CHERISH (25 page)

“Let us leave, Louis. You know this is wrong. I know you. The Louis I know would never have done this. Jordan’s coming home. I just need his passport and then we'll leave. You want to come too, then come on. But we can’t settle this here. Not like this.” I'm trying to keep my voice calm for Jordan's sake, but it's not working.

“Settle what?” Jordan’s suddenly concerned and I can feel his terror gaining momentum.

“You need to leave. This is his home.” Louis turns Jordan by his shoulders away from me. I feel Louis’s ambivalence. I don’t know what made him do this, but he’s clearly conflicted and dealing with his own tortured pain.

“No!” Jordan yells. “What? What do you mean? You said we would go home after two weeks! I’m not staying here! Beckett?” Jordan’s eyes overflow, he slaps Louis’s hands from his shoulders but Louis locks down and yells something in Arabic toward the open archway on the far side of the courtyard.

“Beckett, don’t leave, okay? Where’s Promise? Why didn’t she come? I’m not living here!” His small fists pound on Louis’s arms.

Louis meets my eye. His voice is low. “Leave now. I can’t let him go with you. You need to leave, Beckett.” Louis starts to drag Jordan away. I step forward as calmly as I can manage, which isn't very calm right now.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch movement. Whoever it is, he’s smaller than Louis’s brother. I turn my head for a second and focus. The man is dressed in white, leaning on a cane, his olive skin is cut with deep furrows. Louis's father.

He yells at me in Arabic as Louis steps away with Jordan.

Brendan is on their heels, coming up behind. I turn my eyes to Jordan, who's screaming and crying. His head flies back and forth. His arms are flailing toward me, trying to catch hold.

I set out at a dead run to close the space Louis has managed to put between us, just as the old man lifts his free arm. I see the sun flash on chrome as he screams at me.

Brendan sees it too. He leaps forward, smashing his body into Louis, knocking them both to the ground and tossing Jordan toward me.

I throw myself at Jordan as his arms open and his eyes lock onto mine.

Louis is shouting in Arabic, yelling at the old man, then it all goes to hell as the first explosion from the barrel of the gun hits my ears.

I hit Jordan at his knees, taking him down and protecting his body underneath mine. A second shot deafens us. I flip my head to look behind me and see Louis’s brother reach for the old man. The gun is still shaking and loose in the old man’s hand.

Jordan shrieks, screaming and sobbing under me. I only care that I’m able to keep im safe. I’d use my body as a shield for him any day.

In a split second, I see Zaid take the gun from his father and raise both his hands in the air with a threatening glare.

“You leave our home!
Out. Get out
!” He yells, but the gun is no longer aimed at anyone. I can breathe and figure out how to get us out the door.

I lift my torso off of Jordan, grab his shoulders and flip him over.

I don’t give one happy crap if Louis wants him here, or what his legal position is. I’ll find a way to sneak him out of the country if I need to. There is no fucking way am I leaving him here with this insanity.

I shift onto my knees and look down. Jordan’s face contorts as his hands grasp at his chest. Deep crimson is seeping between his fingers. He wasn’t screaming from fear. He was screaming in pain.

“Beckett . . .” His eyes are filled with terror. “Help me.”

Promise

Bruce wants to call Beckett, but it is not happening. Beckett would try to keep me safe, but I may never be safe from myself.

And neither will Beckett nor the baby. He’s been gone three days now and I can’t breathe.

Bruce has his arms crossed and he's talking in hushed tones to the resident that's come to check on me. They've transferred me to a private room.

A room behind a set of locked doors.

The kind of doors you need a key code to open. It should be really scary but I know why I’m here.

I said some scary things last night, crazy things. Did even scarier things.

Things I’m fairly sure I didn’t mean. Well, I wouldn't mean them if I was thinking clearly, anyway. But at the time, I meant them.

I feel like I’m coming apart. I want to bite and scream and cry and laugh and run out of here into the street and never be seen again.

The room is too hot, and I’m sweating into the thin, worn fabric of the hospital gown.

I throw my head back on the pillows until my neck sends shooting pain down my shoulders and my spine.

“Turn the lights off,” I croak toward the ceiling. “Please turn the lights off.”

I can’t stand the light. I want to hibernate. The light only makes it more excruciatingly painful to breathe and just
be
.

Bruce finishes chatting with the young, male resident. The one with dark hair and rimless glasses. They shake hands like they are in some brotherhood. As if somehow they understand what’s going on here better than me. They have realized their mutual pity and it creates a bond between them.

“Turn the damn lights off!” I hiss and throw an arm over my eyes, kicking my feet at nothing except the burden of the sheet over my toes.

“
Giiiiirl
, stop. You do not get to act like that. Not with me. Not with anyone.”

“Uhhh,” I groan and pull the sheet over my face. “I hate you right now.”

“You hate everyone right now.” Bruce’s usual sing-song voice is tired, but I still hear the sarcastic smile that curves his lips. I wonder for a moment if it's his training or just his personality.

He moves around to stand next to the bed, checking my IV and fussing with something by my head. “I’m calling,” he says flatly.

“No. You’re. Not.” I jerk the sheet down and my hair comes with it, covering my face in a mess of unwashed blonde tangles.

“Yes, I am. He’s your husband and you're pregnant.” He jabs a finger toward me and settles into the baby-blue, vinyl chair next to the window with a sigh. “And I’m calling him.”

