Seasons (Ari AU)

Chapter 59

Holland POV

  "What the hell are you doing here, Felicity?" Ari's voice booms loud through the overly stunned and quiet room.

  Her attention turns from me towards the angry, brooding man that now towers over the chair she's sitting in. Yet oddly enough, she doesn't cower.

  I, however, do cower. I push myself further into my bed, yet having no where to actually go. I swear it feels like the room is spinning out of control, as though my world has just flipped on its axis and gravity no longer exists.  Because as many times as I blink at the photo pages in front of me, the man's picture never changes.

  I need them to change, desperately. I need to feel like the small fairytale I had with Jeremy wasn't built upon lie after lie of absurdities. I need to believe that something, somewhere in the last two and a half years was true, and good, and special between the two of us. 

  "I figured since you finally figured it all out that you must've told Holland the news," she licks over her lips slowly. "I mean, Mason's gonna be a big brother to little Miss Evy Gable.  I was thinking about picking him up one of those cute shirts that have the name and then the words Big Brother. Oh! And a little onesie for Evy that says Little Sister. I really can't wait to tell him the news!"

  I want to object. The pang in my chest is incredibly evident, the desire for my mouth to start moving is falling on an unrelying brain at this point because nothing is working the way it should. This isn't really true. Surely, I'm delirious again and having a fever dream that leads into my worst nightmare. 

  "You need to leave," Ari's voice is stern, unforgiving with a tense jaw and strong stance. 

  Lissy instead leans back a little further in the chair, making herself more comfortable. "Hmm, I kind of think that you're the only one that doesn't actually have a claim to be in this room, Ari. I mean, Holland here is pregnant with my son's sister so therefore we have a connection. But you two," her hand miming between myself and Ari, "there's no connection."

  Something clicks in my brain amidst the turmoil this woman is attempting to unleash upon me. The words 'no connection' being used towards Ari and myself are every bit false, even before the proposal during the night. Because as new information comes out about Jeremy, I'm finding that I am more intertwined and laced into Ari's life than I ever was with my own husband's life.

  "He's my fiancé," I spit out with confidence. 

  A loud, high pitched laugh fills the room and makes me want to vomit. "Of course you're already engaged again. You want to give her my ring, too?" She slips it off her finger, holding the circle out to Ari.  

  "No, she'll be getting the real thing. Yours is as fake as that tan on your skin and the blonde dye in your hair," he snaps back at her as though he's practiced the words all morning. 

  "All that effort you put forth in trying to create your own child wasn't fake though, was it?" 

  My confidence waivers, watching the exchange of a woman scorned with the man who was willing to give her the world if not for her lies. Which are turning out to be in abundance, all centered around one person.

  My dead husband.

  I tune out the arguing, voices growing louder as I flip back a couple of pages, looking more closely at the background of the baby shower. Then once more at the hospital photos on the day of Mason's birth, clarity comes screaming at me as I turn to new pages seeing my mother-in-law in an embrace with Jeremy as he holds his son.  Soon there's first birthday photos, and vacations at the shore, trips to the city for baseball games. 

  "Oh, good! You got to the next part of our story," Lissy speaks, her talons now pointing towards me as tears begin to slip down my cheeks. 

I listen as she speaks, the blur of Ari's body stepping back out of the door not even registering clearly.

  She taps her manicured nail over one photo in particular. It's the three of them, their little family, standing outside a house with a SOLD sign held in her arms while Jeremy's got Mason on his hip, a key dangling from his hand. "He had just moved us into our own home in Connecticut and out of that apartment.  It helped when his mother passed and she'd left him her home. We sold it and within a month were moving into this home." A flip of the page shows another image of just she and Jeremy, a small round cake between the two of them along with two flutes of champagne. "He proposed that night. Said he wanted the world with the two of us, but needed to figure out how to get out of Boston and be able to stay in Connecticut with us. Said he wanted to convince Ari to come along, they were best friends after all."

  "And you cheated on him with his best friend," I interject through the feeling of cotton balls filling my mouth.

  Lissy scoffs, a chuckle mixing in with ease. "And as you can see, Ari is a push over. He'd have forgiven him and followed him all the way to Connecticut.  Except," she pauses, her eyes clouding over with pure hatred, "while he was here that trip, he met you."  

  I shift a bit, pushing myself towards the head of the bed as much as I can when she takes a seat on the edge of my hospital bed, my safe space. 

  "His visits got to a be a little further between and I had to hear about Ari's friend 'Holly' way more often than I cared to. I even tried convincing him, and myself, that it sounded like Holly was a great match for Ari. But soon, I knew I was losing him. So I planned a trip over to visit Ari under the guise of maybe starting something up again, but really it was to meet you."  

  Such simple words have the breakfast I'd just finished threatening to expel itself, and most days I hate even the thought of throwing up, but if I aim it just right it'll cover the perfectly toned body of the woman sitting in front of me.

  "And shock of all shocks, I discover you're married to him. He was giving you the life he promised to me!" she screams, hatred evident in her tone and fire in her icy blue eyes.  

  The door to my room swings open, faster than I've ever seen the hard wood move, a security guard coming in, his voice booming as he asks Felicity to please leave the premises. "He was with me, ya know. The day he died? Tucked himself right into my bed all day long, regretting every sweet and tender word spoken to you." The venom streaking her words as the guard grabs her by her arm, pulling her towards the door.

 "Wait!" she screeches, lunging for the album that I'm all too happy to throw at her, Ari coming up to grab the box and shove it into her chest. "It's not fair," she screams again. "You took him from me. You have another piece of him that I wanted for myself!"

  Her screams echo down the hall as my body shakes uncontrollably, the feeling of Ari's warm arms encircling me doing nothing to help me calm down.  My chest constricts, along with my stomach, sending the monitor into overdrive as it picks up a contraction. 

  "Breathe, baby. I need you to breathe, relax your body, beautiful. It's too early for our girl, okay?"

  I slip into a full blown panic attack, the room closing in on me at a lightning speed. "Dizz, Dizzy," I squeak out, my head falling onto Ari's shoulder as my body trembles.  "Hot," another mutter as chills run through my body. 

  Ari doesn't know what to do, other than hold me, offering me some form of comfort but it's not enough. "Holland, take a breath. I've got you. I've got you both. I'm not going to  let anything happen to you."  

  Some how I manage to lift one hand, striking the nurse's call button as another contraction rips through my belly.

*Unedited