If Forever Comes (6 page)

Mid-January, Eight Months
Earlier

Distorted, late afternoon light diffused
through the small, glazed window, tossing muted beams of sunlight
across Elizabeth’s alcove bathroom. They struck the floor in
slanted rays and lit up the dense motes that floated, suspended in
the air. The walls felt as if they were closing in, and it was
quiet. So damned quiet.

I paced the floor. My footsteps echoed back my
impatience. What else was I supposed to do?

These had to be the longest three minutes of
my life.

I raked two restless hands though my hair. My
fingers dug into my skin and scraped along my scalp. Gripping the
back of my neck, I turned my face to the ceiling and exhaled,
hoping to release some of the pent-up pressure I couldn’t seem to
expel from my body.

God, I couldn’t take this.

“Would you stop? You’re making me nervous.”
Elizabeth fidgeted from her spot where she was propped up against
the bathroom counter. She glanced at me askew. The tiniest of
smiles played at her mouth. It tugged at those places inside me
that only existed with her, simply because in her, they’d been
created.

One side of my mouth lifted in a soft curl of
affection. Her blonde hair was piled in a messy twist on her head,
and a misshapen sweatshirt fell off one shoulder, the perfect
partner to the pair of thin, black leggings she wore. Standing
there, she looked so much like the eighteen-year-old girl I’d first
met rather than the twenty-seven-year-old woman she was.

God, she was a vision, perfection in my
eyes.

It was her expression that loosened that ball
of anxiety knotting me tight. She looked up at me in anticipation,
with trust and hope and the same excitement that was just about to
fry my nerves.

I drew in a calming breath.

She was late. Just one day. But that didn’t
matter. I think both of us already knew. We could feel our lives
teetering on the cusp of change. The only thing left now was
begging that little stick to put to rest the uncertainty, to give
us its promise, to tell us that this was really
happening.

Elizabeth stretched out her hand and silently
beckoned me to her. That smile she wore on her beautiful face grew
a little, nervously fluttering around the edges.

How could any one woman affect me this way?
How could her touch both burn me and soothe me in the same simple
stroke?

A smile teetered at my mouth as I slipped up
in front of her. I gently wound her in my arms, and she laid her
head on my chest. Little tremors rolled the length of her
body.

“You’re shaking,” I murmured, running my
fingers through her hair, hoping to calm her.

She edged back a fraction. Between us, she
placed both hands flat across her belly. She looked up at me from
beneath her lashes, her eyes all alight and alive.

“I’m not shaking.” Her voice dropped low, and
she whispered her awe. “It’s butterflies.”

A sharp exhale escaped through my nose. There
was no fear hiding below the surface of her words, no remnants of
distrust spinning though her spirit. Nothing here threatened to
take us back to that day. This…this was the way it should have
been, how I should have been, standing there supporting the one who
meant everything.

I ran my thumb across the sharp angle of her
cheekbone. “Butterflies, huh?”

“Yeah,” she answered, chancing a hopeful grin.
Warmth gleamed in her soft brown eyes.

Somehow Elizabeth managed to undo me a little
more.

“Does that mean you already know what that
test is going to say?” And I thought I did, too, thought I could
feel it. Maybe I’d convinced myself into believing something just
because I wanted it so badly. I didn’t know. But damn, if I didn’t
ever want this.

Things were crazy with the wedding plans. It
was hard to believe we’d gotten home from New York less than a
month ago. We’d announced to Elizabeth’s family our plans, that we
were actually setting a date.

June seventh.

God, it seemed impossible to fathom that
things were finally as they should be.

Just five short months and Elizabeth would be
mine, completely.

Natalie and Elizabeth’s sisters had
immediately set to work on wedding plans, fretting over this day
that, in my eyes, couldn’t be anything less than perfect simply
because Elizabeth would become my wife.

It didn’t matter the place or the food or what
everyone would wear.

All that mattered were the vows we were going
to make.

Our lives had transformed so drastically in
such a short period of time. We hadn’t been trying for this, but
thought we’d just let it take its course. I mean, things were
already chaotic, a disorganized mayhem, both of our houses on the
market as we searched for a home to fill with love and the memories
of our lives, plus the constant wedding plans we were running
around organizing. But it was a welcomed mayhem.

I had a feeling it was about to get
worse.

Seeming to get lost in thought, Elizabeth let
her attention travel to the far wall. A few seconds later, she
turned the force of it back on me.

“I didn’t think this would happen so fast. I’m
not sure why, but I thought we’d have to work for it. But this…”
Earnestly she pressed her hands more firmly to her stomach. “This
blessing…I’ve been pretty sure of it for the last week. I
just…know.”

I cupped her cheek. My attention flitted over
every line and curve of the face forever burned in my mind. “I
can’t wait to do this with you.”

She smiled up at me. A faint blush tinted her
cheeks and tears glistened in her eyes. “I really hope we’re not
getting ahead of ourselves.”

Longing rushed from her in waves. Each one
crashed into me, as if some unconscious part of her were begging me
to make this real.

I wanted so badly to give it to
her.

“If not today, then we will celebrate it on
another. But we will do this together, Elizabeth.”

She nodded against my palm and brought hers up
to cover mine. She wrapped her fingers around mine. “Thank you for
being here, Christian. For sharing this moment with me…whatever
direction it goes.”

On the counter, the timer dinged.

I lay my cheek against hers, let her warmth
surround me. My hold was secure. I was there for her one way or
another. Even if this didn’t turn out the way we wanted it, we’d
deal with it.

