Courage in the Kiss (30 page)

Maxx ground his teeth as the traffic crawled along at a snail’s pace. He couldn’t believe this. He’d left nearly forty minutes early to get to the clinic and meet Hadley for their appointment.

Now, with traffic, he was already fifteen minutes late and he was worried about what that might mean. This was a big day for them, and he wanted to be there for her to share the joy over good news and console her, if it wasn’t so good.

When a space opened up, he swerved into the gap and found a weaving pattern in the traffic that got him through the mad afternoon rush.

In another ten minutes, he was parked in the clinic parking lot. Panicked and feeling stupid for getting caught in traffic, Maxx rushed into the clinic and toward the reception desk.

“I’m here for Hadley Young. She was getting a scan,” he explained, hoping they’d had a delay or Hadley had waited for his arrival, before going into her appointment.

“I’m sorry, sir, Miss Young left a short while ago,” the nurse said from behind the desk.

Maxx stepped back from the desk, running his hands through his hair. What was he going to do now? Where could she have gone, and why did she leave without him? He stepped over to the desk again with a new thought. “Can I speak to Dr. Stein? I need to find out what happened during the scan,” he explained, hoping he wouldn’t be turned away.

The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but was stopped by Dr. Stein’s hand on her shoulder. “I’ll handle this, nurse,” he promised, gesturing for Maxx to follow him into the office.

He knew this couldn’t be good, but he needed to know what he was dealing with, before he spoke to Hadley. “What’s happening?” he wondered, reluctantly taking a seat as Dr. Stein sat by his desk.

“I’m afraid that Hadley didn’t have a good experience today,” he began, as though he didn’t already know that. “She put off the appointment as long as she could, but we eventually had to go ahead. And once we did...there’s no easy way to say this, Maxx, but Hadley had a miscarriage,” he explained.

Maxx sat back in his seat and took a deep breath, to fend off the panic and shock. He couldn’t believe that they’d lost the baby. That Hadley had been here, to hear the news, all alone. She must hate him for not being there.

Running his hands over his face, he sank forward to lean over his knees, trying to clear his thoughts.

The baby was really gone.

“I’m sorry, Maxx.” Dr. Stein placed his hand on his shoulder and woke him from the shock of the news.

He looked up and cleared his throat, trying to think only of Hadley. He couldn’t let the loss settle in his mind; he had to find her and make sure she was alright. “How was she? Hadley. I mean, this was everything she’d ever wanted,” he admitted absently.

“She was understandably distraught,” Dr. Stein explained, looking away and shaking his head, as though at the memory. “I made an appointment for four days time, when she’ll have to come back. The baby is...she’ll have a D&C when she gets back, to take the baby away,” he said, choosing his words carefully.

Maxx appreciated that he wasn’t turning clinical on him. He was having a hard enough time accepting that the baby was gone, without hearing it referred to as dead.

“I told Hadley this, as she wanted me to,” the doctor continued. “But I’m not really sure she took it in. I placed the appointment card in her bag before she left. She’ll...she may be in shock for the first few days. As will you. This is a grievous loss,” he went on.

Maxx stopped him, because he couldn’t hear this right now. Maybe after he’d found Hadley and made sure she was safe, but not until then. “Do you know what caused it?” he asked, hoping to have something to tell her, that she might not have been in the frame of mind to hear. He could wait until she was ready, but it was best that he had answers when she was finally prepared to talk about it.

“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Stein apologised. “We may never determine the cause. Sadly, miscarriages are still quite the mystery, unless there is an underlying illness with the mother or a detectable illness with the child. And Hadley proved very healthy at our last appointment,” he admitted, sounding lost and troubled.

“Do you think...I mean, the first ultrasound made the heartbeat sound...off,” Maxx hinted, wondering if that was the cause.

“No. I checked that myself,” the doctor reminded him. “The baby’s heartbeat was fine. I’m afraid there’s no one to blame in all this. It’s just something that happens.”

The consolation wasn’t worth much, but at least Maxx could tell Hadley, with absolute certainty, that there was no question of her having any blame in this. That was all he cared about.

