by Shelly Ellis
“None of that matters now,” a nurse had whispered reassuringly to Paulette as she was wheeled into the operating room. “You’re going to have your baby today. It’s going to be okay.”
And then she felt her son being pushed and tugged out of her. After the epidural, that was all she could feel—the pressure of the doctor’s hands. And then she saw him—a mini-version of the baby she had anticipated. But instead of a fist-pumping, feet-kicking, screaming baby, his body was limp. He was quiet. There was another frantic rush as he was taken to the NICU.
Little Nathan was still there in the NICU. Her baby rested under a heat lamp to help him control his body temperature. He lay in a tight little ball—as he had when he was inside her tummy—with tubing down his throat and wires attached by clear tape all over his body. Every time she saw him her heart broke.
“I’m so sorry, Nate,” she had whispered to him the last time she had seen him, gently rubbing his wrinkled arm, listening to the beep of the monitor. “Mommy is so, so sorry she did this to you.”
She hadn’t put her baby first. She had let her fears and worries dominate her decisions, when her focus should have been on preparing for Nate, on giving him all she had to give.
“I was so stupid, honey,” she had told him.
Paulette now stepped onto the foyer floor and walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she heard Antonio ask over her shoulder.
She turned to find him walking down the staircase toward her.
They hadn’t talked—really talked—since he arrived at the hospital and walked into her recovery room. His expression had been indecipherable as he stood near her hospital bed.
“So I hear I’m a dad now,” he had said casually.
She had been unable to meet his eyes when he said that. Instead, she had stared down at her lap.
“When were you planning to tell me you were pregnant? Were you ever planning to tell me?”
She had opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. Her tongue had felt heavy, and not just because of the painkillers she had been given through her IV.
“You know, I don’t get it, Paulette. All the lies . . . the betrayal. How much do you expect me to take, huh?”
She had closed her eyes in response.
In the face of her silence, Antonio had slowly shaken his head and walked out of the hospital room, leaving her alone with her thoughts and her guilt.
He had driven her home from the hospital two days after her cesarean. He had deposited her in her bed, fluffing her pillows behind her head and setting a glass of water and the TV remote nearby.
“Tell me if you need anything,” he had murmured before shutting her door behind him.
“Are you going to see Nate?” Antonio now asked as he walked toward her across the foyer.
Paulette nodded. “I haven’t been to the hospital yet today. I try to do it before noon, but I’m moving a little slower than usual.” She gave a pained smile before reaching for her sweater on one of the coat hooks and wincing at the dull throb that erupted along her stomach.
“I can drive you,” Antonio said, stepping off the last riser.
She paused. “You . . . you don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. I want to see him. I haven’t been to the hospital since he was born.”
Paulette had noticed, but she hadn’t faulted Antonio for keeping his distance from the baby. She had assumed Antonio hadn’t gone back to the NICU because he doubted whether Nathan was his son. And in truth, he was right to doubt it.
“Come on,” he said, walking across the foyer and retrieving his keys from the foyer’s oak table. “Let’s go.”
Ten minutes later they rode in silence in his Mercedes to Chesterton General Hospital. Paulette remembered having a similar strained car ride with Antonio only months ago when they were driving to see Terrence in the ICU. That ride had been carried out in silence, too, though the whole time she had wanted to confess her feelings to Antonio, to tell him all her secrets and regrets. But she had held back. She wasn’t going to do that again.
“I should have told you,” she now said as he drove.
His eyes darted from the windshield and he glanced at her. “Huh?”
“I should have told you about the baby,” she said in a louder voice, swallowing the lump that had lodged in her throat. “It was wrong of me to keep that secret from you . . . ridiculously wrong. But I was scared. I make the worst decisions when I’m scared. I know that now.”
“Why were you scared?” he asked, reaching over to lower the volume of the radio.
