4th October
London
“THERE we are. Baby looks a great deal different this time, yes? About the size of a banana now, and at twenty weeks, you are officially past the halfway mark. Measurements are looking to be right on target for a healthy pregnancy. Umbilical cord, perfect. Heartbeat, strong.” Dr. B narrated details about what we were seeing on screen. The magical sight of our baby moving erratically all over the place, legs and arms pushing and pulling in breathtaking clarity. I couldn’t even take my eyes away for an instant to answer the good doctor. The realism was so sharply improved since the last scan, I couldn’t believe it. I was looking at a little person in full form, with no doubt whatsoever about the humanity of what we’d created.
Brynne stared at the screen with me in utter awe, watching a little thumb pop into a tiny mouth for a suckle. Just as quickly as it was sucked on, the thumb was released. “Did you see that?” I asked.
“Oh.” Brynne laughed softly, still staring. “Sucking his thumb… Ethan, he was sucking his thumb—or she was.” She squeezed my hand, the shy excitement in her expression making her glow in a way that was new to me. She looked like…a mother.
“I know.” Moments like these showed me just how good of a mum Brynne would be. No doubts whatsoever. I rubbed my thumb into her palm.
“Ahh, yes, I can try to see if I might tell the sex of baby for you—”
“—No! I don’t want to know, Dr. Burnsley. Don’t—tell me, please.” Brynne shook her head at him. Her decision was final. Any fool could see that, and the doctor was no fool.
Dr. B shot a glance my way, and then tilted his head in question to ask if I wanted to know. I thought for an instant about saying yes, but I shook my head no instead.
“It’s fine, Ethan, if you want to know. I’ll turn away and Dr. Burnsley can look for you.”
Her quiet beauty and utter confidence in her firm decision to be surprised about the sex of our child, was compelling to me. She was so sure about how she wanted to find out. Brynne didn’t want to know until the baby was born, and that was all there was to it. Whereas I would’ve just shrugged and said, “sure, tell me.” I would know if we had a son or a daughter on the way, and that would be exciting to me. Thomas or Laurel?
“No, I’ll be surprised with you,” I told her, shaking my head at Dr. B again, giving him the negative.
Nothing but utter respect for my girl. I brought her hand up to my lips and kissed it. We shared a look but no words. None were needed.
The doc interrupted, “Right, then. Surprised it shall be for the both of you.” He printed out some pictures for us, and wiped the jelly from her rounded bump, before shutting off the machine that managed the remarkable business of taking ultrasonic pictures of our unborn baby. Good God, the man was stronger than me. There wasn’t enough brass in the goddamn world to entice me to do his job. “Well, I will tell you both this much with certainty,” Dr. B said dryly, “your baby, will be either a boy, or a girl.”
“HALFWAY to the finish line, baby.” Over our lunch at Indigo, I accepted that I was trying to do too many things at once, and failing at all of them. Checking messages on my mobile, following the football highlights reporting from the TV in the bar on the level just below us, and making conversation with Brynne. Being an arse is more like.
I set down my mobile, tuned out what the sportscaster was saying about Manchester United over Newcastle, and gave Brynne my full attention. She had that half smile she did to perfection, the quiet observation that told me she was rather amused by my lapse in manners.
“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked.
“Hmmm, just enjoying my view.” She picked up her water and took a sip, her eyes peeking over the edge of the glass. “Watching you working, thinking about Banana Blackstone, wondering when you might figure out I wasn’t answering you.”
“Sorry. I was distracted by crap that doesn’t matter very much. So the better question is, how are you feeling about what the doctor said?”
“That I need to walk instead of running?”
I nodded. Sometimes Brynne didn’t show much reaction to things. I know she heard what the doctor said about her exercising habits, but I didn’t know what she thought of it.
She shrugged at me. “I can do some walking. Besides, I have you to give me plenty of exercise to make up for all the runs I’ll be missing. I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Her half-smile grew into a full-smile, with an added sexy little laugh at the end of it.
