Chapter 29: Only for You
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Rachel woke up to strips of bright sunlight dancing across her face through the blinds. She squinted, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings of Frank's bedroom. It was tastefully decorated, obviously not by his hand. She could only guess that everything had been left the way it was when he divorced his wife. She didn't know if it was because he was resistant to change, or because he just never spent any time here.
She glanced at the nightstand. Between two empty bottles of Gatorade and an empty glass of water, she saw the small silver cross and her cell phone. She reached over to grab her phone, eager to check for any missed messages from last night.
A text from Angela had been delivered about five minutes after Frank had answered her call.
So who's the lucky hunk who took you home?
Rachel paused with her thumb hovering over the buttons, deliberating on how much information she should reveal.
No one you know. Old flame.
She cringed at having to use such a casual term to describe Frank, but keeping his identity a secret was imperative, especially under the circumstances.
Assuming Angela would be suffering a hangover at the moment, Rachel was startled by the immediate response back.
I think his voice got me pregnant over the phone.
She read the suggestive text through watery eyes just before her phone battery died. She angrily allowed the phone to clatter to the ground and rolled over in the bed, clutching her belly in shame.
The entire situation stung her heart. Badly. It was the habit of her current friend circle to reduce men to their most appealing physical attributes. If she truly desired a relationship with Frank, she would have to leave it all behind. Not only for his sake, but for hers as well. She couldn't live this way anymore.
In a rare moment of utter turmoil, Rachel found herself wishing she had a therapist she could talk to and trust. If it hadn't been for her phone dying, she might have caved and called Fletcher to tell him everything. Who else could understand her pain?
She had almost carried Frank Farmer's child. Even the idea had placed such a profound, dystopian thrill within her soul. The world could not allow an event like that to take place. It was the lifeblood of her deepest fantasies; it was not real life.
Rachel shifted in the bed, remembering her blood loss from the night before. She looked down and realized she was lying on a towel, dressed in a pair of black basketball shorts and a loose fitting Toby Keith concert T-shirt.
The door to the bedroom cracked tentatively, and when he saw she was awake, Frank came into the room. He was fully dressed for the day, wearing belted khakis and a white polo. "Still bleeding?"
"Doesn't seem like it."
He looked relieved. "That's a good sign. But it can start up again. I think it's best if we get you in some better clothes." He placed a pink handbag and a small pile of her clothes on the end of the bed. Getting a closer look, Rachel realized they were not the clothes or the bag she'd worn the night before.
"How did you–"
"Pettigrew," he cut her off.
Her head fell into her hands. "You called Pettigrew up here?"
"Don't worry. I explained everything to him."
From the subtle way he said 'everything,' Rachel got the feeling Frank wasn't just referring to her miscarriage. She sighed heavily.
"You should get ready," he encouraged, collecting her empty glass of water from the nightstand. "Your OB had an opening at noon today."
Rachel's cheeks burned. As if it weren't humiliating enough he had to watch her go through all of this, now he had to chauffeur her around town to doctor's appointments.
"Do you think you can eat?" he asked her.
"Not a lot."
He placed a sleeve of saltine crackers on the nightstand. "Can you manage a couple of those?"
"I guess."
She cleaned up as best she could, thankful that the handbag Pettigrew brought had several feminine products to hold her over until they got to the drugstore. As Frank led her out the front door of his house, she halted at the sight of a large bouquet of flowers that had been left on the porch along with a note.
Ignoring Frank's look of confusion, she lifted the note to read it to herself.
Dear Rachel,
I'll never forget the words you said to me back in Pittsburgh: "Don't start off your marriage with a dishonest move." I have taken your wise words very seriously in my relationship with Devon, and we've grown so much closer as a result.
I left my career as a makeup artist in Hollywood behind because I couldn't take all the dishonest people. You are one of the only people in Hollywood in whom I can confide, and I hope you can continue to say the same for me. Your honesty is something I will always look up to.
Whatever is happening between you and Frank Farmer, I know you're not being irresponsible, so don't think of it that way. Think of it like your heart knows what it wants, and you're just listening to your heart.
Love ya, girl.
