Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Blythe

T he morning at the clinic had been packed with back to back clients, and things had been moving at such a fast pace there hadn’t been a chance for me to speak with Merritt. I’d been trying to talk to her more to see if I could get her to come out of her shell. Truth was, I was worried about her. I could have sworn I saw a bruise on her hip the other day. She’d been reaching up to slide a file back into place on one of the higher shelves, causing her scrubs top to ride up a bit, but before I could be certain it was a bruise and not just a shadow, she jerked it back in place.

The mechanical chime of the door sounded, and I looked up as Ivy Young came through, followed closely by her boyfriend, Connor. The two of them were much more touchy-feely now than they had been when she first started coming to see Dr. Shaundry. I hadn’t asked, not wanting to dig into business that wasn’t mine, but it was clear that the pregnancy had been an accident. As the big man placed his hand on the small of Ivy’s back and guided her to the reception desk, all while looking down at her like she was the very thing that hung the moon in the sky each night, I was glad to see they’d made it through the rough patches and appeared to be going strong.

Ivy smiled brightly as she stopped across the counter from me, placing a palm on the swell of her belly. She hadn’t been showing the last time she came in, but now it was obvious that her rounded belly was more than just an extra-large burrito for lunch.

“Hi,” she greeted me, looking happy and healthy and so much brighter than the last time I’d seen her.

I returned her smile with one of my own. “Wow, look at you.”

“I know.” Her hand caressed her stomach affectionately. “It was the weirdest thing. I just kind of popped overnight.”

“Yeah, it’ll happen like that. But it looks good on you.”

Connor drew closer to her like he couldn’t stand even the smallest distance between them. Looping his arm over her shoulder, he pulled her into his side to press a kiss to her temple. “Didn’t think it was possible for her to get more beautiful than she already was, but then she went and proved me wrong.”

The genuine adoration in his eyes as he gazed at her was beautiful and painful to witness at the same time. I was so incredibly happy for Ivy that she was happy. She was a good person. She’d reached out more than once not long after I returned to Hope Valley, but I hadn’t been in a very good place then. She deserved her happily ever after, and I did everything in my power to stomp down the pang of envy trying to spring to life at the realization that, not only had I lost my happily ever after, but it had all been a lie in the first place.

“Have a seat and I’ll let them know you’re here. Heather will be out to take you back in just a minute.”

“Thanks, Blythe.”

Ivy took the hand Connor extended and let him lead her to one of the cushy chairs lining the walls. As I swiveled my chair around to face my computer, I caught Merritt looking out into the waiting room, sadness chiseled into the plains of her face and glistening from her eyes.

My ribs squeezed tight in my chest as I watched her watching Ivy and Connor. If I hadn’t already suspected something was very wrong in her marriage, the way she looked just then would have been all the confirmation I needed.

She blinked, her eyes clearing and the mask falling back into place. A small, shaky grin pulled at her mouth when she caught me staring. “They’re a cute couple,” she said with a sniffle before whipping back around to face her computer screen.

I reached over, placing a hand on her arm. “Honey, are you okay?”

She nodded a bit frantically. “Yeah. Sure. I’m all good.”

There wasn’t an ounce of truth to those words. “Okay, but you know, if you ever need to talk, I’m here.” It was a pitiful offer, one so much smaller than what I really wanted to give her, but if I pushed too fast, I knew she’d lock down, then there’d be no chance of helping her.

The rest of the day was uneventful and a bit dull, only livening up once I picked up my kids from school and daycare. Listening to them chatter on about their day was always a highlight of mine. Hearing them talk about their friends gave me a small glimmer of hope that I hadn’t screwed everything up by uprooting their lives and moving them out here so soon after losing their father.

“Look!” Adeline’s arm shot between the front seats as I turned my SUV into the driveway. “Uncle Tris is home!”

Sure enough, his truck was parked in the driveway, marking the first time in weeks he’d been home before the sun went down. We’d been living with my little brother for months, but with his work schedule and the havoc in my life, I felt like I hardly saw him. We’d been separated by states for years, but recently I’d missed him more than I had in all that time.

The front door opened as I hefted Ainsley out of her booster and placed her on the ground. All three of my kids bolted toward their uncle. “Hey, guys,” he chuckled as a tiny tornado of kids descended upon him. All three of them were talking over each other, vying for his attention, to the point of yelling.

“Good lord, guys. Let your uncle breathe for a second, why don’t you?”

He placed his hands on top of Adeline’s and Avett’s heads and smiled down at them. “Doc’s out back runnin’ through the sprinkler I set up. Why don’t you guys go join him? I’ll be right out. I need to talk to your momma first.”