She wasn’t kidding about the sex, either. Pregnancy raised the libido in a lot of women, and I was really fucking grateful that my woman had a raging one right now. The doc had given his blessing, and so we were shagging pretty much like mad. And loving every minute of it. “You’ve got that right. Dr. B is my new best mate.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is that so? Typical men’s club stuff with the ‘intercourse is perfectly safe as long as you’re up for it,’” she mocked the doctor’s posh speech with a toss of her head, “with the penis-innuendo thrown in. So clever and original of Dr. Burnsley. I wonder how many times he’s dropped that line.”
“I don’t care how many times he’s said it. Giving the green light on the bang time is all that matters, baby.” I cocked a brow. “And I always am.”
“I know you are,” she whispered sexily, a slight flush spreading up her lovely neck making me want to have my mouth on her.
The look she was giving me right now… A sensual, beautiful, fleeting look, from her to me, over a finely dressed table. And I was undone—in a restaurant at midday, having lunch, wishing I could have her instead. It didn’t take any more than that with us. A look, a touch, a whispered comment, and I’d be instantly caught up in thoughts of when and where.
So I tried to change the subject back to something a bit more appropriate for public consumption. “I also liked what he said about the nosebleeds.” She had been right. Nothing to worry over, just normal side effects. “I’m sorry for overreacting.”
She lowered her head and blew me an air kiss, mouthing the words, “It’s okay.” Brynne put up with my shit with the patience of a saint. I wasn’t under any misconceptions about my rampant arseholery being wearisome a lot of the fuckin’ time. And neither was Brynne. She let me know when I was behaving like a prick, but mostly she just loved me, and soothed all my rough edges. A miracle worker. I was even doing well on tapering off with the smokes. I’d really been pushing myself to finally do it. Ending my nicotine addiction was symbolic of several things. A break with the past, a resolve to live a healthier life, and a commitment to at least two other people who needed me sticking around for another sixty years or so.
I was down to one ciggie a day now. Almost always at night, right before sleep. The symbolism of that habit was something I wished wasn’t so obvious, but anything I could do to help keep away the dreams and a flashback was useful to me.
Brynne excused herself to go to the ladies, and I returned to the scrolling ticker for football scores and messages on my mobile. It was looking like I would be heading to Switzerland for the XT Europe Winter Games in January. Normally, I jump at a job like that, but this one had some concerns. Prince Christian of Lauenburg’s qualification in the snowboarding thrilled the young prince, no doubt. His grandfather—the King of Lauenburg—not so much. Royalty was tricky, and in this situation, more so. The grandson was the sole heir. Heirs are everything to royals. If that lad got hurt, it would be my reputation shot to hell. And we couldn’t forget the threat of terrorism that gained momentum like clockwork at any high-profile international event that ran. There would be a round of veiled threats put about, I predicted. The crazies couldn’t resist the opportunity for some dependable worldwide press.
I resigned myself to making the job work out as I always did, but the spark of interest was not really there for me. As long as my traveling schedule stayed clear for February, I’d be good, I decided. Baby wasn’t due until the end of the month, but I wouldn’t take the chance of being out of the country when it was Brynne’s time. I felt my stomach tighten at the thought. If I was honest, I was fucking terrified about the birth. Hospitals, doctors, blood, pain, Brynne suffering, baby struggling. There were a motherfucking myriad of things that could go wrong.
A text from Neil alerted me that something required my immediate and undivided attention. We had synchronized alert ringtones for emergencies. I read his text.
And felt my blood run cold.
The news ticker on the TV had switched off sports and over to politics.
No. Oh, fuck no.
THE look on Ethan’s face when I returned from the bathroom, told me something was very wrong. I followed Ethan’s eyes to the TV and felt my knees go weak when I saw his face. I listened to what the reporter said about him. I read his name in letters across the screen.
Seven years was a long time.
It had been seven years since I’d looked at his face. More than seven years, actually. I would be lying if I said I’d never thought about him over the course of that time. Of course I thought about him sometimes. Things like, “How could you do that to me?” Or, “Did you hate me that much?” Or, the very best one of all, “Did you know I tried to kill myself over what you did to me?”
The reporter told the whole story for me with perfect, efficient words that I didn’t want to hear, or be faced with having to comprehend.
