“This is why I didn’t tell you; I didn’t want you to overreact.”
He looks at me incredulously. He picks up his drink and slams it back on the table without putting it to his lips. “I’m showing the appropriate amount of concern at hearing my pregnant girlfriend was bleeding almost twenty-four hours ago. You were so concerned you had to go see your doctor, and you’re telling me I’m overreacting?” He takes a long drink, watching me, and puts the bottle down slowly. “Wait a minute, when exactly did you start bleeding last night?”
Here we go. Let me brace myself for the full blast. “After we had sex.”
“What!”
And there it is, and here I go as loud as him.
“You see, this is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you were going to be angry. I didn’t want to be dragged off to the hospital in the middle of the night.”
“So you would rather risk your life and the life of our child?”
I can’t believe him! “You know I would never do that. If I thought it was serious I would have told you. I would have called the ambulance myself.”
If his jaw was clenched any tighter his teeth would crack and crumble out of his head.
He abruptly turns and walks to the living room. I’d forgotten Ava could hear the whole argument. Nothing she hasn’t seen or heard before. If it was someone else listening to the intimate details of our life I would be mortified. But our whole relationship has played out in front of her, good and bad.
“Ava, you have to leave, your friend and I need to have a serious talk.”
Ava is already putting on her coat when I walk in the living room. “Ava, stay,” I say then turn to him. “Don’t be rude, Nick.” I turn my back to him and Ava looks at me.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, so is the baby.” He grumbles and goes to the front door to wait for Ava. “I went to the doctor as you heard, he’s upset because I didn’t tell him about it—”
“Or the circumstances that brought you to see the doctor,” he says from the door.
Ava lowers her voice and leans down to put on her shoes. “Next time let me know you need a cover story, you’re terrible at it, sweetie.” She’s right. “I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re doing. I’m going out with Chloe and Matt later, I was going to tell you to come but you’re not going anywhere. You have your hands full taming the beast within him.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “Tell them I said hi.”
She puts her hand on my belly, which she hasn’t done since I told her I was pregnant and says, “Bye, cuz, I’m glad you’re okay. I know your mommy wouldn’t put you in any danger.” She looks at me. “Your daddy is being overprotective because he cares about the both of you so much.”
Ava walks to the door and I feel guilty for not telling her about today either. I know she’s not mad at me. She always has my back but this way Nick can’t accuse her of anything, no need for her to get blasted too. I guarantee he’d be angrier at Ava than me for going along with the lie.
Nick
I open the door for Ava and watch Cat walk to the bedroom.
“I’m going home, you two need to talk. Take it easy on her. If she says she’s fine, she and the baby are fine. She wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
“No, just withhold the truth.”
She taps me on the shoulder with a neatly manicured fingernail. “People who live in glass houses. Take it easy on her.”
I look out the window over the city in the living room. I need to calm down before I go talk to her. Ava’s right; I’m lying to her by not telling her I was sharing a hotel room with my ex-girlfriend. Paige is nothing to me. The difference is my lie is protecting her from unnecessary hurt because nothing happened. No one was at risk of getting hurt and no one’s life was in danger. She needs to understand if she thinks something—anything—might be wrong with her and the baby she has to let me know. Even if I’m going to overreact, let me. When it comes to her and this pregnancy I’m going to overreact and make sure they’re okay. That’s what I’m supposed to do, worry so she doesn’t have to.
Leaning up against the wall in the bathroom, my hands in my pockets, I watch her move around ignoring me while she reties the sash on her robe. I’m smiling because it reminds me of when she was younger. When she was really mad at me she would ignore me. No call, nothing. She drove me crazy with that shit. I never told her because if she knew she would use it against me, like when she would purposefully cut me off in the middle of a sentence. Drove me crazy when she did that and she knew it.
She looks the same, nothing’s changed except her age. Cute and girly, hair up high in a ponytail. She used to have a similar pink-and-white silk robe when she was in high school. I saw her in it once and I wanted to touch her in the worst way. I knew I couldn’t, I had to turn away and leave before she saw me. Now look at us. She’s having my baby.
She stops moving and puts her hands out at her sides saying, “What? You want to scream at me some more?”
