Provocative (Tempting Book 3) (6 page)

A
fter I eased
my car to a stop on the closest drive to Diana’s grave, I took a second to collect myself. I hadn’t been out here in over a year, mainly because it was just too fucking hard to stand over a patch of cold dirt and reconcile the fact that the smiling, beautiful woman who had been my wife was now a rotting skeleton six feet beneath me.

But it felt different today. More like I was respecting Diana and her role in my life enough to come tell her about this. Not like I believed she could hear me. At least, I didn’t think I did. But if there was a heaven, Diana was the kind of person who’d be there. And if she was there, I’d just choose to believe that she could hear me when I spoke to her, with the space above her grave acting like my own confessional booth.

Walking over the still-green grass and passing headstones in all shapes and sizes, I squinted up into the unmarred, crystal blue sky before I came to a stop at the one I was looking for. After seeing far too many choices in the days after Diana was killed, I’d decided on a simple black marble stone that laid flush with the ground.

I crouched onto the balls of my feet after laying the flowers down, and swept away some dead grass that covered the letters of her name.

“I know I haven’t been here in a long time,” I said quietly, sitting back in the warm grass. “I’m sorry for that. Even before Adele, I didn’t come here much. That’s who I wanted to tell you about. Adele.”

I shook my head and stared at the line of maple trees that lined the main drive. The colors had fully changed by now, the vibrant reds and purples of the leaves almost feeling too celebratory for such a quiet, hallowed place.

“It’s not like you and I ever had a conversation about what we’d want for each other. If you’d been sick, I have no doubt you would have demanded that I not stay alone for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I would have been selfless enough to do the same.” With my arms resting on the tops of my knees, I looked up at the sky again. There was one errant, wispy cloud overhead. Just that one blemish in the sky.

“So I hope that you know, somehow, that I’m happy. I never thought I would be again, Diana. That’s not me trying to be a martyr, I swear. I just loved you
so much
that it was unfathomable that anyone could touch that place inside of me.” My throat tightened into an iron ball and I took a few minutes to let it loosen. “But Adele did. It’s not the same with her, because she’s so different than you. God, Diana, she’s so different.” I laughed, imagining them meeting. “I think you’d like her. She’s so fearless. Almost savage sometimes, but I think you’d admire that about her. But I don’t know if she’d have liked you. You probably would have intimidated her with your niceness and your overwhelming kindness toward every person that you met.”

Pulling in a deep breath, I blinked through a memory of Diana giving our leftovers to a homeless man we’d passed on the street. A car traveled down the main drive of the cemetery and kept going. It was just me and the ghost of my wife, I guess.

“Adele came out of nowhere. And maybe that’s why she’s so deep inside me, because I wasn’t expecting it. She pushes me in a way that you never did. She challenges everything I thought I knew or wanted, and sometimes it feels like walking a tightrope because it’s so fucking exhilarating. She just … she was this roaring explosion in my life. And it was a dark life before she came into it.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to make sure it wasn’t Adele, but it was Elias. I rolled my eyes and put my phone away before even reading his reply.

“Your brother is still a jackass. It shouldn’t surprise me that he’s interrupting me right now. I haven’t seen him much, but it’s like he senses when I’m happy and goes out of his way to try to kill it.” I lifted my chin so I could feel the afternoon sun on my face before it fell behind the tree line. Stretching my legs out in front of me, I shook my head. “I guess I shouldn’t complain about him to you, huh? Sorry. Plus, it’s not why I came. None of this is about him.”

It was surreal how nervous I felt saying this out loud. To a dead body who couldn’t hear a damn word I was saying. But if I suspended my usual theological constructs for just long enough, it felt like I was absolving myself to Diana. Confessing my happiness, almost like it was a sin that demanded penance.

“Adele’s pregnant.” The words fell from my lips and I felt a burning pressure at the bridge of my nose. Blinking rapidly, I clenched my teeth to stem the emotion. The first time I admit it out loud is to Diana’s grave stone. Fucking perfect. “And God, Diana, I’m so fucking happy. I am so happy that she’s carrying my child that I wish I could scream it to every single person I pass on the street. It almost feels wrong that I can experience this again in my life. This hope, this excitement about what’s coming next.”

My phone buzzed again with a text and I let out a rough exhale. Fucking Elias. I ignored it and plucked a blade of grass from the ground next to my legs.

“The thing I can’t reconcile is that my happiness right now is only because you died. If you were here, I don’t know whether we’d have kids yet. We probably would. But I never would have known Adele outside of being a student in one of my classes. And this baby, my baby, wouldn’t exist. And I don’t know how to not be one hundred percent happy with that. Even though it only exists because you’re gone.”

The buzzing started from my phone again and I yanked my phone out to silence it when I saw two texts from Adele, after the first one from Elias. I was about to swipe my thumb across the screen to read them when a call starting coming in from Adele.

“Hey, what’s—”

“Nathan?” Her voice was quiet and quaky. My heart thudded to a stop, my blood freezing in my veins and halting its movement through my body. “I’m bleeding. A lot.”

