks, I’ve been feeling it, little flashes of something that felt
as if it were calling to me. It took me kissing Logan tonight for
me to realize what it was. It was you.”

“Seeing that tonight…it killed me, Elizabeth.
It made me insane with jealousy.” I rolled her on her back and I
propped myself up, hovering over her. My fingers crawled out to
splay wide across her chest, and I pressed my hand over her heart
as I stared down at the brown eyes that searched me through our
misery. “Because I already knew that, Elizabeth. I already knew you
belonged to me just like I belong to you.” I dropped my gaze to the
empty spot near her head. I tried to rein in the depth of the rage
that jealousy had evoked in me. Then I sealed my eyes on hers. “You
hurt me, Elizabeth. I’m not going to lie and tell you it’s okay,
because it’s not. You are my
life
, but you have to make the
decision you’re going to live it with me, even when that life
brings hardships we don’t want to face.”

Grief twisted her face, but I
continued.

“And I’ll never be able to express to you how
sorry I am that I pushed you to let her go. It was stupid, but I
thought I was protecting you and that you were just harming
yourself by continuing to hang onto her all that time. I should
have let you make the decision when you were ready.”

Hesitant fingers fluttered along my chest.
Sadness deepened the lines on her face. She fisted her hand as if
she had to work up to what she wanted to say. Her voice came quiet,
ragged in its admission.

“But that’s the thing, Christian, I would
never have been ready to let her go. And I think you knew that. You
know
me. Know me the way no one else does, in a way no one
else ever will. I blamed you for what you were never responsible
for. I couldn’t even look at you because you represented everything
I had wanted, all of my hopes, my hopes for this little girl and
for our marriage. In one day it was shattered.”

She slipped her hand up my neck, cupped my
jaw, her eyes burning into mine.

“I’m scared that when you and I are together,
I’m so happy. It feels like every time I give myself to you, I’m
hit with the worst kind of devastation. I’m scared of what you make
me feel. It’s so intense that sometimes it’s overwhelming. But
tonight, with Logan…” Frantically she gathered my hand, arched her
back so she could place my palm over her heart. “No one can touch
this but you. My heart, it belongs to you just like every other
part of me does. All of it…all of me. I’m yours.”

And I was reeling, staggered by the depth of
her words. By what they meant.

“I love you, Elizabeth. Nothing can change
that.”

“I’m so sorry it took someone else touching me
to make me realize that, to knock me back into reality. If I’d have
just held on a little longer, I would have seen, Christian. I’ve
felt a change in me, a glimmer of light when I was so lost in the
darkness. I know it would have lit on you.”

I brushed my lips over hers, the softest pass,
an embrace.

She wound her arms around my neck and buried
her face in my neck. “I’m never going to get over her.”

I ragged sigh left me, because I grasped the
truth of her words. They were my truth, too.

“No one expects you to get over her,
Elizabeth. Neither of us will ever completely heal from it. We lost
our
child.
That is something we’re going to have to deal
with forever. It’s never going to stop hurting, but it will get
better, and we have to live through it together.”

We had to believe that our little girl was
safe, free, that she wasn’t alone or feeling any of this pain we
bore for her.

Elizabeth cried, hugging me
tighter.

I ran my hand through her hair, whispered at
her head. “People don’t always get to love like this, Elizabeth.
Not the way we do. It’s a gift.”

I shifted so I could look down at her. “Please
don’t ever let it go.”

Elizabeth ~ Seven Months
Later

A gentle breeze blew across the rising swell.
Ocean waves tumbled in, crashing as they broke on the shore. Rays
of sunlight slanted between gaps in the thin layer of clouds
hanging in the late afternoon sky. My bare feet sank into the
dampened sand, a feeling I had loved since I was a little
girl.

Peace settled over me like the warmest
embrace.

He stood on our beach just off in the
distance. Locks of black hair beat at his forehead as wind gusted
in. His face was still all sharp angles, his jaw strong, those lips
still pouty and full.

