The Men On Fire: A Complete Romance Series (3-Book Box Set) Read online

  “What’s hard? You dumping me? Is that why Holly sent me over here, so I could see for myself how you can just push aside everything we shared in Hawaii?”

  “It’s not like that, man,” Eli says.

  “Eli, stop,” Ivy says with an emotion-choked voice. “I can handle this. Can you just wait in the other room, please?”

  “Not if he’s going to stand here and yell at you.” He turns to me. “She’s been through enough without you adding to the mix.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Eli, please,” she begs.

  He holds up his hands. “Fine. But no yelling or I’m coming back out.”

  We watch him walk down the hallway.

  “Is he going to your bedroom?” I ask through clenched teeth.

  She’s having a hard time looking at me. Her eyes are glued to the door in a vacant stare. “Bass, I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “I love you, Ivy. I wanted to spend my life with you.”

  More tears come streaming out of her eyes. “I know. I thought I wanted that too. But things change. I’m so sorry.”

  “Things don’t have to change. Not if you throw him out instead of me.”

  She looks to the ceiling and rubs the back of her neck. “Eli and I, we’ve been through so much together. Nobody else can understand. Not even you.”

  “Look at you, Ivy. You’re clearly upset. You aren’t thinking straight. Is he making you do this? Does he have some kind of hold on you?”

  She shakes her head. “This is my choice. I’ve made it, Bass. But that doesn’t mean I can’t feel bad. Everything you and I shared. It was real. You helped me in so many ways. But Eli is the only one who can help me now. I’m sorry. Please, I have to ask you to leave.”

  “You want me to walk out this fucking door and not look back as if the last four weeks of my life never even happened?”

  “Yes,” she says, with closed eyes.

  I hit the wall. “I’m not leaving.”

  Eli comes out from the back. “Tell him, Ivy. He deserves to know.”

  “Eli, no.”

  “What do I deserve to know, Ivy?”

  She shakes her head as her body heaves with sobs.

  “Tell him,” he says.

  “I-I’m still in love with Eli,” she says. “I tried to get over him. I tried really hard. And Hawaii was great. But Eli is the one I need to be with.”

  “Ivy,” Eli says, staring her down as if to scold her.

  “Eli, this is between Bass and me.”

  “You still loved him?” I ask, angrily taking a step forward. “When we were sleeping together?”

  Eli puts a hand on my chest, pushing me away from her. I’m a lot bigger than he is, but it’s obvious he loves her and would do anything to protect her. Just like I would.

  “It’s no different than you using Brooke to try and get over Aspen,” she says. “It didn’t work for you either, did it?”

  “But you said you loved me, Ivy. We made plans.”

  Her hands come up to cover her mouth. Her eyes close momentarily. She’s hurting. This is tearing her apart. She truly looks to be torn between two men she loves. And I’m clearly the loser.

  “Plans change,” she says. “I tried to love you. I w-wanted to. But I c-can’t. Please, don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  Eli looks pissed. But in some strange way, he looks pissed at Ivy and not at me. He doesn’t look at me like the competition—like the way I’m looking at him. He looks at me like he feels sorry for me.

  “So that’s it?” I ask.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she says.

  She reaches out like she wants to touch me, but she pulls her hand back. I want to pull her into my arms and make her change her mind. But how can a few weeks compete with what they’ve shared together? High school sweethearts. Kids. Extreme loss.

  I back up and cross over the threshold into the hallway. “I’m sorry, too, Ivy. You’ll never know just how much.”

  “Goodbye, Sebastian.” She shuts the door and I hear her body thump against it as she cries out in agony. I want to go back in and comfort her. But I don’t. Because that’s not my job anymore. It’s his.

  I take the elevator to the ground floor, studying myself in the reflective chrome doors, wondering why I always choose women who are incapable of relationships. “Fuck!” I yell to no one. I hit the door, denting it and distorting my face.