That, and a certain confession that he should have made months ago.

He knew it wasn’t safe to drive home in the state he was in, but Maxx wanted to get home as fast as possible and he could only count on himself for that. He didn’t even bother closing the garage door behind him, and couldn’t remember if he locked the car or not.

All that mattered was getting to Hadley.

“Well, there you are,” Emerson commented, as he crossed from the library to the living room with a cup of coffee and two books in his hands.

Maxx ran up the stairs, ignoring him as he headed for his bedroom. The nurse at the clinic said that Hadley had walked out in a daze, not looking where she was going, with a vacant look in her eyes. He guessed that the only place she’d want to be was at home, but he was still furious that not one person had noticed her condition and stopped her. No one had ever tried to console her.

Dr. Stein had tried to make her stay, had tried to make her put off the appointment for another few days, until he could be there. He’d even tried to make her wait until Maxx could be with her to hear the results of the scan. But she was a bloody stubborn woman and she’d insisted on going through it all alone.

If Maxx wasn’t absolutely devastated by the loss of their baby and aware of what she was going through right now, he’d probably yell at her.

As it was, the minute he got into his bedroom, he let out a sigh of relief as he found her clothes strewn across the floor. That meant she was home and he could take care of her.

Following the trail, Maxx walked into the bathroom to find Hadley in the bath, with water up to her chin, as she curled up on her side. Her back was to him, but when he got closer, he found her scrunched up into a ball, hugging her baby bump and staring blankly ahead at the tiled walls.

“Had,” he whispered as he knelt by the bath. He reached up and brushed her wet hair from her face, but got no reaction.

Maxx stood up again and slipped his hands into the bath water, one beneath her scrunched up knees and the other under her shoulders. With a little effort, he lifted her dead weight from the water and held her tight against his chest.

Hadley turned into him and gripped the front of his shirt, as she burst into tears.

“Baby, I’m so sorry I was late. I promise I left in time,” he apologised, knowing he’d never be able to forgive himself for not being there with her. “I wanted to be with you...I left plenty of time,” he swore.

All Hadley did was sob into his shoulder as he carried her out of the bathroom and across to their bed. He needed to put her some place safe.

Maxx lay her on the bed and tucked her under the duvet, until he could grab some towels to dry her off. Then they had to talk. About the baby, about their future, but most of all, they just needed to cry together.

Hadley was vacant, just as the nurse had told Maxx she was. When she didn’t respond to anything he said, except to cry, he knew that what she needed was a little time before she could talk about it.

Maxx dried her, dressed her, emptied the bath, and lay with her on the bed for over an hour. When she finally cried herself to sleep, against his chest, he left her alone to change his wet clothes and speak to his father.

Questions would need to be answered, and people would have to be told about the miscarriage, but he didn’t have the heart to do any of that today.

Their baby was gone, and Hadley was fading away into a lifeless ghost.

How could one baby cause so much heartache?

Maxx walked downstairs and straight into the library, where he poured himself a double scotch from the bar in the corner. He downed it in one go, not aiming to taste anything, but looking for blind, numbing relief from the pain that squeezed at his heart.

He’d never felt anything like this before. Ever since he’d first kissed Hadley, something had been happening inside of him, something unexpected and unwanted. When he finally accepted it and she told him she was pregnant, he’d had a real moment of unadulterated joy. There was nothing lustful or shallow about the feeling; it was the kind of love that couldn’t be felt for any ordinary relative. He’d been consumed with love for a baby that he hadn’t even met yet.

But it had been real. And so rewarding.

Now that love that occupied half of his heart and had swelled within him for the last few months, was rotting and turning to the kind of pain that people just couldn’t survive. It wasn’t possible to feel this much and find a way through it, to the other side.

How did anyone survive the loss of a child? Maxx could barely stand, couldn’t think, and felt empty – truly devoid of love, hope, desire, even happiness – for the first time in his life. It hadn’t hurt this much when his mother died. Or when Hadley said she would leave.

Nothing had ever hurt this much. And nothing should.

“Maxx?”

He blinked and came back to the room, an empty glass in his hand and his father standing by his side, looking worried. His usually stern features were hazy through the tears pooling on his eyelashes.

