Excerpt
Prologue
Roman
The house was dark when I quietly twisted the
lock so as not to wake her. God knows she needed the sleep. I didn’t know how
she still functioned when her days were filled with tears and her nights
weren’t much better. It was precisely the reason I stayed gone as much as I
did. Or so I’d thought as I’d thrown myself into work. Money couldn’t solve my
problems, but it might have been able to solve hers.
My body ached, and my lids barely stayed open
despite the pot of coffee I’d downed not even an hour earlier. It was a miracle
I had been able to drive at all. I should have just crashed at the office, but
after yet another failed prototype, I’d needed an escape.
Instead, I’d gone home—the very
place I’d spent so many nights trying to avoid.
Only one foot was over the threshold
when I suddenly froze.
“Elisabeth?” I called, flipping the
overhead light on.
My shoulders fell as I found her
sitting on the sofa, her long, blond hair curtaining her face and suitcases
surrounding her feet.
“What’s going on?” I asked as my gut
wrenched, already knowing the answer.
I had no right to be surprised. I’d
all but forced her hand. If I was honest with myself, it was what I’d
wanted—for her. However, none of that made the pain of reality any less
agonizing.
My heart raced. “Elisabeth?” I
prompted again, needing to hear her say the words almost as much as I dreaded
it.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” she
whispered at the floor.
Acid rose in my throat.
Out of habit, I dropped my keys into
the basket she’d bought when we’d first moved in. “If you fail the key basket, the key basket will fail you,” she’d
announced with an infectious smile the day we had become homeowners to the
two-bedroom-two-bath starter home we could barely afford. It was just seconds
before I’d swept her off her feet and made love to her on the hardwood floor of
our foyer in the middle of the day.
But such was life as a newlywed.
Inside that house with her was the
only place I’d ever wanted to be.
Until the fantasy of forever had
worn off and the walls of real life had closed in on us. Once my refuge, our
home became an inescapable prison with bars built of my failures.
I couldn’t breathe inside that house
any more than I could look her in the eye.
We’d only been married for five
years. But, seeing her now, I felt like it’d been a lifetime since I’d peered
into her eyes, promising to love her in sickness and in health.
But it wasn’t like she was the same
woman, either.
Over the last six months, she’d
wasted away both physically and mentally in front of my eyes.
And I’d done absolutely nothing to
help her.
But how do you throw a lifeline when
you yourself don’t even have a rope to hold on to? I might have been able to
keep her afloat for another day, but I’d never have been able to pull her back
to me.
We merely existed on the same plane.
Living under the same roof, eating meals at the same table, sleeping in the
same bed. But we were far from sharing our lives together.
“Are you coming back?” I asked, not
willing to accept the truth that lingered in the air around us.
Her deep-green eyes lifted to
mine—the red rims and the dark circles doing nothing to hinder her beauty.
Swallowing hard, she shifted her gaze to the mantel on the other side of the
room. I knew what she was looking at, but I refused to follow her into the
past.
That might have been our biggest
problem of all.
She was still living there.
And I refused to go back.
“Elisabeth?” My voice softened, but
the question remained the same. “Are you coming back?”
“No,” she replied, swiping the tears
from her cheeks.
A thousand arrows fell from the sky,
searing into my soul. My breath hitched, and my lungs burned. This was it—the
end of my life as I knew it. But, in that moment, with her shoulders hunched
forward in defeat, I realized that it was the end of hers, too.
Why did that realization hurt more
than the lifetime of loneliness that was awaiting me when the sun rose?
I lifted a hand and rubbed my chest,
hoping to ease the mounting pressure threatening to overtake me. “Don’t do
this,” I mumbled through the pain.
I wasn’t sure who I’d meant that for
though.
Was I chastising myself for having
asked her to prolong the inevitable just because I wasn’t ready to lose her
yet? Or was I asking her to stay in this sham of a marriage for even one day
longer?
Probably both.
“You’ll be okay,” she assured me,
pushing to her feet and gathering her bag, complete with our Yorkie, Loretta,
tucked in her mesh dog carrier.
My pulse quickened, nature’s
fight-or-flight finally kicking in. But I’d been in flight mode for entirely
too long. There was no fight left.
I stepped into her path. “Elisabeth,
please.” I wasn’t sure why I kept saying her name. I secretly hoped that it
would snap her out of it, bringing her back to the reality of it all. But it
was the reality that was killing us.
“I’ll take off work tomorrow,” I
pleaded. “We can talk. Figure things out.”
It was selfish. Completely and
utterly selfish. But that was nothing new for me.
Her chin quivered as a steady stream
of tears fell from her eyes. “Promise me something, Roman.”
