by Lynn, K. I.
Miserable. I had made the mother of my child miserable. It was all my fault because I’d fucked up.
I finally saw it.
All the ways I’d pushed her away, created a distance between the two of us. The walls weren’t enough, I had created an abyss of space over weeks.
The one person I wanted to make happy, to take care of, and I’d managed to do the exact opposite.
“All you have to do is tell her how you feel.”
I shook my head. “She’s too perfect for me.”
Jenna quirked a brow at me. “Nat is far from perfect.”
“To me she is.” I stroked her hand with my thumb.
“Then why can’t you tell her that? Why can’t you tell her how you feel about her?”
I jumped up from my seat and began pacing. “It’s not that simple.” That pain in my chest ignited, and I couldn’t sit still.
“Yes, it actually is. Either you love her or you don’t.”
“Maybe that’s how you operate, Jenna, but that’s not how I do.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “I can tell, and so can she. All she wants is the man you were the night you met.”
“I don’t know who I was that night. I was in some sort of trance, completely drowning in her, needing to be close to her. Wanting her in ways I’ve never wanted anyone else.”
I wanted that night to never end.
“Once again, what is the problem?”
“The problem is me,” I growled. “The problem is that I am afraid that if I admit how I feel, she’ll have the power to destroy me.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you gave her that power already.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This second, you aren’t her boyfriend, just her asshole boss, and that knowledge causes you pain. You gave her the power to destroy you, and by not admitting to her how you feel, you activated it.”
I stared at her before stepping back over to my chair and sitting back down. Was she right? Was my inability to tell her, my drive to protect myself, the catalyst for my own self-destruction that tore down the best thing in my life?
“I don’t know how to change. I think about her constantly when I’m away. There’s this thrumming in my veins when we’re apart that drives me mad, but once I see her, touch her.” I took her hand in mine again. “It’s like the world is right again.”
“Do you love her?” Jenna asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t right.
“Yes, you do. So here’s my advice—get your fucking head screwed back on right, or you will lose her forever. Do you want that?”
I shook my head. What I wanted was to be closer to her, not farther away. I wanted to be rid of the pain and doubt that clouded my judgment. That thought walls were the answer. They weren’t. The only thing they did was keep me alone, and I didn’t want that anymore.
My phone went off again, buzzing with another message. For hours I’d ignored it, ignored the calls and texts. I told my assistant to handle shit, and it seemed he wasn’t handling it.
“I’ll let you stew on that,” Jenna said as she stood. “I’ll be back.”
I drew Natasha’s hand to my lips. “I’m sorry. I’ve fucked up. Badly.”
There was only one way to make it right, Jenna was correct there, but I wasn’t sure I could do it yet. To face those emotions was terrifying.
A few minutes after Jenna disappeared, the door opened and a doctor not much older than me walked in.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Nadar,” he said with a smile before walking over to the computer.
“Is the baby okay?” I asked, desperate to know.
“And you are?”
“The father.”
He nodded, apparently deeming me a viable person to speak with. “The baby is fine, and we’re monitoring her.”
“Her?”
The doctor blinked at me, then scanned her chart. “It looks like she had a gender ultrasound last week.”
“Yes. I…I missed it.” For something that was completely unimportant, but told myself it was more important than that ultrasound. A moment I didn’t get to share with her.
“When can I take her home?” I asked.
“We’re going to keep her tonight to monitor her condition. Her numbers are still elevated.”
Still elevated? “Which numbers?”
“Her blood pressure is the biggest issue. Hypertension is a serious condition and can cause everything from swelling to liver failure.”
Hypertension? Liver failure? When did her blood pressure become an issue?
“When did that start?”
He scrolled through her chart. “Looks like it started showing up around the beginning of her second trimester. Quite a bit earlier than we usually see, which was cause for concern.”
The information hit me hard. She’d kept things from me. Aspects that I needed to be aware of. Why didn’t she tell me her blood pressure had become a problem? Whenever I noticed something was wrong, she brushed it off as just another pregnancy symptom.
Then a thought shot through me with a force like being hit by a truck. The date. The weekend that I realized my feelings for her were stronger than I could allow. The weekend I threw the first walls up between us. The offhand comment Natasha had made about her second trimester starting.
I’d pushed her away, so far, in fact, she felt she couldn’t confide in me. As I built walls around me, I tore down the chains that connected us.
She’d been quieter, withdrawn almost, when we were together. I was working more and saw her less, and when I did she was reserved. In recent weeks, the passion that once burned so hot was barely a glow, and I’d chalked it up to no longer being in the honeymoon phase.
That wasn’t it at all.
It was me.
I recounted everything. The meme war she’d started had failed to pick back up one Monday. Over the last two months our calls and text messaging dwindled, and lately it wasn’t uncommon for us to go days in between contact. Again, it wasn’t her…it was me. I was the one who stopped responding.
