Page 3 of Between Our Hearts

Sadie rolled her shoulders uncomfortably. “Yuck. You had to middle-name me?”

Parker’s grin only widened. Early in the relationship, Sadie had revealed over too much gin that she hated her name. Well . . . she’d always liked her last name and had come to grips with her first, butLove? What kind of person gave their child a name like that?

Her mother, that’s who.

The woman who, after three strapping boys, had been pleased as punch that she’d finally gotten her southern doll to dress up. Except Sadie had never fit the mold her mother had tried to shove her into. She’d always preferred scrounging in the mud with her brothers, bringing home toads in pencil boxes, and wearing pants to the frilly, poofy things her mother insisted she wear.

Also, she’d never been small, never been ladylike. She was curvy instead of thin, assertive instead of demure, and her shock of auburn hair always announced her entrance to a room. Her mother didn’t hide the fact that she felt Sadie was a grave disappointment.

In her stronger moments, Sadie would tout that she didn’t care. But no matter how strong you are, your parents’ opinions matter. Fortunately, her father had been her champion from the first time she’d doggedly held her ground as a pint-sized toddler, always calling her “my girl” with affection. Enduring her mother’s criticism had been so much harder in the six years since her father had died of a massive myocardial infarction.

“How are you and Clark?” Parker asked, rotating her lifted glass in a circle.

As Sadie tried to sort out an answer to that weighted question, her mind snagged on the fact thatLovewas also Clark’s pet name for her. But his use of it was the only time it felt right. The first time it’d dropped from his lips—before he’d evenknownher middle name—vibration had zinged down her spine and settled heavily in her quads. A month later, when he’d discovered her full legal name, he’d only chucked that breathless laugh of his and whispered “perfect” into the crook of her neck.

Absentmindedly, the back of her index finger traced the space that lit with awareness from her memory.

“That good, huh?” Parker’s voice and eyes were gentle.

Her hand dropped as a crumbling sigh left her body. “This whole thing”—she roughly waved over her flat belly under her slacks—“is hard on us.”

It’s hard on me.

Since their friendship was built on a mutual understanding of female strength in the face of adversity and a love of fixing broken people, talking about their feelings wasn’t part of the zeitgeist. Addressing emotion in general wasn’t one of Sadie’s strong suits, and therefore she tended to avoid it all together.

Parker nodded silently while taking a sip from her drink. Sadie hadn’t touched hers yet, and condensation started to pool around the base. To give her hands something to do, she plucked the limes from their space bobbing in the clear bubbles and squeezed each wedge in half.

“I’d offer advice but it’s out of my realm, and I wouldn’t want to assume.” Parker fingered the intricate fern leaves wrapping her collarbones.

“And I appreciate that.” Her gaze lifted to her friend’s. “I just don’t feel like talking about it tonight.”

Or ever.

Parker’s chin dipped sharply once. “I had a twenty-year-old with sixteen GSWs last week.”

Sadie felt her shoulders relax before she brought her drink to her lips.

?Chapter 2?

Clark plucked another succession of strings with his fingertips, nearly failing to move his hand over the neck of the hand-me-down guitar at the appropriate times. Propped against a low bookshelf, a tablet continued with the chords of the song he was supposed to be playing. But his hands froze as he listened to the low rumble of the garage sounding from the other side of the house.

Almost immediately, his heart ran in two opposing directions. It clenched with the desire to see his beautiful wife, to spend time with her, to be close to her, but at the same time, it ached with trepidation of what would instead be his reality—terse conversation and her avoidance.

Clark let out a deep nasally breath as he leaned the guitar against the wall. Picking up the warm wooden instrument from a secondhand booth at the Northwood Farmer’s Market a few months ago had been an impulsive purchase. In their small eclectic town outside Durham, the market had been a mainstay even before he’d begun taking their two-and-a-half year old daughter, Lottie, when Sundays stopped being family days.

This evening, he’d stumbled over the chords that his learn-to-play-guitar app had displayed for him to follow. At least when he was faltering over trying to coordinate his fingers to work in a way to produce sound in an appealing manner, his mind wasn’t dwelling on the fact that his life was falling apart. Lately, it had almost been a game to keep at bay the deep ache that twisted at the base of his chest.

Wake up and ignore the fact that even though Sadie’s calendar said her first surgery was at nine, she’d already left the house by seven.

Halfway through the increasingly rare family day at home, saying “Sure, love” when she claimed she needed to go to her office on the hospital campus to finish charting and emails, though she’d always done it from home before.

Lay down for sleep and fight the raging desire to simply hold her between his arms and whisper “I love you” into the crook of her neck, and instead toss a resigned “Goodnight” over the distance she’d created by facing away, clinging to the edge of the bed.

Often, he spent his solitary evenings reading webpages about how to support your wife through recurrent miscarriage instead of his usual stack of non-fiction books. But it was a rare moment when anything he said or did seemed to make a difference. He was walking through a minefield and never knew what action or word would set off an emotional explosion, further damaging their threadbare relationship.

And the unfair thing about it was that all he wanted to do was to walkwithSadie—to hold her hand and face this together, but after the first loss, she’d closed herself off, and these days, it was impossible to reach her.

The sound of cabinets opening and closing and the pouring of cereal into a bowl reached Clark’s ears before he turned the corner to their kitchen. His lip reflexively quirked at the corner. When they’d first met, he’d been surprised to learn that she often subsisted on cereal. Whenever they’d spend time together, he’d be sure to feed her, but even after coming home from a delicious meal, she’d sometimes pour herself a bowl of cereal for dessert. It had been a topic he’d tease her about, and the opportunity to do so now sent effervescence searing through his veins.

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