Fall From India Place

CHAPTER 20

A week later school had resumed and it felt good to have something to bury myself in again. Morning classes had gone quickly and I’d now settled at my desk to do marking while I had a free period.

When the phone rang I didn’t think anything of it. I answered it and got Neil at Reception.

“Hannah, we’ve got a Cole Walker at Reception for you.”

Wondering what the hell he was doing there, I tried not to let my mind race with the worst possibilities. “Send him up.”

I put the phone down and quickly scrambled through my bag for my own phone. Had something happened to Jo? She was past due and maybe…

It seemed to take forever for my phone to come on and when it did I had no new messages or missed calls. I shoved it back in my bag just as Cole came through my doorway and slammed my door shut.

Slowly, nervously, I stood up.

Cole was furious and I had not a clue as to why. “What’s going on?”

The muscle in his jaw flexed while he looked me over, seeming beyond frustrated and angry. “I bumped into Suzanne half an hour ago.”

My stomach dropped.

“Marco has a family?” he asked in disbelief. “A kid? A wife?”

“No.” I hurried toward him in denial. “He has a son… Cole, we can’t do this here.”

“Just tell me what’s going on and I’ll leave.”

I wasn’t sure I could get through an explanation that would work without breaking down, but I attempted it. “I found out that Marco got someone pregnant when he came back to Edinburgh four years ago. She was an old friend of his. They’re not together. But they have a three-year-old son.”

He frowned at me in confusion. “You broke up with Marco because he has a child?”

The incredulity in his voice made my anxiety spike even more, but I nodded, hoping my expression didn’t give me away.

Unfortunately, the trembling in my hands did. Cole caught the shaking as he scrutinized me from top to bottom, and as soon as he saw it, he stiffened. Understanding flitted through his eyes and he pinned me to the spot with the force of his realization. “It was him,” he said hoarsely. Renewed fury roiled in his gaze. “It was fucking him. You lied? It was him! He got you pregnant and fucked off!”

“Cole —”

But he was already marching out of the room.

Panicked, not sure what he might do, I grabbed my bag and ran out of the classroom after him, struggling in my stupid heels. By the time I caught up to him he was striding across the parking lot toward his beat-up old car and he was talking on his phone to someone.

“Cole!” I shouted, but he ignored me and got in his car. “Shit.” I hurried after him, chasing him as he pulled out of the school gates. As soon as I hit the main road, I scanned the street for a taxi.

My phone rang. It was Adam.

My gut told me to answer it.

“Hannah, what’s going on?” Adam demanded. “Cole just called to ask what site Marco is working on. He sounds beyond pissed off.”

Seeing a cab, I threw my hand out, grateful when it slowed. My heart was racing frantically in my chest. “Adam, he’s about to do something really stupid. Where is he going?”

Adam gave me the site address and as I jumped into the cab, I relayed it to the driver.

“Hannah, what is going on?” Adam repeated.

“I need to go.” I hung up, turning my panicked attention to the driver. “Please, get me there as fast as you can. It’s an emergency.”

“I’ll try my best, love.”

I jumped out of that cab at the site entrance ten minutes later and I heard the commotion before I saw it. As I hurried around the office cabins, my heart plummeted at the sight before me.

Marco had Cole by the throat, his face twisted in anger. He thrust Cole away, but Cole barely staggered back before he swung out and clipped Marco in the face with his fist. There were two workers standing behind them, not doing much to stop them, and I could see more running toward the scene.

Marco punched Cole and suddenly I was in action.

“Stop!” I screamed, running toward them, pushing past the crew that was gathering. “Cole, stop i —”

Cole’s elbow slammed into my head as he pulled back his arm in preparation to punch. The pain burst down the side of my face, dazing me, and I stumbled back, feeling hands on me, steadying me.

I blinked, trying to refocus, and when I did, I saw Cole staring at me in horror and an enraged Marco behind him, ready to lunge.

“No!” I pushed past Cole and collided with Marco, pressing my hands to his chest. “Marco, please,” I pleaded.

Marco’s handsome features were stretched tight, his jaw clenched hard. I could tell he didn’t want to stop, but he did, taking a step back in silent acquiescence.

Head throbbing, heart pounding, legs trembling, I spun around to placate Cole. I ignored the men who had gathered around us. “He doesn’t know, Cole. He doesn’t know.”

Cole’s nostrils flared. “He still fucking left you.”

“Yeah. He did. But everything else… he doesn’t know.”

“I don’t know what?” Marco asked impatiently behind me.

My shoulders tensed. I’d never wanted this moment to come.

Cole opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t you dare,” I snapped.

“He needs to know.”

Feeling nauseated at the prospect I replied, “And now he will. But I’ll be the one to tell him.”

“Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Marco growled.

“And me.”

I turned my head at the unfamiliar voice. A tall man wearing a hard hat and a yellow safety jacket over a suit was glowering at Cole.

“You want to tell me why you attacked one of my men on a worksite?”

“I’d like to know the same thing.”

That voice was familiar. I blanched as Braden and Adam emerged through the crowds of men. They stopped by the guy in the suit, who I presumed was Marco’s site manager. Braden and Adam looked harried. Their eyes blazed with annoyance as they took in Cole and Marco, but their expressions turned concerned when their gazes fell upon me.

“Mr. Carmichael?” The site manager looked surprised. “I didn’t know you were planning a visit today. I can assure you this has never happened before.”

“Keep your trousers on, Tam.” Braden brushed him off. “That’s my little sister.” He looked back at me. “Hannah, what’s going on?”

