Shaken Read online

  She stared at him with love and just like that, he was back in that car. Remembering. Wishing he’d had just one more second, one more chance to slow down. To turn that goddamned wheel…

  Water poured down the windshield in a steady flow, the wipers doing little more than creating waves that near blinded him. They’d gone carefully over the mountain highway, heading back to the 5 Freeway so they could get home to Laguna Hills. They’d gone over the Ortega Highway thousands of times, rain or shine, day or night, because her family was there in Lake Elsinore. Julia lived for her family, wanting to see them whenever his schedule allowed. Her mother loved to spoil Autumn, and Grant loved to spoil Julia. Win-win, he’d always thought.

  Usually, the drive was even somewhat soothing, the only time Autumn slept solidly and they could talk about whatever without toddler interruptions. This time wasn’t different from any one of those trips. The rain hadn’t even been a problem, falling as little more than a sprinkle until they’d finally cleared all the hairpin turns. Then, suddenly, it turned into sheets of water. He’d thought they were lucky to have gotten through before the road closed. Now it was only the big, swooping curves around the final jags of the mountain. Another mile or two and they’d be off the old road. Just a few more turns…

  The sight of the road under the car lights still haunted him. He couldn’t stand to drive at night anymore. Each white dash disappearing under the car reminded him of those final moments. In his mind, those lines were clear, but that night, he’d barely been able to see them. The shine of the reflectors broke through the dark too late. He yanked the wheel, and Julia screamed, a sound that still woke him in the night, sheer terror ripping from her as the car began to spin, its rear dragging them backward toward the guardrail. Metal shrieked, sparks flying behind them, but the steel simply crumpled behind the heavy weight of his German import. Crumpled…then tore.

  There were little more than flashes of memory at that point. Memories he never let himself complete, crushing them down ruthlessly if they dared surface. But there was no defense from them now. He could see it now as clear as it was that night, bursts of images and sounds so sharp he expected to feel the blood and the impact all over again.

  The car rolling down the ravine, first backward, then end to end. High beams knifing through brush, bramble and trees, his hand pushing through the glass and into the boulder that crashed through his door. Autumn’s wail, cut violently short, while Julia’s screams tore through his eardrums. Pain, white and blistering, flashing through his vision as Julia’s hoarse cries finally penetrated his mind. The car had stopped tumbling, was dented in around them, but finally still. Balanced on the passenger’s side, leaving him to dangle above his wife.

  “Autumn’s not crying,” Julia had said, blood spilling from her lips and her hairline. She spit it out, yanking at a seatbelt that refused to let her go. “Grant, she’s not crying!”

  Years of emergency training kicked in, making his muddled mind and damaged body start to move, even if he wasn’t sure what to possibly do next. His belt gave easier than hers, allowing him to drop heavily against her. It wasn’t easy, especially not with his left hand bleeding, the fingers broken, but he worked his way to the back.

  “Is she okay?” Julia had asked, needing him to reassure her. Needing him to tell her their child was just unconscious. He hadn’t known what to tell her, shock, pain, stealing any thoughts he could have formed.

  She looked asleep. Her wild curls falling onto her slack little face, cheeks still rosy, cinnamon lashes fanned down, her chubby little hand loosely draped over her chest. If it weren’t for the stake of the tree branch poking through her little jacket, the blood spreading across her favorite blanket, he would have thought she was.

  The doctor in him took over. It had to, because the father was screaming inside. Broken. Destroyed. The doctor was the one searching for a pulse, trying to use CPR to bring life back from where it had fled. Pushing air into her lungs, counting ribs and calculating the catastrophic damage the branch had caused. But even the doctor couldn’t look at his watch to see how much time was passing by. Couldn’t allow himself to think about how much blood was already lost. Or admit that he was already too late.

  The doctor fought.

  The father begged.

  In the end, they both failed.

