Fall From India Place

CHAPTER 18

The next morning, I sighed regretfully as I tidied away all evidence of our visit to the cottage. When Marco came in from putting our bags in the car and saw the uncharacteristic pout on my lips, he cracked a smile. “Back to reality.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Do we have to?”

His smile disappeared. “We have a lot to talk about when we get back.”

My stomach flip-flopped. “Why don’t we talk about it now?”

“I’d rather we talk about it back home. It’s a pretty big deal.”

“It is about your mysterious weekends, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay, let’s hit the road now, because the suspense has been killing me for weeks.”

Marco pulled up outside my flat. “You go in. I’ll drop the rental off and get a cab back.”

I leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. “Text me when you’re nearly at the flat. I’ll put the kettle on for you.”

“Sure, babe.”

I got out of the car, grabbed my bag, and ducked my head back in the passenger door, everything I wasn’t quite ready to say but definitely felt shining in my eyes. “Thank you for a beautiful weekend.”

His mouth kicked up at the corner. “It’s not over yet, Hannah.”

I reluctantly shut the door on that rather thrilling comment and hurried into my building out of the cold. As much as I loved my flat, I really did miss the cottage already. Pottering around the flat, putting on the heat, tidying up the mess I’d left in my bedroom after Marco had dropped the surprise getaway on me, I couldn’t ignore the kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach. I was beyond nervous about Marco’s upcoming discussion with me. In fact, it was an understatement to say I was growing a little impatient with the “family thing.” I’d even spoken to Joss about it. She reckoned Marco was waiting until I said “I love you” before divulging whatever this unspoken commitment was.

“It’s obviously important. It’s not hard to guess he just needs to know you two are serious before he tells you,” she’d opined.

“But we are serious.”

“Have you told him you love him?”

“No.”

“Then how does he know how serious you are?”

I wondered now, after he had said, “I love you,” if there hadn’t been some truth in what Joss said. We had grown much closer over the last two weeks. Perhaps Joss was right. Maybe he had just needed to know I was serious about him.

In an attempt to take my mind off it until he returned to finally clear up the whole mystery, I decided to do some housework, starting with my bedroom.

I’d barely begun when my phone went off. Assuming it was the text message from Marco, I was more than a little surprised to see Suzanne’s name on the screen. I swiped it, opening her message.

Don’t shoot the messenger. I was at the German Market last weekend and saw this. I thought it through and finally decided you needed to see it.

My heart now flipped in a much less pleasant way as I clicked on the photo attachment to enlarge it – and felt the world narrow around me.

The photo captured Marco by one of the market stalls. He was carrying a little boy and smiling at a pretty brunette who was laughing up into his face.

The little boy… he had Marco’s coloring… Marco’s smile…

The phone slipped from my hand and I felt my knees wobble.

Suddenly I was on the carpet, attempting not to throw up at the implications of the photograph. My heart was racing too hard. I couldn’t breathe properly.

I willed myself to calm down, exhaling and inhaling in measured breaths until my heart rate slowed.

Trembling, I reached for my phone and flicked open the picture again.

Suddenly everything began to make sense and I knew, I just knew, what Marco was returning home to tell me. I forwarded the picture to him so he’d know I knew too.

Suzanne just texted this to me.

It felt like forever as I waited on the floor for an answer, but it was only a minute or two at most before my phone rang. I clicked the ANSWER button.

“Hannah” – Marco sounded out of breath – “I can explain. I’ll be ten minutes.”

“Marco —”

I heard the click as he hung up.

This was bad. This was… I knew it. I was right. If it were anything else he would have explained over the phone. I knew what he’d say when he walked through that door.

Just like that, the past blindsided me, taunting me for my earlier smugness.

Not wanting him to find me on the bedroom floor, pale with shock, I got to my feet and walked into the sitting room. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was a jittery mess.

The buzzer went off.

In a daze, I let Marco into the building, opened my door for him, and returned to the sitting room. I frowned at the mess I was supposed to be tidying up. I had books scattered all over the flat because I was reorganizing them into the bookshelves Marco had built for me.