Feeling my cheeks pale at having all this attention on me, I took a step toward Braden and Adam’s comforting presence. “I need to speak with Marco privately. I’ll explain everything to you, but first I need to explain it to him.”

For a moment Braden was silent as he considered this. It was clear he wanted to know what the hell was going on now so he could decide whether he wanted to help finish what Cole had started with Marco. Finally, he gave me a taut nod and then turned to Tam. “My sister needs the use of the office cabin.”

“Of course.” The site manager gestured toward it. “It’s empty.”

Before I could do anything, I felt the warm press of Marco’s hand on my lower back. He gently guided me forward as the site manager started yelling at everyone else to get back to work.

I wanted to rip away from Marco’s touch, hating the ache inside of me, that torturous longing that couldn’t seem to get on board with the whole not-forgiving-him thing. However, I let him keep his hand there and I didn’t know if I did it for him or if I did it for me.

Once inside the quiet cabin, I stepped aside from the door and watched Marco as he strode toward the manager’s desk. He whirled around to look at me, a million questions in his eyes. Ignoring the throbbing in my head where Cole had clipped me, I dipped my gaze to Marco’s lip. Cole had split it open. “I’m sorry about Cole,” I muttered.

“I could give a damn about what he did. I want to know why he did it.”

It took all the courage I had to meet Marco’s eyes.

“Hannah?” he prompted, his patience clearly waning.

The last time I’d felt this sick was after discovering he had a son. Ignoring the cold chills I was feeling, I rubbed a shaking hand over my dry lips and fought the nausea.

“It wasn’t because you have a son,” I told him quietly.

The air around him instantly grew still, his look sharpening.

“I don’t know how to say any of this,” I confessed.

“Well, you better find a way because I lost patience with this shit weeks ago.”

Exhaling, I nodded. I just needed to say it. Just say it.

Breathe, Hannah.

“When you left me five years ago I was in a really bad place. I thought at first I was just heartbroken, that that was why I wasn’t feeling great. But a few months after you left I was out with Jo and Cole and I felt this indescribable pain. I passed out from it.”

Marco’s expression tightened and I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to hear what was coming but recognized that he needed to. I didn’t want to tell him because I knew in that moment that what I was going to tell him was going to hurt him, too.

I fought the tears and powered on through. “When I woke up it was almost forty-eight hours later and I was in hospital.”

“Hannah…” He seemed to plead with me.

That’s when the tears started winning. “I miscarried. But it wasn’t just a miscarriage; it was something called an ectopic pregnancy. That means the egg implanted inside one of my tubes instead of the womb, but because I didn’t realize I was pregnant, the egg grew until it ruptured the tube and I started bleeding internally.”

“You almost died?” he asked, his voice deep and thick with the emotion I could see blazing in his eyes.

“Yes. I had surgery. They removed the damaged tube.” Saying it out loud just reminded me of all the resentment I’d been feeling, and without meaning to I let it spill out of me. “I lied to my friends and family about who got me pregnant. I protected you. I protected you, but you weren’t there to protect me. I had to cope with having a miscarriage at seventeen. And you weren’t there for me. And I know you had your reasons and I tried to forgive and I tried to forget.” I swiped at my tears, but they were falling too fast for me to keep up. “But you weren’t even back in Edinburgh a few months when you got Leah pregnant. You were there for her, Marco, and as much as I know it’s not rational, I feel like you betrayed me somehow. You were supposed to be the love of my life, but how can you be? I went through all of that alone only to discover that the supposed love of my life was there for some other girl when he was never there for me.”

The small space was thick with a stifling silence, broken only by my labored breathing.

I waited for him to say something. Anything.

Without warning, he turned around and slammed his fist into the cabin wall. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He punched it repeatedly, the wall crumbling like paper.

“Marco!” I moved toward him to stop him, but my voice had already done that. He sagged into the wall, his forehead resting against it as his shoulders shuddered.

“Marco,” I whispered, my emotions confusing me all the more when an ache inside me begged me to comfort him. I walked over to him and he turned his head to watch me approach.

There was anguish unlike anything I’d ever seen in his eyes as they looked deep into mine. “You were this precious, beautiful gift that came into my life when I needed it the most,” he said quietly. “I never felt safe as a kid. I knew what it was like to not feel safe and I hated the idea of anyone I cared about ever feeling that way. I started to care about you pretty quickly, so it feels like I’ve always only ever wanted to protect you, you know. And I didn’t. So I did betray you. And I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sor…” His voice fell away as he dragged his hand down his face, pushing away from the wall and turning away from me.

The door behind us opened and I glanced over at it to see Braden standing in the doorway. He took in my tearstained face and red eyes, the broken plaster on the wall, and Marco’s obviously bad state. Eyes soft with sympathy, Braden asked me gently, “Do you want me to take you home?”

I glanced back at Marco, but he hadn’t turned around to face me. He needed time to deal with this.

Me? I didn’t know what to feel. I just knew that a man like Marco didn’t lose control of his emotions easily.

I just knew that he loved me. Deeply.

And I just knew that it was all one huge painful mess that I couldn’t fix.

“Yeah,” I whispered, brushing tears off my cheeks and moving over to Braden.

I rested against him as he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me out of the cabin. Walking toward the cab he had waiting, I glanced over my shoulder, back up to the cabin. There was still a massive part of me holding back, trying to protect myself from being hurt by Marco again, but that didn’t mean that I felt right walking away from him when he needed me. In fact, the guilt plagued me all the way home.