The kids took off like a bullet, eager to play in the water with Tristan’s dog. Meanwhile, my stomach sank at the emotion skating over my brother’s face as he looked back up at me.

“What’s up?” I managed to ask, though everything inside me was screaming that I didn’t want to know. “You got really serious all of a sudden.”

He braced his hands on his hips and lowered his head as he let out a gust of breath. “I tried callin’. Wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“You’re freaking me out, little bro. Just tell me, already.”

I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the sympathy in his eyes, but I found myself holding my breath anyway. “Lincoln’s here to see you, B.”

And there it was.

It was funny how I’d been preparing myself for this very thing, yet I still wasn’t prepared.

I couldn’t breathe. As I stumbled out of the house and onto the front stoop, I struggled to fill my lungs with air. It felt like someone had punched me right in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I guess, given the news I just received, that was about right.

Footsteps sounded behind me, just as Tristan’s voice called out. “B? You okay?”

I wasn’t. God, I was the furthest thing from okay. “I can’t—” My voice cracked, and it took everything in me not to burst into tears. I didn’t want my kids to see me break down. They needed their mother to be strong. I couldn’t crumble. Not again. Elliott had caused that too many times already.

“I can’t be here,” I finally managed to get out. “Can you?—?”

“Of course. I’ve got the kids, B. You do what you need to do. I’m here. I’m always here.”

I nodded, blinking back the burn in my eyes as I raised up on my toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks,” I croaked, that single word scraping along my throat like sandpaper. I rushed to my car and threw it into gear. I wanted to slam on the gas pedal and take off, but that would have been reckless, and reckless wasn’t something my family could afford.

I didn’t know where the hell I was going, but I couldn’t stay in that house, not with the walls closing in on me after the bomb Lincoln dropped.

It hadn’t been an affair. It was so much worse.

It hurt bad enough to know my husband had been sleeping with someone else, but he’d built a whole life I didn’t know about. Knowing he had a whole other family ... well, that killed. He had two kids with her, for Christ’s sake. Kids ! All those business trips, all those lectures and conferences I thought he was going to, those had all been a cover for him to go spend time with them. His second family.

The pain in my chest wouldn’t let up. It was so bad that, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was having a heart attack. What I was dealing with might not have been life threatening, but my heart was irreparably damaged nonetheless.

I ended up somewhere I hadn’t been in years, somewhere I never expected to be again. I’d driven on autopilot to a place that used to be second nature to me. Still dressed in my scrubs and hospital approved shoes from work, this definitely was not the proper footwear to be wearing on a hike, but my body moved of its own accord, without any input from my brain. Before I knew what was happening, I was out of my SUV and starting up a trail I used to know like the back of my hand.

My feet slipped on the bed of fallen leaves on the soft ground. I wound through the trees, somehow managing to keep from falling as I moved up, up, up. The tightness in my chest refused to loosen its vise grip. I was dangerously close to hyperventilating as I burst through the trees into the clearing beyond.

This place had meant something back then. It was special. It was a place Rhodes and I had kept to ourselves. It was where we’d first kissed, where I’d given him my virginity, where he’d said he loved me for the first time, and where he’d told me he planned on joining the Army as soon as he graduated, but I wasn’t focused on any of that then.

The cliff overlooked the beauty of this valley. It was a view that never failed to take my breath away with its stunning vista, but now I wasn’t seeing any of it. I couldn’t hear the trickle of the river below over the rush of blood in my ears. I couldn’t appreciate the peaks and valleys of the mountains stretched out before me. All I could think about was the pressure building inside of me. I felt like my insides were made of that shit kids put in their science fair volcanos, just waiting to explode. I was a human pressure cooker, and if I didn’t find some way to release it, I was going to lose my mind.

So I did the only thing I could think to do. It was the very thing Tristan had suggested days ago. I leaned back, opened my mouth, and screamed as loud and long as I possibly could. I felt better afterward, so I did it again. And again. Until my throat felt like it was on fire and tears were streaming down my face. Once I couldn’t scream any longer, I started letting out a stream of curses in between broken sobs as I poured out all the pain eating me up inside.

I sucked in a gasp and whipped around at the snap of a twig, right to where Rhodes was standing between two wide oak trees.

“Of course!” I shouted up at the sky, throwing my arms out wide. “Of course you’re here right now. How is it you always pop up when I’m at my very worst, huh? Did I do something evil in a past life? Was I an auditor for the IRS or something?”

Before he could formulate an answer, a fresh wave of rage and sorrow crashed into me, taking me down to my knees as my tears fell and leached into the dirt beneath me.