Never Giving Up (Never #3) (17 page)

“Oh, hush. You’re fine.” We took a few more slow and hesitant steps and then we stopped. “Ok, just keep your eyes covered for one more minute.” I sighed and kept my hands over my eyes. I heard her moving around the room and then she said, with much excitement, “Ok! Open your eyes!”

I blinked away the darkness and my eyes roamed around the room. The first thing I noticed were the hundreds of tiny, sparkling stars hanging from the ceiling throughout the great room. My eyes landed on the banquet table pressed against the far wall and I was taken aback by the three tiered cake sitting in the middle. Each layer was made to look like clouds against a dark sky with more stars adorning it. On top of the cake was a bigger star wrapped in a blanket, laying on a pillow, sleeping on a cloud.

Hanging above the table was a banner that read, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, We Can’t Wait to Find Out Who You Are.” The theme was obviously stars and clouds, and it was so beautiful.

“Megs, this is incredible,” I said quietly, still trying to take it all in.

“Your sister worked very hard on this for you,” my mom said from behind me. I turned and smiled at her.

“I can tell.” I walked to Megan and wrapped her in a hug. “Thanks, Megan.”

“Anything for you, Fella, and my future niece or nephew,” she said, gently rubbing my belly, which was, honestly, getting a little out of control. She pulled away and ran off to put some finishing touches on something. I pulled out my cell phone to send a picture to Porter. Within half a minute he replied.

Wow. Looks like Megan missed her calling as a party planner.

Right? It’s so beautiful. It’ll all be torn apart by the time you guys are done golfing, so you won’t get to see it in all its glory.

Trust me, I’d rather be there with you than golfing. I hate golfing.

Why did you agree to go? I’m sure Patrick would have found something to do that you enjoyed had you told him.

It’s fine. Patrick likes golfing. Maybe he can teach me how to not suck at it.

Well, you have fun walking around in the sun all afternoon. I’m just going to sit here, open presents, and eat cookies and cake and get even more fat.

Ella, love, eat as much as you’d like. I like all the extra Ella I’ve been able to grab ahold of lately.

I smiled. Even through a text he could still make my blood run quickly. He had been enjoying my new, rounder, lusher body. And I’d been enjoying his enthusiasm for me.

Hmmm. I will, but not for your benefit. Love you. Have fun.

Love you too.

“Is that Porter?” Megan said as she walked past me with a platter of deviled eggs.

“Yeah. He just told me he doesn’t even like golfing. He’s so funny sometimes.” I shook my head, making a mental reminder to tell him how silly the whole thing was.

“Well, they’re probably drinking too, so that should help. But honestly, if he would have told Patrick, he would have come up with another idea.”

“I know,” I waved her worry away. “I think sometimes Porter is so used to just making other people happy, he goes with the flow. It can be really attractive sometimes, to have someone who just wants what you want. But sometimes, it’s like, Porter, what do
you
want? Ya know?” Megan nodded and walked back into the kitchen as my mother came to sit next to me on the couch.

“Any new developments on the case?” My mother wore her worried eyes. Everyone in my family was worried, and I understood that, but I hated that they looked at me like I was going to break open at any moment. Granted, I had a history of falling into deep bouts of darkness, but I felt stronger in the last few weeks.

“Not much has changed. He can’t make bail, so he is waiting for trial in jail, thank God.”

“And he’s still pleading not guilty?” I nodded.

Jason Ramie pled not guilty to the charge of attempted aggravated murder and so the process became so much more than I had ever imagined. We were headed for a jury trial. All our lawyers and Detective Dillard told us it was a slam dunk case. With the testimony of the person who gave the police his identity, the surveillance video at Poppy, and the new forensic evidence that matched the bullet found at the scene to a gun Ramie had in his possession at his arrest; all signs pointed to guilty. The most damning piece of evidence they had, of course, was me.

