Carla Unbroken

© 2019 by Sara Leanne Adams

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

WARNING

This book contains graphic sexual content which is not suitable for persons under the age of 18.

This is Book 2 in The Unbroken Series. It can be read as a stand-alone novel, but would be best enjoyed if you read Gelasia Unbroken first.

Pacing back and forth in front of the floor to ceiling windows in my living room, I watched the people hustling by on the busy street ten-stories below. My eyes were trained on the main entrance of Mercy Hospital, located directly across the street from our building.

My husband wanted to live close to the hospital. Greg worked long hours as an emergency room physician. I was willing to do anything to make his life easier. Eventually, we planned to move to the suburbs, when we outgrew the two-bedroom condo. That didn’t happen as fast as I had hoped.

I wanted to have babies and be a stay- at-home mom. College didn’t interest me. I met Greg one weekend at a Harvard frat party while visiting my friend Lacey. Our eyes met across the room, and the rest was history.

Greg was completing his residency in his hometown of Portland, Maine. Since I was still living at home in Marlo, Maine, it worked out perfectly. It was only a forty-five-minute drive to Portland. We dated for six months before we got engaged. Last January, we were married in a beautiful wedding in my hometown.

I hoped to get pregnant on my wedding night. I went off the pill well in advance and planned everything out, even managing to get married on my most fertile day of the month.

Somebody got pregnant while I was on my honeymoon. But it wasn’t me. One of my best friends, Lacey Jones, ended up snowed in with her new man at some sex themed inn, on their way back to Boston after attending my wedding. She slept with him and got knocked up.

I was jealous and angry for a long time after I heard the news. And every month that went by without a pregnancy for me, just added fuel to the fire.

I didn’t speak to her for several months, until she was kidnapped by her crazy ex-boyfriend. She was missing for several hours, and no one knew if she was alive or dead.

I watched the television news in horror, riddled with guilt that I’d spent so much time resenting her for something that wasn’t her fault. She made it out alive, and I summed up the courage to attend a party in her honour. It wasn’t easy to see her pregnant, with everyone making a big fuss over her. But deep down beneath my anger, I was happy for my friend. And when her boyfriend proposed that night, I cried tears of joy.

In the month since Lacey’s party, I’d stopped wallowing and feeling sorry for myself. Not completely, but I was making progress.

I contacted a fertility clinic and started taking the necessary steps toward achieving my dream of being a mom. Learning to accept the reality that the babies weren’t going to come easily was a big step for me. Greg was really supportive, agreeing to do whatever we had to do to get our family started.

I glanced at my watch for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes. Where was my husband? We needed to leave in ten minutes if we had any hope of making the appointment.

The first flutter of panic took flight in my stomach. What if Greg was delayed by an emergency? We had our initial consult at the fertility clinic that day. They had a cancellation and managed to squeeze us in. If we missed this appointment, it could take months to get another one.

“Oh, thank God,” I muttered with a sigh of relief when I saw him exit the hospital and cross the busy street.

I grabbed my purse and headed to the door. He arrived a few minutes later, strolling in casually as if we weren’t running late for the most important appointment of our lives.

“Hey,” he said, scrubbing his hands over his face.

“Hey,” I replied curtly, opening the door that he just closed. “We need to leave right now. What kept you? I was getting really worried.”

He reached past me and pulled the door closed again.

“What are you doing, Greg?” I asked with an exasperated sigh.

“We need to talk, Carla,” he said quietly, averting his eyes.

My stomach started to burn, like someone was dropping little squirts of Tabasco sauce in there. Like it always did when I sensed something bad was about to happen.

“Whatever it is, Greg, it’s going to have to wait.” I reached around him, frantically trying to open the door that he barricaded with his six-foot frame.

“It can’t wait, Carla.”

He looked down at me, finally making eye contact. What I saw in his eyes sent the Tabasco sauce spreading through my stomach and up my esophagus to my throat.

Guilt.

Regret.

I sucked in a big gulp of air as I tried not to panic. “What is more important than our appointment at the fertility clinic?”

“Come and sit down, honey.” He took my hand and tried to pull me toward the living room, but my feet were rooted to the floor. I didn’t want to go back inside. I wanted to leave. I wasn’t missing that appointment for anything. “Carla! Come and sit down.”

I let him lead me to the sofa, the cool leather sending a chill through my bare legs as I sat and waited for the bad news I knew was coming. It was all over his face. He was about to drop something big on me. And I wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was.

He sat in the chair across from me, templing his fingers under his chin. His tanned face was etched with worry, his short blonde hair standing on end. He must have been running his fingers through it while he walked home. Greg always did that when he was nervous.

“Just spill it, Greg,” I said quietly.

He took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling as if he was praying or something. Greg wasn’t religious, so I’m not really sure what he was hoping for. Maybe for the ceiling to come crashing down and kill us, so he wouldn’t have to continue with this conversation?

“I don’t want to pursue fertility treatments.”

The words dropped out of his mouth like little bullets aimed right at my heart.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Seven little words that obliterated my dream of becoming a mother.

“Why?” I asked, my voice rising toward hysterics.

He levelled his gaze and stared directly at me. My heart was pounding so hard against my chest wall, I expected it to come flying out at any moment.

“I want a divorce.”

Okay. I guess it wasn’t enough that he just put seven bullets in my chest. Now, while I was lying on the ground, bleeding to death, he decided to kick me as hard as he could in the gut.

My brain was sending words to my mouth, but I couldn’t get them to come out. I sat there with my mouth hanging open, but no sound came out.

“I met someone. A nurse. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did. We fell in love almost instantly.”

“You,” I gasped as the word came out garbled. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Three months.”

“Three months!?”

We’d only been married for seven months. So four months into our marriage, he started banging someone else? No wonder he was always tired and reluctant when I told him we had to have sex. He’d probably just fucked his little nurse before he came home, and given her all his semen.

“I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe it would just be a fling and I would get tired of her. I figured when you got pregnant, that would straighten me out.”

“So, let me get this straight. You thought, as long as I wasn’t pregnant, it was okay to cheat on me!” I’d found my voice, fueled by the anger starting to course through my veins.

“No. Of course not. I fell in love, Carla. I wasn’t planning on that. It just happened.”

“When did you fall out of love with me? Or maybe you never loved me.”

“Of course, I loved you. But this is different. There’s a spark that you and I never had. I didn’t know it was missing until I experienced it with Janie.”

“I see.” Tears burned behind my eyes, but I held them back. I wouldn’t give that bastard the satisfaction. “Maybe you should just go, Greg. I think that would be best right now.”

“Okay. But before I do, there’s one more thing I need to tell you. I want to get everything out in the open right now. Get this over with.”

“There’s more?” I glared at him with disgust. He had just destroyed my life in one fallow swoop, and he wanted to tell me more bad news? Because he wanted to get it over with?

He sucked in a deep breath and stared at the ceiling again.

Oh boy. This was gonna be bad. I could feel it in my bones.

“Janie is pregnant.”

The room spun as the words spilled from his mouth. He stopped kicking me, climbed behind the wheel of his car, and ran me over, flattening me like a pancake.

“I’m really sorry, Carla,” he said softly, rising from the chair and edging his way toward the door. “I’ll be in touch about getting my things moved out, and my lawyer will be in touch about the divorce.”