Second Lieutenant, Lance Oakley, was one of the critically injured yesterday, when outside the Interior Ministry headquarters in Baghdad, a bomb killed five people and wounded eight more, in what is believed to be a terrorist incident. The bombing came at morning, just as workers were arriving for their day at a block of government buildings, where he was stationed as one of the few remaining US troops working in an ambassadorial capacity on the ground in that country. No terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the attack as of yet, but that is expected to change due to the nature of Lieutenant Oakley’s connection to the inner circle of US politics at the highest levels. Lieutenant Oakley is the only son of United States Senator, Lucas Oakley, Vice Presidential candidate alongside Benjamin Colt, in the upcoming US elections held in early November, every four years. Colt’s campaign bid for highest office in the United States has been rife with tragedy since its beginning. The death of Peter Woodson, US Congressman, in early April in a fatal plane crash, led to Oakley being vetted as a replacement for Woodson. The Senator is said to be enroute to see his son, who is receiving care at Lord Guildford Hospital in London. Lieutenant Oakley, and the other wounded, were airlifted out of Baghdad to the UK for specialist care and rehabilitation. There are reports that Lieutenant Oakley’s injuries have necessitated the amputation of part of his right leg, below the knee. The news agencies are flooding officials here at Lord Guildford for any information on the status of Lieutenant Oakley. Political analysts are already weighing in, considering the effect this will have on the outcome of the presidential election in the US in less than one month. Reporting live for CNN in London…
ETHAN took us straight to the flat from our lunch at Indigo. Both of us quiet on the ride home. I wondered what he thought about the whole thing, but I didn’t really want to discuss it with him. He read me well. He didn’t ask any questions or make any demands. My man just took me home and let me be.
This was Dr. Roswell territory for sure.
Ethan was working in his office when my phone rang. I knew who it was before I ever checked. “Hello, Mom.”
“Sweetheart, did you see the news about Lance?”
“Yes.”
“And how are you feeling about it?”
I took a very deep breath and was very grateful that my mother lived in San Francisco and we were separated by an ocean, because I quickly figured out where this conversation was heading, and I didn’t like it. “I’m feeling like I don’t want to hear his name, or see his picture, or hear about his father running for Vice President, or knowing that it will be everywhere in the news—”
“—Brynne, listen to me. Senator Oakley will want you to go and visit Lance in a show of support and ties to your friendship, and since you live in London I think you should consider—”
“No! There is no way in hell, Mom! Have you lost your mind?”
Silence. I could picture her lips pursing in measured frustration with me.
“No, Brynne, I have not lost my mind. I am thinking of you and trying to make you see that for the good of your happiness and future peace of mind you should go and make a visit to an old family friend.”
“How can you ask that of me, Mother? You want me to go visit the man who hurt me and made a video that nearly destroyed me? You want me to do this? Why? Because his dad is running for Vice President and it will look great for our family to be connected to his family? Is that…why?” It hurt me to ask the question, but I had to know. I hoped she could tell me if it was true. I doubted it, though. The tears I wanted to cry didn’t come. Instead my heart hardened a little more toward the woman who’d given me life. She claimed to love me, but I didn’t believe it anymore.
“No, Brynne. I’m only thinking of you and worried that distancing yourself from this opportunity to let go of the past…is a mistake.”
“Let the past go?” Now, this was what you call being blindsided right there. Just bashed to hell, with no warning, whatsoever, of the impending hit about to rip you in two. I found myself reeling in pain and shock, in total suspended disbelief, before I managed to find my voice again. “How could that be, Mom? You—you think I should go visit him in the hospital and pretend he didn’t rape me, and let his friends abuse me on that pool table? I—I should forgive him?”
“I do, sweetheart. Let the past go, and you can move on with your life. It’s not helping you to hold onto it.”
Now the tears were coming.
My mother couldn’t love me. There was no way she did. I had to suck in a gasping breath at the sharp pain that pierced my heart.
“No, Mom.” My voiced cracked as I spoke, but the words were true, and she would understand my meaning. “I wish Daddy was here to help me. He loved me. Dad loved me. You know how I know that, Mom? Because he would never ask me to do what you just asked of me!”
I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I hung up on her instead and resisted the urge to throw my phone against the wall. As I stood in our bedroom, I was unable to do much more than breathe in and out steadily. I felt curiously numb, and strong.
This would be true if there weren’t tears streaming down my face.
The muscled arms of my husband came around me from behind and pulled me into his body. I brought my hands up to hold onto his arms and…just lost it.