“Maxx, what’s wrong? Where have you been all day?” Emerson asked, with a hint of concern, but a faint smile that said he was oblivious, as usual.

“The clinic,” he replied, not sure how he found the strength to speak when it felt like his entire body was shutting down.

“For the second scan?” his father guessed, with a nod of encouragement to continue with an explanation. He had hope in his eyes that said he wanted to see another image of their baby, or hear great things about whether they were having a boy or a girl.

Maxx froze and realised that he hadn’t asked Dr. Stein. Did they lose a boy or a girl? What kind of future had they just lost?

“Well...is it a boy or a girl?” Emerson pressed, giving him a nudge.

“I don’t know.”

“Hadley didn’t want to know?” he wondered, sounding so disapproving and judgemental that Maxx couldn’t take it.

“Dad!” he shouted, turning to face him as he lost his fight.

The tears escaped and he felt his heart squeezed, painfully, at the thought that he would never have a little boy or girl to call him ‘Dad’. He wasn’t going to be a father anymore. He wouldn’t have a son or a daughter to dote on, to drive him mad, to beg for money or a lift. He wouldn’t have a tiny human to hold at night, while he let Hadley sleep, or to wake up to when the baby started screaming for attention.

The restless, sleepless nights he and Hadley had talked about and anticipated were no more. There would be no nappy changing, no first tooth, no first word, or magical video to keep watching until they grew old as their baby took their first steps.

There was nothing left. Just a blank, empty future. Devoid of hope and babies and love. There was nothing ahead of him now, except work and loneliness.

Would Hadley still want him, now that there was no baby?
He’d
been the one to ruin her dreams; he couldn’t wait and had no self-control. He’d seduced her and taken away her chance of happiness by tricking her into a fake ‘relationship’ when she wanted unconditional love. He’d strung her along, like a no good fling, and got her pregnant, when all she’d ever wanted was for him to love her.

Maxx sank into the leather armchair by the bar and put his head in his hands. He started crying and didn’t care who saw him or what anyone thought. “This is all my fault,” he said to himself.

“Maxx,” his father said in that warning tone. “What did you do?”

Knowing he didn’t understand and unable to deal with his constant talking, Maxx looked up at his father and tried to force the words out. “Hadley...had a...” He stopped and cleared his throat of tears in an attempt to regain control. “We had a…miscarriage,” he explained.

For a moment, Emerson’s face froze in a look of disbelief, then he slowly sat on the arm of his chair and placed his hand on Maxx’s back. “Son, I’m...” He sighed and his hand moved to his shoulder, until he had his arm around him. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Maxx broke down again, curling in on himself, as he tried to hide from the world. He couldn’t get away from this; he knew that, logically. The truth would always be waiting for him, no matter how far away he tried to run or how long he hid.

But as he cried, unable to stop now what he’d started, he thought about Hadley. She’d spent her whole life dreaming of getting married and having a family. Of living the perfect life and spending her entire adult life with one man, loving him and growing old with him.

Maxx was that man. If he wanted to salvage any part of that dream for her, he would have to stop thinking of himself and step up. He’d put them in this situation, and he would have to help her out of her grief.

The only way he could see of doing that was to get off his ass and do something useful. Something that Hadley shouldn’t have to do.

“I’ve got some phone calls to make.” He spoke up, as he brushed his tears away and tried to ignore his father a little longer. He couldn’t deal with sympathy right now. There were important things to do.

He’d call Conway, and Ronnie and Jay, to ask them to come over later tonight. Preferably when Hadley would be sleeping or he’d have to send her out of the room. Micah and Rowan would be home from school soon, so he’d talk to them when they got in.

Right now, he had to make sure that no one got to Hadley, not even to speak to her for a second, until he’d broken the news to them. He wouldn’t have innocent questions reminding her of her harrowing morning.

Maxx stopped at the door and turned back to his father, trying and failing to utilise that businessman mask that Hadley kept insisting he had up his sleeve to disguise his emotions. “If she’s not down by dinner, I’ll be in the study. I’ll take care of her.”