Swap Out (14 page)

She blows out a final breath, then takes the next one more easily as the color rushes back into her cheeks, and I drop my forehead to hers. Her free hand settles against my neck, her other still wound around my chain and IDs. I slide my hand up her arm, checking her pulse, and it’s fast but steady, and slowing back to normal.

“You’re okay,” I reassure her, and myself, “you’re okay.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, and I faintly nod.

She takes a few more breaths before she pulls away, sitting back in her seat like she’s exhausted and I know she is.

I give her another minute before I speak again, waiting until she’s finally calm and in control before I reach over and tuck her hair behind her ear.

“What’s the story with the attacks?” I ask gently. “That’s twice now. You weren’t like this before.”

“I’m off meds,” she says, then looks at me. “I take Effexor for depression, and Ativan for anxiety attacks.”

My eyes widen a little, but that’s what she needs to be on if this is a reoccurring issue. Except she can’t take them now. There is no anti-depressant or benzo prescribed to help control anxiety that can be taken while pregnant. Birth defects are just the beginning of the problems they can cause.

“You been on them long?”

“Yes,” she tells me, looking a little ashamed. “It’s just…after what happened with
him
, I couldn’t get a handle on it. Sometimes, I still can’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Zoe. That’s why those medications exist. But…when did you stop taking them?”

“That morning.”

My brow furrows. “What morning?”

“
The
morning. Friday I got up and I was sick, again, and I just had this
feeling
and it all started adding up. So I didn’t take them, and then I went and took a test and then that night, I told you.”

“And you haven’t taken any since?”

She shakes her head, and I swallow my relief, and my confusion.

For someone as adamant as she is that she’s not going through with this, she sure is paying attention to it. And she’s being careful.

And as glad as I am that she’s off those meds—for now—it also worries me. She’s under a tremendous amount of stress, and detoxing off that stuff isn’t easy, even in normal circumstances. There’s no telling how many attacks she’s suffered when I’m not around, and it’s safe to say
my
anxiety over her health and safety when we’re apart is going to be enough to warrant some controlled substances.

Christ, there’s so much we don’t know about each other. And I can’t curb the fact that I wish I was with her all the time, to keep an eye on her, to help. I’d sleep on the couch every night if that’s what it took, I don’t care.

I blow out a breath, and I don’t want to upset her any more than she already is, but I have to know.

“Zoe, who is Hailey? Why was it important to show me…her?”

“She’s his daughter,” Zoe says quietly, and my brow furrows. She looks at me, then turns in her seat to face me a little more. “My parents…are assholes.”

My eyes widen.

“They were corrupt in their business, took advantage of people, driven by greed. I wasn’t that old when I found out what they were really doing, and I was…” she trails off and shakes her head. “But my dad’s business partner, he was the good to their evil. He told me he knew what my parents were doing and he was fixing it every way he could. He was helping the people they ruined.”

“Why would he tell you that?”

“Because I had known him my whole life,” she says. “Hailey and I did grow up together, and we were practically sisters. I loved her father like my own, wished I was his daughter instead of my father’s, and then…things changed.” She shrugs. “I grew up.”

I sigh and lean my elbow on the steering wheel, my temple resting against my fist. I already know where this is going, and I can’t be sure I want to know if I’m right.

“He was…nice to me,” she says, looking down at her hands. “He said I was beautiful, and I was completely infatuated with him. Trusted him, implicitly. I had these wild fantasies that he’d leave his wife and we’d get married, and I gave him everything.
Everything
, Luca.”

I reach over and take her hand, wanting to be sick.

“When I got pregnant, I thought…this was it. He was going to give me everything he promised, that he was going to get a divorce and we’d be a family of our own and how I was so lucky to have a man like him love me. Someone good and decent and successful and handsome, and I got to start my fairytale early. I was so stupid.”

She shakes her head, discreetly wiping at her tears, and I just…
hurt
, for her.

“As soon as I told him, I knew I had made a mistake.” She sniffles, and I wince. “Everything was just…gone. Over. He didn’t love me, he didn’t want that life. He was afraid of going to jail and what his wife would think and I was reeling. The next thing I knew he was writing a check and shoving it at me—I can still see the way his hands shook as he signed it—and he gave me two choices: take the money, keep quiet and get an abortion, or destroy both our families and send him to jail.”

She looks out the window, her bottom lip trembling, and I tighten my grip on her hand.

“I made the wrong choice,” she whimpers. “I sold my child, my soul, for a check and to protect a man who didn’t deserve to be protected. He should be in jail, and instead he just had his fortieth wedding anniversary.”

“Hailey doesn’t know?” I ask carefully, and she shakes her head.

“I kept my word, and he kept his. I have a degree, a house and a business, and he has his family. That’s what happens when someone buys you out.”

I wince, sweeping my thumb over the back of her hand. What I wouldn’t give to take that accusation back.

But something stirs in my stomach when I realize we just saw his daughter, and she was fewer than five minutes away. There’s only one explanation for that.

“Zoe, is this where he lives? This all happened here?”

“Yep,” she says, wiping at her eyes again.

“Why would you live in Moab? You could’ve gone anywhere else…”

She turns and looks at me, tears streaming down her cheeks and her eyes cold. “To remind him of the truth. To scare him. Take your pick.”

It starts low: a spark of jealousy and then a flicker of fury, the dull warmth of my want and her disinterest steadily growing into a searing burn. It climbs from my stomach and licks up my lungs, scorching my throat and stinging my eyes.