“I’m fine. He does not need to be over there worrying about me as well. He has enough to do. I need him to bring Jordan home.” The truth is, everything hurts right now. I can’t fathom the thought of having a conversation with Beckett. My skin, all my organs, even my eyelashes hurt at the thought of him. He sees too much. Sometimes I just want things to go back to the way they used to be.

Hiding.

Invisible.

“People still love you, you know, even when you’re unlovable. That’s sort of how love works, ding-dong.”

All this
feeling
and emotion is exhausting. I’m tired, and for the first time I don’t know if I can do it. Be with someone like Beck. A man who requires me to live in the light. To experience all the feelings. I’m falling down into a dark, dark well, and I am not equipped to save myself from drowning.

And on top of that there's a baby.

I turned my phone off yesterday to block it all out. Even if he’s tried to call, I wouldn’t know about it. I didn’t want to know. Every time he opens the door, something inside me closes it. I can’t seem to stop it. Even after knowing what we’ve created together. This baby.

The muscles in my belly tighten. My chest constricts. The lump in my throat cuts off my air and the sobs wrack by body without notice. I’m falling again. So hard and deep I can’t see the way to claw myself out.

“Hey, I know you don’t see it right now, but it’s going to be okay. It is.” Bruce’s voice cuts through with his special brand of compassion. He is sincere and it only makes me cry harder because I don’t believe him. This kind of hopelessness doesn’t let me see any way out. Doesn’t let me see logic.

“It’s not,” I choke out the words. “It will never be okay, because I’ll always have this.” I gesture toward myself with my hands. If I still had any tears, I'd be crying.

Thoughts of Beckett and how he loved me so hard feel less and less like a comfort. Instead, they only make the pain more acute. This feeling that sooner or later he will find out who I really am. I feel guilty that he loves me so deeply. Because he must be wrong. One day he will wake up.

“Listen to me.” Bruce’s compassionate tone shifts to stern, professional nurse. “
This,
as you say, is not you. It’s a reaction. You can’t take sertraline for almost ten years then just stop one day and go cold turkey. Your body is pitching a little fit and it will pass. But you can’t do this stuff without talking to your doctor. You can’t.”

“I’ve been fine for so long. I didn’t need it anymore and I didn’t want Beck to know. And what about the effect on the baby? I mean, how much more are they both supposed to sign up for? I’m the one that
killed
Beck’s family. Ruined his life and he still took me back. Now this? I’m supposed to say, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Once I took my foster father’s gun and tried to shoot myself. Then when that didn’t work, I took every pill I could find in the medicine cabinet. But, really, I’m fine now. I’ve just been taking anti-depressants for twelve years.’ Add that juicy tidbit to the ‘con’ column under my name. The ‘pro’ side of that equation is pretty bleak.” I blurt it all out through the dry tears and great heaving breaths. Snot runs down onto my lips and Bruce shakes his head. He runs his long-fingered hands over his shining, bald head.

“Are you done?” he asks, eyebrows high and lips pressed in a thin line.

“No,” I grunt and kick the sheets which are too tight on my feet.

The muscles in my legs ache. My back and shoulders feel like I’ve been training for an Olympic power lifting event.

When Bruce walked into my bedroom last night, he found me soaked with sweat, practically convulsing from the muscle spasms. I could barely speak.

He’d been out at work most of the day. Set me up with Netflix, Mint Chocolate Chip Gelato and a few trashy romance novels before he left. Beckett had brought along a few blank canvases and my paints when he dropped me off, but I didn’t do anything but lay in my bed with the curtains closed.

The longer I lay there in Bruce’s apartment, the worse it became. When it started a few days before, I convinced myself it was just the blues from the raging hormones. And when my muscles started to twitch, I figured it was from laying around too long. Like restless leg syndrome, but this was whole-body-restless.

Five hours later, I couldn’t form words into anything resembling a coherent thought. I didn’t know what time it was, nor where I was. I was back to that place, the one I went to when they found me with two empty bottles of Advil and a few boxes of sinus and allergy meds with all the little foil pockets popped open. I was fourteen years old.

The doctor here advised I’m in withdrawal because I stopped taking the sertraline without weaning off of it slowly. But what if this is just me? What if I am always going to feel like this? Because that’s how it feels right now. Like there is no way to claw my way back. Even for the sake of my baby.

I am my mother’s daughter after all. And if I think about it, wouldn’t it have been better if she’d never even tried to be a mother? If, from the very beginning, she’d given us away? At least then we wouldn’t have had to go through all the other bullshit.

“You will be fine in a couple of days. The doctor said the sertraline wouldn’t hurt the baby. They’ll get you back to terra firma, and then send your pitiful ass back home with me. In a few days, your dreamy husband will be home and he can deal with you. But right now. We. Are. Calling. Him.”

Bruce takes his phone out of his pocket and gives me another stare with raised eyebrows, challenging me to argue with him.

“Fine,” I snap the word at him like it's a bullet. I pull my lips to the side, crunch up my face and wait for whatever comes next.

Beckett

The last thing we saw was ten police officers swarming the courtyard at Louis’s family’s compound. I fought off three of them before another three jumped me. Then some medical personnel showed up and dragged Jordan away screaming.

The echo of his terrified voice yelling for me rips my heart to shreds. I managed to rip his shirt open to see that the bullet’s entry point was just above his left pectoral muscle. That was pretty much all I saw before they jumped me and I ended up here.