Page 175 of Somebody's Watching Me
“The next morning, I started puking again.,” she said finally. “I couldn’t even go to work.”
He sat back on the couch, continuing to assess her while she prepared to get through this next part. There was no going back. He might never speak to her again, but for the remainder of her life, she would always love him, no matter the pain that would eventually come from being unable to let go.
“Laura Jean always thought the phrase falling in love was stupid,” her dad had once told her. “Your mom would say that if you were ever truly in love, it wasn’t a fall. It was a tumble. Right off a cliff.”
She might never have known her mother, but she wholeheartedly agreed with her way of thinking. Anyone could fall into love as easily as they could fall out of it. Tumbling, on the other hand, involved a head-over-feet affair.
And as with any tumble, there were parts of you battered and bruised in the drop. Moments which left scars. Scars that served to remind us how real it was.
On the very first day she met Liam in Haven’s library, and he tripped over his own feet to shake her hand, Jamison had tumbled into love with him.
He tripped.
She tumbled.
It had all been so easy.
One day, they might trip and tumble their way back to what they once were, and if it ever happened, she would never take a second of their time together for granted.
But today would not be that day.
Sitting up straight, she spoke loud and clear. “The next day, the same thing happened. I started puking when I woke up.”
It was as if time stopped. Liam sucked in a sharp breath, and she held hers with him. Some sort of unnatural roar overtook the silence, accompanied by the rhythmic thudding of a heart. Hers or his, it didn’t matter. They both beat to a broken tempo these days.
“What did you do?” Liam didn’t need it spelled out for him. “Talk fast before I… just talk fast, Jamison.”
Rubbing her hands over her thighs nervously, she ordered herself to speak one sentence at a time. This was going to hurt, that was inevitable, but he needed to hear everything.
“I took a pregnancy test.” Her vision went in and out of focus, thinking of those two pink lines. “Actually, I took four pregnancy tests.”
Digging her nails into her knees, she watched helplessly as he shot off the couch. Hands on top of his head, chest rising and falling. “Keep talking,” he demanded, like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “Faster.”
“I called my doctor to see if I could get in, but they were full for weeks, so I made a same day appointment at a clinic close to our place. We had agreed that you would stay away until the weekend, and I wanted to be sure before you came home. They checked everything, did an ultrasound, and let me go with a black and white photo of a dot.”
The utter devastation on his face, the absolute haunted look in his eyes, had a sob erupting from somewhere deep in her soul. “It was just a dot, Liam. But it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
A paleness washed over his skin, and he dropped to sit on the floor as if standing or returning to the couch required too much energy. He wasn’t expecting this. Whatever he thought she was keeping from him, a baby wasn’t it.
“On the way home from the clinic, I passed one of those cute baby boutiques, and on a whim, I went in.”
She was rambling now, strangled by the memory. That store had been the most exciting place, filled with promises of a happy future. No matter if she ever became pregnant again, the emotions which struck thesecond she stepped inside that store would never rise in her like they did that afternoon. The immense joy. The soaring hope. All from one silly downtown shop with its racks of tiny clothes and colorful toys.
“I bought a little pink dress and a blue T-shirt with a picture of a guy surfing on it in case it was a boy. The store clerk wrapped them in this beautiful packaging, so it would be just right when I presented them to you. Then I went home, ordered every baby book I could find, and spent the rest of the night researching names.”
A bittersweet smile settled on her lips as she recalled how late she stayed up, totally dedicated to finding the perfect one. List after list, she hunted, using it as her focus while she fought the urge to call him and share their news.
Surprising him had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
“I cleaned up the apartment, taking measurements and stuff. You know, like calculating where we would put the highchair,” she went on. “I got the ingredients to make my lasagna because I know you love it. We had agreed that you would come back on Saturday, so I wanted everything to be ready when I told you. I wanted to have my plan in place so you could see that having kids wasn’t going to be a bad thing.”
Scrubbing his hand away from his mouth, he spoke with deadly calm. “But I did come home, and you weren’t there.”
No, she hadn’t been there.
Outside, dark clouds rolled over the gulf, dimming the already dwindling sunlight trickling in through the sliding glass door. Shadows played around the room and over Liam’s face as he waited for her to explain. With every passing second, he seemed to regain a little more control of himself until he stood looming over her.
“You weren’t there,” he repeated. “I came ready to beg. To get on my fucking knees and beg, but you weren’t there, and now you’re telling me this?”