“Ethan—she—she said I should go and v-visit Lance and f-forgive him…” The flooding tears had wet my face to the point where I couldn’t even see. “She—she thinks that it will help me to let go of my bad experi—”
“Shh, hush.” He turned me around and held me against his chest, the welcome scent of him enveloping my senses, and so very comforting to me in my wretched state. “I know,” he crooned. “I overheard some of what you said. You don’t have to go anywhere, baby. You don’t have to see anyone that you don’t want to see. Or speak to anyone you don’t want to speak to.”
“I—I can’t believe she asked me to do th-that…I miss my dad…” I trailed off, my blubbering gaining momentum with every new tear that leaked out of me, until Ethan took over the unpleasant task of trying to settle me down.
“To bed you go. This is not good for you or our child, and you’re lying down now.” He led me over to our bed and sat me on the side of it. He bent down to take off my shoes, working silently but efficiently, maneuvering me into bed in under a minute. He loomed over me, bringing his face very close. “You can tell me everything if you like, but I want you off your feet and resting when you do. You’re exhausted and upset, and that’s just fucking wrong.” His actions were gentle, but the tone of his voice was anything but. He was also sporting a frown that showed me just how angry he was about the situation. And at my mother. The two of them had absolutely no chance of ever being friends. I scoffed inwardly. Don’t kid yourself. You’re not even friends with her.
After bringing me a cool washcloth to clean my face, and a glass of water, he joined me in bed. Keeping very quiet, Ethan comforted me, spooning his big body behind mine, petting my hair over and over, and listened to me replay the conversation with my mother in all its garish detail.
When I was finally finished, he asked me a question. His tone changing from one of comfort and gentleness to one much firmer and serious. “Brynne, have you ever told your mother about what happened with Karl Westman?”
“No, you said never to speak about him to anyone.”
“And you’ve told her nothing?”
“No, Ethan, not one word. I never even mentioned him to Dr. Roswell.”
“Good. That’s good.” He continued to rub my head and trail fingers through my hair for a minute before he said, “Baby, I know this is hard to bring up, and to think about, but nobody can ever know about what happened with Westman the night he took you. Never. You have to take that experience and just put it away into a part of your mind as if it never happened.”
“I-I know. Because they killed him, didn’t they? Senator Oakley’s people had Karl killed because he was trying to blackmail them and holding the video as collateral over them, right?”
He kept rubbing my head with his strong fingers massaging my scalp through my hair. It felt divine, and was in such contrast to the unpleasant topic we were discussing. “I think that’s very close to what happened, although there’ll never be any proof or evidence to show it. His body will never be found. Westman has been wiped off the face of the earth.”
I nodded. I couldn’t really express my feelings, but I got it. Ethan’s choice of words hit me right in the heart. Wiped off the face of the earth. Because that’s what had happened to my dad. Gone. No longer here for me. No more hearing the love for me in his voice when we talked.
And the reason he was gone, all went back to something I had allowed to happen years ago. Consequences of my actions. Lance was in there too, yes, but it was my decision that made his evil deeds possible. I went to the party. I got drunk and didn’t respect my body. I was used and abused, and let the experience take me over to the point I was willing to just go out of this life. Pathetic. But in the end, it was my father’s life that was sacrificed.
“What are you thinking?” he asked me in a soft voice, for the second time today.
“About how I miss my dad,” I blurted, my emotions so raw I felt another crying jag coming on strong.
“Baby…” Ethan put his hand on my belly and started rubbing. The gesture was very sweet but it just made me long for my dad even more.
The words started tumbling out of me and I couldn’t stop them. “Today we went to the doctors and saw pictures of our baby. If Daddy was still here I would have shared with him, and he would have wanted to listen…and be excited about being a grandpa. I would have shown him the pictures—he would have wanted to know how I was feeling—I just miss him so much…” I paused for a breath. “I can’t talk to him now, and I can’t talk to my mother, either. I have nobody… I feel like an orphan—” I finally broke, silently this time, but no less emotionally painful, in sharing my grief about something that would hurt for a very long time.
Ethan felt my silent sobbing shudders, but his response was simply to hold me a little tighter, showing me that even with my great loss, I still had him. The rubbing on my belly must have gotten a little stronger too, because that’s when it happened.
