by Cleo Jones
“I’ve got that covered,” Nia insisted, sounding happy to be telling the truth. Her severance check had finally come in from Kanadov, and though it wasn’t much, it was certainly enough for her to hold her own.
Blake seemed irritated by that. “Would you mind if I talked to you in the living room for a minute?” he questioned, giving Noah a small smile to indicate that everything was all right.
Nia hesitated before following him into the other room.
“I think we need to talk about me paying you some kind of child support,” Blake stated once they were alone, cutting right to the chase.
“Blake, no,” Nia insisted. “You’re already doing more than enough…”
Blake shook his head. “You don’t get it. I can’t stand the fact that you and Noah struggled for so long while I was out of the picture. It makes me sick, which is why I want us to work out a more formal agreement moving forward…”
Nia frowned. “What do you mean an agreement?”
“I want to have my attorney draw up a contract between the two of us,” Blake clarified, choosing his words carefully. “For however long you’re here, I want to be the one to cover all of the expenses.”
Nia balked at him, glancing briefly into the kitchen to make sure Noah wasn’t listening. “Blake, I appreciate the gesture, but…”
“But?”
“But it’s not necessary,” Nia finished. “Besides, who knows how long we’re even still going to be living here. I’ve already got a few leads on jobs.”
Blake’s expression darkened then.
“And what if one of us were to meet someone?” Nia continued before he could say anything, deciding to finally breach the subject that’d been weighing so heavily on her mind. “All an agreement like that would do is complicate things…”
Blake sighed and glanced out the large bay windows in front of them. “I guess I was under the impression that all of this was more important to you than dating,” he spoke up after while. “I thought this was about giving Noah stability, a sense of family…”
“Hold up,” Nia interrupted. Now it was her turn to be insulted. “You’re not actually insinuating that Noah’s life was unstable before you came into the picture, are you?”
“Oh come on, Nia, don’t go putting words in my mouth.” Blake sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Look…I think we’re both getting way off topic here. I just…I love having you both here, that’s all.”
“And we love being here, but be realistic,” Nia said, reaching out to touch his arm in an attempt at getting him to look at her. “Do you honestly think this is still going to work when other people enter the picture?”
Blake groaned internally. He was trying his best to give Nia time to adjust to her new living arrangement before he approached her with his feelings, but that didn’t mean he was going to entertain a conversation about her dating other men. “Can’t we just deal with that when the time comes?”
“Sure,” Nia said, giving him a skeptical smile. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Chapter twenty-four
Nia sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop and browsed the Internet for a while before applying for two scholarships she qualified for at the nearby university. She wasn’t overly hopeful that it would amount to anything, but the idea of being able to go back to school and get her Masters was one that excited her all the same.
“What’re you up to?”
Nia was so startled by the deep baritone of Blake’s voice that she almost fell out of her chair. She’d been so engrossed in what she was doing that she hadn’t heard him come home from work.
“Oh, nothing,” Nia said, waving her hand in the air and quickly exiting out of each tab. “I’d better get to bed. I have to start waking Noah up earlier to prepare him for school.”
“Actually, you can sleep in tomorrow if you want,” Blake offered. “I told Noah I’d take the day off tomorrow and spend it with him at the beach. The weather’s supposed to be nice.”
Nia agreed, and Blake and Noah were already gone when she awoke the following morning. She spent the day pampering herself and running a few errands, and she was cooking an early dinner for Noah when he and Blake finally returned home a few hours later. “I can make more if you want,” she offered when Blake entered the kitchen and reacted to the aroma, immediately feeling guilty for not thinking to make enough for him.
“Nah, that’s alright,” Blake said, shaking his head. He tried his best to conceal a yawn, but it escaped anyway. “I’m gonna go take a nap, but…uh…did you have any plans later?”
Nia turned to look at him and frowned. “Why? Are you going out?”
“Nah, I was just wondering if you wanted to go out and do something...”
“I don’t know,” Nia said with a note of hesitation in her tone. She glanced in the living room at Noah as she considered it. “He seems pretty cranky...”
Blake looked slightly disappointed, but he nodded all the same, turning to make his way upstairs. Nia associated his peculiar behavior with the fact that he was probably exhausted from spending the entire afternoon at a beach full of rowdy kids, and she let it go at that. After feeding Noah the pasta she’d prepared for him, she snuck away for a few seconds in order to call the Dean’s office at A&M, wanting to verify that she wouldn’t miss the fall deadline if she put her application in the mail that day.
