“There was a car accident a few weeks after I returned to Boston. Got a good thump on my head, along with a few other issues and since I’d been staying at Ted and Jane’s they were more or less forced to take on my convalescence. I hadn’t realized till now how much they resented the intrusion in their lives.”
Shannon hoped her comments were enough to deflect Jane from any further damage with more comments.
“Oh, give it up sister-in-law. Did you really think that Ted wouldn’t find out the truth? You were a basket case with a concussion being the least of your worries. He doesn’t even know does he?” she bit out. “You haven’t even told him.” she said with disgust.
Next thing she knew her parents appeared out of nowhere; apparently having been in the shadows the whole time, listening to the awful sibling confrontation.
The expression on the faces of her older parents didn’t help Shannon’s growing hysteria bank off any.
“Is this true, daughter?” her mother barked while her father turned cross eyes her way snapping, “Shannon, explain yourself.”
Could time stand still? Was there a pause button she could push to give herself the time to gather her emotions and not make this any worse? Shannon could feel Nick standing like a stone monolith at her shoulder. Shit.
Ted and his uptight wife were tittering quietly to each other shooting looks of contempt her way. The sight of her parents though, with faces brimming with disappointment stiffened her spine. Time to put her big girl knickers on.
“Mom, Dad. It’s alright.” Shannon said quietly with a trembling smile.
Reaching for Nick’s hand she stepped a bit closer to him sending a clear message of where her loyalties were.
“Nick and I need to talk. Would you take Ted and get him bourbon, Dad?” she asked sweetly while nodding reassuringly in her father’s direction. “I think he needs it!” Shannon added as she looked again at her mother.
“Mom, I love you. Trust me. Everything will be fine.”
The four retreated back inside to the lively celebration going on around them. Shannon’s mom had hesitated at the last second. Before closing the terrace doors so they could have some privacy she smiled at her daughter.
“I’m glad you know,” she said. “Glad that your head was full of fanciful, romantic notions as a young girl. They made you brave, my only daughter.”
Looking from Shannon to Nick and back again she chirped a final, “Use your head and your heart Shannon.” while pulling the French doors shut, leaving them alone on the darkened terrace.
Considering the import of her mother’s words Shannon knew there was a message in there. It’s how her mother was. She wanted her to think and to feel. It was the first time that Shannon could ever recall her mom approving of the fancy-filled colored rose glasses that had so marked her youth. She was letting her know that her romantic visions were okay and to also be brave.
Nick’s hand was cold as ice, reminding Shannon she couldn’t be a coward and that she had to do as he had done for her. Explain everything. Honestly. It was her turn in the batter’s box with the whole game riding on how she handled the next ten minutes.
Drawing her quiet, maybe too quiet, giant of a man deeper into the private shadows to a small loveseat bench, Shannon pushed him to sit since he was not making any attempt to act on his own. When she slid to his side still clutching his hand like it was an anchor in a storm, the look of shock, confusion and fear on his face slammed into her heart.
There was no way to dress up what she had to say so she took the band-aid approach … rip off the truth quickly and accept the pain so the healing can begin.
“I had a miscarriage.”
Her previous words to Nick when she’d said it wasn’t what he thought circled in his brain. She had a miscarriage but it wasn’t what he thought. Oh holy god, he thought. Did that mean it wasn’t his? Had she found comfort after the painful way he’d thrown her aside in somebody else’s arms? He thought he might throw up.
“Was it mine?” he asked in an anguished whisper that tore through Shannon’s soul. Every horrible thing he was feeling right now she understood. She’d been there herself and remembered with vivid clarity that feeling of being gutted, of having your heart quite literally ripped from your chest and how the overwhelming feeling of helpless loss froze the soul. Paybacks were a bitch and she wanted to no parts of this one; that particular emotional debt having been paid in full.