A fluttery little tickle from inside my womb. A brush alongside the front of my belly that reminded me of the beat of butterfly wings. I froze, and covered over Ethan’s hand with my own, pressing on the spot where I’d felt it.
“What?” he asked worriedly. “Are you hurting—”
“I felt our baby. Moving around inside me. Like butterfly wings flapping.” Like a message from an angel.
He kept his hand on me, probably hoping he could feel what I was feeling but I doubted it was possible quite yet. As we lay in bed together worrying about bad things that couldn’t be changed, I realized something very important. I would never make it through this without Ethan. His strength pulled me through the hard parts.
Ethan never let me give up.
The words that came out of his mouth next, showed me just how much I had been blessed when he’d found me, regardless of my losses.
“I love you,” he lulled at my ear, “and this little person loves you…so much.” He splayed his fingers wide, swirling them over my stomach in a show of affectionate possession when he told me the last part. “He’s there watching. Your father. He loves you from another place now, but his love is still there, Brynne, and it always will be.”
OAKLEY didn’t waste even a day in reaching out. I’d thought a few days before the request came through. But, no, I suppose not. The Senator didn’t have much in the way of time to work with. The US election was less than a month away, and time stopped for no man. I’d played out the scenario in my mind as soon as I saw the news report in the restaurant at lunch. That cocksucker was going to use his son’s war injury to propel his running mate into the presidential seat. And it was going to work.
The call came through on my mobile while I was smoking my one cig for the night.
“Blackstone.”
“Yeah. What do you want?”
“I want insurance that puts the past to rest once and for all.”
“Of course you want insurance. We all want it. How do you propose for that to happen, Senator?” I dreaded whatever he might suggest. Probably because I had an inkling for what it might be. The earlier call from Brynne’s mum was a good fucking clue.
“A simple showing of support to an old family friend should do it. Hospital visit. Media will be taken care of.”
Bingo. I cringed at the idea. “My wife will never agree,” I told him, picturing how I’d left her in bed after crying herself to sleep. Drained and exhausted, and very emotional from the argument with her mother. That insensitive bitch had stretched my patience to its last reserve today. What sort of fucking cow thinks so little of her daughter’s emotional and physical welfare? And now this arsehole. I stubbed out my ciggie and lit another.
“Make her agree, Blackstone.”
“I know you care for nothing but the success of your campaign, Senator, not even what’s happened to your son, but I don’t give a maiden queen’s first fuck about your politics, or your rapist son.”
I’d give Oakley points for laying it all out on the line. He wasted nothing on words. Just went straight to the issue in that tonal American accent of his that seemed almost devoid of humanity. “Don’t you think it’s better to be a couple of indiscreet teenagers who had a lapse in judgment years ago, and who’ve put it firmly behind them, than to worry about extortion should their shameful secret be brought to light? If they are still friends, then no crime ever occurred. Simple insurance, Blackstone. I think you should care very much.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Oakley’s “insurance” scheme was really very clever. But the cleverness of it wouldn’t help Brynne. It would hurt her. “I care about the welfare of my pregnant wife, who was made ill tonight by this whole shitstorm blowing up in media. And that, Senator, is not going to help you one iota. I can’t make her go and see him. She won’t do it.”
He responded with, “Within the week, please,” and cut the line. Fucking bastard. I stared at my mobile, sure the number he’d called from was already deactivated. The tingle of fear scratched its way down my spine. I lit another Djarum and filled my lungs. I didn’t know how to fix this problem, and it had grown exponentially in a matter of hours. The US presidential election was propelling this one. How in the goddamn shitting hell did one fight that monstrous beast?
So I got up and left my office. I went to sit outside on the balcony, where I started smoking in earnest. One Djarum after the other, until I was high from the pumping nicotine and spice that fueled the addiction I couldn’t deny.
The smoke drifted away on the cool nighttime breeze in lazy, wafting swirls. I had a flash of longing that my problems could magically do the same. Wishful thinking. Real life never worked that way. My hand was being forced in this. Sometimes my experience with poker was a curse…because I knew the odds here. I could see when folding was the only option.
It wouldn’t help Brynne to bring her into Oakley’s circle, but I feared it was already too late for that. My poor girl was going to be hurt.
