Barren

I.

They were destined to be together.

If Alex was certain of one thing, it was that.

Finn Reedy was his better half, a voice of reason in the chaos of his life, the driving force behind his sudden want to be the best person he could be. Without her, his life held little meaning. She was his muse, his reason to get out of bed each morning, his every thought while he was touring. She was absolutely amazing. And Alex had the stars and heavens above to thank for fating the two of them together.

With half-lidded eyes, he watched as Finn slid a hoodie on over her silky pajamas.

“Finn?” Alex asked, glancing with squinted eyes at the alarm clock.

Turning in the moonlight, she faced him with a soft smile on her face. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” he admitted, leaning up from his pillows to rub his eyes. “What are you doing? It’s two in the morning.”

Without so much as making a sound, she crossed the room and knelt on her side of the bed. Cradling his cheek in her palm, she felt the stubble lining his jawline against her softness. “I’m in the middle of a really, really bad craving. I’m just running to the gas station.”

“I’ll go,” he offered, touching her protruding stomach with an open hand before lifting the blankets from his waist. Before he so much as shifted, she stopped him.

“Don’t be silly, Alex. You’re so tired and I’m already ready to go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” she murmured, leaning down to press one single kiss to his lips.

“Okay. Be safe Finn.”

Smiling, she pulled away. “I will. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Alex watched as she shifted the hood of her sweatshirt – or rather his – before she whisked out of the comfort of their bedroom.

II.

The call came before Alex even realized that Finn hadn’t returned to their bed since she’d left – and in his sleep-induced stupor, he’d had to ask the nurse to repeat herself before the information registered in his mind.

Lying in the small beds Saint Luke’s hospital offered to its patients was Finn after a serious car accident. After hours of waiting, of pleading with God to not take away the best part of him – to not take his best friend from him – of pacing the hall just outside the room designated for people in the same shoes as Alex just to avoid the hysterical woman sobbing inside, he got the update – the news that had him walking into room 304 with wobbly legs.

Staring at her still frame, at the respirator breathing for her and the electrocardiograph as it monitored her heart’s activity, Alex felt himself sinking helplessly into the chair closest to her hospital bed.

Pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, he shook his head. Out of all the damage – the broken sternum, the cuts caused by broken glass along her face, the bruised ribs – he knew that the most painful would be to her emotional health when she woke, when he told her.

Their baby was gone, their daughter’s life faded away before she had the chance to experience it.

That would be the wound that would take the longest to heal for Finn.

With one last painful breath, Alex broke, allowing his tears to fall before his girlfriend regained consciousness – before he would be forced to be strong for her.

III.

Alex watched as Finn sat on the edge of their bed with a pillow clutched to her gauze-covered chest. Even with the healing cuts and the bruises still blossoming and fading from her skin, she still looked beautiful in the moonlight seeping in through the window.

“Finn, you need to rest. Lay back down,” Alex said, leaning up from the pillows that no longer brought him comfort.

Pinching her eyes shut, she tightly shook her head, the muscles along her jaw tightening. “I can’t. My chest hurts too badly,” she admitted.

In every symbolic and literal sense of the word, it did. The place where she once felt her heart was hollow, and the airbag that hadn’t deployed at the correct time, the seatbelt pulling at her under impact, and the corrective surgery that had resulted from it all caused the middle of her chest to burn with every breath she took.

Sitting up, Alex reached out to rub her shoulder carefully. “Is there anything I can do to help? Do you want me to go get another ice pack?”

“No, I’m okay.”

Finn had been saying that a lot and Alex never could bring himself to believe her. Maybe it was because of the way her eyes looked either filled with pain or sadness when she said the words. Or maybe it was the way he’d found her sobbing out of first grief, and then pain from the strain it’d put on her still healing sternum after he’d gone to the pharmacy for her pain medication.

“No you’re not,” he said softly.

She pinched her eyes shut, fingers tightening in the cotton at the words. “But I will be. I just need time, Alex, okay?” Getting up from her place at the edge of their bed as carefully as she could, she grabbed a handful of pillows. “I’m going to try sleeping in the recliner.”