“Hannah.”

I whirled around to face Marco as he strode into the room, his eyes glittering, his face flushed. He was coming straight for me. “Don’t.” I held up my hands to stop him. He froze. “Explain first.”

I watched the muscle tick in his jaw. “I was going to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

He cursed under his breath, rubbing a hand over his close-cropped hair. “That I have a son.”

The words hung heavy in the cold air. I closed my eyes against the truth.

“His name is Dylan. The woman in the picture is Leah, his mom. I was at the market with them last weekend along with Leah’s fiancé.”

Breathe, Hannah.

“You have a son?” I opened my eyes, sure the pain of that truth was blazing clear for him to see. “That’s what today’s talk was supposed to be about?”

Marco’s features were strained as he nodded. “He’s three.”

I did the calculations in my head and they took my breath away. “When you…” I was starting to shake. “When you came back to Scotland you… you knocked someone up?”

He took a placating step toward me, as though I were a wounded, abandoned dog, unpredictable but needing comfort. “Hannah, Leah and I were friends at school. Sort of. We hung around with the same people. I was back in Edinburgh a couple of months and I was still trying to sort my head out about Nonno, everything, and a friend invited me to a party. I thought loosening up might help. I got really drunk. Leah was there and she was wasted too. We hooked up.” He said it gruffly, like he felt guilty about it. “She got pregnant. We didn’t want to be together, but I’d never leave my kid the way I was left.”

He was saying it all. Explaining the situation. I heard it. I know I did. But the past was so much louder than his explanation.

“I get Dylan every other weekend and we alternate holidays, but his mom, me, and her fiancé, Graham, are pretty tight. We have a good relationship, which is great for Dyl. And Dyl…” Despite my distraction I saw a happiness in his eyes I’d never seen before. “Hannah, he saved me. You want to know why I got over all the shit my grandfather dealt me? Dylan. Everything changed when he came along. I have someone who needs me to have faith in myself so that he can grow up and have faith in himself. But also I need to have faith in myself so that he has faith in me that I’ll always be there for him.” He gave me that half smile of his I loved. “Kid thinks I’m a goddamn superhero… but he’s the one that saved me. He’s the reason I wanted another chance with you. He made me feel like maybe I could deserve you.”

I knew that was a good thing. I knew that.

But that feeling of happiness for him, that relief for him I knew was in me somewhere, was buried under a mountain of irrational fury.

“Hannah, baby, please say something. I’m sorry I kept this under wraps, but I wanted to give us a chance first. I thought if I told you right away it would scare you off, and I needed the chance to remind you how right we are for each other. I knew after last weekend that you and I are solid, so I was going to tell you today and then introduce you to Dylan next weekend. Leah already knows about you, but I needed to be sure about us before Dylan meets you. I’m sure, babe. You know that. But I had to be sure that you loved me back, that this was serious, and that we definitely have a future.”

It was the most he had said in one breath since the first night he’d come to my flat.

I stared at him, keeping my silence while I tried to keep a lid on my emotions. Something like panic flickered in his eyes. Beautiful eyes. Eyes I loved.

Eyes I wanted – no, needed – gone.

I searched for a semblance of numbness to get me through the next five minutes.

“Hannah —”

“I don’t want kids,” I said dully, holding on to the numb sensation.

Marco blinked in confusion. “What?”

I took a step toward him, trying to herd him out of my home. “I don’t want kids. Ever.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re a schoolteacher.”

“So?” I shrugged, my expression carefully blank. “I don’t want kids. Mine or anyone else’s.”

“Hannah, just take a minute. We need to talk about this. This is us.”

Looking him directly in the eye, I replied with calm and authority, “As of right now there is no us.” The calm slipped somewhat. “You should have told me you had a son.”

Suddenly my upper arms were gripped in his hands, his body brushing mine, his face close. “Why are you acting like this? This isn’t you.” He gave me a little shake, as if trying to loosen me up, get back to something that made sense.

It worked.

I wrenched out of his hold, my face twisted in anger. “You don’t know me.” I shoved him, stumbling away from him. “Obviously.”

