Afterwards
Page 33
“I was in foster care for three years. My sister, too.”
Mrs. Lawson had stopped eating altogether and was watching him keenly now. Chris didn’t know what it was that made him feel compelled to talk about this, but he let it happen nevertheless. He was too tired to resist the urge to unburden himself.
“And because she had special needs, I don’t even know what that was like for her, how she was treated. But I got her out when I could. And of course, now . . .”
Now his sister Audrey was in a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. After years of trying to keep her with him, three years prior Chris had given in and found a place for her, realizing that it was better for her to be in a place with people who had similar challenges than it had been for him to keep her in his house, isolated most of the time except for a never-ending parade of nurses and caregivers. Even though she seemed content when he visited her, Chris still considered the fact that she was living apart from him to be a personal failure.
“Not having your parents, must make it hard. Being one,” Mrs. Lawson said.
Shrugging, Chris speared two string beans. “I wouldn’t know. My kids’ mothers do all the parenting.”
Saying it out loud didn’t feel good, though it was something he had always known to be true.
“How does that feel?” Mrs. Lawson asked.
“How it feels?” he said, looking down at his plate of food. “It feels shitty.”
Mrs. Lawson looked up at him. This time she didn’t smile. “Then I suppose you’d better change it.”
___________________
Easy for her to say.
Later, as he lay in bed, Chris turned to find that it had begun raining. Outside it was falling in dense sheets and fat drops collided with the French doors, distorting his view of everything beyond them. The sound, like the roar of an oncoming train, had somehow escaped his notice before. Chris reached for his phone and checked the time. Two forty-two a.m. and he felt no closer to sleep than he had been three hours earlier when he turned off the lights.
Grabbing his phone, he tapped out a brief email to Deuce, telling him to call. And while he had email on the screen, on impulse he sent Karen a message as well, asking her how Jasmin and Kaden were doing. He knew they were doing okay, because if they had a cold, Karen called, as though they were infants. Thinking back over the years as they grew up, Karen had been relentless about sending him pictures and updates, invitations and mementoes like baby-teeth, locks of hair and medals won at school. Among his kids, Kaden, his younger boy was the sweetest, still in many ways a baby. Chris thought of how excited he still was to see him, running out to the driveway on those occasional visits, barely able to contain himself until Chris got out of the car.
How long would it be before Kaden learned—as Jasmin and Deuce had—that his father was could not be counted on to make an appearance?
Chris turned off the phone and closed his eyes, wondering whether, some dozen miles away, Robyn was listening to the rain as well.
Taking a deep breath, he realized, he didn’t have to wonder. He could call her. If he called, she would answer, and if he said he was sorry, she would accept. And if he told her he wanted to see her, she would welcome him with open arms. He was sure of her and the person she was in a way he had never been sure of another living soul.
Picking up the phone once again, Chris turned it on and made the call.
32
“I think you already know what you want to do.”
Chris looked across the loggia toward the bar where Riley was fetching him a bottle of water.
“Really? And what’s that?”
“You want to marry her.”
Chris shook his head, laughing. “No, I don’t.”
Riley laughed with him and sobered up, nodding. “Yeah. You do.” Coming over to hand him the bottle, she patted him on the shoulder and sat in the chair across from his. “I’ve seen it for ages now and honestly, it’s . . . excruciating watching you flounder around trying to figure it out on your own. You men are such emotional cripples, I swear.”
Chris laughed again. “Flounder around, huh?”
“Yes, Chris. I mean did you ever really think Robyn got pregnant so she could get at your money? Did you ever really, for one second truly believe that?”
Chris cracked the seal on the bottle and took a swig of water.
No, he hadn’t. What he had believed was that once she was pregnant, Mother Nature had forced his hand, and that pissed him off. Robyn wasn’t in place to push for anything like marriage; she was like him, just along for the wild-ass ride and seeing where it took them. And once she got pregnant, Chris knew he would have to decide that much sooner which path to take with her—the route he’d gone with Sheryl and Karen, or toward some new destination; one where he’d never been before. Honestly, her pregnancy hadn’t changed much of anything, just accelerated it.
“She wouldn’t want that anyway,” he said. “She just got divorced, and hell, if that little legal document she waved at me means anything, she doesn’t even think I’d make a fit parent.”
“She was terrified,” Riley said, shrugging. “So she tried to control the situation the best way she knew how. Which is not that different from you by the way. You’re not an easy man to read, Chris. She just read you wrong.”
“Very wrong. She told me once she thought I was in love with you.”
Riley grinned and reached out to touch the side of his face. “I should be so lucky.”
Chris touched her hand, and she released him.
“So,” she said. “What’re you going to do?”