  When the doors open, I walk outside. And then I run. I run faster and farther than I’ve ever run before. And when I finally get home, I collapse from exhaustion. But that doesn’t keep me from dreaming of her and the life we’ll never get to have.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Ivy

  It’s been weeks since I’ve seen Bass. Weeks of throwing myself into work to try and forget that the child growing inside of me will make me love him before I have to go through another miscarriage, stillbirth, or worse—bonding for years and then losing another love of my life.

  Him. Thinking of the baby as a boy is the only way I can get through this. Because as much as it hurt to lose Jonah, losing Dahlia was a million times worse.

  We talked about it, Eli and I. We talked about terminating the pregnancy. But in the end, neither of us could bring ourselves to say we genuinely wanted to do it. It would be like saying we wished we never had Dahlia.

  The doctors told us the chances of us having another ARPKD baby are small. But I know better. I know this baby has the same chance of having it as the other two. When Dahlia was born, they said it was unusual for a couple to have two children with the disease since the chances are only twenty-five percent with each one. That’s twenty-five percent too high when we’re batting a thousand.

  They also said there is no way to determine if the baby has it in utero, not unless there is clear visible evidence of enlarged kidneys or cysts. And even if neither of those shows up on an ultrasound, it still doesn’t mean the baby is out of the woods.

  I had several ultrasounds with Dahlia, mostly because I was scared of losing another baby, and none of them showed any indication of the disease. But perhaps that’s because they didn’t know they were looking for it.

  I sit down in a chair in the shop office and open up a package that was delivered this morning. I put the batteries inside the device and then try using it. Then I start to panic.

  “What are you doing?” Holly says, coming around the corner.

  “I’m trying to hear the heartbeat,” I say, moving the wand thing around my lower, still-flat belly.

  “Seriously?”

  I shrug. “It will give me peace of mind.”

  “Except that you look terrified right now,” she says.

  “That’s because I can’t find it. Maybe you can help.”

  Holly lets me give her a demonstration of how it works. Then I lean back in the chair as she moves the wand all over my stomach.

  “I must be doing it wrong,” she says.

  Tears prickle my eyes. “Or maybe there isn’t a heartbeat.”

  “Ivy, you can’t beat yourself up like this.”

  “Try again,” I say.

  She spends a few more minutes on it, but then the bells on the front door chime. “I’ll be right back,” she says.

  I pull my shirt down, put the fetal Doppler away and grab my purse.

  “I’ll be back later,” I say, when I pass Holly on my way to the front door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to be sure.”

  I hear her sigh as I walk out of the shop. I make the four-block trek to the emergency room. I know this will probably cost me at least a few hundred dollars. But at this point, I don’t care.

  “I think my baby is dead,” I tell the intake nurse.

  “Is the baby here?” she asks, looking behind me.

  “I’m pregnant. I think the baby died.”

  She gives me a sympathetic look and then takes my information and puts a hospital band on my wrist. />
  “Right this way,” someone says from the other side of the double doors that lead into the back.

  The nurse gets me set up behind a curtain and takes my blood pressure and temperature. Then she asks me about the pregnancy.

  “A doctor will be in shortly,” she says.

  It seems to take forever for the doctor to show up, but the clock on the wall tells me it’s only been fifteen minutes when an attractive guy wearing a white lab coats walks around the curtain.

  “I’m Dr. Stone,” he says. “I’m filling in for Dr. Rigdon today, but not to worry, I know my way around this ER almost as well as my own ER across the bridge. I hear you’re worried about a miscarriage. But it says in your chart that you haven’t had any bleeding. What makes you think you’re losing the pregnancy?”

  “I can’t find the heartbeat,” I say.

  “Did your obstetrician send you here?” he asks, confused.

  “No. I have one of those Doppler things at home and I can’t hear the heartbeat.”