Porter argued for hours with our lawyer, telling him that there was no way in hell I was getting up on the stand and testifying. He was convinced that I had been through enough and that they didn’t need my testimony. The lawyer, bless his heart, listened to Porter, but never wavered. The case was
good
on its own, but with me it was golden. I let Porter assert himself, let him rant and rave, and do his best to keep me safe, but eventually I told them both that I would do, gladly, anything that helped put Jason Ramie behind bars.

That evening I was so worried about Porter. I’d never seen him so uptight. He was angry with me and I didn’t know how to make him understand.

“Porter, please, talk to me.” He banged things around in his workshop in Lincoln City, moving things from one spot to another, tossing things, ripping up papers from his desk.

“I can’t talk to you right now.” Those words hurt. He never denied me anything, especially not himself. My air was stuck in my throat. Everything in my body seized up.

“Please,” I squeaked. His face turned towards me, but he was still all the way on the other side of the shop.

“I won’t sit by and watch you torture yourself, Ella. I won’t sit in that courtroom and watch you relive all the terror you’ve experienced in the last year. They don’t need you to win this thing. You’re volunteering to be torn apart, and I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and let it happen.” His chest moved up and down, labored by his heaving breaths. I’d never seen him this angry before. We’d had arguments, of course, but he’d never been upset with me.

“That’s not how I see it,” I whispered. His eyes shot over to me. “I just want to help. I can help end this. I can do it.”

“No one is questioning whether or not you’re capable, Ella! Not one person cares if you can pull it off. I know you can. I know you’ll sit on that stand and you’ll tell them everything. You’ll give them every tiny detail you can remember, shredding yourself for him, again. You’ll let him take another piece of you and no one but me seems to care what effect it will have on you, or on me. I’ll be forced to watch you fall apart, again, and just be reminded that I failed you.” His voice broke and his head fell forward, hiding his face from me.

“Porter, no,” I whispered, my voice breaking, my head shaking back and forth. “Please, don’t think that way.”

“I can’t help it. I’ve tried for a year now to bury the voice in my head that tells me everything could have been avoided if I’d found a way to protect you, but all I’m left with are the images of you laying in that hospital bed, or you sitting on that porch with blood covering you . . .” He ran his hands through his hair and huffed out angry breaths. “You’ve been through enough and if I can keep you from having to relive it, I swear to God, Ella, I will.”

I slowly took a step towards him, trying to gauge how he would react to me. He didn’t move away, so I took another step towards him.

“I’m not going to try and convince you that I’m fine, because I’m not. I’m changed. Altered. Different. But I’m not broken. I might have been, for a little while, but I’ve managed to put myself back together. You helped me with that, Porter. You helped me find the pieces of myself I thought I’d lost and helped me put them together again. But the same way you won’t sit by and watch me fall apart, I won’t sit by and let you blame yourself for this.”

I took another step towards him. We were just feet from each other now.

“Two very terrible men are responsible for this, not you. Not in any way is this your fault. To hear you tell me that you feel that way almost hurts worse than anything either of them did to me.” I swallowed, closing the distance between us, only inches now. “I can do this, Porter. I can walk into that courtroom and tell everyone who can hear me what that man did to me. I can do that. I
need
to do that.” I reached up and cupped his face, rubbing my thumb across his cheek. “But I need you more. I need you to be there, being strong for me, supporting me. I can’t tell you how much I need you.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” he whispered, leaning into my hand. “But sometimes, it seems like that’s not enough.”

“What do you mean?”

His hands found his hair again and I watched as his face gave away all the emotions he was feeling: angry and sad. “You’ve suffered so much, Ella, and I haven’t been able to take any of your suffering away. These men, Jason and Kyle, they’ve hurt you in ways that I can’t fix.”