“Nothing dramatic if that’s what you’re hoping. But we took a few days to cool down and tonight,” he almost couldn’t get the words out. “She’s taking me to see her new house. She closes on it next month.”
Riley sighed. “Floundering,” she muttered, reaching for his water and helping herself to a sip of it.
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It was nice. Pale blue shutters on the windows, large rooms downstairs and a good amount of space out back. The neighborhood looked safe and quiet, and there seemed to be lots of kids around. Iris Greenberg had given her the code to get into the lockbox on the front door so Robyn was able to get them in to look at it properly.
Making her way up the stairs, she was careful and a little slow in her movements. She’d told Chris that at her last appointment her OB told her the back pain was probably the residual effect of her bruising her tailbone that time, along with the usual stretching that happened during pregnancy. Lately, Robyn had taken to calling the baby “her” instead of “it” and he suspected she’d already chosen a name though she didn’t say which she picked.
Sometimes, he pretended only to be half-listening to her when she ran off at the mouth but the truth was he took in every single word she said. She liked the names Avery and Hayley, but her mother liked the idea of having another girl in the family with a name ending in ‘yn’ like Robyn and Carolyn. Chris was happy to humor her and let her name the baby whatever she wanted, but he hoped she knew that no matter what, their daughter’s last name was going to be Scaife.
“This will be the nursery,” Robyn was saying, showing him a very small room with a tiny closet. “And when she gets older, I guess I’ll turn it into an office or something. I think it had just enough room for a loveseat in the corner near the window.”
His head was starting to ache a little bit. The room was too small, and felt a little close to him. Once Robyn put furniture in there, it would be smaller still. Chris tried to picture himself coming over to visit, sitting in this small room on a loveseat, rocking an infant, and couldn’t.
“And look . . . you can see out into the backyard from the master.”
Robyn had left the small room and was down the hall, flinging open windows in the largest of the rooms.
“Chris? Are you listening?”
Wearing a blue blouse that tented over her expanding middle and covered th
ree-quarters of her arms with khakis and brown flats, Robyn looked suddenly and for the very first time, vulnerable. She could fall in the tub, or down the stairs, she could slip on a rug . . . the possibilities for calamity suddenly seemed endless if she lived alone. Pregnant, and living alone. Did women do that?
Of course they did. Karen had for awhile until she moved her family in to stay with her during his frequent absences. And Sheryl had for her entire pregnancy because Chris had never moved her in, knowing right away that they were not compatible beyond the amount of time it took to accomplish an orgasm.
Women were pregnant and alone all the time. Because of men like him.
“Do you like it?” Robyn asked, her eyes alight.
She obviously liked it. A lot. Chris could tell from her eyes that she was picturing her life here, and planning out this new mini-adventure of hers. That was how she approached everything, like a mini-adventure, only fun times and blue skies ahead.
“I like it,” he said, nodding, trying to sound genuine. “It’s nice.”
Robyn spun around, taking in the room that would become her master. “I think so. My brother’s coming right after the closing to help me move in, so by Christmas . . .”
The headache was getting worse, the throbbing gaining in both speed and intensity. Robyn, probably seeing something on his face narrowed her eyes and came toward him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Well let’s just . . .” She took his elbow as though to lead him somewhere, looking about for a moment as though trying to find a place to sit. Always trying to look after him and make sure he was okay. Deciding on the windowsill, she tugged him toward it and Chris followed.
“It’s not that bad,” he mumbled. “Not like a migraine or anything.”
“Yeah, but let’s not wait until it gets there.” Robyn was digging in her purse now, shoving things aside and moving stuff around, searching for something.
“Robyn . . .”
“I thought for sure I had some . . .”
“Robyn,” he said again.
She looked up from her search, brow slightly furrowed. God, she was beautiful. Chris reached up and gently moved a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“Robyn, I love you,” he said.
It wasn’t even hard to say. It felt like a relief to say it actually, and just like that the funny, tight, twisty feeling in his chest and gut that always seemed to be there when she was around went away, and he was calm.
The corners of Robyn’s lips turned slightly upward into a smile and her eyes held his. “I love you too,” she said, her voice very quiet.
Chris took her by the arm and pulled her closer, as close as her pregnant belly would permit them to get face-to-face. Leaning down to press his lips against the top of her head, he spoke into her hair.
“Remember that time you told me you like to go fast?” he said.
Robyn nodded slowly, and he pulled back a little to look at her, seeing that her eyes had filled with tears.
“Well . . .” Chris said. “I’ve got a question to ask you . . .”
Also by Nia Forrester
ON AMAZON
Commitment
Unsuitable Men
Maybe Never
Mistress
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta
Secret
The Art of Endings
ON NOOK
Commitment
Unsuitable Men
Maybe Never
Mistress
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta
Secret
The Art of Endings
And visit with the author at NiaForrester.com