Mackenzie wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t scream, she wouldn’t make a scene, and she wouldn’t lose her shit over the scene she had made at the print shop.
If it killed her, she’d keep the damn tears at bay.
Her days of being weak were over. She had grown and changed and if things were ever going to work out with Gabe, he had to accept the new version of her.
She pulled into the driveway and rested her arms and head on the steering wheel, forcing herself to take deep breaths, grateful for the soothing lavender air freshener she had picked up at Miss Molly’s shop downtown.
Once upon a time, the promise of a white picket fence and resting under Gabe’s protective wing with their two point five children was enough.
They had their version of the fence. She couldn’t give him the kids. And being protected under Gabe’s wing was no longer what she needed.
But she wanted him. Though pain and self-doubt nearly crippled her each day, she never questioned her love for Gabe. Nor did she question his love for her.
She wanted him in her life. But she didn’t need him—not in the way she used to need him. She could do things on her own—had managed to carve out some competence and independence when she was away. And he needed to know that.
But was it fair of her to keep him saddled to a woman who couldn’t give him the one thing she was made to give? When he so clearly wanted the gift she couldn’t offer?
A familiar ache started in her uterus and throbbed in her breasts. To bear children was her dream. Her mission. Each time they had successfully managed to fill her womb in the past, they had celebrated. And each time her body had been unable to bring the pregnancy to completion.
After a long year away, she had thought she could get past it. She had thought their love would be strong enough to work past the issues. To come up with a different plan.
She had thought a year had been enough time and she had given him enough space. She had managed to convince herself he’d be ready to talk about it. That they’d come up with another plan.
The look in Gabe’s eyes when he watched her play with the baby had told her that he needed to have babies. That he wanted them with her.
The comment about being barefoot and pregnant had been more than just a cliché—it was a Freudian slip.
He wanted her to still fit in the box of a life they had designed when they were younger. When the world had been full of possibilities. When being unable to bear children wasn’t even on the radar.
Needing to feel close to the life she was trying to come to terms with losing, Mackenzie took herself to the nursery. She unpacked everything she could find, carefully unfolding the clothing. Rocking in the rocking chair. Studying the ultrasound picture.
Refusing to cry over the photo of her and Gabe and Ariana.
The only photo she’d ever have of a child made by the two of them.
A child who had never even taken a breath.
Mackenzie clutched the photo to her heart, hoping to stave off the sharp pain that cut off her breathing and reminded her that she was alive while her child was dead.
Buried.
She had never imagined a coffin so tiny.
A special box made for babies who didn’t make it to full-term.
If she had miscarried a few weeks earlier, the hospital would have disposed of the body.
They might not have even had a funeral.
Mackenzie couldn’t stand the thought of her baby going from her warm womb to the cold ground, but it was a better thought than her being thrown away with the medical waste.
Ariana had been wanted. Desperately, passionately wanted. She represented everything sacred about Mackenzie’s marriage to Gabe.
The jingle of Gabe’s keys hitting the ceramic dish startled Mackenzie. She couldn’t put the things away—his heavy footsteps were already closing in.
What was he doing home?
He never left work early. Or late. Always on time.
She had thought she’d have the day to process her feelings. To learn to move on. To figure out how to make things work with her husband.
His face was tight with anger when he found her.
When he saw her surrounded by the baby things they had carefully picked out together, the things he had meticulously packed away in her absence, his face softened.
“What are you doing home?” she asked, loosening her grip on the baby blanket on her lap when she realized her fingers had dug into it.
“I was worried about you. We’ve never fought like that before.”
He was right. They hadn’t. She had never been one to raise her voice. Or to even argue with him.
She had never not wanted his protection before.
She couldn’t blame him for being confused.
She had grown and changed and he hadn’t been there to witness it. Because of the decisions she had made. Without his input.
He knelt on the floor and started filling the boxes she had emptied. He didn’t ask if she was done. He didn’t ask why she had taken them out. He didn’t offer to talk about it.
He simply swept away the evidence of how close they had come to dream fulfillment.
“I was thinking we could leave town for the afternoon.” He folded up the little green striped outfit as if folding something as benign as the washcloths and buried it in the box. “Have lunch someplace nice.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her anger at his careless disregard for her need to process things—preferably with him—gated her throat, making passage of words impossible.
“Why aren’t you speaking to me?” His eyes blazed into her face, burning jagged holes that released bits of her shame into the atmosphere, but she couldn’t look up. All she could do was stare at the flaws in the blanket she had made for their baby.
“Kenzie. What is going on? Things have been good. Why are you freezing up on me?”
She carefully and precisely folded the blanket and placed it back in the zoo animal box along with the take-home outfit she had snuggled earlier. She tucked the photos between the folds of the blanket. Then she brushed her lap off and stood to leave the room.