I would have promised her the entire
fucking universe if it had made her stay one night longer. But who was I
kidding?
We were over.
We both knew it.
“Anything,” I whispered, reaching
down to take her hand, desperate for the connection I didn’t deserve.
“Remember to live.” Her voice
caught, and a silent sob tore through her.
Cupping the back of her head, I
pulled her into my chest.
“I can fix this,” I swore, but it
was yet another lie. “We just need time.”
Her shoulders shook as she cried in
my arms. “We…we promised. We told him we’d live for him.”
I closed my lids and clung to her
tighter.
We were supposed to be fighting and
screaming. That was what soon-to-be-divorced couples did. But that wasn’t us.
We didn’t hate each other. Elisabeth was my soul mate on every level.
And she was paying the price for
that.
Minutes later, the tears stopped and
she backed out of my arms. I fought the urge to regain my hold, forcing her to
stay. But her sad resolve as she hurried to the mantel and then to the door
made it clear it’d be a wasted effort.
Never in a million years had I
thought I’d be standing there, watching her walk away.
But, then again, I’d never expected
her to have the urn of our only child cradled in her arm, either. A reminder of
just how much I hadn’t been able to give her. How much I’d never be able to give her.
My past, present, and future were
walking out of my life, and I stood immobile as every fiber in my being
screamed for me to drop to my knees and beg her to stay.
To take her in my arms and tell her
that we’d figure it out.
To reclaim my life once and for all.
But how would that have helped her?
Staying wouldn’t magically bring
back her smile. Nor would it make her look at me with those bright-green eyes
that made me feel as though I could conquer the world.
It wouldn’t give me back the crazy
woman who argued with her whole heart and loved with her entire soul. No. Those
days were gone.
I’d lost that woman somewhere in the
bitterness between grief and blame.
We’d been happy once.
But we’d gotten greedy and tried to
start a family.
That was her future. Not mine.
Regardless how desperately I longed to give it to her…and then selfishly take
it for myself.
Sex. That’s how babies are made.
Children as young as elementary school are taught the simple biological facts
of reproduction.
But what they never tell you is
that, for one in six couples, having a baby goes a little differently.
For Elisabeth and me, it looked more
like this:
Thirty-six months of crushing
disappointment.
Three miscarriages.
Hundreds of tests our insurance
company refused to cover because the inability to reproduce was not considered
a health condition.
Countless tears.
Helplessness.
Failure.
Failure.
Failure.
Her broken heart.
My empty chest.
Thirty-seven thousand dollars we
didn’t have.
In vitro fertilization.
A sperm donor.
A handful of hope.
A positive pregnancy test.
Five months of utter bliss.
Earth-shattering devastation.
A funeral for a child I would never
get to see grow up.
A job that became my only reprieve
from reality.
And now…losing the only woman I
would ever love.
I’d always been amazed by how much
punishment a heart could take. I was broken, battered, and destroyed. And yet,
much to my dismay, as I watched the front door close behind her, my heart kept
beating.
ONE STORY. TWO COUPLES.
The Retrieval Duet by Aly Martinez is a two part series
releasing September 2016.
RETRIEVAL releases
on September 13th and will bring readers the first part of this emotional
second chance romance.
TRANSFER (Part Two) will release on September 27th!
Retrieval (Part One):
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2ccSQWX
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2aW07Yb
iBooks: http://apple.co/2aH2bFb
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2aFOVxB
Transfer (Part Two)
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2bXApI9
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2aW0WAf
iBooks: http://apple.co/2beFszd
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2aW1So5
Blurb
I proposed on our first date.
She laughed and told me I was insane. Less than a day later,
she said yes.
It was a whirlwind, but we were happy…
Until we got greedy and wanted a family.
It was a life I couldn’t give her, not for lack of trying.
Fertility just wasn’t on our side. We sought out doctors and treatments. Spent
money we didn’t have. Lied to our families. Smiled for our friends. Put on a
brave face for a world that didn’t understand.
Finally, we were successful…
We were left broken, battered, and destroyed.
They say love is in the details, but it was the details that
ruined us.
This is the story of how I took back what had always been
mine.
The retrieval of my wife and our family.
Meet Aly Martinez
Born and raised in
Savannah, Georgia, Aly Martinez is a stay-at-home mom to four crazy kids under
the age of five, including a set of twins. Currently living in South Carolina,
she passes what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can
get her hands on, preferably with a glass of wine at her side.
After some encouragement
from her friends, Aly decided to add “Author” to her ever-growing list of job
titles. Five books later, she shows no signs of slowing. So grab a glass of
Chardonnay, or a bottle if you’re hanging out with Aly, and join her aboard the
crazy train she calls life.
THANK YOU!