She took a deep breath. This would be the hardest part. “Because I wanted for so long for us to have a baby, Tony. I had been hoping about it, dreaming about it. And then when I finally got pregnant, I . . . I couldn’t say for sure if it was our baby.”
“Our baby?” She watched as the muscle flexed along his mahogany-hued jaw. “You mean, you think it’s his baby, then?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t say for sure. And I know how you feel about the affair . . . how you feel about . . .” She was going to say his name but thought better of it. “I know how you feel about that man and I didn’t want you to . . . I didn’t want you to take it out on me and the baby,” she whispered.
The car compartment fell silent again. Antonio’s hands visibly tensed on the wheel.
“I wish you would give me more credit, Paulette. You make me out to be some monster.”
“No, I make you out to be a normal man who’s been through a lot, whose wife has pushed him to the point that any other guy might break or go crazy. But you haven’t broken or gone crazy, Tony, and I’m in awe of you. You are a good man . . . a man who is way too good for someone like me.”
He didn’t respond. Instead he kept his eyes focused on the windshield, on the roadway in front of him.
“So if you want a divorce, I’ll give it to you. I understand.” She lowered her eyes. “I thought about it last night and I’m . . . I’m going to talk to Evan and ask him if I could stay at the mansion for a while, at least until Little Nate gets better. You can have the house all to yourself. It’ll give you some peace, finally. I’ll pack my things and—”
“No,” Antonio suddenly said.
“Huh?” she asked, raising her eyes.
“I said, no, baby. I don’t want to get a divorce. I told you I was in this for the long haul. And besides, I don’t want my son being raised apart from me. That’s not what I signed up for.”
“But . . . but you don’t know if he is—”
“He’s my son,” Antonio declared. There was so much resolution in his tone that she wouldn’t dare argue with him. “I okayed my name being added to his birth certificate, didn’t I? You don’t think I realized what I was doing? No, Nathan Williams is my son. I don’t care what any DNA test says. And my son will be raised with his father. And we will . . . we will work through this.” He drew to a stop at a stoplight and turned to gaze at her. “I want to be with you, Paulette. I want to make this work.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. After all this, he still wanted to be married to her. And he was willing to claim the baby as his own without question.
“You’re too good,” she squeaked, her throat tightening.
The light turned green and he accelerated. “I’m not perfect,” he said. “By no means, but my family is important to me. You’re important to me. I fight for what’s mine.”
They arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. In the elevator, Antonio reached out and grabbed her hand and she almost fainted from the feeling of relief and calm that washed over her. He hadn’t held her hand in almost a year. He hadn’t touched her. The feel of his warm palm against her skin was a sensation that she had sincerely missed.
They made their way down the hall of the maternity ward to the NICU. Paulette knew most of the nurses by name by now and greeted them when she entered. One blond nurse looked up at Antonio in surprise.
“Are y
ou Little Nate’s daddy?” she asked, a smile on her pink lips.
Antonio nodded. “That’s me.”
They walked to Nathan’s incubator and Paulette watched as Antonio hesitated. “Can I touch him?” he asked the nurse. For the first time, he seemed nervous.
The nurse nodded. “Of course!”
He then leaned his hand in and caressed a finger along Nathan’s leg.
“Hey, buddy,” he whispered, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s your daddy.”
Chapter 26
Terrence
“She’s all yours, Mr. Murdoch,” the car salesman said with a bleached-white grin as he rose from his desk and extended the keys toward Terrence.
Terrence slowly lowered the ballpoint pen to the salesman’s desk, pushed away the stack of documents in front of him, and hesitated. He stared at the dangling keys like a recovering alcoholic would stare at a bottle of gin—with a mix of longing and fear. He wanted badly to take the keys, but he was scared he might regret it later.
“You don’t have to be scared, Terry,” Dr. “How Do You Feel About That?” had told him during his last therapy session earlier that week. “It’s been several months now. Your doctor okayed you to drive again. Don’t you think you’re finally ready?”