  “I couldn’t save her,” Grant sobbed now, great gulping gasps of choking guilt making him nearly unintelligible to his own ears. “I tried. I tried everything I knew, and I—I—” If he could just get a fucking breath, he could explain. He could make her understand. Don’t hate me, please God, don’t hate me…

  “I know,” Julia whispered, her soft lips against his brow.

  His whole body was shuddering in her arms, as if he were in shock. Maybe he was. He felt shocked, almost out of control. He grappled to find his bearings, but they were hopelessly scattered. “I sh-shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Doing what?” she demanded softly. “Telling me what you feel? Sharing your pain?”

  He shook his head against the silk of her throat, taking her comfort even as he hated himself for it. “Adding to yours.”

  Smooth hands coursed over his shoulders, the gentle touch soothing the electric tautness there, easing the tension. “You took my pain.”

  “I tried.” God, how he tried.

  “Why won’t you let me do the same for you?”

  He swallowed, the muscles in his neck clenching reflexively. How to explain this in a way she’d accept? “Because…” His hands tightened on the loose fabric at her back, his throat so constricted he wasn’t even sure he could get the words out. “I deserve to hurt.”

  She stilled. No words. No recriminations…no false denials.

  His heart knotted again, the truth right in front of them. Impossible to hide from anymore. “It was my fault.”

  He felt her head shake against his even as he spoke. “No, it was an accident.”

  But every thought he’d had since they’d pulled them from the car, from Autumn, flashed through his mind at almost painful speed. All the second guessing that had echoed in him since that day. “We should have just stayed over like your mother said.”

  “We couldn’t have known we’d lose control of the car. It wasn’t supposed to storm for hours.”

  “No, she’d still be here if I’d done the right thing, but I didn’t. I did something wrong, I…missed something.” He went over every step, every option he’d tried to get her heart going, to make her breathe… “I must have missed something. I don’t know what, but I must have missed something.”

  “Grant.” Julia’s voice broke on his name, her hands clenched at his back.

  “You were right, I didn’t want her. Not at first. I didn’t know the first thing about babies. Until you my life was about my career. I never imagined wanting anything else. But then she was there and I couldn’t not love her. She was us. She was…Autumn.”

  Agonizingly, he could still see her, laughing after falling on her bottom, twin dimples on her cheeks and a chortle that made her whole little body bounce. “This little person with all this personality and this trust. She believed in me, as if I could have fixed the whole world for her if she asked. I cared. I cared. I loved her so fucking much I feel like I died in that car with her. Like someone ripped out my heart and left me standing there. I’d let them do it now, if it would bring her back. But they won’t.”

  Her lips pressed to his brow and he could feel her shaking beneath him. “I know.”

  “It’s not enough, is it? I wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t it enough? How could I save so many people and not save her? Why not Autumn?”

  “I don’t know, honey.” She pressed more kisses to his face, her hands petting down his cheek. It was only then that he realized she was crying, too. “But you can’t go on like this. Don’t you see it’s tearing you apart? Tearing us?”

  “I have to.”

  She cupped his face, forcing him to look up at her. “Autumn would n
ever want you to hurt like this.”

  He tried to shake off her hold. “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand? I was there, too. I made the decision right along with you to drive home that night. I was in the car, listening, while you did everything you could to keep her alive. What don’t I understand?”

  He lifted up, trying to get away, but she didn’t let go. Desperation clawed at him. He had to get up. She had to let this go.

  “What don’t I understand?”

  His fingers curled around her wrists, prying, but she held firm.

  “What don’t I understand, Grant?”

  Words exploded from him like bullets. “If I let go, she’ll be gone all over again!”

  The grief came back, doubled, his insides on fire. There was no air, no words, just the feeling of agony turning him inside out. He choked, trying to swallow down the tears, but the pain was too big. It was swallowing him whole. Julia held him through the ravaging storm of his tears, wordlessly allowed him to hold onto her. An anchor he couldn’t begin to let loose.

  God help him if she asked him to let her go again.

  God help them both.

