Dream a Little Dream of Me, page 10
She barely remembered the ride to the hospital. She didn’t really know what a miscarriage entailed, but she knew there was too much blood. She heard someone say something about a clot and about her blood pressure being dangerously low, but after that, everything went hazy. Mostly, she remembered Trent’s pale face and the terror in his eyes, and then a nurse asking her to sign a form to perform a D&C immediately.
When Lizzie woke up, she saw white: white sheets, white walls. She heard beeping. Then she looked and saw Trent sitting beside her, his head in his hands, and she murmured his name.
His gaze was stark. He looked like he’d gone to hell and back again.
“The baby?” she croaked. She touched her belly, but she didn’t know. Or rather, she didn’t want to know. In her heart of hearts, she knew the answer, though.
Trent just shook his head.
She closed her eyes. She tried to breathe, tried to focus, but she couldn’t. She wondered if she were going to be sick. Mostly, she felt empty. Not just physically, but in her very soul. Tears leaked from her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Lizzie. You were losing so much blood. There was nothing anyone could do.”
She opened her eyes to see Trent looking like he wanted to touch her, but she moved her arm away. She wanted to be alone: wrapped up in her grief like a blanket until it suffocated her. Maybe then the pain wouldn’t be so overwhelming.
The tears flowed silently, but they seemed like they came from far away. Lizzie didn’t reach up to wipe them away. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
A doctor came in to explain things, then a nurse to check on her. When the nurse asked if Lizzie wanted to contact her parents, Lizzie paled.
“Please don’t tell my parents,” she begged, knowing she probably didn’t have a choice. “Please don’t. They can’t know.”
The nurse soothed her. “Since you’re over fourteen, we don’t have to inform your parents. And we won’t. It’s the law.”
“Promise?”
The nurse smiled sadly. “Of course. If you need anything, just press the call button.” The nurse touched Trent’s shoulder before she left the room.
Trent got up to take a call, and Lizzie closed her eyes again, hoping she could fall asleep. But when she woke up, she heard voices: one angry, the other quieter. Lizzie peered at the door of her hospital room, only to stare in shock when Seth burst inside, looking like he’d murder Trent given half the chance.
She sat up. “You told him?” she whispered as she caught Trent’s gaze. “You promised.”
“What could I do? You could’ve died. I had to tell somebody.”
Seth sneered at Trent, and when Trent tried to approach Lizzie, Seth wouldn’t let him. If Lizzie weren’t so exhausted, she’d almost laugh at the ridiculous show of male aggression happening in her hospital room.
Instead, she just crossed her arms. “I’m going to be fine. You don’t need to be here.”
“Jesus, Lizzie, what the hell? Trent tells me you almost died and you act like I shouldn’t know?” Seth’s voice radiated hurt, and Lizzie instantly felt guilty.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to keep this from you, but if Mom and Dad had found out…”
“Because I would’ve blabbed to them?”
She rubbed her eyes; they were gritty. “No, yes, I don’t know.” She looked at Trent, and the emotion that had seemed to dissipate bloomed inside her. Instead of sadness, though, it was anger. “But mostly I don’t get why you broke your promise.”
Trent clenched his fists. “You aren’t thinking clearly right now.”
That made her laugh. “Don’t give me that. You told me you wouldn’t tell a soul, but you lied. You lied to me.” She just shook her head and refused to speak to Trent the rest of the time in the hospital room.
Turning over onto her side, she let the tears flow again, refusing to look at either of the men in the room. After a time, she asked them to leave her alone.
Finally, blessedly alone, she sobbed until she fell into an exhausted sleep.
Lizzie returned home, but it no longer felt like home. It felt like a prison. It reminded her of everything she’d lost. Sometimes the grief was so thick that it choked her, and she struggled to make it through the day. Her grades fell further; her parents demanded to know what was going on. Lizzie avoided Trent completely: she refused his calls and texts. She wouldn’t look at him at school. In some way, he represented the loss of their baby. It was unfair and it was cruel, but it was all she had. If she had no one to blame, then all she could do was carry her grief and try not to sink below its weight.
By June—Lizzie graduating just barely—Trent cornered her outside one of the many graduation parties.
“You can’t avoid me forever,” he said. He looked thinner, older. Sadder. “Are you just going to act like nothing happened?”
She wouldn’t look at him. “Leave me alone, Trent.”
“No way. Look at me, Lizzie. You can’t hate me forever.”
At that, she wanted to slap him. She curled her fingers into fists. “Try me.”
“I still love you. Does that mean nothing?”
“Love me? What has your love gotten me? I don’t want it. I don’t want any of this.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Leave me alone.”
His voice rose. “So this is it? We’re over? If we are, say it to my face, Lizzie. Tell me you don’t love me anymore. Tell me.”
“We’re over.” Her voice was deadened, her expression emotionless. “I hate you. I never want to see you again. Can I go?”
He seemed like he wanted to demand she explain, and Lizzie knew that if he pushed, she’d break. She was barely holding herself together at that point.
And then, without another word, he let her go.