“Don’t walk away. Please, Kenzie. Don’t do this.”
She paused at the door. The torment in his voice matched the torment in her heart. She ached for him. Hated what she had put him through. Hated everything about the things they couldn’t control, and also the things she didn’t know how to control.
He was right. She couldn’t expect him to open up to her about the past if she kept walking away from the present.
“I don’t like how I’m feeling again.” She turned toward him, forcing herself to look into his eyes. His tender, warm, compassionate eyes. Eyes that could make her body burn before he touched her. Eyes that studied her and knew her inside and out. Eyes that betrayed how he felt despite his attempts to hide. “I hate who I’m becoming again. How I feel.”
Gabe ran a hand through his hair, clearly exasperated.
“You don’t like the way I make you feel? Jesus, Kenzie.”
She approached him and reached out to grab his hand. She hated the hurt in his eyes. On his face. His handsome, caring face.
“No—I love how you make me feel. Gabe, you make me feel like a woman. A lovable, desirable woman.”
He turned his eyes back to her and clutched her hand tight.
“It’s just—I don’t know. I feel like I’m losing who I became when I was away. While I was away I became someone who was okay with not being a mom.”
Damn tears. They formed a smog that could rival the pollution she had read about in Los Angeles. The world became blurry and her voice became choked.
“Come on, let’s go get some lunch.” Gabe brought her hand to his face and kissed her knuckles. “A little food will do us wonders.”
“Food can’t fix this, Gabe.”
“Fix what? It was a little fight. Aren’t we supposed to have make up sex now?” He wiggled his eyebrows and lifted one side of his lips into a pseudo-smile that didn’t fool her one bit.
She closed her eyes to keep from saying something hurtful. He was trying to lighten the tone, to keep things from going dark. That was his talent—to turn darkness into light.
But for a little while she needed to walk in the darkness. And she needed him to hold her hand through the darkest parts.
She didn’t need him to protect her from the fierceness of the world, or to shield her from the difficulties in life. But she did need his company as she maneuvered the graveyard of their shared dreams if they were ever going to move beyond them.
“I need to talk about the babies. The pregnancies. The infertility.”
He flinched at her words. Normally his reaction would make her stop—not that the old her would have had the nerve to say any of this. But if their relationship stood a chance, they had to clear the gravel and pave the way for a healthy foundation. Communication was part of that health.
“You’re not infertile,” he snapped.
“I need to talk about it, Gabe. And I need to talk about it with you.”
He grabbed her other hand and held both close to his chest. She could feel the wild thumping of his heart through his flannel shirt.
“Kenzie. Love.” He leaned down to kiss her nose, then captured one of her escaped tears on his lips. “Talking about the hurt isn’t going to make it better. We need to move on. I’ve closed the door on the past. I suggest you do the same.”
Though her throat felt like it was coated in Super Glue, the words finally slipped out like they had been dipped in honey.
“You closed the door before I even stepped over the threshold.”
She didn’t hide the anger behind her words. Nor did she try to stop the tears.
He had to see her pain as clearly as she had to live with it.
If they couldn’t fix this, they couldn’t go on.
His mouth tightened and a muscle in his jaw flexed.
His look was final.
He was done talking, and nothing she said was going to get him to communicate.
With a sob that made her want to gouge her own eyes out, she jerked away from him, out of his grasp, and fled the room. She slipped back into her boots and grabbed her purse and keys.
He met her at the door.
“So that’s it, huh? You’re just going to take off again. Why not take your whole bag? You know you’ve been planning to leave me again.”
She paused, shocked that he could believe that of her.
When her response finally came to her, she was shocked at how deeply she felt, and how desperately she wanted him to hurt as bad as she was hurting.
“You left me emotionally long before I left you physically.”
His mouth opened as if to respond, then clamped shut.
She took his silence as an invitation for her to leave.
***
When the last of her tears had been cried and the warm February sun began to cool, Mackenzie weighed her options. She didn’t want to go to work. She didn’t want to face Gabe. She didn’t want to go to her mother’s and have to explain anything to her family.
She wanted to cease existing. Not permanently, but at least for a little while.
She pulled her coat around her and huddled into the corner of the playhouse. Not knowing where to go, she had fled to the place she felt the most carefree. The playground where she and Gabe had first reconnected so recently.
Since this was a residential area playground and the kids were in school, she knew she’d have privacy. She had been right—not a soul entered the area.
Good thing, too, since it would have been awkward to explain why a full grown adult was having a sob fest on the playground equipment with no kid in sight.
She had left her cell phone in the car, not wanting to know whether Gabe tried to call her. Not even wanting to take the chance that she’d be called into work on her night off.
Not wanting any connection to the outside world.
The cold cut through her layers. She tightened her scarf around her face and zipped her coat up as high as it would go.