  Chapter Eight

  Julia hummed, her back against the wall, her hand slowly running over the slope of Grant’s shoulder to his ribs and waist before running up his length again. Over and over, for what seemed like hours. There’d been no word from the elevator technicians. No sound of anything. Just the two of them, locked away in this box where time didn’t matter. He was heavy, his head on her lap, his arms tight around her legs. Her legs protested a little at his weight, but it was nothing she couldn’t ignore. The rest of it—holding him, being held by him—more than made up for any discomfort. For the first time since the accident, the silence between them wasn’t clouded with blame or tension. Instead it was…simple. Clear.

  Her fingers slipped through the heavy lengths of his black hair again, lifting the streaks of silver threading at his temples. It wasn’t out of the question for a man nearing forty to have some distinguishing gray, but she knew them for what they were. Scars. Just like the ones on his knuckles where the skin had been torn in the crash. So much of him had been torn apart. So much of them.

  Her heart had broken all over again, holding him as he’d cried. The loss in her heart had reignited, but it was…different. He was raw, the grief ripping him apart because he’d held it in so long. Too long, trapping it with guilt and blame and anger. Hers was softer. Like an ache that would never truly go away, but the vicious blades of it had worn into something she could bear now. Or maybe her own scars had grown thicker and she hadn’t even realized. Whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d taken steps forward. Moved on in her life. Grant hadn’t. He’d been trapped in that car all this time, trying to save Autumn over and over again and losing over and over again.

  She wiped at the new moisture on her cheeks so the tears wouldn’t spill onto him. She’d always thought the accident had been hardest on her because she hadn’t been able to see her daughter. To take any active part in trying to help her, even if it was just to hold her hand while she’d died. The doctors told her that Autumn’s death was instant, but her mother’s heart couldn’t quite believe that. Her own guilt had ravaged her, that she’d been so close and unable to give Autumn even that barest comfort. Her baby had been alone in that backseat. Afraid. In the darkest nights, nothing drowned out the memory of that final, broken scream.

  Nothing but Grant.

  He’d held her. Taken on her pain and until now she’d never realized what it must have cost him. How it must have dug deeper grooves into his heart and soul. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t let her do the same for him until now. She hadn’t helped him. She’d left him to drown in his pain, even told herself that he felt nothing so that she would be justified in going. It was the same thing all over again. He was dying behind her turned back and she’d done nothing to hold his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, petting his hair back into place. She’d barely made sound enough for the words to be heard, but he jolted in her lap anyway. “I’m so sorry, Grant.”

  His big hand caught hers, pulling it down to his lips, pressing a kiss against her fingers. Another and another. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  She flinched at the sound of his voice, hoarse and graveled from the screams he’d tried to muffle against her belly. “Yes, I do. I shouldn’t have left. I should have made you talk to me. I should have listened. I was so wrapped up in my own grief, I did nothing to help you with yours.”

  “Yes you did.” He rolled onto his stomach, looking up at her with that frown that was so much a part of him. He hadn’t smiled very much, he used to say, until they’d met. When he was quiet, thinking, the frown always came back, forming deep lines between his dark brows. Autumn had been the same, the little frown of concentration marking her as Grant’s daughter in a way nothing else ever could. She’d been so much like him…

  “Enabling you to bury your pain so you could take care of mine isn’t helping.” As if her loss had been any greater than his. God, the selfishness of it all stung.

  “Don’t you understand, Jules?” He rose up, kneeling in front of her and reaching out to cup her face with one warm hand. “If I didn’t have you…I never would have left that car. I wouldn’t have gotten up every day. I’d already failed her. But if you had died, too?” He choked, his eyes closing as if just the thought stabbed him to the soul. “There wouldn’t have been anything left of me.”

  She reached for him. Her arms locked around his neck and his around her body, their lips meeting in a kiss so desperate it should have hurt. But it didn’t. It felt right. As if the jagged pieces of them had finally found the perfect fit again.