-Tina
Rachel swiped away the tears from her eyes as she tucked the note into her purse.
"You okay?" Frank asked.
She nodded.
"Are those from Tina?" he asked.
She looked up at him in surprise.
"She called earlier this morning while you were still asleep, and I answered it. She asked for the address of where you were staying."
Rachel looked down. It was not common for Frank to so willingly give up his location of residence to a relative stranger. The fact that he knew Rachel trusted the woman must have made the risk worth it to him.
He looked apprehensive before he asked, "She knows about . . . us?"
"Yeah." Rachel nodded. "She's the only one."
He stared at her for a moment, but remained silent. She had anticipated a lecture on giving away too much information, but instead he gave her a tight smile and held out his hand for her to take.
He was quiet on their drive to her OB-GYN. When they arrived, Frank dropped her off in front of the building.
"Do you need me to come with you?"
Rachel hesitated. He had asked her if she needed him, not if she wanted him. If it had been the latter, she may have said yes. But the last thing she needed was for someone to recognize her and publish an article surmising what Rachel Marron was doing at the gynecologist with a strange man.
She shook her head. "Go ahead and drive around for a bit. I'll meet you down here when I'm done."
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Dr. Lacey was a no-nonsense woman who was just a year older than Rachel. Rachel had taken years to find an OB-GYN who made her comfortable as a high profile patient, and Dr. Lacey had met all of her needs. Rachel was oddly comforted by the sight of her doctor, nervous as she was to be lying on an exam table in the ultrasound room.
"Rachel, I'm so sorry we have to see each other under these circumstances," Dr. Lacey said as she entered the room and sat beside her. "How are you holding up?"
Rachel breathed deeply and answered honestly. "I'm just . . . surviving."
"I had a miscarriage myself before I gave birth to Luca," she said quietly. "It's truly the worst experience a woman can go through."
"It caught me off guard," Rachel admitted softly, staring down at her hands. The ultrasound technician knocked on the door, and Dr. Lacey made the introduction.
"This is Dana." The middle-aged tech smiled tightly at Rachel.
"I'm really sorry, honey," she said, a genuine look of sympathy in her eyes. "So, do you have any idea of when you possibly conceived?" she asked as she lifted Rachel's shirt and swiped the cold gel onto her skin.
Rachel felt extremely awkward then. As innocent as the question seemed, in her mind it felt strangely invasive, as if they were asking her to recount every sex position and every time of day she had fucked him. Her cheeks burned as unbidden images of his naked body in all different rooms of the cabin flashed through her mind. "Uh. . . sometime between . . . a few days after Christmas . . . and New Year's Eve?"
The tech moved the transducer over her belly and stared intently at the screen. Dr. Lacey spoke calmly over the soft buzz of the machine. "If you and your partner are actively trying for a baby, Rachel, I would recommend that you abstain for at least one full cycle so that your body can clear everything out first."
Her doctor must have misunderstood the sadness on Rachel's face, because she bent down closer and added gently, "And then you can resume trying again."
Once she was cleared to go back into the exam room, Rachel found herself on the verge of tears, alone in the small space with her doctor.
"I didn't know I was pregnant," Rachel admitted. "I was drinking. A lot."
Dr. Lacey looked at her cautiously. "That's not necessarily the reason, Rachel."
"Is it because I'm old now?"
She shook her head with a gentle smile. "A lot of women your age still have successful pregnancies."
"Then why?" Rachel whispered, clutching her belly.
"I can't always tell the reason behind a miscarriage. Sometimes it's just not the right timing for your body." Rachel winced at the soft touch of her doctor's hand on her shoulder. "If it happens again, we'll bring you in for some tests, okay?"
If only she'd known there was never even a chance it would happen again.
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About an hour later, Rachel came out of her appointment. It was brutally depressing to go through the aftercare for a miscarriage. Going back to bed sounded very appealing. Even so, she was grateful for the sunshine when she left the building. She had all the time in the world to grieve and cry as much as she wanted later, preferably when Frank took her back to her own house. She felt that she had imposed on him enough. Despite the shame she felt at that thought, she held her head higher to quash it. As she entered Frank's car, he asked her if everything went okay.