She started to drift off, exhausted from emotions and life.
A few moments later, footsteps startled her.
Somehow, without looking, she knew it was Gabe.
A few seconds later, he was climbing into the fort and sitting across from her, his shoulders too big for the small space and his knees tucked up near his chest.
She almost giggled at the sight, but she was too broken.
And cold.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” she asked after several long, quiet beats. She watched the steam from her mouth swirl between them.
“Your car wasn’t at the nursing home or your mom’s house. I knew you had to be here.”
She nibbled her bottom lip. He knew her better than anyone.
“I need some space to figure out how to process my feelings, Gabe.” She sounded so grown up. Guess reading those self-help blogs was paying off.
“I know.” He did the opposite of giving her space. He squeezed next to her and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t push him away. He was warm. Very warm. She could melt in his arms in more ways than one.
Surely there were relationships that survived without communication. Surely she could talk about her feelings of loss with someone else—Sabrina, her mom, a therapist. Why would she even think of throwing away a perfectly good relationship over one need? He fulfilled everything else. If he could accept her and her faulty womb, she should be able to accept his lack of communication skills.
But could he accept her faulty womb? That was the big question.
“Let’s go home.”
She didn’t argue, she just watched him descend the ladder and allowed him to catch her when she jumped down.
Slipping into her old skin was a whole lot easier than continuously growing new layers.
He drove her home, leaving her car in the lot. Good thing, probably, since she couldn’t feel her feet.
When they got home, he drew her a warm bath, poured some soothing bath salts in, and undressed her so she could get in.
She was emotionally dead, but every time his fingers brushed against her skin, she became a little more alive.
He didn’t try anything sexually, though. He stayed fully clothed, brought her tea in the tub, and offered her a book.
She shook her head, hungry for him to touch her. To make things better.
He knelt beside the tub. “I’ll wash your hair.”
She watched him as he lathered her wet locks, massaging her head as he worked the shampoo into her scalp. His expression remained stoic, but a hint of redness colored his cheeks and the tips of his ears, giving away his arousal.
He didn’t try to touch her body.
After conditioning and rinsing her hair thoroughly, he held up a towel for her to step into. She did. Wordlessly.
She couldn’t stop watching him.
After wrapping her in the towel, he bent to dry her legs and the tops of her feet. The towel he used grazed the juncture between her legs, but he didn’t capitalize on the thrill he gave her.
Once she was done dripping, he took her hand and brought her to the bedroom. She slipped between the sheets with her nude and rapidly-chilling body while he turned to get pajamas for her from the drawer.
She shook her head at the offer.
He visibly gulped.
Moments later, he stripped down to his boxers and climbed into the bed beside her.
He gathered her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.
“You’ve always taken such good care of me,” she murmured as she kissed his bare chest.
“We’ve always taken such good care of each other,” he returned, stopping her hand from drifting over the ridges of his muscular belly. “Remember how we stayed in bed for days after the first, you know.”
Miscarriage. After the first miscarriage.
She needed him to say the words.
His arm muscle tightened beneath her.
He cleared his throat and said, “After the first loss.”
Close enough! She closed her eyes, relief nearly crippling her.
“I remember,” she said, resting her hand on the front of his shoulder.
“I thought that was just a fluke. A horrible fluke. And that the next time would go easier.”
“I did, too.” Her voice had taken on a quiet, almost childlike sound. Sort of eerie to her own ears.
“You were so sad. I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“You took very good care of me, Gabe. I am forever grateful that you were the man by my side at that time.”
“I didn’t do enough. I pushed you into trying again so soon.”
“I wanted to! More than anything!”
“I thought it was the right thing to do. I was wrong.”
“No.” A tear wriggled itself free from each of her tightly closed eyes. “You weren’t wrong.”
“I should have given you more time to heal. I treated you like a brood mare. Like it was a mission to have a child as soon as humanly possible. I thought,” he paused, swallowing hard. “I thought that if I gave you a baby, the sadness would leave your eyes.”
“Oh, Gabe.” She kissed his chest and clutched his arm. She hugged his legs with the leg she had slipped over him.
“I never asked you how you were feeling about it all because I didn’t think I could handle it.”
She heard tears in his voice, and though the devastation in his tone carved a hole in her very soul, it also helped to fill some of the empty spots his silence had drilled.
He was talking about it.
Because she wanted him to.
He tightened his hold on her and pulled her painfully close to him. She didn’t complain—the pain was a welcome distraction and a healthy reminder that she was part of his equation.
“I’m sorry I left,” she murmured, unable to find any strength to lend her voice. “I wanted to make you happy.”
His heart pounded against her ear, but every other muscle she could feel stilled.
Maybe now wasn’t the right time.