I’d put everything before her and pushed her to the background. Why? Because there, maybe she wouldn’t have as strong of an effect on me? That I could somehow manage my feelings for her if she wasn’t my sole focus?
That proved to be a useless exercise.
“Richard?”
I looked up to find Natasha’s mom and dad standing in the doorway.
The air was suddenly thick with tension. I didn’t know how much they knew, but given how close they were, I was certain they knew everything. And none of it painted me in a very good light. Which only made me their least favorite person at that moment.
“Do you really think you should be here?” Greg asked.
I deserved the hit, but that didn’t make the blow any easier to take.
“She needs me.”
“She’s needed you for a lot longer than today, and where have you been?” He drilled in further.
At least I finally knew where Natasha got it from. Her father was every bit as direct as she was.
“Not where I should have been,” I answered honestly.
“It’s a good thing Wyatt and Carson don’t know you’re here. Just saying,” he said, his expression tight.
I clenched my jaw and kept silent. Knowing he had every right to his statements didn’t make them any easier to hear.
Tabitha put her hand on her husband’s arm, gaining his attention. “Come on.”
“Come on where? I came to see my daughter.”
“And you’ve seen her. Now, let’s give them some space.”
Greg leaned down and pressed his lips to Natasha’s forehead. “Love you, Natty.” His eyes caught mine as he straightened, and I didn’t miss the warning there.
The interaction hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Greg was a man simply protecting his only daughter. Would I react any other way if our positions were switched? If
it was our daughter lying on the bed, knowing the man beside her was the cause of so much of her pain?
Shortly after they left, Natasha’s hand twitched in mine and she let out a low groan. Her eyes flitted open, and she turned to me.
“Hi,” I said when her beautiful eyes met mine. My chest clenched as the look in her eyes deadened.
“What are you doing here, Richard?” she asked. The strength was gone from her voice. Had I really reduced her to such a shadow of herself?
“You’re hurt.”
Her eyes narrowed on me, though the action caused the swollen one to shut. “You actually left work, drove all the way down here, because I fainted?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“It’s year end,” she ground out.
“Yes.”
She eyed me for a moment. “You actually left?”
I took her hand in mine and drew it to my lips. My other hand drew lazy circles across the bump that held our baby. Trusting those feelings was difficult, but I forced down the walls that had started to build up between us. Being honest with her and myself was the only way we were going to make it through. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her brow scrunched. “Tell you what?”
“That we’re having a girl.”
“Because I figured if you couldn’t be bothered to come to an appointment that was on your schedule for almost a month, you didn’t care.”
I squeezed her hand. “I do care, Nat.”
“Even so, you still didn’t care enough to come,” she snapped.
“Don’t.”
She pulled her hand from mine. “Don’t lash out in anger and frustration? Don’t show you how I feel?” She shook her head, her eyes narrowed on me. “I’m sorry, Richard, but not telling people emotions is your hang-up, not mine.”
“You’re not wrong.”
With that, Natasha’s eyes closed and her head turned slowly away, shutting me out. Forcing me to look back at the last few weeks without the blinders I’d been wearing. All they did was make me lose focus on the things I cared about, instead of keeping out those that could hurt me.
When I was released the next morning, it was Richard who was there to drive me home.
I hated it. I hated the way it made my chest clench to see him there, so attentive to my needs. It was a side of him I’d seen glimpses of in the past, but it had been many weeks since this side of him had been allowed out.
The buzzing of his phone in his pocket went unnoticed, and the ringing through the car’s speakers went unanswered.
“You aren’t going to get that? It could be important.” The air continued to be filled with static, and it was suffocating.
He reached across the center console and covered my hand with his, giving it a squeeze. “Not as important as you.”
“Had some epiphany, huh?” I cringed against the light, my eyes overly sensitive thanks to the migraine slamming my head into a table had caused.
“I want to talk about this.”
“Why?” Give me a reason.
“Because this isn’t over, despite what you seem to think. One fight does not end a relationship.”
“It is over, and if you think a fight is why we broke up, you really have no idea what the fuck is going on.”
“I’ve been flaky, I know.”
I scoffed at that and pulled my hand from his, crossing my arms over my chest. “That’s one way to describe the last month. Hell, the last two months.”
“Do you have a more accurate term?”
“Checked out? Running for the door? Leaving without saying goodbye?” My voice broke on the last few words, and I clenched my jaw to hold back tears. For weeks I’d wanted an open and honest conversation with him, but he continued to slip further and further away instead. “Actions speak loudly, Richard, and you are a dichotomy of actions. On one side, you are affectionate and sexy and caring and everything I’ve ever hoped to find in a man. On the other side, you completely disregard everything that isn’t work, and that includes me.”
“I’m in a high-level position that requires a lot of time.”