“You ready?” I asked.

She blinked. “So ready.”

Her message was clear, rang in my ears and in
my heart, a promise that every question of my devotion to her had
been erased from her mind.

She clung to me as we turned our faces to the
test sitting beside us on the bathroom counter.

I felt her lose her breath, and I wound my
arms around her a little tighter to hold her up as her legs
weakened beneath her.

Two pink lines.

This time, there was no question she was
shaking. She trembled in my arms. “Christian,” fell as a breath
from her mouth, bled into the room as wonder and awe.

Two pink lines.

There was no greater joy than what I felt in
this moment. It just didn’t exist. Nothing else could
compare.

She was crying as I knelt on the floor in
front of her. I wrapped my hands around her waist, buried my face
in her stomach where our child grew. Where a new life had
begun.

I was overcome.

Elizabeth gentled her fingers through my hair.
I tipped my head back so I could look at her. I slipped my hands to
the outside of her waist in the same second she took my face in her
hands.

“We’re going to have a baby, Christian,” she
said.

Saying it aloud seemed to rip something open
inside of her. She choked over a cry that spoke of so many
things—shock and relief and joy, crushing the vestiges of disbelief
that had lingered in these walls.

“A baby,” she whispered again through a
fervent sob. “Oh my God, Christian… I don’t know how to explain
what I’m feeling right now. How happy I am. I didn’t think I’d ever
get to have this again. I’d accepted that it was only ever going to
be me and Lizzie.” Passion poured from her mouth, her spirit
seeking understanding in mine. “I…I…” She stumbled over her
thoughts, wet her lips as she looked at me through bleary eyes.
“You know, you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted this with…the only
one I’d ever give this to. Thank you for finding me, for loving me,
for filling up the void in my life…for giving me this.”

“God, Elizabeth…”

How could I respond to that when I’d been the
one to leave that void in the first place? But I knew…knew I was
the only one who fit in that void, because it was Elizabeth that
perfectly filled mine, too. “Nothing in this world could make me
happier than this,” I urged.

Unchecked tears streamed down her face, and
she took me by the hands and held them flat at her
stomach.

I swallowed over the lump wedged at the base
of my throat, my hands burning into her flat stomach that would
soon grow round.

In the fading light of the room, we held our
child.

My mind raced with images of what was taking
hold in the deepest places of Elizabeth’s body.

Was this a boy or girl?

I wondered if again the child would take after
me the way Lizzie did? Maybe have a tiny cleft like the one Lizzie
wore on her chin and the same shock of black hair on her head?
Would he watch the world through intuitive, blue eyes, just like
Lizzie?

Or would she be a small Elizabeth, would her
eyes be warm and brown, would blonde curls frame her face, would
her heart go on in unending innocence, kindness, and
compassion?

Or would this child defy the
imaginable?

“I’m so happy, Elizabeth,” I whispered at her
stomach, hoping that maybe this child could sense the devotion
flooding from us, the love we had already found ourselves
in.

I’d forever regret not being there for Lizzie.
Even though my spirit had recognized her the second I saw her, the
truth was, I’d only known my little girl for a matter of months.
But somehow, somewhere in the bleakness of that time, she had still
made her mark on my heart. Through time and space, she’d managed to
touch me. She had stirred something in me that I never wholly
understood until the moment I first saw her.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that this
child already had, too.

A smile washed the entirety of Elizabeth’s
face, those same images I’d been thinking of before so obviously
playing behind her eyes.

Then she offered a soggy grin. “Lizzie is
going to be the best big sister. I can’t wait to tell
her.”

“I can’t imagine a better big sister.” I
smiled up at her, running my hands up her stomach then wrapping
them firmly around her waist. I tugged her a little, rocked her
forward.

Her hands fell to my shoulders for support and
a tiny giggle of surprise rolled from her mouth. She raked her
bottom lip between her teeth.

God, she was always pushing me to the edge of
sanity, driving me a little mad because only this girl could stir
these impossible things in me, wind me up and tie me from the
inside out. In the same pass of her hand, she managed to put me at
the greatest ease.

She was what made me complete. She was what
made me right.

“How’d we get this lucky,
Elizabeth?”

She touched my face and slowly shook her head.
“I have no idea…but I’m not going to let it go.”

Two Weeks Later

Elizabeth was on her knees on the bathroom
floor. For what had to have been the tenth time in the last thirty
minutes, she vomited. Her entire body trembled and shook as she
purged the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She squeezed
her eyes shut, her back arching as she lifted up higher on her
knees and gasped for a breath.

I swept back the hair matted to her forehead,
lifted it from her neck that was drenched with sweat.

God, this was complete torture. I didn’t think
I’d ever felt so helpless in my life. All I wanted was to fix her,
to make her better, to take it away.

And I couldn’t do a goddamned
thing.

She gulped for air before she lurched forward
and heaved again. This time, nothing came up. An indistinct whine
fumbled from her mouth as her muscles clenched and strained, and
she gripped the edge of the toilet as her body fought to expel
something that just wasn’t there.

With a heavy sigh, I placed a kiss to her
temple. “Hold on a second.”

Harshly she nodded, and I climbed to my feet.
Grabbing a washcloth from the linen closet, I ran it under cool
water and wrung it out. My footsteps were subdued as I shuffled
back to her.

I knelt down beside her. “Here,” I whispered,
wishing to find anything that would soothe her, even in the
slightest way.