  He nods. “Oh, I see. I assume you bought it over the Internet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those can be fairly reliable, but only after about fourteen to sixteen weeks. At ten weeks, you’re not far enough along to hear it without being a skilled physician.”

  “Really? They should tell you that when you buy it.”

  He pulls out a device from his pocket that looks similar to the one I ordered only a lot more expensive. “Let’s take a listen, shall we?”

  “Please.”

  He moves the wand around down by my pubic mound and he presses a lot harder than I was pressing at the shop. Ten seconds later, my own heart starts beating again when we hear the fast-paced whoosh whoosh whoosh come through the small speaker.

  My head falls back against the pillow, relieved to hear the sound.

  “Sounds perfect,” he says, removing the device.

  “Wait. Can I hear it for just a little longer?”

  He smiles and puts it back where it was, moving it around again until he finds the heartbeat. I lie here and listen, hoping things will be different this time. But the nagging feeling inside me tells me otherwise.

  “Thank you,” I say, after Dr. Stone lets me hear for another minute or two.

  “Of course. But I think you should wait at least four more weeks before trying this yourself. You’ll just cause undue stress if you don’t. You need to relax and enjoy your pregnancy. Your little one will be here before you know it.”

  I don’t tell him there is nothing to relax about or enjoy. I don’t tell him that I wish I never got pregnant. I don’t tell him how much I regret turning to Eli for comfort on Dahlia’s birthday. I don’t tell him about the two lives I’ve already lost and the man I’ve had to push away because of how screwed up this whole thing is.

  I don’t tell him any of it. Because he obviously thinks I’m just another paranoid first-time mom.

  “Thank you, Dr. Stone. You’ve been very kind.”

  “The nurse will be in to discharge you in a minute.”

  A half-hour later, I’m walking back in the shop. Holly eyes me over the top of the package she’s looking at. “I’m assuming all is well?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  She holds out the packaging of the fetal Doppler. “That’s because you didn’t bother to read the damn directions, did you? It says you might not be able to hear the heartbeat until about sixteen weeks.”

  “That’s what the doctor told me.”

  She throws the box at me. “Stop doing things to make yourself crazy,” she says. “This is hard enough on you as it is without you creating drama.”

  “I know. I just thought it would help—”

  “If you obsess over things that may or may not happen?” She pulls me over to the stool at the counter and sits me on it. “Ivy, you must know that nothing you do at this point will change the outcome. Your job now is to eat properly and sleep and try not to stress over every little thing. That is what you can do to give this baby the best chance.”

  I lean in to hug her and when I do, I think I see something out the storefront windows. I pull back.

  “What is it?” Holly asks.

  “I could swear I just saw Bass.”

  She nods. “I wouldn’t doubt it. He walks past here almost every day. Sometimes I see him jogging, too. I’ve caught him looking through the window more than once. I wish you’d just tell him. You know he must be suffering.”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m not telling him, and neither will you. I know you’re still hooking up with Justin and if you happen to be where Bass is, you can’t tell him. Not under any circumstances. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you, little sister, and I’m not going to rat you out, but don’t you think telling him you’re pregnant with Eli’s baby would at least provide him with more of an explanation?”

  “I know him, Holly. If he knew I still loved him and just got pregnant by accident before I’d ever met him, he’d still want to be with me. I know he would.”

  “Would you please tell me what the hell is so wrong with that? I mean, you love him, Ivy. And he loves you. You two should be together.”

  “There is no way I would put him through this, Hol. Nobody knows better than I do how devastating this can be. I can’t risk him falling in love with the baby—the baby that isn’t even his—and then going through anything like what we went through with Dahlia. Or even Jonah. And Eli and I have done this before. We supported each other through both of them. We can do it again.”

  “But you don’t love Eli. In fact, he has a girlfriend. One he’s very happy with as I hear him tell it.”

  “Of course I don’t love him.”

  “And why do you think Eli isn’t dumping his girlfriend over this?”

  I shrug.

