Page 83 of Catcher

Something heavy settles in my gut with each word Catcher speaks.

Catcher swallows, throat working. “Not long after that, Hannah got pregnant.” His gaze snaps to mine, quick, measuring, checking whether I’m still okay to hear this. “It wasn’t planned. Hell, we were barely figurin’ out how to pay bills without eating ramen every night.” A rough chuckle breaks free and dies immediately. “But we were over the moon. I was over the damn moon.”

The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach intensifies. Catcher is telling me this for a reason. People don’t open old doors unless something is waiting on the other side.

“We worked on the nursery together,” he says, and for the first time since I’ve known him, there’s a flicker of something almost bright in his face. Not happiness, but more so the memory of it. “Picked out paint colors together, decorated the walls with pictures. Hannah would sit on the nursery floor with a list of things we still needed, reading them off while I hung shelves. His voice goes quieter. “I built the crib by hand. Took me months.” Catcher’s eyes go glossy, not with tears, but with the strain of holding them back. “I was on top of the world, Ruby. I had a woman I adored and a baby on the way. A house I built into somethin’ worth coming home to.” He slowly shakes his head once. “I thought… I thought that was it. That was my life. My whole damn future.”

I don’t move, I barely breathe, but I listen, as if my silence is the only thing keeping him talking and from locking this back up inside himself. The television murmurs in the background, throwing blue light over the side of his face, the bruises, and the hard set of his jaw. Something tells me I’m not going to like where this story is heading.

The silence stretches on forever. I feel his energy shift.

My stomach tightens, and I know, in the quiet certainty of instinct, that what comes next is going to hurt.

When he finally speaks, his voice is lower, flatter, as if he’s rehearsed a thousand times what he’s going to say. “I came home from work one night after pickin’ up some extra hours. With a baby on the way, I was pickin’ up as much overtime as I could.” Catcher’s eyes look almost vacant as he recalls the events. “I pulled into the driveway, and I knew right away somethin’ wasn’t right. The porch light was off. Hannah never forgot the porch light. Not once. She’d leave it on even if she were just runnin’ to the store, just in case I got home after dark.”

He shifts forward in the chair, elbows braced on his knees. “I reached behind the seat, grabbed my rifle, and went inside.”

My hand presses hard against my stomach as Catcher’s throat bobs. “It was quiet,” he says. “Too quiet. And when I stepped into the kitchen…” He pauses, eyes dropping to the floor. “I found Hannah on the floor, and she wasn’t moving.”

His voice goes hoarse. “There was blood,” he says. “I’d never seen so much blood.” His eyes lift to mine again, and the pain in them is so raw it makes my own eyes sting. “There was a man standin’ over her,” he continues. “Gun in his hand. His back to me.”

I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until my chest burns. “I didn’t think,” Catcher says. “I didn’t hesitate. I shot the motherfucker where he stood.” His stare goes distant again. “I didn’t know there was a second intruder until I saw him bolt out the back door.”

I don’t say anything. I can’t. Tears stream down my face, silent and hot. My chest aches with every breath, and it isn’t the bruises this time. It’s Catcher. My heart breaks for him in a way I don’t know how to hold. I knew Catcher had demons—everyone does, in one form or another—but nothing could have prepared me for this. For the image of him walking into the home he built with his hands and finding it ruined in a single night. For the sound of his voice right now, stripped down to bone and truth.

I want to reach for him. I want to pull him into me and tell him I’m here, that he isn’t alone with it anymore, but my body is pinned to this bed. All I can do is look at him through blurred vision. Maybe this is the root of the steel in him. The reason he watches every door. The reason he goes quiet when people talk about families and futures is that he doesn’t trust either one to stay. My tears don’t stop, but I don’t wipe them away. I let them fall as I hold his gaze, waiting and terrified for what he’s going to say happened next.

Catcher’s eyes drop again, and when he speaks this time, the words come slower. “After that, there were sirens, lights, and people askin’ questions,” he says, voice tight. “I don’t remember half of it. I remember holdin’ her hand, and it being cold. I remember somebody pullin’ me away.” His throat works as he goes quiet again. “I buried my wife and child three days later. Just like that, they were gone.”

My tears start again, fresh and helpless. I try to blink them back, but they just keep coming, sliding down my cheeks into the pillow. Catcher keeps talking, his voice a low current I can’t escape.

“I stood there at the front of her casket, draped in flowers. White daisies because they were her favorite. I was lookin’ at a box that’s supposed to hold the person whom I had planned to spend the rest of my life with.” Catcher’s hands clench and unclench. “I remember thinkin’ it was all a dream, and I’d wake up to find Hannah in the nursery.”

His eyes squeeze shut for a beat. When they open again, all I see is anguish. “I lost everythin’ that night.”

My hand flies to my stomach so fast the IV tugs and stings. The pain barely registers. All I can think is no, a raw, feral sound inside my head. My baby. His baby. Our baby. The grief on his face makes my chest cave in. I didn’t know it was possible to look at someone and feel their loss like it’s a weight dropped into your body, but that’s exactly what happens.

Catcher doesn’t give me details, probably because he can’t or maybe because he won’t. But his voice turns rough. “They tried,” he says. “Doctors, nurses… everybody.” His gaze drops to my hand over my stomach, and something savage flashes there before it disappears. “But there wasn’t anything to save.”

He drags in a breath, shoulders lifting, then dropping. Then I picture it without wanting to—an untouched nursery, the handmade crib waiting for a baby who will never sleep there, and a house full of love and her laughter, suddenly just… empty rooms.

I make a small sound, not quite a sob, not quite a breath. My heart feels shredded. He’s sitting here beside my hospital bed, bruised and exhausted, and he has been carrying the loss of his wife and child around with him every day.

No wonder he’s afraid.

No wonder he fights like he has nothing left to lose because once, he did.

I can’t stay in bed any longer. The urge to go to him is too strong. I swing my legs over the side of the mattress, and the movement sends a hot streak of pain through my ribs and down into my right hip. My vision blurs at the edges. I grit my teeth and breathe through it, refusing to let my body talk me out of what my heart has already decided.

Catcher’s head lifts, his eyes tracking me instantly. He doesn’t move to stop me, but I can see it on his face—pain, fear, the instinct to protect colliding with the fact that he’s the one bleeding inside right now. His hands flex on his knees, fighting the urge to scoop me up and put me back in bed.

My feet find the cold floor. The IV pole gives a soft clink when I stand, and the line tugs at my skin. I steady myself on the bed rail, then take one careful step, then another, closing the small distance between us. Without giving myself time to second-guess it, I turn and lower myself onto his lap. His thighs are solid beneath me, warm through the thin hospital gown. Catcher’s arms come around me automatically, fast, sure, and engulfing me.

I slide my hand up the back of his neck and thread my fingers into his hair, the strands soft against my knuckles. Catcher makes a sound that’s barely there—a breath that trembles on the way out—and then he leans forward until his forehead rests against my chest. His hold tightens, careful around my sore ribs but unbreakable everywhere else, like if he lets go, he’ll lose control. Neither of us says a word. We just hold each other.

Everything around us fades. All that exists is the weight of him in my arms and the way his breathing gradually evens out against me. I keep my fingers in his hair, stroking slowly, anchoring him the only way I know how. My ribs ache and my hip throbs, but I stay exactly where I am, because the pain is proof that I am here, that he is here.

Minutes pass, maybe more, but time doesn’t matter. Catcher’s arms stay wrapped around me like a vow, and my cheek rests against the top of his head while my tears finally slow. Neither of us reaches for words, because words can’t fix what he lost or what I’m afraid of losing. So, for now, we hold onto what’s real—each other.