Blue Read online

  “Give me your phone,” he ordered.

  “You know, please goes a long way.”

  He chuckled, “You have no idea. But I’m not usually the one to say please. Just give me your phone,” his smile was nearly as disarming as Vaughn’s, “Please.”

  I couldn’t help but grin back at him.

  “Fine,” I said, unlocking my phone with my fingerprint and handing it over.

  Why did I just give a stranger my phone?

  After a minute, he handed it back. My phone was open to a text message, the name “Law” shown across the top where he had entered himself in as a contact. A single text message he had sent to himself from my phone read, “Gorgeous, witty girl in yoga pants you ran into while texting and walking outside Black Ties.”

  Law pulled out his own phone and asked, “What’s your name, so I can save you?”

  “Save me?” I questioned.

  He had no idea how much saving I needed.

  He waggled his phone at me, “On my phone.”

  I hesitated.

  I didn’t want to give him my real name, he was a complete stranger to me. I felt guilty for handing him my phone, for basically just giving another man in a bar my number after running from my husband. It was wrong to be putting myself within crossing distance of the disloyalty line and the guilt of that took over my senses. It was an awful, sickening feeling.

  But the rush of shame I had from this was bearable because it felt deserved in some way. It was shame as a consequence of an action I chose, not from something I had no control over. This was shame I could own, unlike the responsibility I felt for Lucy’s death. Logically, I knew my actions weren’t to blame for her death, but still felt remorse as if I was to blame.

  This sick feeling of owning the guilt distracted me from my grief and in a strange way, that distraction was calming.

  I couldn’t tell him my real name, so I said the first thing that popped into my mind, “I’m Holly Blue,” I regretted it as soon as I said it.

  In a morbid sort of way, it seemed fitting to give the stranger that name, as I would never be able to talk to him without thinking of Vaughn. Vaughn had given me that nickname, he owned it. And here I was giving it to another. I supposed I deserved to have that reminder if I ever talked to Law again, though I didn’t hold my breath that he would actually contact me after tonight.

  “Holly Blue,” he said it out loud, smiling to himself as he typed in my fake name as a contact on his phone.

  He slid it back in his pocket and stood unexpectedly.

  He offered his hand for the second time that night and I took it graciously, “It was nice to meet you, Blue. I’ll be in touch. Order whatever you want, it’s on the house,” he waved at the bartender and told him, “She’s drinking for free.”

  “Thanks, for the drink.”

  He leaned forward and like a true gentleman, kissed the top of my hand in a very chaste and protective way, his eyes piercing mine unexpectedly, “The pleasure was all mine. Drink what you want. Then go home and tell your husband how much you love him. That’s an order, Blue.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I replied jokingly with a salute and a chuckle.

  He froze, standing in front of me, half of his mouth curling up into a smirk, “That sounds good coming from you. You can definitely expect to hear from me tomorrow.”

  My breath hitched at the promise of this beautiful, dark haired stranger at a bar wanting to talk to me again. I welcomed the rush, but even more, the shame I felt for having it, knowing that my behavior tonight had warranted that kind of emotional pain.

  Pain.

  A totally different kind of ache that gave me reprieve from the consistent grief of being a mother without her child. It was tolerable, welcome, even. It was the mental diversion I’d been looking for.

  I reveled in the adrenaline riddled anxiety and the punishing guilt that followed it. I felt alive again for the first time since Lucy died.

  I looked forward to the promise of feeling it again tomorrow.

  Chapter 2

  Vaughn

  I landed on the living room floor with a thud, jolting awake at the unexpected impact.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, climbing up to sit on the sofa I’d just rolled off.

  I had fallen asleep on the couch while I waited for Desi to come home. It was far too small for my broad frame to sleep on comfortably and since she’d never put me in the dog house before, I was finding out for the first time that sleeping here would only lead to aching muscles and a quick drop to the floor.

  I called her no less than twelve times and sent about a thousand text messages before I passed out on the couch at God knows what time.

  Maybe she’d turned her phone off.

  Maybe she was just ignoring me.

  Maybe she was in some sort of trouble and couldn’t answer.

  I’d been in trouble a few times in my life, more than my fair share, so my brain automatically jumped to the most dreadful conclusion. I was genuinely worried about her safety. She had bolted out of the apartment, so anxious, hopeless, and distant.

  She'd become careless since Lucy died. One of the millions of things I loved about Desi was her wild, adventurous spirit. She was smart as a whip and her spot-on judgement balanced out her tendency toward recklessness. When we lost our baby girl, it was like the self-preservation switch in her brain had been flipped to the off position and I had no clue how to turn it back on. It worried me that she might do something stupid. I feared someone might take advantage of her when she wasn’t paying attention.

  Even more so, I was livid. I was angry at Desi for the way she was treating me.

  Angry that she’d run away, too afraid to face her emotions.

  Angry that she refused to talk to me.

  Angry that she’d disappeared, alone on Halloween, and left me behind to worry about what the fuck had happened to her.