“Oh God, no,” I exhaled as I stood from the ground. My feet pounded on the grass as I ran to the car and I vaguely registered a sniff from Adele. My brain was fuzz and my heart was thin glass while I yanked my car door open. “Okay, honey, where are you?”

“I’m at home. Are you still at the office?”

Mother fucking shit. “No. I’m about forty-five minutes away. Maybe less.
Shit
!”

“What do I do?” God, she sounded so fucking scared. The glass splintered and I struggled to breathe. My arms started shaking while I pulled out of the cemetery. Adrenaline or fear, I couldn’t tell.

Breathe, Nathan, breathe
. “Do you think you can drive?”

“Umm, yeah. I’m not really cramping or anything, just … just bleeding.” She let out a noise that sounded like she was swallowing a sob and I wanted to die. I wanted to run myself through for not being fifteen minutes away like I would have been if I’d been at the office.

“Fuck. Okay, is Leo on campus today? Could he come get you?”

“No, umm, he’s got an away game this weekend.”

I slammed to a stop at a red light and pounded a fist on my steering wheel. “Okay, baby, I will get to Mass General as soon as I can, I promise. But I don’t think you should wait for me. Go to the emergency room, and they’ll be able to help you. You and the baby will be
fine
.”

Adele sniffed again and I blinked at the boulder behind my eyes. “Okay.”

“Drive safe, and if you feel light-headed or anything, pull over and call 9-1-1. Okay?”

“Okay. I love you.” Her voice cracked at the end and I shut my eyes for a second since I was still stopped.

“I love you too. I will be there as soon as I can.”

I tucked the phone into the console right as the light turned green. My tires squealed when I took off and I did something for the rest of my thirty-six-minute drive that I’d never done before. Not when Diana died and not in the aftermath.

I prayed.

S
now had begun to fall
. It was just a couple flakes, their descent so rapid that they obliterated the second they touched the windshield. I turned up the heat as I turned down the radio that had started playing the moment the engine came to life.

It was light, especially by New England standards, but as I drove through it to an unfamiliar place, across town from Nathan’s house, I focused on each flake that touched my windshield. Because anything was better than thinking about the puddle of blood I felt between my legs.

Just as I turned into the emergency parking area, my head felt fuzzy. The breath shuddered out of my lips and my eyelids closed nearly all the way.

“Nathan,” I whispered, putting the car in park and just resting my forehead on the steering wheel.

I was so tired—and it hit me in that moment.

My fingers curled around the warm leather of the steering wheel and I squeezed, trying to will myself to leave the car and walk into the hospital.

But fuck. I was scared, down to my marrow.

The blood that pooled in my underwear was warm, and each movement I made caused it to pool in other places.

A rush of ice cold panic hit me. I pressed a hand between my legs, touched the wet that had leaked through my yoga pants. As I pulled my hand away, my jaw trembled the word “Fuck,” but sound itself escaped me.

Nathan had purchased a handful of books. The one thing I’d read earlier that week had said that once you hear a strong heartbeat, your chances of miscarriage dropped, drastically.

I couldn’t be losing a baby
, I thought.

There’s a reason for this.

There has to be.

It’s normal.

Everything will be okay.

Somehow, I pushed myself out of the car, averting my eyes from the blood stain on the driver’s seat. The snow was still falling and I registered that it was bringing with it a certain kind of cold, a cold that didn’t seem to touch me in any deep way.

My fingers were wet with blood as I stepped into the emergency room and stared, my mind suddenly going blank.

“Miss?” someone asked.

Gray scrubs approached me, the lines of the uniform sharpening as they closed in.

“Can I help you?”

All I did was hold up my fingers and wrap my other hand over my belly. It was as if I was in a trance, my sensory input narrowed to the width of a needle. I tried to say something—but my tongue was a hundred pounds and dry.

Somehow, I found myself being gently pushed into a wheelchair. As I was pushed down the hallway, I took in the lights that flashed and dimmed above my head. I pressed a hand more firmly to my stomach, wanting to reach inside of me and hold onto the tiniest human I’d ever known.

More lights flickered and my head tipped down and blood kept leaking from my center.

I wanted Nathan.

* * *

T
he doctor treating
me was unknown. She held my hand and said a few words before a nurse came in and took a vial of my blood.

“Is there someone we can call for you?” the doctor gently asked. She still hadn’t told me what was going on.

I was finding my voice. “My boyfriend. He should be here soon.” But I had lost track of time itself since walking through the emergency room doors. How far away had he said he was?

Where was he? I thought of my phone, but didn’t pull it from my bag.

“We’re going to test your HCG levels, check your cervix, and perform an ultrasound. Is that alright with you?”

I nodded, because what else did she really expect me to say?

The nurse assisting the doctor pulled out a paper blanket.

“Undress from the waist down,” the doctor said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be back in just a moment.”

I waited until the door clicked shut before I moved. My legs were like twin rubber bands as I stood and slowly lowered my pants. I was able to somewhat ignore the dark spot until I pulled down my white panties. The red was blooming, far worse than any period I’d had in recent memory.