“You should be fine,” the woman who picked up the phone reiterated. “As long as it’s post marked by the 25th, we’ll be able to process it.”
Nia let out a breath of relief, but something about the date struck a chord with her. She flipped through the event planner app on her phone to make sure she hadn’t forgotten any important appointments, but it was completely blank. “Huh,” she wondered aloud, continuing to rack her brain for why the date seemed so significant. Then it hit her. Today was Blake’s birthday, and she immediately felt awful for having blown him off when he asked if she wanted to go out.
“Noah, put on your coat,” Nia said as she started to load up the dishwasher. “We need to run a quick errand.”
Nia drove Noah to the nearest mall, and after scouring each store from top to bottom she finally managed to find a suitable gift for Blake: a long-sleeved cashmere sweater that was the exact same shade of blue as his eyes. It was perfect for fall, and she felt sure that he would love it.
Eager to get home and wrap the gift, Nia pulled Noah towards the cash register and fell in line behind a few other customers. The store wasn’t busy, but the line was still moving ridiculously slow. To ward off Noah’s whining, she pulled a sugar-free sucker from her purse that she kept on hand for moments like this one and handed it to him before focusing her attention on the mother and daughter ahead of her. They were discussing how it was only appropriate for girlfriends or wives to buy a man clothing, and she immediately looked down at the sweater in her arms and hung it back up on the nearest closest rack, making a quick dash out of the mall without making a purchase.
Noah was still wide-awake when Nia pulled into the driveway despite how late it was, and they found Blake sitting on the couch watching the tail end of a basketball game when they entered the house. “I was wondering where you guys took off too,” he spoke up, smiling down at Noah when he rushed over sand snuggled into the crook of his arm.
“We were at the mall,” Noah rattled off, putting everything out on the table as per usual. “Mom wanted to buy a sweater, but she changed her mind at the last minute.”
Nia cringed, but she was at least grateful that she hadn’t informed her son of the underlying purpose of their visit to the mall. “Yeah, it wasn’t really my style,” she said when she caught Blake staring at her for an explanation, taking a seat in the loveseat across from him as she studied him and Noah. It was impossible for her not to notice just how much they favored each other. The similarities were undeniable, and it was in that moment that the perfect gift for Blake revealed itself to her.
“Noah, come o
n,” Nia spoke up, making her way over to the stairs and holding out her hand to her son. “Let’s get you ready for bed. You can even wear your new pajamas. I just washed them.”
Noah perked up at the prospect of wearing his favorite pajamas, hopping off the couch and heading upstairs in one fluid motion. Nia went to follow him, but she felt guilty when she noticed the disappointed look on Blake’s face. It was an expression that solidified what she was about to do.
Nia helped Noah change into his pajamas and had a short heart to heart with him before leading him back into the living room to Blake, who looked curious when he noticed the secretive grin on his son’s face. “He just wanted to say goodnight,” she explained, nodding for him to do as they’d discussed.
Noah suddenly looked shy, something he rarely ever was, and his mother had to give him a soft nudge in the back before he stepped forward to acknowledge his father. “Happy birthday dad,” he whispered, climbing into Blake’s lap and wrapping his small arms around his neck.
Blake froze beneath his son’s grip, and it took him a full minute to digest just what had been said to him. A wide smile broke across his face when he finally did, and he pulled Noah into a tighter embrace, meeting Nia’s gaze in the doorway. She returned his smile with one of her own, blinking back tears before making her way into the kitchen to give them some alone time.
Chapter twenty-five
Blake went looking for Nia and found her in the kitchen finishing off a glass of red wine. He leaned against the doorway and remained quiet, but he could tell that she was aware of his presence all the same. “Thank you,” he spoke up, taking a step towards her. “You have no idea how much that meant to me…”
Nia smiled, but she kept her back turned away from him. She could feel all too familiar emotions stirring to life inside of her. Emotions she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to revisit. “You don’t have to thank me,” she finally managed, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “It was long overdue...”
Blake wasn’t the only one in good spirits though. Nia had checked her phone earlier that evening to find a voicemail from someone at A&M informing her that she’d won one of her scholarships and had been accepted into the university based on her transcripts alone. She had an appointment with the Dean of Admissions tomorrow afternoon, and she couldn’t wait. It seemed like everything was finally starting to fall into place, but she decided to keep the news to herself until she was officially enrolled.
Nia was in the kitchen organizing her day planner the following morning when she looked up to find a fair skinned blonde peeking through the foyer windows. It wasn’t until she noticed Nia staring back at her that she finally worked up the courage to knock.