  I called my older sister, Hazel, a couple of hours after Desi ran off to express my fear and anger over what was happening with the woman I married. She talked me down from the rage cliff I was about to topple over, reminding me that I couldn’t let my impulses get the best of me. That would only lead to getting me in trouble again and that was the last thing I needed. That was the last thing Desi needed.

  Hazel was my saving grace when it came to my anger. She was one of the few people who could talk me down from a fit of rage and put me back in control of my emotions. She reminded me that I had married a strong, capable woman who was smart enough to take care of herself, even though her insistence on doing so effectively shut me out and pissed me off. I had no doubt that was true, but it was also true that Desi had a tendency to run toward risk rather than away from it, more so as of late. That’s what really had me worried about her.

  I realized suddenly that I had no idea what time it was and I’d never heard Desi come home. I reached for the jeans I had discarded on the floor and pulled out my cell phone. The clock on my screen told me it was 2:04am. No calls, no voicemails, but there was one new text. I opened it at lightning speed.

  DESI: I’m okay. I’ll be home by midnight.

  The time above her sent message told me it was delivered at 11:37pm.

  Shit, that was hours ago.

  I jumped to my feet, rushing to the bedroom, praying that I would find her already there, safe and sound and asleep. The door was open just a crack when I approached, but I pushed it wide as soon as I could reach it. I sighed with relief when I saw her there in the dark, face down on the bed. She was snoring and drooling like it was any other night. She hadn’t bothered to change her clothes before she passed out.

  I was immediately relieved to see her back home. Nonetheless, I had an urge to wake her and scream at her, ask her what was wrong with her, ask her why she didn’t wake me to let me know she was okay. I shoved the urge away, knowing that scratching that itch wouldn’t help either of us. It would just turn into another fight and I was fucking exhausted from riding tonight’s emotional roller coas
ter.

  As irritated as I was, I was still happy that she was back home where she belonged. I went out of my mind waiting for her to come home earlier, and now that she was here, I needed to get my hands on her to feel lucid again. Touching her always gave me comfort and peace, so I didn’t waste time jumping into bed behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist.

  Pulling her close, I deeply inhaled the smell of her sweet pea and magnolia scented shampoo as I spooned her. The sweet smell of her that reminded me of home was tinged with the stale aroma of beer and sweat, which threatened to ignite another spark that would send me back into fury.

  Not now, Vaughn, not now.

  I forced my agitation out with a gruff exhale. She was sleeping so soundly, she'd hardly noticed me tugging her gently backward against my form.

  With her tightly in my arms, where she belonged, my muscles finally relaxed and my mind started to calm. I stroked my fingers over her arm lovingly, wishing I could just keep her in my hold forever.

  Seeing Desi passed out in our bed after drinking a little too much reminded me of the fun-loving party girl she used to be. I selfishly craved the wild child I fell in love with, greedily hoping her state tonight might mean she was finally ready to get back out and experience life. At the same time, I wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in metaphorical bubble wrap with a tracking device attached to ensure her safety and protection every waking moment.

  As my brain made the switch from primal fury to reasonable thought, I remembered the moment everything changed just a few short months ago. Desi had lost a piece of herself when Lucy came too early to survive. I’d felt it when her soul snapped in two that day. It was the moment they placed our stillborn baby girl in her arms for the first time. The pain she felt nearly ripped me in half. Our daughter was gone before she could live. Desi’s thrill for life had been slowly dying along with her every day since. We had to grieve her when we’d only just begun to know her.

  We’d anticipated diving head first together into the adventure of being parents, young parents who didn’t have a fucking clue. But life was a bitch. Our first and last parenting decision for Lucy was whether to have her buried or cremated. We chose the latter.

  All I’d ever wanted was a family. When I met Desi, I knew instantly that she was the woman I wanted to make that family with. Little did I know how quickly it would start. She was my everything from the day we met and I wanted nothing more than to know her, love her, take care of her. I wanted to be her everything and I tried so hard every day.

  Choosing to marry her was easy. The day she officially became Mrs. Desi Rhodes-Cooper was the best day of my life. Before our loss, loving Desi was easy. It was like breathing, necessary and automatic. But we struggled every day since. We struggled with the grief, the pain of loss. We struggled to understand what went wrong and tried to be okay with never knowing why Lucy didn’t make it. We struggled to comfort each other. Some days, I was okay and she wasn’t. Some days, she was okay and I wasn’t. Our grief never aligned in the same rhythm and the unexpected waves could be daunting.

  The past month had been the hardest. I was growing to understand the differences in our pain. Though we both felt it, I knew hers was distinct, more intense. She had suffered the discomforts of pregnancy, which sometimes had been downright hell for her. The morning sickness had hit her hard early on, but she was glowing and vibrant in her second trimester.

  Truly, she was the most beautiful woman in the world, carrying my child, carrying our child.

  She selflessly gave her comfort, her freedom, her youth, all to start our family. It was a different kind of pain for her because she didn’t just witness her water breaking at twenty-one weeks. She didn’t just watch in horror as her partner went through the excruciating pains of labor and delivery. I had to witness it all, but Desi had to experience it all.