“Goddammit. I can’t believe this shit.” His voice lowered to a growl. “You’re not even going to discuss this? Just… we’re over? After everything? After spending the best few weeks in the fucking history of weeks, you’re seriously showing me the door without talking it through?”

Struggling not to let my rage and pain explode all over him for fear I might actually do physical damage, I clenched my hands into fists at my sides and held on to self-control. “This isn’t a little thing, Marco.” The self-control was slipping already, my voice climbing higher on every word. “You kept a son from me. A son! And yes… we are over! You lied!” I panted, shuddering from the weeping wounds inside me. “I don’t want kids. I certainly don’t want yours. So get the fuck out of my life and stay there.”

If I hadn’t been so tightly clasped inside the past’s vicious grip, I might have faltered in my resolve at the expression in Marco’s eyes. The incredulity. The loss.

Then his face tightened with his own fury.

He leaned into me, eyes sparking with fire as he hissed in my face, “It’s a good thing I did keep Dylan away from you, because I wouldn’t want him around whatever shit this is.”

Wearing a look of disgust, Marco turned around and stormed out of the flat.

I jumped at the sound of my front door slamming and immediately swayed with dizziness. My hands groped for the couch to steady myself.

I took a few shallow breaths.

My feet started to move, walking me through a fog, cold little pinpricks of nausea covering my face. I reached the bathroom and lifted the lid on the toilet seat seconds before I threw up the past…

The wind was bitter and bracing on North Bridge. It whipped my short hair back and stung my cheeks. It felt good.

I smiled at Cole as he walked beside me. Jo was just a little ahead of us, talking on her phone to Cameron.

Three months ago. Well, just under. That’s how long since I saw Marco – my last image of him was India Place… that horrified look in his eyes as he dressed and then hurried from the room. I didn’t expect to hear from him after he’d taken my virginity and then rejected me, but after four weeks of nothing I finally went to ask after him at his uncle’s restaurant. Imagine my total and complete heartbreak to learn that he’d left for America weeks ago. Without saying good-bye.

My family and friends had noticed my despondency. They were worried. I was worried. When I didn’t feel numb, I felt like crap. I’d had a sickness bug that I couldn’t seem to shake, and I had pains. I didn’t feel like myself and I knew if I didn’t go to the doctor soon, my parents would force me to.

Everyone was taking their turn with me. Trying to cheer me up. Today was Jo and Cole’s turn. Cole and I were friends, not close friends since he was a year younger and we went to different schools, but I found his presence soothing. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, which was always nice when you didn’t have a lot of answers.

Jo grinned over her shoulder at us and murmured something into her phone.

“What do you think she’s saying right now?” Cole squinted against the winter sun.

“That we make a cute couple,” I answered wryly.

Cole looked surprised. “You think?”

“Something I’ve learned watching the women around me fall in love… it makes them want everyone else to fall in love.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

I laughed weakly. “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in falling in love. We can fight any attempts at matchmaking together.” I felt a stab of pain in my abdomen and flinched.

“I kind of have a girlfriend anyway,” Cole confessed, distracting me from the pain. “I haven’t told Jo yet.”

I smiled. “Yeah? What’s her —” Violent pain shot through my abdomen and I bent double, sucking in my breath.

“Hannah.” Cole wrapped his arm around me. “Jo!”

More pain. Agonizing. I think I screamed. I felt a rush of wetness between my legs.

Pain. Nausea.

Fear.

Black spots in my vision, hundreds, thousands… until all was just black.

There was a beeping sound.

It was bloody annoying.

Pushing through the dark of sleep, that beeping sound grabbed hold of me and pulled me into consciousness. My eyes fluttered open slowly, my vision hazy. I took in the fading cream-colored walls of the room. The polystyrene ceiling.

Where the hell was I?

I felt weird. My mouth dry. My body weighted.

Catching movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head on the unfamiliar pillow to find my mum sitting on a chair beside the unfamiliar bed I was in. Her elbow was braced on the arm of the chair, her chin braced on her hand.