“Uh…hi,” Nia greeted, silently praying she hadn’t just unwillingly accepted some long door-to-door sales pitch. She needed to leave for her appointment five minutes ago, and she didn’t want anything to make her even later than she already was.
“I’m Karen,” the woman greeted, giving Nia a slow once over. “The realtor who sold your husband this house?”
“Oh, he’s not my husband,” Nia quickly corrected, not bothering to offer her more of an explanation. She was never one to share the intricacies of her personal life with a stranger.
“Ah,” Karen said, obviously pleased to hear that. She craned her neck to look inside the house and perked up when she noticed Noah’s toys scattered across the living room. “I’m guessing you’re the nanny, then?”
“Nope…” Nia deadpanned.
Good Lord…
What was the woman’s deal?
Karen nodded then, visibly puzzled. “I’m sorry…does Mr. McNulty not live here?”
“No, he lives here, he’s just a bit tied up at the moment,” Nia explained, not bothering to mask her irritation. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Karen hesitated before responding. “Oh, no, it’s no big deal. It’s just…he mentioned that he was single, so I thought I’d pop by and bring him a few free entry passes to some of the nightclubs I manage...”
Nia followed Karen’s gaze downwards, eyeing the stack of vouchers in her hands. “Well if you want to leave them with me, I’ll see to it that he gets them…”
“Great,” Karen said, handing them over to her. “By the way, I love what you’ve done with the place. It’s very Home and Gardens.”
“Thanks,” Nia said, giving her a tight smile before closing the door. It wasn’t her intention to be rude, but she really needed to haul ass if she was going to make it over to A&M in time for her appointment. She set the vouchers down on the kitchen counter, and she was just about to grab her keys off the hook when she noticed that Karen had scribbled her cell number down on the back of one of them.
“Who was that?” Blake questioned, approaching from his office.
Nia tore her gaze from the voucher and swallowed hard. “Your realtor. She dropped off some nightclub passes for you.”
Blake smirked and rolled his eyes. It was obvious that he was aware of something that Nia wasn’t, but she definitely wasn’t about to hound him for the details. “You look nice,” he remarked, taking notice of her attire. “Do you have a job interview or something?”
Nia shook her head and grabbed for her keys before pacing for the door. “I just have a few errands to run,” she called over her shoulder. “Be back soon. Noah’s out playing by the water.”
Nia made her way out to her car before Blake could press her for any more information, and she arrived at the campus right on time. “Your transcript looks great, Ms. Evans,” the Dean spoke up from his side of the desk, giving her an impressed smile. “However, you’ll need to complete another application if you intend on participating in our job shadowing program. We have a ton of great internship opportunities that I wouldn’t want a bright mind like yours to miss out on.”
“Oh I will,” Nia assured him, hanging onto his every word. She left his office shortly after with a stack of paperwork and a heart swollen with pride, and she was still riding her high when she arrived home later that afternoon.
“Mom!” Noah yelled from his room, running downstairs to greet her. “Dad took me for ice cream! And he didn’t even make me get the sugar-free kind!”
Nia casted Blake a disapproving look, but she quickly softened when she noticed how fondly he was staring at Noah. “There’s a message on the answering machine for you,” he spoke up. “I think it’s from Deidra.”
Nia thanked him and rushed into her office to call her sister back. She’d been dying to hear from her, but they’d both been so busy as of late that they kept missing each other’s calls.
“D!” Nia exclaimed when her sister finally picked up. “You have no idea how happy I am to finally hear your voice!”
Deidra laughed. “It’s about damn time! I was beginning to think I’d never get you on the phone!”
Nia smiled and took a seat in her computer chair. “How’s DC?”
“Loud and chaotic, but amazing too,” Deidra said. “But forget about me. How is your living arrangement working out?”
“Oh you know, not bad…”
“Not bad?”
“Yeah, not bad.”
Deidra snickered. “And what about Noah? How’s he adjusting to everything?”
“Pretty great, actually,” Nia responded, smiling to herself. “He’s thrilled to finally be living with his daddy.”
Deidra let out a loud gasp. “I can’t believe you finally told him!” she exclaimed. “What happened? What did Noah say? What did Blake say?”
Nia hesitated, taking a moment to gather her thoughts before filing her sister in on all the details. “Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but you sound pretty happy yourself,” Deidra spoke up when Nia went on to explain just how happy Noah had been as of late.