“They’ve hurt us both, Porter. I hate that our relationship centers around you trying to keep the baby and me safe, or that you have to worry if I’ve got a guard with me, or if I can handle a testimony. I want us both to be happy, to be free of this dark cloud that’s been shrouding us for so long. The best and easiest way to end this, for good, is for me to testify. I want to sit in that chair and look Jason Ramie in the eye and tell him what he’s done to me. I want a jury to hear about my anxiety, the amnesia, everything that has happened because of his actions. He deserves to hear it and I deserve the opportunity to tell my side of the story.”

Porter’s hands fell to his sides and he let out a long and exasperated breath. Then he reached for me, and I felt my body relax into his chest and his lips kiss the top of my head. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.” I felt him breathe me in and his arms fell around me, cinching around my waist. “You do deserve that. I’ll support you one hundred percent.”

Porter would always support me, but his concerns about me testifying were the same concerns my whole family had, which is why my mom had the worried look across her face as she sat across the couch from me.

“You’re still going to testify?” She asked me with hopeful eyes, obviously wanting my answer to have changed since the last time we spoke about it.

“I am. If I didn’t testify and he was found innocent, there’s no way I could live with myself. He needs to pay for what he did and I will do whatever I can to make sure that happens.”

My mother nodded her head and placed a hand on my knee. “I understand, Ella. I just want you to be healthy.”

“I’ve never felt healthier,” I said with a smile, rubbing my belly. “I think I’m going to walk around for a bit until I’m forced to sit in a chair for too long.” I got up and offered to help Megan with any last minute preparations. In no time at all, guests arrived, cake was cut, and gifts were opened. Women near and dear to me spent a good hour oohing and awing over tiny little baby outfits, all of which made my heart swell just a little more with excitement about someday soon having a tiny little baby to put in all of them. I heard many complaints about the difficulty of buying gender-neutral gifts, but brushed them off knowing that everyone was just excited to meet the little baby.

When the men returned from their golfing trip, I was caught off guard by Porter’s grim expression.

“What’s the matter? Couldn’t Patrick teach you how to not suck?” I asked, running a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“The lawyer called while I was out.”

“On a Saturday?”

“Yes, on a Saturday. We pay him a lot of money so I’m ok with him working on the weekends.”

“Ok,” I muttered, completely caught off guard by his grumpiness. “What did he want?”

Porter exhaled loudly, running his hand through his hair. “The defense attorney wants you to come in for a deposition.” His eyes drifted towards the floor, not willing to make contact with mine.

“Hey,” I said gently as I hooked my finger under his chin, urging him to look at me. When his eyes found mine I smiled, hoping to bring him out of his funk just a little. “We knew this was coming. Everything is going to be ok. I promise, I can handle this.”

“It goes against every instinct I have to let you walk into a room where people are waiting to hurt you.” His eyes never left mine, but I watched them go from desperate to angry.

“They don’t have the power to hurt me, Porter. I am the one in control of the situation.” I ran my hand up and down his bicep, again, trying any trick I could think of to get his mind off of the trial. “Do you want to look at all the adorable baby things we get to take home?”

His eyes wandered to the pile of gifts that still sat next to the chair I’d occupied while opening gifts. A look of shock and surprise floated over the features of his face and I smiled because it was very seldom I got to see a surprised Porter; he was usually the one surprising me. “Where in the heck are we supposed to put all of that?”

“Looks like we might need some more storage in the nursery. It’s all gender neutral stuff, so it can easily be saved and used for the next baby. It will actually make having baby number two way easier.” My voice trailed off, as did my thoughts. I contemplated armoires and chests of drawers, weighing my options for how to best utilize the space in the nursery. I looked to Porter, about to ask him if it was too late to have built-ins installed and his face morphed again into something that resembled euphoria. A smile came over me, impossible to look at him happy and not smile, and I was curious about what brought on this sudden and turbulent mood change. “Babe, you ok? You are all over the emotional map today.”

His attention turned to me and his arm wrapped around my waist, not getting as far around me as it used to, but still doing a good job of pulling me closer to him.