Page 49 of Between Now and Always

As we walk back to the car not touching, not speaking - but with a nearly frantic need lacerating my heart, our feet are firmly back on the ground.

Something You Can’t Replace

CARTER

The tension in the car on our way home stretches. The almost kiss in the helicopter shook me up. I forgot myself. And I can’t afford to. I told Dean our story this morning when he invited me to his fancy barber shop. He warned me in no uncertain terms that I would regret it monumentally if I let things with her get out of hand.

But, I don’t know how else to be with her. She seems to be struggling, too. I wonder if she’s having second thoughts. In the veil the dark interior of the car offers, I ask her.

“You wrote me a letter on the day you left Winsome. You said, you hoped that one day, we’d find a way to be in each other’s lives. But that you weren’t ready. That was just six months ago. What’s changed?”

She shifts in her seat, clears her throat. “I started therapy. Group therapy. And all of the things I hadn’t dealt with when I wrote that letter, I have or at least am in the process of. I have new…perspective on things,” she says with a shrug.

“That’s great. I should probably do the same. I’ve been avoiding it because I didn’t want to move on.” I admit.

Her chuckle is hollow, forced. “Oh, I haven’t moved on. I’ve just gained an acceptance that there are some things I won’t be able to control. And I’ve found an outlet for my grief,” she says and her voice cracks. I have to stay my hand when it reaches for her, instinctively.

“I guess I haven’t really tried all that hard. I was hoping for miracle. Looking for cases where things like this, people like us… worked out.”

“Oh,” she breathes, surprise in her voice.

“Yeah, I became a little obsessed with it after I left.”

“What did you find?”

I sigh. “In the grand scheme of things, we were lucky finding out when we did. Some of them didn’t find out they were related until they were married, and had kids. At least, we didn’t do something that couldn’t be undone. You know?”

She reaches up and presses the button to turn on the overhead light.

When I see her face, I can tell that I’ve said something monumentally wrong. Her eyes are haunted and bleak.

She takes a deep breath, and takes my hand, squeezing it tight. “I need to tell you something.”

My throat goes dry, my gut clenches at the deepening anguish in her eyes.

“Okay, I’m listening,” I say.

“I was pregnant. When you left.” She brushes tears off her cheeks and shuts her eyes.

I recoil, not from her, but from the pain that slams into my chest.

“What? When?” I squeeze the words out. I want to say so much more, but my heart has folded in on itself and the pain has stolen my breath.

“I found out for sure the day you took your DNA test with Phil and my dad…I’d already decided to end it.”

I close my eyes against a wave of nausea. I’m sick that she went through this alone.

“Did you have anyone with you?”

She shakes her head, her expression is heartbreakingly sad.

I bring her hands to my mouth and press a kiss to them. She hiccups a sob, wraps her arm around my neck and climbs into my lap.

“I lost the baby. I had a miscarriage,” she says in a voice that makes everything ache.

She presses her head to my chest, I hold her, and curse the whole fucking world.

“I didn’t think I was going to survive. It was terrible. I still feel like I lost best thing that will ever happen to me. All my therapy, all this time, and I still wake up with that gnawing in my gut. I could have had something of us…forever.”

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