Carry You Home (Carry Your Heart #2) (25 page)

But still.

Prison.

Caleb was going to prison.

There was no way around it. No magic
deux ex machina
that could sweep in at the last minute and prevent it from happening.

It was most definitely happening.

The irony, of course, was that Skyler and I had had to scrape together every last penny and all but emptied Caleb's bank account just to bail him out of prison. Karma, in all her infinite, bitchy wisdom, really knew how to kick you right where it hurt.

We were supposed to go to City Hall in two days to get married and now, I just didn't know how I felt about taking that step with him.

And more than anything, I needed to just stop working on the baby's mural. Creating it under all this negative energy wasn't good for anyone. A spike of pain flashed across the length of my stomach and I winced, rubbing the spot on my baby bump a little.

That tell-tale motorcycle roar came screaming down the street and I closed my eyes to brace myself. I didn't want to see him. I did, but I didn't. About a minute later, the front door opened and closed and I knew I just had seconds to calm down long enough to tell him to get the hell out before I did or said something I'd regret later.

As it turned out, I had only about half a second before a gentle knock rapped at the door.

"Iz?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, blew out a deep breath, tossed my paintbrush into the mason jar at my feet, stood up my stool on shaky legs, and flung open the nursery's door with one swift motion. Caleb was standing in front of me, both arms splayed over the doorway as he leaned into the open space.

It was his eyes that knocked me sideways. I didn't know what I'd been prepared to see, but this softness, this apology, this genuineness, this
anguish
had me momentarily forgetting why I was so furious with him in the first place.

"Iz," he started softly before darting his eyes over his shoulder to the prospect behind him and nodding to him, signaling it was time for him to leave. "Can we talk?"

My chest was heaving wildly now and I couldn't make it go away. So, without as much as a word, I gripped hold of the door and started to slam it right in his face. When his hand shot out to stop me, putting just enough force to gently nudge me backwards, the soft, concerned eyes reflecting back at me still didn't change.

"Iz, please," he tried again, this time more urgently. "Just let me in. Don't do this."

My nostrils flared at his choice of words and his eyes widened when he realized his error.

"No," I bit back. "I can't even look
at you right now, let alone even think
about talking to you."

Pain flashed across his face, but he didn't take another step. He knew what he'd done, he knew he'd completely destroyed everything we'd been working toward, and he knew there was nothing he could say that would make this better.

His head tilted to the side in agony and he reached for me, but I just batted down his hand. If he touched me, I'd let him in. I'd talk to him. I'd forgive him. He didn't deserve any of those things right now.

"I'll call you when I'm ready to talk to you," I told him icily. "Until then, I think you should leave."

Steely resolve clouded his eyes and for a moment, I thought he would protest. I thought he would fight a little harder. Instead, he nodded sadly and stepped out into the hallway. I watched him walk out the door and locked it behind him just for good measure. Sure, he had a key, but I wanted him to hear the lock click. I wanted him to hurt just as much as I was hurting right now.

I stumbled back until my calves hit the back of our couch and tried desperately to control the thundering inside my chest. About two seconds later, my phone chimed from the nursery and I headed back down the hallway with a sigh.

As I swept my phone off the carpet, ignoring the little pricks of pain in my stomach, and frowned down at the screen.

Not leavin you, Iz. I'll just wait til you wanna talk.

Swallowing tightly, I leaned across the window and pulled the blinds down. Caleb sat on the edge of our porch, hands clasped in front of him as a cloud of smoke puffed out into in our yard.

My phone buzzed again.

Sorry about the smoking. It's just been a shitty day. This is my last one today. Promise.

I pushed out a heavy sigh and let the blinds fall back in place. He knew me too well. And he knew exactly what to do to crumble my resolve. Still, if he wanted to wait, then I'd let him wait. I just didn't know if I could have a rational conversation with him without throwing something at his head or screaming obscenities at him until I was blue in the face.

With new resolve, I headed straight for my home studio, plopped down on my stool, and shoved my earbuds in, and cranked up the volume as loud as my eardrums could tolerate. Twenty minutes later, I roughly pushed off the stool and stalked back to the window. White shoes were still directly in my line of vision, but now, both of his hands were clasped over his knees, and he was leaning forward enough off the porch that I could clearly see his stricken, tightly drawn features. He really was going to sit out there and wait until I decided to let him back in the house.

I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed a hand across my belly to try to lull the sharp pain there. In two weeks, Caleb would be checking into prison and I'd be lucky if I saw him once a week. Shouldn't we be making the most with the time we had left together?

That dull ache in my stomach had spread all the way around to my back and I sucked in a breath when that dull ache sharpened into a shard of pain. It almost reminded me of some of the worst period cramps I'd ever had, but that couldn't be what this was. I inhaled again, a little more slowly this time to try to soothe whatever was going on inside my stomach, but it didn't work.

At first, I thought I had to be dreaming, but then little pricks and tremors erupted and pulled at the inside of my stomach.

My eyes flew open as the pain subsided for just a moment and my hands subconsciously flew protectively over my tiny baby bump. What had started as a slight tugging sensation had quickly escalated to a sharp, stabbing pain and now there was no denying it.

Just as I leapt to my feet to head for the front door, another wave of pain nearly knocked me to my knees. Somehow, I managed to scramble to the door, wincing and gritting my teeth through the sharp edges of pain spreading across every inch of my stomach, and threw open the door. Caleb had his back to me and whirled around from his perch with a relieved smile on his face.