  Desi had known Lucy far longer than I had. She had loved her longer, been her mother longer than I had ever understood what being her father would mean. In the end, she had to hold her baby, lifeless in her arms, the baby she had planned a whole life with. Her screams and gut-wrenching sobs during that horrifying moment in time nearly broke me. All I could do was climb into the hospital bed beside her and hold her tight as she purged all her hopes and plans for the future through uncontrollable tears.

  As I recalled the sounds that poured from her soul that night, I pulled her closer against my body. I sat up as much as I could without letting go of her so I could watch her as she slept. Even as she rested, the grief didn’t let go of its ever-present hold on her. It was etched across her face and seeing it there softened me. Her expression was constantly marred by mourning, mine by indignation at the life that was stolen from us.

  I swiped a strand of hair that had fallen stray from her ponytail away from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. I leaned forward to kiss her cheek, wishing that would be enough to heal her and bring her back to life. But I knew it wasn’t that easy.

  Laying my head back down, I curled around her. I reminded myself not to push her too hard, to give her time and understanding. She deserved my patience for what she’d been through, for what she was still going through. I had to find a way to control my impulses that told me to push her and force her to talk. She would talk to me when she was ready to talk to me. We would reconnect when she found herself again.

  And I would continue to patiently love the shit out of her until that day and every day after.

  Chapter 3

  Desi

  I was drawn from my deep, drunken sleep by the steady rise in my body temperature. I opened my eyes, drenched in sweat, to find Vaughn sleeping soundly behind me, his arms wrapped tightly around my body. His strong embrace had always been like a cup of hot chocolate on a snowy winter day, slowly warming me in peaceful decadence from the inside out. Though it had always been soothing before, tonight, that hot drink was scalding, burning my skin, and I just couldn’t take the heat.

  I had to get away from him.

  I peeled his arm off me and nudged him until he rolled over before sliding to the far side of the bed. That was when the hangover really struck me.

  My stomach rolled in queasy waves. My head ached. If I moved, I knew I would puke rather ungracefully, so opted instead to lay there, motionless, feigning sleep. That and the thought of facing Vaughn, after everything that went down last night, made me want to curl up and disappear. My neck muscles strained and pulled painfully at the stress of it all.

  Some time later, Vaughn’s phone buzzed and blared as the alarm went off. He groaned beside me in protest of the early hour. I would’ve groaned, too, at the way the noise thrummed in my head, but I didn’t want him to know I was awake.

  My body rocked slightly as he sat up, shifting the old spring mattress we’d bought at a garage sale just before we moved in together in July. I knew he’d sit there for about a minute, elbows on his knees, head in hands as he contemplated going back to bed, though he never did. His morning routine was predictable. I knew each movement and each step he would take before it even happened.

  I felt another shift and knew it would take him a couple of slow moving steps to make it into the only bathroom in our humble home, accessible only through our single bedroom. He always, always, peed with the door open right after turning the light on. Soon after, I would hear the clank of the toilet seat landing down against the rim and the flush of the toilet. Then I would hear the water of the shower roar as he turned on the morning waterfall.

  I wished my pretend sleep would become real. I felt so tired, but sleep evaded me. My mind felt empty and overflowing all at once and I didn’t know how to cope with it.

  The hiss of the shower water stopped abruptly and I rolled, slowly, over onto my side in the warm bed. I curled my legs toward my chest and pulled the blanket higher just before I heard the creak of the floor as Vaughn stepped back into the bedroom. He shuffled around the bed in the dark and flipped on the light switch without warning. I couldn’t hold back my g
roan and my fake sleep ended right then and there as I pulled the covers over my head.

  “Good morning, Des,” he crooned with a tone of lingering resentment, presumably in response to my behavior last night.

  I didn’t reply.

  Drawers opened and slammed shut noisily as he located his clothes. He was clearly trying to make as much noise as possible to add to the pain of my rapidly worsening headache. After a couple of minutes, he sat next to my hips on the bed and yanked the covers back from my face. I squinted at the light, giving him a death glare. He was fully dressed and ready to leave for work. He could’ve turned the light back off, but he was intentionally being an ass, not that I didn’t deserve it.

  “I said good morning, Des,” he repeated, though his tone was softer.

  “No, it’s not,” I replied.

  “Hangover?” he smiled, trying to charm one out of me, but I was in such bad shape today, emotionally and physically, that it just didn’t work.

  I think he sensed then that early morning flirtation after what happened last night was a terrible idea. His smile dropped and I felt like a bitch for not responding to him the way I should.

  “I was really fucking worried about you, Des. You could have at least woken me when you got home.”

  I couldn’t deny that he was right, but I also had no desire to let this conversation go farther than it needed to. I felt awful in every possible way and I just wanted to sweep everything under the rug.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I tried to sound sincere, knowing that I should be.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, expecting more to my response, but I didn’t budge.

  I simply added, “I’m fine, Vaughn.”

  “Okay, Desi” he sighed and stood from the bed, the frustration and judgment behind his honey eyes physically hurt me, “Go back to sleep.”

  I should’ve said more. I wanted to tell him I knew how cruel it was for me to storm out the way I had. He needed to know that he hadn’t done anything wrong and I should’ve promised that I would try to do better, to be better. But I didn’t say any of it.