12
Trent held Lizzie as she cried, and he cried, too, letting himself feel the grief he’d kept locked up inside for nine long years. Lizzie clung to him like a lifeline, and her sobs broke his already cracking heart.
“It wasn’t fair,” she gasped. She sounded like a little girl, but he felt the same way. It hadn’t been fair and it hadn’t made sense.
“I know.” He stroked her hair. “It wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
She cried until she’d soaked his shirt, until her eyes were red and she looked exhausted. When she looked up to see tears on his face, she reached up to wipe them away with gentle fingers.
“Don’t apologize,” she whispered. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I hurt you.”
He wouldn’t deny it. The day she’d told him they were over and that she no longer loved him had almost broken him. He’d barely put the pieces of his life back together again.
“I was so angry. I wanted to blame someone. You were the easiest target. I know that—even then, I knew it was wrong of me. But I didn’t want to see it.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Hearing you admit you were wrong is a miracle in and of itself,” he said, trying to lighten the mood a little.
She pinched him, but she smiled a small smile.
“This baby is going to be all right, right?” She took his hand and placed it over her abdomen. “We aren’t going to lose another one.”
He wanted to believe she was right. But he couldn’t lie, and he couldn’t say that he was just as afraid as she was, so he kissed the top of her head and held her as evening passed into night.
Lizzie texted Seth to let him know she wouldn’t be coming home, and after she’d taken a shower, Trent showed her to his room, while he’d sleep on the couch. When Lizzie came into the living room wearing one of his shirts—one that went to her knees, it was so big on her—he could barely breathe.
He smelled her soapy scent, and she’d twisted her long hair into some kind of bun. She looked tired but beautiful. When she stepped closer to him, he found himself unable to move.
She placed her palm over his pounding heart, and he covered her hand with his own. Didn’t she know she’d had his heart in the palm of her hand since he’d first seen her? He should tell her to go. Hadn’t she already said that they couldn’t be anything to each other beyond two people raising a child?
But memory and the present mixed together until the desire pounding through Trent couldn’t be ignored. With a small groan, he cupped her cheek and kissed her. She pressed closer. She was warm and curvy, and he trailed his hand down to her ass as he deepened the kiss. When she shivered, a little thrill chased through him.
His mind sounded warning bells. His body, though? It reveled. He kissed Lizzie until the taste of her consumed his senses, until he didn’t know where his body began and hers ended.
The kiss ended too soon. They both were breathing hard, struggling to speak. It took all of his self-control, but Trent finally stepped away.
“You should sleep,” he said quietly. He almost said that they couldn’t continue tonight anyway for obvious reasons, but he bit his tongue.
Lizzie bit her lip. “Good night, then.”
Trent closed the bedroom door behind him and took a deep breath. He tried to calm his body, but his cock pulsed insistently against his boxers. He was tempted to take a very cold shower.
He stared up at the ceiling in the living room, thinking of nothing and everything, until the early-morning hours. He thought about the baby they’d lost; he thought about the baby they would have by next spring. He thought of Lizzie’s blank expression when she’d told him she no longer loved him. He thought of when Ash had told him Lizzie had left with her band to tour the country without so much as a single goodbye.
He thought of the first time he’d kissed her, and he thought of the second time. Mostly, he thought of what would happen to them, and if they could ever manage to go through life together without just hurting each other in the end.
It was just before dawn when Lizzie woke up. She inhaled Trent’s smell that lingered on his pillows, and heat pulsed through her veins within moments. She thought of their kiss last night. She’d understood why he’d pushed her away, but it still hurt.
Sighing, she considered. She should go home and clear her head. After crying so hard last night, her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Her eyes were gritty, and she was so thirsty she could drink a gallon of water in one go.
After rinsing her face and pilfering a new toothbrush from Trent’s cabinets to brush her teeth, she padded into the living room to find Trent already awake and drinking coffee. She stilled; they stared at each other. Inexplicably, a blush crawled up Lizzie’s cheeks, although she had nothing to be embarrassed about. Not really. They’d both needed to cry last night and release some of the heavy grief that had weighed them down for so long.
Trent cleared his throat. “Do you want something to eat? Drink?”
“I’m just going to get a glass of water. No, don’t get up. I can get it.”
She drank her weight in water, her head clearing somewhat. She snagged something to eat and then returned to the bathroom to get dressed. To her immense relief, she was no longer spotting, and the initial crisis seemed to have been averted. Quickly letting Dr. Lennox know that everything was all right, Lizzie stared at herself in the mirror. She didn’t put on her jeans.
She looked beaten. She looked exhausted, and mascara was smeared under her eyes from her crying, even after her shower last night. Her hair was a rat’s nest. She tried to comb it into submission as best she could and wiped off as much mascara as she could so she looked less like a raccoon.
Stepping into the living room where Trent sat, she watched him. He raised an eyebrow at her.
And before her courage left her completely, she slipped out of the oversized t-shirt he’d let her borrow and let it fall to the floor.
Trent swallowed, but said nothing. She wore nothing but her panties—no bra or anything else. Her nipples tightened as his gaze heated.
He rose; she lifted her chin. He didn’t touch her, even though she practically trembled with desire.
Then, he murmured, “What are you doing?”