Maybe he was, but still, he wished he had planned this better. He had purchased a new car on impulse after he saw a double-page ad in one of the men’s magazines he got in the mail. The new Porsche Boxster GTS . . . not identical to the last car that he had owned and totaled, but certainly a close enough replica. The instant he saw it, he called the car charter service that he had been using for the past month and asked them to take him to the Porsche dealership just outside of Chesterton. He hadn’t even bothered to test-drive the damn thing. He didn’t want to lose his nerve when he climbed behind the wheel. Instead, he had pointed to the car as soon as he stepped into the showroom.
“How can I help you, sir?” asked the salesman in the sharkskin suit with his hair loaded with so much gel that it glistened under the showroom’s lights. “Any particular vehicle you’re interested in today?”
“I want that one,” Terrence had said boldly, still pointing his index finger at the Boxster GTS.
“Wow! You’re a man who knows what he wants, huh?” The salesman had guffawed and slapped him on his shoulder so hard that it stung.
“Yeah, I . . . I guess you could say that.”
But now Terrence regretted his boldness.
What the hell was I thinking? He now wondered.
The salesman’s grin started to wane when Terrence made no move to take the car keys. “Is something wrong, Mr. Murdoch?”
“Uh, no. No, everything’s fine,” Terence said with a forced smile before finally reaching for the keys. The cool metal and plastic felt heavy in his hand. He reached for his cane and slowly rose to his feet.
“Does your wife or girlfriend know you bought a new car today?” the salesman asked.
Terrence stared down at the keys in his palm, transfixed by the Porsche emblem. “It’s girlfriend and no . . . no, she doesn’t know I bought a car.”
“Ah, well! Then this will be a big surprise!”
Terrence nodded, though the truth was that C. J. wouldn’t give a damn that he had bought a new Porsche. She would more likely chide him about it.
“Your penis is fine, Terry,” she would say dryly with a smirk once she saw the gleaming roadster. “You don’t have to drive around in a fake one.”
But she would be proud of him for overcoming his fears, for finally taking the last step he needed to move on with his life, to prove that he had finally left that horrible accident and all the aftermath that came with it, behind him.
“It was a pleasure working with you, Mr. Murdoch,” the salesman said, extending his hand for a shake.
“Thanks,” Terrence mumbled before resting his cane on the edge of the table and shaking the salesman’s hand distractedly.
When Terrence climbed onto the car’s leather seat ten minutes later, inhaling the soothing new car fragrance, he felt a rush filled with a mix of excitement and anxiety. He buckled his seatbelt, checking the fastener once, twice, and then three times to make sure it was secure. He inserted his key and listened to the engine rumble to life. He ran his hands over the leather steering wheel and sat back in the driver’s seat, staring out the windshield, working up the will to press the accelerator and pull out of the parking space.
“You can’t sit here forever, Terry,” the voice said in his head.
“I know that,” he whispered fiercely, feeling the panic rise within him. His heart galloped. His grip on the steering wheel tightened. His breathing became shallower and shallower. The car’s compartment started to feel smaller and smaller; it was like the roof and the side doors were pressing in on him.
What if he pulled off and made a wrong turn and sideswiped someone? What if the wheel spun out of his hands and he jumped the curb and hit some poor pedestrian, or he stopped at a stoplight and someone rear-ended him, sending him careening into oncoming traffic? He had lost an eye and fractured a leg in his last car accident. What if he lost his life this time around?
“You’ll be fine, Terry,” C. J.’s voice suddenly whispered in his ear. “I have every confidence in you.”
At the thought of her, his breathing and his heartbeat slowed. His grip on the steering wheel loosened.
“Now put the pedal to the metal and come and see me!” her voice ordered huskily, making a reluctant smile spring to Terrence’s lips.
Terrence did just that, shifting the Roadster into Drive and pulling out of the dealership’s parking lot.