  “Come home with me,” he whispered between kisses, his hand tangling in her hair, the lush sense of passion flaring between them again.

  “Yes.” There was no other answer inside her.

  “Be my wife again.”

  She paused, pulling back from his lips to look into his gray eyes. There was nothing guarded there anymore. No dark secret. No hidden pain. Just Grant, open and honest. She had to be the same. “It won’t be easy, you know that, right?”

  They’d been through too much. Had lost too much. The days of simple happiness were gone. From now on, the specter of what they could lose would always be behind them. Waiting.

  “Do you still love me?”

  A tremulous smile pulled at her lips. “Loving you is the only part of me that hasn’t changed. The only part that will never change.”

  “Then we can deal with the rest.”

  “Do you promise? Because I can’t bear it when you shut me out.” No, she wouldn’t bear it.

  He kissed her, a fast press of his lips she figured was more to quiet her than anything else. A second kiss, softer, an apology, replaced it, before he pulled back. “I promise. You can throw anything you want at me if I start.”

  She laughed, startling herself at the sound. “Even your precious medical journals?”

  “Anything. Just don’t leave again.”

  She sobered, lifting her hand to caress his face. “I promise. Never again.”

  His kiss this time was more than passion or a ploy. It was a promise. One she accepted with her whole broken heart. Forever, come what may, they’d face it all together.

  Soon, those broken pieces would mend, she could believe that now. They’d leave their scars behind, but they would mend. And her heart would grow. Life was just like that. She pressed her face into the crook of her husband’s neck, closing out everything but the ember glow of the hope growing inside. She’d forgotten what it felt like, but it hadn’t forgotten her.

  Grant slowly lowered her to the floor of the elevator, wordlessly parting the folds of her blouse. He touched her bare breasts reverently, caressing the upper slopes to the rosy tips. Slowly, gently, he lowered his face to them and pressed kisses to the pale curves. She arched, but she didn’t cl
ose her eyes. She watched him take her nipple into his mouth, lave it before drawing deeper. His warm hand smoothed from her ribs down to her hip and thigh, pulling her skirt up when she lifted for him. He fit their bodies together easily, the hard length of him sliding deep into her core, right to the heart of her.

  He didn’t move and she didn’t want him to. Their gazes locked even as their hands coursed over each other’s bodies. Caressing. Soothing.

  Forgiving.

  He lay over her, fitting together skin to skin, still staring into each other’s eyes even as he kissed her. The intensity of the joining stole every sensation that wasn’t about them. Still, he didn’t move his hips. Didn’t pull back or surge back to her. Right now, in this moment, they were truly one. This wasn’t about lust or need or hurt. It was communion. Without words, she knew he wanted them to stay that way as long as they could.

  But there were words she needed to say.

  “I love you,” she whispered, touching his jaw, his mouth, with her lips as she spoke.

  His smile, when it came, still had the tinge of sadness, but she could see the hope in his eyes now, too. Could see it growing. He took her hand into his own, pulling it down so he could twine their fingers together. A second later, he took the other as well, moving both of them just above her head. It lasted a second, or maybe forever, but for a perfect moment, it was pure connection between them. But then he moved. Slowly pulling from her, easing back inside. The urgency, the fiery need, had changed into something different. Something patient, something willing to build within them.

  “More.” She lifted her hips for him, urging him to meet her. She was ready now. Ready for everything he needed to give her.

  His gaze flickered, his expression growing darker, his thrust burrowing deeper.

  “More.” She tightened her legs around him, lifting her lips for his kiss.

  He groaned, his mouth fitting over hers even as he increased his pace. He drove into her, grinding against her clit and sending pulses of dark pleasure through her. But she knew there was more. She whimpered for it, clamping her fingers tighter to his. Faster he moved through her slick sex, harder, shuttling against her sensitive walls without grace. Just raw, desperate plunges that stole her breath and stroked parts of her she hadn’t realized she had.