I had a quick, irrational thought to press a hand to myself, if only to hold in whatever was sliding out of my body. Could I staunch the bleeding? Could I prevent the loss?

When I first learned I was pregnant, I had trouble accepting it. In fact, I had walked into my first obstetrician appointment having an emotional disconnect from the pregnancy. It wasn’t until I’d heard the heartbeat—and then watched the little blob squirm around the monitor—that it felt real. And more than real, it felt … right. I was having a baby with Nathan, a man I loved above all others.

Was this my penance for not accepting it right away?

I couldn’t accept I was losing the baby, my baby—not yet. Bleeding wasn’t uncommon in pregnancy. I’d read that in more than a few books.

But as I stared at the blood soaking my panties, I wondered what I was to do with them. Fold them up, tuck them somewhere? Throw them away?

No. The thought made my stomach clench and vomit press against the back of my teeth. I couldn’t throw them away.

In the end, I folded them and wrapped them in tissues before I lay back on the examination table. I opened the paper blanket and covered myself with it as I placed my feet in the stirrups.

Where was Nathan?

The doctor knocked on the door a second later as if she had x-ray vision and sat down between my legs. Her eyes met me over the tops of my knees and she gave me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll try to make this quick, okay?”

The nurse from before joined her and after they both washed their hands and put on gloves. I felt the blood dripping from my center and soaking the sheet underneath me.

“I’m sorry,” I said absently. “The blood.”

The doctor touched my knee and squeezed. “Don’t apologize. Do you want to hold Trudy’s hand?” She gestured to the nurse.

I shook my head. “No, let’s get this over with.”

“Okay. Relax. Inhale and on your exhale, let it last a long time.”

I did as she instructed, staring at the butterfly photo on the ceiling above my head. Something cold pushed into me and I heard mumbles from the doctor to the nurse and the clank of tools on the metal table.

Less than a minute later, the doctor sat back. “We’ll be right back,” she said as she snapped off her gloves and left the room with Trudy the nurse.

My feet were still in the stirrups, the lower half of my body completely open and exposed.

I wanted Nathan. Desperately. I was holding it together, but with a very short rope.

Suddenly, as if I’d conjured him, the door pushed open and Nathan came in.

“Adele,” he said, his face ashen and his eyes flat. He immediately leaned over, pulling me up to sitting so that he could wrap his arms more fully around me. “I’m so sorry,” he said against my hair. “What did the doctor say?”

“I’m waiting for the results,” I mumbled. I let him hold me, but moving my own arms felt like too much effort. So I stayed still as his warmth surrounded me.

The door opened again and the doctor returned. After a brief introduction, she sat in her doctor’s chair and rolled close to me.

“Adele,” she sighed, and I knew. Nathan held my hand and I squeezed painfully—wishing for an answer she couldn’t give me. “I’m so sorry. Your cervix is open. This early in a pregnancy, that means miscarriage is inevitable.”

“No.” I shook my head. The word repeated, on a loop. I wasn’t sure if I was speaking it or if I was hearing it so loudly in my head that it just sounded like I was speaking it too.

Nathan’s hand in mine went limp and instantly cold, as if he’d lost the blood that was pumping through it.

“We’ll need to perform an ultrasound to see if it has happened yet, or if the fetus is still viable.”

I wanted to close my ears to the noise. Nathan was saying something, but nothing came out of my throat—nothing English, at least.

“I’m very sorry,” the doctor repeated, and she had the decency to actually look sorry. She left the room and Nathan followed her to talk in the hallway and then I was alone as the cold seeped in.

By the time I was being wheeled to the ultrasound room, Nathan had joined me but said nothing. It was as if there was a language barrier between us. His grief was an illustration on his face and swept through his body. His hands shook and his lips didn’t move. His eyes were shuttered closed and his pallor looked unhealthy.

Inside, my body was building up towers of denial, to keep me safe behind them. I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone.

And when the ultrasound technician placed the wand over my low belly, I waited to see the bouncing blob again. I waited for the blink of the heartbeat.

I waited and waited and nothing happened.

The technician was different this time and I wished for the one we had before, the bubbly one. Maybe she’d be able to find the baby and announce that this was all a mistake.

But after fifteen minutes, she found nothing.

It had just been there. Not long ago. Living inside of me.

Nothing.

The entire time, Nathan stared intently at the screen as if he could will the technician to find the magical baby that we’d seen so recently.

The next hour moved slowly, with words like “empty sac” and “d & c” and sorrys laden with hurt eyes. Nathan brought his hands to his face, shielding his eyes and mouth from me as he dragged his fingers down his cheeks.

Nathan was inches and lightyears away from me during all of it.

Did he blame me?

I did.

Snow fell outside the window, heavier now. It collected along the bottom of the window pane, causing a fog to form around the corners of the glass. I wished to reach it, to rub my finger along the cold. To see if I’d feel anything from it, because right then all I felt was a profound loss of everything.