"They can't really do much more." She shrugged as she buckled her seatbelt.
She could tell he wanted to interrogate but was holding himself back.
She said quietly, "They think I was about seven or eight weeks."
Frank was silent for a few moments, during which Rachel held her breath. She knew he was calculating in his head.
He surprised her when he finally spoke. "Where to next? Pharmacy?"
Rachel looked over at him suspiciously.
He stared at her expectantly, his face impassive behind his dark black sunglasses. "Antibiotics, right?"
She just nodded again and sat quietly back in her seat as he drove.
After a while, she worked up the courage to thank him. It wasn't easy for Rachel to say 'thank you,' and Frank knew that. He didn't say anything, so she continued candidly, "I wouldn't have made it through that without you, Frank. You should be a doula."
He smiled. "Guns aren't allowed in the maternity ward."
She didn't think it was possible to laugh so soon after having a miscarriage, but she was wrong. "I'm surprised you even knew what a doula was."
"I've spent enough time at fertility clinics."
Eager to get the attention off of her for a bit, she asked him quietly, "Did she make you get a sperm analysis?"
He looked extremely uncomfortable, even behind his shades. "Yeah."
She paused before asking forwardly, "How was it?"
"Good enough to know I wasn't the problem," he replied calmly, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel. He was so fucking diplomatic.
He pulled up to the pharmacy so that she could go inside to get her prescription. While in line, Rachel noticed the excessive pink and red hearts hanging from the ceiling tiles and pasted to the windows of the store.
Valentine's Day. It was fucking Valentine's Day.
All out of reactions, Rachel shook her head and approached the counter where the pharmacist instantly recognized her. "Rachel Madden!"
"Marron," she corrected flatly.
"Right, Rachel Marron! That's what I said." The eager employee grinned at her. "I've never seen a celebrity in here before. This is so cool."
For such an insignificant interaction, Rachel felt an existential crisis impending.
That's all she was now. A familiar face. A story to tell. An occasional tabloid title for slow news weeks, and a name drop for 80s and 90s cult followers.
First a miscarriage, then Valentine's Day, now this?
When she got back into the car, Frank had a downright brooding expression on his face. In fact, his face matched perfectly how she felt. Maybe he had just noticed the paper hearts on the store windows, too.
She didn't say anything for a long while again. They were minutes away from his house when she finally spilled in a quiet voice, "It was my fault. All the drinking I did at my birthday party." She massaged her forehead with both hands.
She could feel his tension in the way he was driving the car. He pressed very carefully on the brakes as they approached a red light; it seemed ages before he brought the car to a stop.
"It would've been ours, Frank," she revealed, her voice just above a whisper.
She saw a single tear fall down his cheek from underneath his sunglasses. He said nothing.
"Life's crazy, isn't it?" she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
He didn't respond.
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As soon as they arrived back at his house, Frank asked her to sit outside with him on the back porch. She assumed he wanted to talk to her about everything that had happened, but instead they both sat in silence as the sun beat down on them, never once looking in the other's direction.
She supposed they were both processing the sad reality of the situation, and perhaps fantasizing about what could have been if things had gone differently. Rachel couldn't help feeling that she was at fault for the loss, but Frank had never given her reason to feel that way. She did not feel that his silence was judgmental, but rather that he was so stricken with grief that he could not find the words to console either himself or her.
Normally she would have asked him a thousand questions like she always did during the times she wanted him to open up. But this time was different. She could not think of any question that would've been appropriate to ask him. More so, she worried that his answers would be so brutally truthful that it would hurt her to hear them.
It was an unspoken truth that they had both lost what they had both secretly desired. The lovely, unbidden consequence that would have linked them together despite their differences, and despite their separate paths. If they had wanted an excuse to force things to work between them, that was it. And they had lost it.
Still, just being in his presence was comforting to her. The loss was as much his as it was hers, and she couldn't think of any reason to tell anyone else about it. It would break Fletcher's heart, and it would cause her friends to judge her. Pettigrew only knew out of necessity – funny how the bodyguards always ended up knowing her darkest secrets. She owed him much more than his salary would allow after this trying week.