“But not all of your time,” I said, hoping maybe he would understand. “You’re allowed to have a personal life, to have a life outside of the office, but you refuse to set any type of boundaries. You’re available to them twenty-four seven.”
He remained silent for the last mile, hopefully mulling over my words in a constructive way, otherwise the rest of this conversation was going to go sideways. When he pulled into a spot in front of my door, he had me wait so he could help me out of the car. He even made me hang on to his arm as we walked inside in case I got dizzy.
After helping me out of my work clothes and into something comfortable, he helped me to the couch. I didn’t really need the help, but he was insistent. The swelling in my right eye persisted, causing limited vision out of that eye, so I allowed it.
However, that meant he remained in my presence. He scooted the sofa chair around so that he was sitting in front of me. It seemed we were about to have a conversation I didn’t want. I said my piece. Now I wanted to move on. Before I could ask him to leave, Richard noticed the boxes stacked around the room.
Carson had delivered a bunch of moving boxes and the flattened ones were leaning against the wall. On the kitchen table sat two boxes that were taped up. There were more on the floor stacked up. The walls were bare, and so were the shelves of my entertainment center. Slowly my life was being packed up.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked, and I was surprised by the anger lacing his tone.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m moving to a bigger place next month.”
“Without talking to me?”
With a nonchalance that I didn’t feel, I calmly responded. “I have a baby coming in eighteen weeks. I can’t wait for you to make decisions any longer. It’s time for action.”
“Okay. We didn’t discuss this.” His voice was strained and he blew out a breath. I held back my urge to scream at him that I’d tried to talk to him about it and he ignored me. “Move in with me. Come to Chicago.”
My eyes widened, and I stared at him. “What?”
His jaw was set. “You can stay with the company, just in a different department.”
I blinked and shook my head. “If this is your version of a grand gesture, you’d better think of something better.” He was only saying it because he felt guilty.
His eyes were wide in disbelief that I wasn’t suddenly swooning over his declaration. How could I? I didn’t want him to want to be with me out of guilt or obligation.
“Natasha.”
I held up my hand. “What you’ve just said is that you want me to leave Indianapolis and move to Chicago. Leave my family and friends and job to live with you. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head. “No. Fuck, no.”
“Why not?”
“Because my life is here. You’re asking me to leave my life, pack it up, leave my support system with a baby on the way for a place where I don’t have that support, and really neither do you. Yes, you make more money, but we work for the same company.”
“Which creates other issues, because I’m technically your boss.”
“Four steps removed.”
“That doesn’t change the reality. My position makes me the boss of every employee below me, even if they don’t report to me. But you do report to me. You are in my direct department.”
Tears began to fill my eyes. “Once again, your job comes before me.”
“Nat, that’s not—”
“That’s not the reason? I love you, Richard.”
He stared at me in stunned silence but made no move to speak, which made the tears flow down my cheeks.
“I’ve been in love with you for so long, ever since we met, but I see now that you will never love me. And even if you do, you will never love me with the depth that I love you. I don’t know why, but I do know all that awaits me w
ith you is heartache and pain.”
“I…I have difficulty expressing my feelings in words.”
I was getting tired of his excuses, and I’d had enough. “Your actions have spoken loud enough. We’ll go through the court system to set up custody and a schedule.”
“No,” he ground out.
“It’s the easiest way.”
He shook his head. “You’re asking me to miss half my child’s life, Natasha.”
“Work will do that regardless. Maybe this will force you to take weekends off.”
His eyes were wide, pleading. “Don’t do this.”
“You’re the one doing this, Richard. All I’m doing is protecting myself.”
“Please, Nat, don’t. Don’t leave me.”
Don’t leave him? “You were never really with me to begin with. I was just an afterthought, something to do in the few hours outside of your marriage. I’m the other woman, Richard, and I deserve better than that.”
He shook his head. “I’m not giving us up. I won’t. I refuse to.”
I angled my head toward the door. “You should go.”
He took my hand in his. “Please, Nat. Don’t.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. “I have to. For me, for my heart, for our baby, I have to be selfish, no matter how much it hurts, because if I don’t stand with my convictions, you’ll continue on and the hurt will be so much worse.”
The broken expression he wore tore at me. “I won’t. I can change. I will change. I just need you to give me a chance to.”
I slowly pulled my hand from him. “I need more than empty words and reassurances. I need proof.”
“Me being here isn’t proof enough?” he asked as he brushed back a lock of hair from my face.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but no. It’s too little, too late.”
He shook his head. “No, not too late. I’m not fucking giving up on this, on us, and I’m going to prove it to you.”
He took my face in his hands and I stiffened, then melted when his lips pressed against mine. That connection, that feeling of perfection together lit up, then died down when he released me. He stroked my cheek, his breathing hard, brows scrunched.
“Don’t shut me out. Answer my texts. I’m coming for you.”