I’m sick to fucking death of catching the brunt of other people’s mistakes, and I refuse to be crucified for them. And it’s past time she took herself off the cross she’s lugging around. I can’t stand to watch her do it anymore.

I let her hand go and get out of the car, seeing Zoe stare at me in shock through the windshield while I stalk around the hood.

“Get out,” I tell her as I approach her side, and she shakes her head at me. So I open the door, unhooking her seatbelt and then lead her out of her SUV until we’re standing on the edge of the shoulder, below: endless rocks and certain death.

I look down at the view I’ve faced many times before, then I take a deep breath and slide my palm down the inside of her arm until I can grasp her hand, closing my eyes against the wind, against the sound of Zoe’s sniffling and the trembling in her fingers.

“You think I don’t understand pain?” I ask, my voice quiet and controlled, but every other part of me is vibrating with intensity. I swallow thickly. “I’ve been alone my whole life. Used and abused and thrown away, just like you. I did things in the military that haunt me, and no matter how much time passes, I will always have done them.”

I lean my weight forward so a few rocks from the edge break free and fall, and she squirms and pulls back, my eyes flying open as my grip tightens on her hand to make sure she’s safe.

But my sight can’t help but to focus on the tumble and jarring jerk of the rocks as they crash off of others on their long way down, their final ride one that would end in shattered bones and exploded organs, a mess of a form that used to be a body if it was alive.

“I’ve thought about it, and I know you have too,” I tell her, my eyes darting down to the scars on her wrist that are hidden by the sleeve of her shirt, but we both know are there. And why. “No more pain, no more endless rounds of you rejecting me, no more unwanted pregnancies, no more anything.” I turn towards her, my eyes as pleading as my voice. “But the thing is, Zoe, as shitty as my life has been, I’m not ready to give up. After years of drifting, wondering if there was a reason I was alive other than just taking up space, I finally found something that gives me purpose. And it isn’t hate, and it isn’t revenge.”

Tears slip down her cheeks as she shrinks back from me, her hand slipping free from mine, and I walk forward until her back hits the side of the car.

“You wanted to show me what a buyout looks like. Well, that’s what giving up looks like, when you live your life for the wrong reasons and eventually end it for the same. There’s more than
this
,” I tell her, gesturing behind me to the cliff at my back.

“You don’t understand,” she whispers, and I shake my head.

“I understand shame. More than you realize. And I understand regret. God, do I understand regret.
I get it
, Zoe, but the difference is you have to find something else that’s more important. Do you really want to live your life haunting a man who doesn’t even deserve to know your name until all you are is a ghost of who you used to be?”

“Stop,” she pleads, and I cup her face in my hands.

“You don’t have to keep punishing yourself,” I whisper. “You were sixteen years old, Zoe.
Sixteen
. He preyed on you, took advantage of you. But the worst part is: you’re still letting him do it.”

“No,” she whimpers, shaking her head, and I brush my thumbs over her cheeks.

“He’s still calling the shots, making your decisions. He’s still keeping you alone and separating you from your family.”

“That’s not true!” she yells, shoving and swatting at me.

I grab her wrists and anchor them to my chest, stepping in closer to her. “Look what’s right in front of you,” I tell her, and she goes still, her eyes settling on mine. “Right now, no matter how you want to define it, there is no denying that we are a family. We may not be together, and you may not love me, but we are still a family, Zoe.”

Her eyes close as tears stream down her cheeks, and she takes a deep, shaky breath before she looks up at me.

“I don’t know how to be what you want me to be,” she says. “I don’t—”

“All you’re saying is what you can’t do.” I step a little closer, my thumbs sneaking into the inside of her palms and rubbing them soothingly as I hold her hands to my chest. “And I don’t believe a woman who was capable of getting herself through school, starting her own business and building a life with no one to help her did any of that by focusing on the things she couldn’t do. So why don’t you tell me what you can do?”

She shakes her head, her mouth twisting. “I…I want to believe you when you say you care about me.”

“I do.”

But she doesn’t nod, doesn’t make any sign that she trusts a word I’m saying. I bring up one of our locked hands to brush her tears off her cheeks, wishing I knew what to do to convince her. But I don’t have a clue.

“You’re going to change your mind, Luca. This is all so—”

“I won’t,” I say steadily, but she still doesn’t look like she believes me.

“You don’t know that. I drive you insane. You quit every other day.”

“Well…” I trail off, then the corner of my mouth pulls up. “We’re doing better. I didn’t quit once this week.”

She scoffs. “For a
week
, that’s not enough to take on—”

“We do one thing at a time,” I interrupt again. “First, us. And what I see is that when we’re not fighting, we do it well. Talking, spending some time together. We do it all the time, Zoe. We’ve shared many lunches, many dinners, and the only thing different is now when I flirt with you, you’re allowed to like it.”

She rolls her eyes with a smile, and I tug lightly on her hands.

“And once you start to believe me, and—God forbid—trust me,” I say a little teasingly, “then we’ll decide what to do about everything else. Can you at least try to agree to that? Along with the addendum to quit reminding me every five minutes about how much you can’t stand me?”

She takes another deep breath, then swallows. “Do you promise you’re not just saying this because—”

“Yes.”

“And do you promise you’re not going to…” she trails off, and my brow furrows.

“Not going to what?”

“That you won’t lie to me. Even if you change your mind, just
tell me
before you pull the rug out from under me and disappear.”

“Zoe, if history has proved anything, it’s that I have a habit of being brutally honest.”

“Can’t argue with that,” she deadpans and I smile, then my voice becomes more serious.