Her eyes were closed. Her cheeks pale.

The beeping behind me seemed to speed up.

“Mum?” I tried to say, but it just came out as a croak. “Mum.” I tried again, more successfully.

Her lashes fluttered and then she was looking at me in surprise. The surprise immediately disappeared as her face crumpled and she started to sob.

“Mum?” Scared, I lifted my arm a little to reach for her hand and I spotted the IV stuck in the bend of my elbow. “Mum?” My voice shook now.

She grabbed my hand. “Oh sweetheart, you’re okay.” She smiled through the tears.

“What happened?”

“Hannah?”

I turned my head to see my dad standing in the doorway. His features were strained, his eyes bloodshot. He rushed toward the hospital bed and leaned over me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Sweetheart,” he whispered hoarsely.

I started to cry. Silent tears. “What happened?”

A little while later a doctor arrived to explain. She introduced herself as Dr. Tremell, my surgeon.

She stood on my right, while my parents stood in each other’s arms on my left. Dr. Tremell stared down at me kindly. “Hannah, you had what is called an ectopic pregnancy.”

What? Pregnant? No. I turned to look at my parents in denial. “No… I would have… known.”

The doctor shook her head gently. “Sometimes with an ectopic pregnancy there is bleeding, spotting, that is often confused with menstruation.” She must have seen on my face that that’s exactly what had been happening these last few weeks. “An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants itself outside of the womb. In your case, Hannah, the egg implanted inside your left fallopian tube. Unfortunately, because you were unaware of your pregnancy, any symptoms you might have had were not picked up on.”

The sickness. The pain.

I closed my eyes in disbelief.

“The egg continued to grow inside your fallopian tube until it ruptured the tube. You were bleeding internally when you arrived at the hospital. We had to perform surgery immediately. As I explained to your parents, we lost your heartbeat but managed to resuscitate you.”

I’d died?

I looked at my parents and saw it written all over their faces.

“Hannah.” Dr. Tremell’s voice had grown softer. “We removed the damaged tube and you should make a full recovery from surgery. We’re administering pain medication to you, but if you feel any pain, please let your nurse know and we’ll administer more if needed.”

I looked up at my parents and saw in their ragged expressions what the last forty-eight hours had done to them.

I closed my eyes.

This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

Two months.

I sat on the end of my own bed, staring around at the things in my room, feeling strangely detached from the person who owned them. I didn’t feel like that girl anymore.

Nearly dying, weeks of pain and recovery, missing school, dealing with the rumors at school… all without him, all without Marco by my side. The one person I needed.

It had been a long two months.

A life-changing two months.

And I still hadn’t explained anything to anyone.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.

My eyes locked on a photograph of Jo and me last Halloween. I’d convinced her to dress up with me. She was a sexy nurse and I was a mischievous angel of death. I had my arm around her shoulders and I had pouted dramatically at the camera, laughter and joy in my eyes.

Who was that girl?

I blinked away the tears, refusing to give in to any more of them.

A light knock sounded at my door and I looked up to watch Cole slide in. He was taller than Cameron now.

Without saying a word he walked into the room and sat down beside me.

“I know everyone has tried talking to you about what happened and I know you keep blowing everyone off, but today you aren’t going to.”

I scowled at my lap.

“Hannah, you passed out in my arms. There was blood. Jo and I didn’t know what was going on. You were dying. I was scared shitless,” he confessed, his words thick with emotion.

Surprised, I looked up at him. Cole cared about me.

Sighing, I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. Just tell me who got you pregnant so I can kill him before Braden, Adam, Cam, and Nate get to him.”

Still, despite feeling betrayed by Marco’s departure, angry at him, so angry at him for leaving me to deal with all this alone, I felt fear more than anything else. Fear of my family discovering he got me pregnant. Fear they’d hurt him. Fear they’d think less of him.

“Hannah, you almost died,” Cole reminded me harshly.

“I know.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I made a massive mistake. At the beginning of the school year I went to a party with Sadie. I got really drunk.” I looked away from him. “I slept with this random guy I met and I took off afterwards because I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I don’t even know his name, let alone where he lives. And if I did, what would be the point? I had a miscarriage. He didn’t know I was pregnant, I didn’t know. We were both to blame for acting irresponsibly.”