“Yes, it was yours. Could only ever have been yours. I’ve never been with anyone but you. Look at how we are together, Nick. I couldn’t ever be that way with anyone else!” she cried, shuddering at the thought.
Okay. Let in some oxygen his mind screamed. So it was his but she’d said it wasn’t what he thought. How many other options were there beyond parentage? Nick’s mind searched for answers but came up firing on every cylinder all over the emotional map.
Had she known when they’d talked that last time? Jesus, he felt sick. He had been a vicious, cruel prick as she cried and silently took everything he’d thrown at her while he destroyed their love. Had she known then that he’d gotten her pregnant? The thought of Shannon, with his child in her belly while he hurt her so badly, made him wish for a quick death to escape the horror seeping into his veins.
For once, Shannon had no problem reading the thoughts flashing across Nick’s mind. A grimace he let loose was like a road sign, letting her know what former moment along their journey together he was re-visiting in his mind.
“I never knew Nick. Didn’t have even the slightest clue, I swear.”
She squeezed his hand where it lay limp and lifeless in her grasp. Nick’s anguished eyes searched hers for more. Shannon sighed and squeezed a little stronger.
“None of the western women had regular cycles while we were in the middle of nowhere. Everyone manipulated their menses with the pill or an implant. It was one of the things the project recommended for all females since running out to the drug store for tampons every few weeks was not on the agenda. There was no way for me to know when I’d missed a period.”
Nick nodded, remembering this odd fact of information he’d picked up back then. It made sense of course but as a guy was hardly something he’d really considered.
“Finding myself traveling back to the states a month after you left was a fluke. One of the ambassador’s daughters needed a multi-lingual chaperone to get her home safely when an urgent medical procedure was needed and I got the nod. The trip from where we were in Africa to Washington, D.C. was grueling and I was not in the best of shape after the long journey.”
“You were by yourself.” he mused out loud, lost in his memories of that time.
“Yes. After we’d ….. parted,” she said diplomatically, “I went back to Boston and tried to put my life in order. That’s really how I came to be staying with Ted. I still had another semester in school and no place to live until the term started so necessity forced me to crash there. It was only supposed to be for a week or two while I lined up somewhere else but one day …………”
Shannon stopped altogether and tried to control the rush of emotion flooding her chest. This was the part of that dreadful time that she tried so hard to avoid. Her own personal redaction of an event she wanted to ignore the existence of.
Coughing to clear her thickening throat she continued but in a much quieter voice.
“One day I was driving when a sudden searing pain exploded in my abdomen. I must have blacked out because the next thing I knew I was in hospital with an intern telling me I was lucky to have only banged into a tree at a relatively low speed. Concussion and a bump on the head. I thought that was it until the doctor arrived and filled in the blanks. Shortened version; cyst erupted. Lost consciousness. Sorry but they couldn’t save the pregnancy.”
“You hadn’t known.” Nick muttered letting the pieces fall into place.
“No Nick. I hadn’t any idea. What he was saying didn’t make sense. The whole, you’ve had a miscarriage thing, d
idn’t seem real. How could you lose something you hadn’t known existed?”
“Was it the anxiety Shannon? Had that caused …..”
“Oh my god Nick, no!” she cried. The doctor assured me over and over it was nothing like that. Even if I had known there would have been no way to predict the ruptured cyst. All I remember is an agonizing pain and then nothing. Apparently there was internal bleeding, shock. I was only about eleven weeks along and well ………. there wasn’t anything to be done.”
She let a few moments of silence hang between them before continuing.
“It took me a while after that to pull myself together. Everything that had happened and all that I’d felt and experienced kept piling up until it was just too much. Remember what you told me about losing yourself for a while, drinking too much? Well, it was like that only without the drinking.”
“No wonder you were so angry and bitter at first. Why didn’t you tell me this right away Shannon?”