Knowing she needed her space, Alex didn’t get up as he watched her lamely walk out of their room.

“You know you can talk about anything with me, right Finn? This hasn’t changed anything between the two of us. I still love you as much as I did before, if not more.”

She paused at the door, too fearful of the pain that would come with maneuvering to face him. “I know.”

“Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you knew.”

A moment of silence passed between the two of them, one that had Alex hoping that she was going to finally break in front of him and tell him all of the emotional baggage she was harboring.

But she didn’t.

Finn took one deep breath and faced her newest enemy: the stairs, wincing with every step she had to take.

IV.

Alex heard the sharp intake of breath even over the roar of the shower.

Peering out from behind the shower curtain, he watched silently as Finn stared at the rugged looking pink line peeking out of the top of her towel. Carefully opening the fabric away from her body, she finally looked at the long, mangled line of flesh running between her breasts fully for the first time.

Tears welled in her eyes and her mouth hung open in shock.

Alex watched as her eyes flickered in the mirror, her bright blue eyes meeting his browns for a mere second before she hid the scar away from both of their visions.

Before he had the chance to even open his mouth, she fled from the room, leaving her boyfriend unsure of her reaction in her wake.

Without hesitation, without even bothering to wash the remaining shampoo from his brown mop of hair, he reached for the towel he’d set out and wrapped it around his waist as he followed after her.

He found her frantically wiping at her eyes as she tore through her drawers for clothing. “Talk to me, Finn.”

“About what?” she asked, her voice so calm, so even, that if she hadn’t been wiping at her tears and avoiding the conversation, Alex would have passed it off as nothing.

But Finn was crying and she wasn’t opening up to him yet again.

“Finn, don’t do this. Stop locking me out. What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”

“Nothing, Alex.” She slammed a drawer shut a little too forcefully and her tone was just a little too harsh for her to be believable.

“Obviously it’s something…” When she said nothing, Alex sighed, reaching for her. “It’s just a scar, Finn.”

She jerked her shoulder away from his hand, wringing her tights up in her hands before storming out of their bedroom.

V.

They were both awake despite the odd hour, both staring in opposite directions so that they wouldn’t have to face each other.

Finn was thinking everything through, her mind running in overdrive as she tried to hold back her tears. Alex, on the other hand, felt himself growing angrier by the second – angry that she wouldn’t give him the chance to understand, angry about the accident, angry with the death of the daughter that he’d never had the opportunity to meet, to hold, to protect from the forces of the outside world.

“It’s a reminder.”

Alex’s thoughts came to a halt as the words came to him.

“What?” he asked, rolling over to face her, his anger fading away.

“It’s not just a scar. It’s a reminder of that night – that day when you told me…” Finn used her thumb to wipe away the tears pooling in the crevice of her nose. “It’s everything that I hate, every emotion that I don’t want to feel ever again. It’s not just a scar, Alex. It’s that night stuck in my skin.”

Feeling his chest tighten up at her words, he moved closer, daring to play with her hair as he leaned up against her pillows.

“I just want her back, Alex. We never even met her before she was taken from us. It just – it’s not fair. And this scar – it just reminds me that we’ll never be able to see her go off to her first day of school, or see her walk for the first time, or even open her eyes.”

Alex stayed silent, waiting for her to continue after keeping everything inside for a month and a half, and unsure of what to say to comfort her.

“How is it possible to love something that you never even really had?”

Sliding down, he rested his cheek against hers, wrapping her in a hug, careful not to hurt her any more than what she already was. “You had her, Finn. We both had her. Maybe we didn’t get to see her eyes, or feel her finger wrap around ours, but we felt her move, and we saw her sucking her thumb at the last appointment we went to.

“We had her. Even if we didn’t get the full experience, we had her.”

For the longest time, he allowed her to cry in his arms. He focused on the way she shook with each sob, the way she curled into his body without hesitation.

With each tear that came and went, they could feel the sadness wash away and the tension between them fading.

Pressing his lips to her hair and pulling her gently closer, Alex felt himself whispering a promise that he wanted desperately to be true, "Everything will be okay."

And Finn believed him.