“But you’re the only one who had to deal with the consequences. How is that fair?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think God’s a woman, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He choked on laughter. “You’re joking about this? Really?”

“It’s either that or I cry.” I felt my lips tremble. “Shit. I’m going to cry.” The tears fell before I could stop them, the sobs shuddering out from the very depths of me.

Cole wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him, his T-shirt instantly soaked where I laid my head on his chest. “You’ll get through this, Hannah.”

“I keep seeing my mum’s and dad’s faces. I watched them go through hell when Ellie was diagnosed with her tumor and I saw it in their eyes again when I was lying in that hospital bed. Their whole world nearly disappeared along with me and it’s my fault.” I sobbed harder.

“Ssh,” he soothed, pulling me closer. “It’s nobody’s fault. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The truth was, I was scared. I was scared one wrong move could rip life away from me. Suddenly pregnancy was something that could do that to me. It wasn’t rational. I knew the doctor had told me I could go on to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, but the fear of another ectopic pregnancy was too great. My fear forced me to grieve too young for what I always took for granted would be in my future.

Sitting up from the cold tiled floor of my bathroom, I swiped at my wet cheeks, and pressed my back against the bathtub, wrapping my arms around my knees to draw them into me.

My miscarriage, my near-death experience, and my grief changed me. It made me a bit of a loner. I lost most of my high school friends and I created a distance between myself and my family. Partly because I felt to blame for it all. I had acted recklessly that night with Marco, and in doing so I scared the utter crap out of the people that meant the most to me. They all became super-overprotective. To the point of suffocating me. That only made me internalize everything more.

I was depressed for months. Heartbroken.

In an attempt to try to pull me out of the dark, my parents were actually the ones who surprised everybody by suggesting I stay in student accommodations at university. They believed it would force me to start living again.

And it did.

Suzanne was crazy. She was never serious. She liked to party, and I found her carefree attitude addictive during a time when I really needed that.

I soon discovered, however, that my parents were worried about me getting pregnant again. Although they’d never admonished me for my stupidity, since nature had done enough reprimanding for the both of them, I knew I’d lost something from them. I’d lost their certainty in me. They worried that I’d make the same mistake all over again and that I’d put myself in danger.

So I went with Mum and I got the pill.

I’d been on it ever since, even though until Marco there had never been any real use for it.

By the time I turned nineteen I’d gotten through the worst of it, and standing on the sidelines, waiting for me to come back to them, was my family.

And I did.

They knew I would.

Waiting at the head of that line was Cole. He was the only positive thing to come out of it all. Since the moment I’d collapsed in his arms, a bond had formed between us, gradually growing until we counted each other as best friends. He had always been there in those dark days to assure everyone else that I was still in there and that day by day I was making my way back to them.

Eventually I moved on.

I tried to let it all go.

Until Marco. He came crashing back into my life. No one but my dad knew he was the one who had got me pregnant and left me. I felt all alone again. I couldn’t talk to my dad about it. That was too weird, too uncomfortable, and so it brought everything back.

I tried to fight through the hurt and disappointment to reach for rational thought. Marco hadn’t known I was pregnant. If he’d known it would have been a different story. I was sure of that. It wasn’t his fault any more than it was mine.

Okay, if he hadn’t left me I would have had him by my side when I needed him. Maybe the days wouldn’t have been so dark. However, he’d explained why he left. And Cole had been right. I might not like it, but his explanation was a good one.

I forgave him.

My fingernails dug into my knees.

But to know now that he’d not only returned to Edinburgh without looking me up, but that he’d returned and gotten some other girl pregnant and been there for her… It was devastating.

All that pain was back full force again.

It didn’t matter if it wasn’t rational. I felt it. I felt it scoring my insides.

The hardest thing I’d ever been through and he wasn’t there for me.

But he’d been there for Leah.

I knew I shouldn’t have let him back in.

I couldn’t forgive him this.