  “It’s because he’s thinking rationally, Ivy. Listen to the doctors. The chances of this baby being sick are low.”

  “Twenty-five percent is not low, Hol. Think about it. If there was a twenty-five percent chance you would die every time you walked out the door, would you ever leave your house? If there was a twenty-five percent chance your plane would crash every time you flew, would you ever book a flight?”

  “Geez, well when you put it that way.”

  “Yeah, it’s a huge possibility. And it’s happened twice.”

  “But what if after, if the baby is okay, what happens then? Will you go crawling back to Bass and say, ‘My bad, I still love you and secretly hope you’ve pined away for me these last seven months’?”

  “Of course not. I know he’s going to move on.”

  She shakes her head. “You’re giving up the opportunity to be happy. And if anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you.”

  “I can’t do it to him, Hol.”

  She runs a supportive hand up and down my arm while staring at my face. “You should go home and rest. You look tired.”

  “You mean I look like crap,” I say with a pathetic smile.

  “You look beautiful, Ivy. But tired.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping very well,” I admit. “I don’t take sleeping pills anymore because I don’t want them to hurt the baby.”

  I don’t tell her that because I’m not taking sleeping pills, I dream. Every night I dream about Dahlia. How she was. How she would have been. How she died. I relive that day over and over in my dreams. Her life and death are on a constant loop that plagues me during my sleep. The only thing that’s changed since going off the sleeping pills is now I dream of daisies. Every time Dahlia comes to me in my sleep, she has a daisy in her hair, just like the one I wore in Hawaii.

  Oh, how I miss Hawaii. I guess Dahlia’s just trying to keep that memory alive, too.

  Holly grabs my purse and puts it on my shoulder before pushing me toward the door. “I’ll close up. You go home and rest, birthday girl, we’re having company later.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The sound of laughter wakes me. It takes me a minute to remember where I am.
The nap I took was longer than I expected. I look at the clock. It’s after six. I hear the squeals of a child coming from the living room. Oh, right, everyone is coming over for dinner.

  I check my hair and makeup and then head out to join them.

  “Happy birthday!” Christina hugs me as soon as I come in the room. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I couldn’t find a sitter for him.”

  I close my eyes for a minute and think of how the past two years have been for her—walking on eggshells around me because her son is healthy.

  “Christina, I’ve been so selfish,” I say. “Of course Ricky should be here. I’ve been a horrible sister-in-law and friend and an even worse aunt. I’m so sorry.”

  “You haven’t been horrible, Ivy. You’ve been human. It’s understandable—all of it.”

  “I’m going to be better, I promise. No matter what happens with …” I put a hand on my stomach. “I’m going to be better.”

  Ricky toddles over and holds his hands up to Christina. I lean down and try to pick him up, but he fusses and wiggles out of my hands.

  “It’s okay,” Christina says, holding him on her hip. “You remember Aunt Ivy, don’t you?”

  Ricky buries his face in her neck.

  She reaches out to touch my arm. “It’ll take time. Thank you for trying.”

  I nod. Then I greet the rest of my family.

  It’s odd being pregnant and having nobody acknowledge it. It’s the proverbial elephant in the room. It’s so different than the other times. When I was pregnant with Jonah, everyone was worried about how two teens still in high school would be able to care for a child. When I was pregnant with Dahlia, after people got over the shock that we’d planned it, everyone said what a blessing she would be in the wake of Jonah’s death. But now, everyone knows this child isn’t a blessing. Everyone is well aware of the months or years of torture we’ll have to go through if the baby is like Jonah and Dahlia.

  They all know there is a chance of the baby being normal, or just a carrier. But we don’t talk about it. Because what if it’s not true? What if everyone convinces me that this baby will be okay? What if I start to get excited about the idea of raising a child who isn’t tied to doctors, hospitals, and dialysis machines? What if I get my hopes up and then—then my world comes crashing down again.