But his eyes. They were aware, knowing and
kind.

My heart stuttered as a roll of nervous energy
hastened through me.

Yes, Christian Davison still managed to steal
my breath. It was no different than ten years ago when he’d first
walked through those cafe doors and changed the direction of my
life.

I guess I should have known it then, the way
he’d made me feel as if he’d knocked something loose inside of me,
unleashed something I didn’t know existed.

Lizzie peeked back at me. Her long black hair
was all tied up in an elegant twist. It was beautiful and made her
look much too old, but she insisted that she have her hair done
like mine. She was almost seven, but today, as she paused and
looked back at me with a meaningful smile, her mouth so soft and
her blue eyes softer, I knew my little girl fully grasped what this
day meant to us.

At the end of the sandy path, she veered off
to the left and took her spot.

Our guests all stood and turned to face me.
There were few, just two short rows of chairs situated on each
side. This was the way Christian and I wanted it.

The wedding we’d missed almost a year ago was
supposed to take place in a large church overflowing with all the
people we knew—friends, family, and acquaintances.

Today there were only those closest to us,
those who really understood what we’d gone through to make it here
today.

On the left, my sister, Sarah, was surrounded
by her husband and two children. Carrie, my youngest sister, smiled
at me from within the mix. And my mom, she was there, her
expression so kind, so gentle in the backdrop of the rough woman
who had worked her entire life to take care of us. There were just
a couple others, my aunt and a few cousins.

I looked to the right. Christian’s aunt, a
woman I had only met this week, stood there beaming, flanked by her
husband who had his arm around her waist. They’d said they wouldn’t
have missed this, not for the world.

My attention traveled to the front row and
settled on Claire. A wistful smile lifted one side of her trembling
mouth. Our eyes met. Hers were glassy and red. She was already
crying, twisting a handkerchief in her fingers. She mouthed, “Thank
you.”

Emotion expanded my chest, filled it so full,
it made it difficult to breathe. But the loss of this breath was
not pain as it used to be. This was joy.

It was I who owed her thanks, the one who I
would be grateful to for the rest of my life for her
son.

My attention was drawn to him. This beautiful
man who stood there, staring at me, waiting for me, as if I were
his life.

I knew I was, just as assuredly as he was
mine.

Never again would I run from him.

The cellist shifted, the strings striking with
the song we had chosen for this day. It wound with the wind,
crashed with the waves, a soft love song that rose to a beautiful
crescendo that called me home.

My steps were slow as I began to walk toward
the man who had loved me through my darkest hour, my stride
deliberate as my bare feet sank into the sand. The flowing gown
swished around my ankles, the back brushing the ground.

Maybe my steps were slow. Maybe it was because
I was relishing each one, like each represented an obstacle we’d
had to climb, the trials we’d had to overcome. Maybe each one was a
triumph, each a celebration.

Even though each step was measured, in
reality, I was running toward him.

Running toward my forever.

Because I realized I didn’t have one without
Christian.

He was my all.

I stopped a foot from him. He smiled that
smile, that stomach-flipping, heart-lurching, earth-shattering
smile.

The one that was only for me.

Softly he tilted his head to the side, so many
words spoken in his expressive eyes, his love and his devotion, his
hopes and his dreams. He cupped my jaw and ran his thumb along my
cheek. “You beautiful girl,” he whispered into the wind.

I covered his hand with mine, pressed it
closer as I closed my eyes.

And I cherished.

I cherished this man.

My eyes fluttered open and I caught Matthew’s
expression from where he stood behind Christian, standing up as his
Best Man. What else would he be? He’d stood beside me, beside us
for so long. He was our best friend, our family. His kind brown
eyes swam in a soft affection, in a relief and a joy of something
he’d wished for me for so many years. He’d always told me he just
wanted me to be happy.

And I truly was.

Christian slipped his hand from my cheek to my
neck, his palm warm against my cool skin as he dragged it down the
expanse of my bare shoulder, over my elbow, all the way to my
hand.