“I couldn’t. How do you say, ‘Hey I was pregnant only I didn’t know I was pregnant and by the way I had a miscarriage? Pass the mashed potatoes please?’ I didn’t think anyone knew. It was one of those deep, dark secrets we keep buried in our hearts Nick. Maybe it would have been different had I known, but to be told a baby I hadn’t known about wasn’t going to be was beyond what I could handle.”
They sat in silence for a bit, Shannon replaying over and over in her mind the series of events that had nearly destroyed her with Nick desperately trying to come to grips with all that he’d learned in the last half hour.
He looked at the woman by his side. The woman he loved and adored beyond measure. Knowing now what he didn’t know then, Nick was astounded that she’d let him back in at all. He’d always loved her and at a time when he should have been protecting her and taking care of her he had cast her away. Even the bullshit he’d fed himself all these years about having sacrificed his happiness to protect her didn’t assuage his guilt.
“I don’t understand why you’re still here Shannon. Maybe it would have been better for you to run screaming from me. I let you down. Horribly. In the worst way a man can let down the woman he loves. How can you forgive what I’ve done?” he asked in anguish. “All this time, wasted. And for what? So you could be left alone to grieve something I single-handedly destroyed?”
He lifted her hands to his mouth pressing desperate kisses to her trembling fingers. “I am sorry, Shannon. More sorry than you could ever imagine.”
She loved him so much. That he so easily shared his emotions with her was a balm for her soul. He was crushed and she knew it would be some time before he recovered from the shock of what he’d been told but there was no way he was getting away from her now. Not ever again.
“I’m here you silly, because I love you.”
He raised tear filled eyes to hers. Was that hope she saw mixed in with his fear and pain?
“Unless you can tell me you don’t want me anymore, I am sticking by your side forever and always Nicholas Barrett. You know everything now. There isn’t anything left in the shadows to prevent us from leaving the past in the past.”
It was impossible to know who made the first move but seconds later she was crushed in his arms as they kissed with a tenderness that filled her heart to bursting. She put a hand at his nape and opened her mouth to give him access while he swiped his tongue around hers in a kiss that meant more than any other ever had.
A long time later with Shannon nestled securely in his arms, a position he decided was exactly where she should be, Nick whispered softly in her ear, “Are we alright, little one?”
“Yes my love, we are more than alright and as soon as you can wave that magic Barrett wand and hopefully speed up the red tape, I intend to make an honest man of you. Will you marry me Nick? Can we get started right away on the white picket fence and the mini-van loaded with car seats?”
Eight years of loneliness melted away along with a whole host of ghosts and regrets leaving them both looking forward instead of running from the past.
“We get a second chance, Shannon.” was all he needed to say.
Before they headed back inside to mend whatever fences needed repairing with her parents, Shannon’s cowboy pirate beamed a quiet smile showing a flash of her favorite dimples, kissed her on the forehead and laughed while asking, “How many car seats you planning on?”
And then, as one of her favorite rose colored glasses saying goes ….. they all lived happily ever after.
EPILOGUE
A beautiful wedding, planned and executed by Jules and Rory at a private estate in upstate New York, set the stage for a winter wonderland extravaganza that saw Shannon strolling down the aisle on the arm of her dear father wearing what could only be described as a perfect sugar plum fairy dress covered in sparkling crystals and beads that gave her a magical, ethereal look in the flickering light of their candlelit ceremony.
The day was sacred and precious to them both, made all the more so by the fact that only Nick and Shannon were aware of the tiny secret they were preciously guarding. In a little over seven months she and her gorgeous, sexy husband would be welcoming a new life that would finally erase all the dark shadows from the past. A happy ending indeed.
About The Author
Thanks for reading The Billionaire’s Second Chance
and for taking a chance with a self-published author.
I hope you enjoyed Nick and Shannon’s love story.
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Coming Soon….
The Justice Brothers Series
Three men, a brotherhood forged on the battlefield, and their search for hope in the aftermath
Cameron Justice
Draegan Justice
Alexander Justice
The Billionaire's Second Chance Page 41