But just as quickly, that gorgeous smile faded into deep lines of worry and disbelief. He shot up to his feet, practically tripped up the stairs, and his eyes widened when I winced yet again and hunched over from the pain.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried in vain to breathe through the pain, but it felt like my stomach was spasming and closing in on itself and I finally cried out through clenched teeth as Caleb's hands closed around my shoulders to steady me.

"Iz, what's happening?"

 
"I don't—" my voice died out on me when a rush of warm wetness soaked between my legs. I looked down in disbelief, unable to let myself even consider what was really happening here, but I knew.

Somewhere, deep down, I knew.

"I think..." I struggled for the words.

If I said it then it would be real. I guessed I just needed to live in a fantasy world for as long as I could, but when another wave of needles swept through my stomach, I couldn't deny it any longer.

"I think my water just broke."

Isabelle

When we finally got to the hospital, Caleb sped through the entrance, ignoring every stop sign and speed limit warning in our path, until he skidded the truck to a stop directly in front of the emergency room's main entrance. In a flash, he shot out of the truck and sprinted around the side as an attendant met him at the passenger side door with a wheelchair.

Caleb carefully lifted me out of the truck and set me gingerly down in the wheelchair. When the attendant moved to take hold of the steering, Caleb roughly shoved him aside and wheeled me inside the emergency room, where a nurse was already waiting for us.

All I had to do was sit there numbly, twisting my engagement ring around my finger while Caleb, following the nurse's lead, wheeled me right through the hallway and into an elevator that would take us to the maternity ward.

After Caleb helped me out of my clothes and into the hospital gown, he carefully lifted me onto the rickety bed as a doctor and nurse pulled the curtain back to enter.

"Alright," the doctor began easily, despite the tension in the cramped space. "My name is Dr. Reynolds and I'll be your attending physician tonight. So," he gestured for me to put my feet into the stirrups as he spoke. "You're 15 weeks along, correct?"

"Yes," I nodded anxiously. "We just had an appointment a few weeks ago. Everything was fine then."

Caleb squeezed my hand supportively while Dr. Reynolds positioned himself and the fetal monitor next to us.
 

"When did the cramps start?"
 

"Maybe an hour ago. I didn't really think much of it at first, but the pain just kept getting worse and..." I trailed off, unable to force myself to say any more.

"You did the right thing in coming in," Dr. Reynolds nodded tightly, his lips set in a grim line. "With your water broken, I need to listen to the baby's heartbeat first and then we can decide what steps to take from there."

There was a part of me, even as Caleb squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead, that knew no amount of denial or distraction would make this go away. Even I knew, as the doctor dutifully got to the task of trying to hear the baby's heartbeat, that the odds of the baby even surviving a delivery, if there had to be one, would be slim to none.

I winced and shifted uncomfortably on the squeaky bed, but my eyes never left the fetal monitor screen, waiting desperately to hear something similar to what we'd heard at my gynecologist's office. Everything just seemed to stop as Dr. Reynolds waited and waited for the screen to focus on something other than waves and emptiness.

As Dr. Reynolds gently moved the fetal monitor away from my body, all the blood drained out of my face. I knew what was coming now. It was only a matter of time before the doctor told us what I already knew and had known from the moment I'd first felt those little pinpricks of pain before Caleb came home.

"I'm so sorry," Dr. Reynolds looked at us somberly. "There's no heartbeat."

Hearing the words, the confirmation, was more devastating than I'd expected. It felt like I was submerged underwater and everything felt hazy, like I'd just been shot with a tranquilizer. I felt heavy, despite the way my heart thundered violently in my chest and I was vaguely aware of Caleb's tortured, hoarse voice above me.

"What do you mean?" Caleb asked desperately, disbelief flooding into his voice. "How can it just be gone? I don't understand."

"Well," Dr. Reynolds cleared his throat painfully. "Unfortunately, premature labor like this isn't uncommon and when that happens at this early stage, there's very little we can do to stop it once the water breaks. I wish I could tell you the exact reason..."

At this point, I knew I was better off just tuning out the rest of this terrible conversation. I didn't want to hear any more. I
couldn't
hear any more. Now, there was just this heaviness weighing down inside me and I didn't know how much more of this shit I could take. There was just nothing now. Nothing but emptiness.

After the nurse pumped me with some pain medication, my body finally caught up to my mind.

I finally allowed myself to take a deep breath for strength that never came. A beat later, as Dr. Reynolds once again expressed his sympathies, he launched into our 'options' and my heart sunk lower and lower with every second.

"In circumstances like these, the baby is just too big for us to allow him or her to naturally pass," he started and whatever life that was left in me withered away. "We have several options: the first is to allow labor to continue. You're already dilated several centimeters, so the delivery would be fairly quick. After an epidural, you wouldn't feel any pain and in most cases, it's one push and it's over."

On some level, I appreciated the doctor's no-nonsense, yet sympathetic approach and the way he referred to the baby as a him or her, but that didn't make the reality burn any less. Just as I was finally beginning to wrap my head around what I might actually have to do, I dared a glance at Caleb.

He'd gone white as a sheet next to me and he rubbed his mouth with the hand that wasn't locked around mine. But it was his eyes that nearly me brought me back over the edge—mostly because the anguish and the devastation and the disbelief and the guilt mirrored everything I wouldn't let myself feel.

"What's the other option?" Caleb murmured hoarsely.

Dr. Reynolds pressed a quick, albeit grim, pained smile on his face. "We can do a procedure to remove all the remaining tissue."

I winced at the word,
tissue,
and glanced at Caleb again, who still clung to my left hand like his life depended on it. His watery eyes softened and he pressed a kiss into my fingertips.