She sat outside with Frank, lost in her thoughts, until the sun was on the other side of the sky and her two glasses of water were empty. He didn't look ready to leave his spot, so she quietly excused herself and went back inside.
Rachel made her way upstairs and began to awkwardly put together her belongings. It wasn't like she could stay here. She had to get back to all her problems, had to finish cleaning out the last remnants from the house, had to figure out where she was going to live, had to make sure Pettigrew wasn't armed before she set foot on her property again...
About ten minutes later, Frank came upstairs and saw her packing her things. He looked out of breath even though he had only just come up the steps. His face was slightly flushed from sitting out in the sun for so long, and it made his eyes look even brighter.
She stared at him for a minute then said softly, "How do you move on from something like this?"
Standing in the doorway, he shook his head infinitesimally, his eyes darting around her face in that way again.
She bowed her head and stared at the bed. "I can't stop thinking about Nicki, and now this?" She shook her head, a weight of agony in her chest. "I just don't know how to feel anymore, Frank. I'm just... numb."
"You've been through a lot, Rachel. You'll get through it. The same way you did before." His voice was so painfully quiet.
She looked over at him. "What about you?"
"Don't worry about me." There was such an emptiness in his expression, it absolutely killed her.
"This was your loss, too," she reminded him.
She saw the telltale break in his stoic gaze. He caught himself too late.
"Frank, there were so many things I wanted to say to you..." She exhaled heavily and shook her head. "But now I can't remember any of them."
He furrowed his brow and opened his mouth as if to reply, but nothing came out. He swallowed hard and finally entered the room. She caught him glancing at her belongings, a strange flicker of panic in his eyes. "You don't have to leave tonight," he told her.
Of course he would tell her that. He was too nice to kick her out, and she was too proud to admit she wanted to stay.
"Don't tell me that, or I may never leave," she said half-jokingly.
His eyes widened slightly at this. She saw the conflict in him as he thought of what to say in response. He probably would stand there thinking forever since he could never act on impulse.
"I don't want you to leave," he said, a tremble of intention in his voice.
She stopped folding her clothes and stared at him. "Farmer, what are you saying?"
This time he did not hesitate. "Stay with me."
"For how long?" She could only whisper it, knowing what he wanted, but needing to hear him say it straight.
"Indefinitely." The word was so soft on his tongue she barely heard it. He seemed to steel himself before making the proposition, "Move in with me."
She inspected his face from across the room, refusing to believe him at first. "It would never work between us." She wrung her hands, fighting tears.
"I've been tortured by that fear for years," he admitted, a wildness contained within his eyes. "But we'll never know until we try."
"Are you asking me on impulse?" she asked as he closed the distance between them.
"Yes."
She could only look at him in awe. "Move in … here? But this is the house where you lived with your ex."
His expression was pained yet confident. "It's either here or the middle of nowhere, and you said you couldn't last in Tahoe."
She shook her head, incredulous. "So you'd give it up? Just like that?"
He took a deep breath, released it, and closed his eyes. "I'd do it for you."
"Why?"
He did not answer, but instead firmly grasped her arms and kissed her senseless. When he pulled away, his eyes were overflowing with tears.
"Because I love you." His voice broke on the words.
She looked up at him in awe, crippled by her own tears. "I've only been telling you 'I love you' a million times over F.M. radio for the past ten years!"
His expression so clearly reflected everything she felt herself — relief, laughter, unbridled joy.
"I don't know what to do, Rachel… I don't have a plan, but I can figure something out, I just need some time…"
She shook her head adoringly at him, more head over heels than ever for him in this frantic, fumbling state.
"Frank, I would never ask you to give up your father's house, and I would never ask you to stay here on my account. But you don't have to make a decision at all."
He looked at her in confusion, having forgotten one very significant detail of her living situation in the fervor of his proclamation. She withheld it from him only for a moment before she revealed in a steady voice, "I sold my property for $60 million."
He blinked a few times, stunned into speechlessness as he studied her face.
She ran her fingers reassuringly through his hair and smiled. "We'll live somewhere new together." A tear fell from his eye, which she gently swiped away. "I don't care where we go, as long as I'm with you."