That made her smile. “If you don’t know, then you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”
“Lizzie…”
“I’m fine. I mean, I’m not spotting anymore.” She refused to blush over that admission. If Trent was going to be involved, he could hear about the less glamorous bits of pregnancy, too. “Everything’s okay.”
His gaze trailed down her torso to her belly. She wasn’t showing, not really, except perhaps a tiny bit of a curve. With a tender touch, Trent trailed his fingers down until they rested right where their child grew. Lizzie covered his hand with her own.
“I don’t want to fight this anymore,” she admitted. “Do you?”
His jaw clenched, and she wasn’t sure he was going to reply. Then, he lifted his hand and, tangling it in her hair, he said, “Neither do I.”
Her heart soared. When he lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom, all she could think was finally. It hadn’t even been three months since Harrison’s wedding, but it had felt like a lifetime. Lizzie clung to Trent and then laughed against his mouth when he tossed her onto the bed.
Sitting up, she watched as he stripped out of his own clothes in record speed. She wanted to ask him about each of his tattoos, and most especially about the one treble clef on his shoulder. But then her thoughts turned distinctly carnal when he took off his boxers and strode toward her without an ounce of self-consciousness. His cock was already hard and ruddy, and she struggled to catch her breath.
The boy he’d been no longer existed: this Trent was all man—muscles, tattoos, and a gaze that made her flush all over. He crawled over her, caging her in, dominating her. She stroked the hair from his forehead.
“I dreamed about this,” she admitted in a soft voice. “About you.”
He kissed her fingers. “I never stopped thinking about you.”
Lizzie wrapped her arms around him, needing his skin against her own, and she wanted to cry at the feeling of his weight upon her. How could she have lived without this? Without him? She had wanted to believe she could move on, but she’d lied to herself. He’d captured a piece of her very soul years ago and had never given it back.
He licked at her mouth and kissed her slowly, thoroughly, just how he knew she liked it. She sifted her fingers through his hair, and when she scratched her nails down the nape of his neck, he shuddered.
She traced the treble clef swirling on his left shoulder. “When did you get this?”
He didn’t have to look to see which tattoo she meant. He traced a pattern down her chest, across her breasts, just glancing over her sensitive nipples.
“I got that eight years ago,” he admitted.
“Is it…?”
“For you?” His smile turned sad. “If I told you I got it when I heard you’d been signed for your first record deal, would you believe me?”
Lizzie did believe him. Her heart shuddered in her chest, and she was at a complete loss for words. I don’t deserve someone like him. I never did.
“You always do this,” she breathed. She arched her neck as his thumb swirled around her right nipple.
“Do what?”
“Make it impossible for me to say no to you.”
At that, she received a quick grin. Then Trent rolled her nipple between his fingers, sending a jolt of pleasure through her. She bit her lip to keep from moaning. Or maybe screaming. Her breasts had become more sensitive with her pregnancy, and every brush of his fingers against her skin sent her nerves into overdrive. When he licked one aching peak and pinched the other, she moaned long and low, gasping for air.
Eventually, she pushed his hands away from her breasts. It was too much, too soon, but in some way, it scared her. Trent could elicit a response from her so easily. He petted her sides, soothing her.
“Are you okay? Do you want to stop?” he asked. He kissed her over her pounding heart.
“No, they’re just really sensitive lately. From the baby.”
At first she was afraid that mentioning the baby would kill the mood, but it only made Trent give her a smile that made her melt. He brushed a hand down her torso until he palmed her belly. He traced a circle before he kissed her there.
If her heart hadn’t already exploded, it did now.
“You’re not really showing,” he mused. He looked more closely. “Although, I think I see something…”
She tugged on his ear; he laughed. “If I have anything, it’s a food belly. It’s too early.”
“Mmm, I don’t know. I think I see something right…here…” He tickled her pelvis, and she squealed. She laughed until she was breathless, and then Trent was kissing her again, and her squeals turned into moans. He turned them onto their sides and he pressed her close, and she couldn’t stop touching him everywhere she could: his shoulders, his chest, his belly.
Lizzie kissed down his body, licking at the tattoos swirling around his pectorals. She wanted to ask him about each and every one, but she paid special attention to the treble clef on his shoulder. He muttered her name as she licked his skin.
She found her prize finally: palming his cock, she smiled when he closed his eyes, his jaw clenched. When they’d first had sex, she’d been too shy to really touch him. Now, she reveled in the way she could give him pleasure. She stroked and squeezed him, loving how he grew harder in her hand, and when she leaned down to swirl the tip of her tongue around the top of his cock, he swore.
Although Trent tried to get her to stop, Lizzie only took him further into her mouth. He gripped her hair, and she could feel the tension in his body tightening. As she swirled her tongue around his length while squeezing him, he let out a shout.
He finally pushed her hands away, saying her name like a benediction, and then she was underneath him again. Kissing her wildly, Trent pushed her legs apart and touched her sex. Lizzie moaned against his mouth. She already knew how wet she was, but as his finger dipped inside her, she shuddered, clenching at the invading digit. He played with her, kissing her, getting his revenge for her playing with him earlier.