Twenty minutes later, Terrence pulled into the lot of C. J.’s apartment complex, gliding into one of the few empty spaces. He turned off the car engine and released a long breath. It hadn’t been an easy drive. He had been tense for the first five minutes of the car ride, driving so slow that a woman who had to be in her eighties had blared her horn at him and passed him while giving him the evil eye. He finally started to relax as he drew closer to C. J.’s apartment, keeping a vision of her face in his mind the rest of the way.
As he opened the Roadster’s car door, he saw a vision of her again—this time in the flesh. Terrence squinted as he watched C. J. walk toward her Honda Civic, dragging a suitcase on rollers behind her. Or at least, he thought it was C. J. At this distance, he couldn’t say for sure because she looked so different.
“C. J.?” he called to her as he climbed out of his Porsche.
She paused just as she opened her trunk. She turned her head to look in his direction. A smile brightened her face. “Terry, hey!” She waved.
He crossed the parking lot, all the while staring at her in confusion.
She was wearing a suit—a pale blue ensemble with pearl buttons down the front and along the cuffs and a skirt that fell just below her knees. She had finished the outfit with sensible heels of the same shade as her suit. She had straightened her hair, too. Gone were the corkscrew curls he knew and loved and in their place was a shag haircut that fell over her shoulders. She was even wearing makeup.
C. J. looked like someone had abducted her and forced her to undergo a makeover—the Stepford Wife edition.
“What the . . . what did you do to your hair?” he said, reaching out to run his fingers through her tresses.
“Nothing!” she cried, smacking his hand away. She smoothed her hair back into place, looking somewhat embarrassed. “I just got it flat-ironed. I used to wear my hair like this all the time until . . . well . . . a few years ago.” She paused and gazed at him. “What? You don’t like it?”
Terrence shrugged. “It’s not bad, I guess. I just wasn’t expecting it.” He let his eye slowly travel over her. His focus settled on the suitcase leaning against her rear tire. “Are you going somewhere?”
She nodded almost apologetically. “I was heading to North Carolina. I didn’t get the chance to tell you. I-I figured you were busy with your family stuff. I didn�
�t want to bother you.”
His newly minted girlfriend was disappearing somewhere and she didn’t think she needed to tell him that? He couldn’t help but be a little offended and irritated.
“You wouldn’t be bothering me, babe. I’d want to know something like this. What if I showed up and found you had just . . . just disappeared? That wouldn’t have been cool.”
She lowered her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. I should have told you. But honestly, Terry, I would have called from the road to tell you. Besides, I’ll be back before you know it. It’ll only be a couple of days. You’ll barely notice that I’m gone.”
Oh, he’d notice! It was alarming how quickly he had gotten addicted to this woman and her reassuring presence. But she was allowed to have a life. She was allowed to do things without him.
“So what’s in North Carolina anyway? Are you headed to a news assignment?”
“No, nothing like that.” She paused to toss her suitcase into the trunk. “My family is there. It’s also the home base of Aston Ministries. They invited me to come down.”
Terrence grinned. “That’s great! So your dad is finally willing to talk to you? He wants to make up with you?”
She closed the trunk and pursed her lips. “Sort of.”
“Sort of? What does that mean?”
“He wants to make up . . . but it kind of comes with strings attached.”
Terrence’s smile faded.
“There’s some dustup within the church. It’s bad, Terry. Really bad. And it’s happening just when Dad is thinking about running for office. He wants us to show a united front, so he asked me if I would—”
“Go back to being Courtney Jocelyn Aston. Go back to pretending you’re the perfect family,” Terrence finished for her, slowly shaking his head. “Babe, I thought you told me you didn’t want to do that anymore.”
“I don’t. And . . . and I’m not! I’m still going to be me. I’m not letting my dad and my brother pull the same manipulative bullshit that they used to, but I agreed to do a few press conferences and meet and greets . . . to stand smiling in the background while he or Victor talked. I’ll do a few on-camera interviews. That’s all.”