But since the floodgate had been opened, she couldn’t dam it up now.
“Gabe, I know I came back to ask for your forgiveness, but if you can’t—” She paused to hiccup. “I know it’s unfair of me to ask you to give up your dreams. For me.”
She sniffed and fought the stupid tears again. Where was the strength she had worked so hard to build? Why was she being such a crying weakling?
“What are you talking about? You are my dream, Kenz.”
Why the hell did he have to be so perfect?
She knew he was lying to help her feel better. He could never stand her tears. He had always thought it was his job to protect her from anything that would bring on tears. That’s why she had vowed not to let them loose, but in spite of herself, she couldn’t ebb the flow.
“You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
He sounded offended.
“Remember how you rescued me from those bullies when I was in tenth grade?”
He grunted a response. “I still think I should have kicked their asses.”
“No, the way you humiliated them was way more effective. Did you know that the ringleader actually apologized to me in English class later that day?”
She looked up to see him smiling a knowing smile.
“Did you make him?” She gasped at this newfound knowledge. “All this time I thought it was his idea.”
“Oh, it was.”
“I don’t even want to know,” she joked. Then, turning serious again, “I vowed that I would do anything to repay you for your kindness. I thought we’d be best friends, but you gave me so much more than that.”
“Kenz—”
Her throat clogged up again, but she struggled to get the words out before it closed entirely.
“And though I wanted to, I couldn’t give you the one thing a woman is meant to give.”
“Kenz—”
“It kills me. It kills me that I can’t carry your child, Gabe. Aside from you, I have never wanted anything more.”
He held her as sobs tore through her. Her body shuddered in his arms, but he held her with all his might.
The storm of her emotions blew out to sea as quickly as it came, but she still hadn’t found peace.
She took a deep breath and filled in the silence. “I can’t think of anything that would be more beautiful than seeing a baby—our baby. Our baby made with pieces of you and pieces of me. Our baby with our mingled blood. To play the game of ‘whose features will they have?’ To wonder whose temperament they’d end up with. Wouldn’t that be such a magical thing to experience, Gabe?”
He didn’t say anything. She was dying to know what he was thinking.
“I don’t want to put you through a lifetime of people asking when we’re going to get around to having kids. To making our family complete. Don’t they know how hard we were trying? Don’t they know how those questions hurt?”
“It’s none of their business, Kenzie.”
“But that doesn’t stop them. And, damn. It hurts.”
“We’ll find a way. Miracles can happen. They happen to people all the time when they think they can’t have kids.”
“But that’s the thing, Gabe. Every month when my period starts it kills another part of me. When I was away, the feeling dimmed because I knew there was no chance that I was pregnant. But now I don’t know if I can live through that sign of my failure every single month. I don’t know if I can do it, Gabe.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“Gabe, I need you to hear me. I can’t do it. I can’t even try anymore. I can’t lose another baby. The first three miscarriages were awful. But then getting so close with Ariana and then losing her? I can’t go through that again. I just can’t.”
“Okay.” He kissed her head, then lifted her chin so he could kiss her face. “Okay.”
“I still have the tiny stretch marks that were just starting to appear. They’re barely noticeable, but I notice them. And while most women dread the marks, I wish they were more pronounced, because they are the only proof that I was almost a mom.”
“Love, don’t do this.”
“Can you honestly say you’d be okay with never having a child of your own, Gabe? You’ve built your entire world around the idea of having a family. Sometimes I think you wanted a baby even more than I did. Is it fair of me to expect you to give that up?”
He didn’t answer.
She didn’t want to force him to say something he didn’t mean, so she waited. And waited. And fell asleep waiting.
And that silence was probably what she needed to know.
***
Gabe didn’t sleep at all that night. His arms were cramped and his soul felt heavy, but he couldn’t release the love of his life from his arms.
How had they ended up here?
She was right. He wanted children with her.
But she was wrong if she thought he couldn’t look past blood and DNA to imagine raising a family.
He wasn’t good with words. She wanted to hear things from him, but he had no idea how to express his thoughts without somehow insulting her or making her feel worse.
By the time he had thought of what to say, she was sound asleep.
Valentine’s Day was only a few days away. He’d plan something special for her. And then he’d pour out his heart. The way she needed him to.
And things would be perfect.
Life would be back on track.
The next morning they both woke up late, so they rushed around in chaos to get to the shop on time.
Crisis after crisis at work arose, so they had no time to chat over the days that followed. They were both exhausted at the end of each day; especially on the nights she pulled those extra shifts. He didn’t dare to express any concern about her other job, though, as that particular tactic hadn’t gone over well last time.
And though she looked at him and smiled each time they had a moment together, and though they kissed goodnight each night and good morning each morning, he knew things weren’t yet resolved.
But he’d do his damnedest to make sure she was happy.