What Grows Dies Here

She cared deeply about me. Worried deeply. She’d gently mentioned me seeing a therapist. I’d gently told her this was not the time.

Zoe understood. My friend loved me. Bled for me. But she watched carefully, letting me make my decisions without judgement or comment.

Stella wasn’t here because Stella was pregnant.

She hadn’t told any of us, but we all knew. You could see it. She was naturally petite, and her boobs had gotten bigger. Her skin glowed, and she wasn’t drinking any booze. That was the biggest sign. That bitch loved a cocktail.

I guessed she hadn’t told us because she hadn’t told Jay. Him and Karson were deep in planning for war with the Russians.

I knew this through Stella, not Karson. Apart from last night, I hadn’t spoken to him in months. Even though he was everywhere. He fucking slept in his car outside my gates. I’d watch him on the security camera, for hours, clutching a glass of wine, willing myself to find the strength to press the button to let him in.

I never found the strength.

There was still a security detail on me, though they followed me at a distance.

There was currently a man in a suit three tables over, sipping water and packing heat, watching us. I recognized him from the party at my house, eons ago.

“I’m not going to say shit about you leaving,” Zoe said, sipping her drink. She was dressed, as always, to the nines. Her curves were on show in a vibrant yellow sheath dress, perfect on her with her smooth, ebony skin. She wore her hair natural, with tight, wild curls framing her face.

Her espresso eyes focused on me. “Because I understand why you need to leave. But you’re not leaving without talking to me.” She leaned back and regarded me. “Really fucking talking to me. None of this, ‘I’m back to the Wren I was before.’ You don’t fool me.”

I measured her gaze. It was resolute. Determined. And no one stood a chance once Zoe had made up her mind.

There had been no heart to hearts with my friends. I hadn’t opened up about my pain. Everyone tiptoed around me. No one openly acknowledged what happened since my mother had that talk with me that day at the hospital.

They were all itching to, I knew that. But up until now, they hadn’t wanted to push me.

Zoe was quite obviously done with that.

I sighed, taking a long drink. Alcohol was my best friend these days. I had to be careful, though. I needed to drink enough to numb the pain, but not too much that I lost all self-preservation and searched for Karson.

A delicate balance.

“I’ve found myself fantasizing about a way that my life could’ve gone in order for this not to have happened,” I confessed, my voice little more than a whisper. “First, I go to the obvious. What if I didn’t go shopping that particular day, on that particular street? But that wouldn’t work. So what if I didn’t get pregnant in the first place?”

I had to force my hand from not going to my now flat stomach.

“Again, not specific enough,” I sighed. “So I toyed with the idea of wishing that Stella never met Jay.” I took a long drink. “But even at my absolute worst, I couldn’t wish that my friend didn’t find love, a family. So the only logical thing would be to wish that I never met Stella in the first place. In order to never meet Stella, I would have never met you.” I looked into my friend’s deep brown eyes. “So basically, I’m reverse engineering my entire life, taking away every single event and relationship that brought joy and love into my life so I didn’t have to experience one painful, terrible loss.”

I sucked in an uneven breath.

“That’s not who I am as a person. But then again, before that, I was not a person who had experienced true hardship. So I didn’t know who I truly was. And you know what? I now know who I truly am. I’m the person who would take away every piece of joy and happiness in my life just so I didn’t have to experience that. This.”

The silence rang between us like a high-pitched beep, imperceptible to the outsider, but I could feel it ringing in my ears, causing my brain to hurt.

Zoe was not one to fill a silence just for the sake of it, despite how uncomfortable I was in this one. She wasn’t going to rush in to placate me and my obvious pain, not with empty words she didn’t mean.

Zoe would never say anything she didn’t mean. Not even to her most fucked-up, broken friend. I appreciated that. Everyone else feared me far too much. Feared just how close to the edge I was. Stella and Yasmin were bending over backward to be tender, kind, understanding and patient with me.

It was driving me fucking insane.

Well, it was one of the things that was driving me insane. The emptiness of my womb and my heart were contributing. And my ruined, blackened soul.

“That’s fucked-up,” she murmured.

“Yep,” I grinned. “I died. Twice. In that ambulance. Then a third time when I woke up and realized...”

My stomach clenched.