She walks past me and I push off the wall, following her to the bedroom. “Sit down.” She refuses by folding her hands defiantly above her stomach. “Please, sit down.” Slowly unfolding her arms, she sits. I sit next to her on the bed and palm her stomach with my hand, kissing her belly. “Hey, you. I need you to move for me so I know you’re okay in there.” She’s carrying small but the doctor said it’s fine. She’s a small person and the baby is developing fine. I can’t wait till I can actually feel him move for myself. “I don’t want anything to happen to you or this baby.” She takes my hand and places her other hand on my thigh.
“You think I don’t notice? Sometimes I wake up with you clinging to me for dear life and your hands roaming over my belly almost like you’re making sure the baby’s still there. What’s wrong? You’re not telling me what’s wrong.”
I see the worry in her soft brown eyes. I didn’t realize she noticed anything was wrong. I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it from her.
“You not wanting to worry me is making me worry more. You need to talk to me, Nick. I don’t want you to hide things from me especially now. Pregnancy hormones are kicking in and everything seems more heightened and intense.”
“I know right, the sex is off the chart good.” I smile and she smiles at my attempt at a joke and rolls her eyes.
“As out-of-this-world amazing as the sex is, it’s not keeping you asleep at night. You need to talk to me.”
“I’ve been having a recurring dream. I see Kate losing the baby and I go to help her but when she looks at me it’s you. The first time it happened I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart was racing, and I couldn’t breathe. I was having a frigging panic attack in my sleep. It’s always the same. The fear, the panic, and the helplessness, I can never save you.”
“Oh, baby, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping it from you.”
“You keeping secrets from me because you’re afraid of how I’m going to react isn’t a good thing. It’s going to make things worse.” She puts her hand on the side of my face and looks in my eyes, her thumb brushing against my skin. “Why don’t you talk about the baby?”
“You don’t want to hear me talk about that.” I don’t want to talk about it. That was not a good time for her or me in our relationship. I don’t want to bring up things that are going to hurt her. Things that I caused. Why should she have to deal with it?
“Yes I do. You’re not the only one who lost a loved one. You lost a child and I lost a nephew. I’ll admit, I wasn’t happy Kate was pregnant for you but I liked the idea of having a nephew and being an aunt again. Kate and I weren’t on good terms, we’re still not. I don’t know if we will ever be, but I would never wish that kind of pain on her or anyone else.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” It’s not in her to wish that kind of pain on anyone else no matter how much they hurt her. “I lost two things that night, one I didn’t know how much I
loved and one I knew exactly how much I loved.”
She kisses me on the cheek and her eyes soften. “I’m sorry.”
“I was angry earlier. You need to tell me if something is wrong with you or the baby no matter how insignificant it might seem to you. Seeing what happened to Kate, I know things can go wrong at any time. I don’t want that to happen to you if it can be prevented.”
“It won’t.” She’s shaking her head at me, her ponytail swooshing back and forth.
“You don’t know that. You’re as far along as Kate was; a week before, she went to the doctor and everything was fine. Look what happened. I don’t want to go through that again, I don’t want you to go through that loss. I did what you asked the night you left me at the hospital. You said she needed me and I should take care of her, I did. I realized I couldn’t be the one to help her the way she needed because I didn’t love her, I loved you. I was constantly thinking of you when my attention should have been solely on her. I also needed to deal with my issues but I couldn’t be with the person I loved, it made it harder.
“She couldn’t get out of bed, I had to force her to eat. Your mother and I had to take shifts taking care of her for that first week. I realized she needed more help than I could give. It wasn’t helpful for either of us, she was devastated.”
“I didn’t know.” Her eyes glisten, her lips quiver, and she looks down at our hands.
This is why I didn’t want to talk about this with her. I don’t want her feeling guilty about things she has no control over. I kiss her temple and put my arms around her. “This is why I need you to tell me when things like what happened last night happen. I don’t want you to suffer that loss. We’re in this together. Always. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Lie back, relax. I have work to finish.” She crawls on the bed and I pull the covers over her. Lying back, she yawns and I kiss the top of her stomach. My eyes move up to hers when I feel it. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes! Your daughter kicked. A real kick, no flutter, a solid kick.” She smiles at me and I mirror her excitement.
“You think he’ll do it again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Be quiet, be quiet, let me see.” I put my mouth to her stomach and talk. “Come on, baby, kick for Daddy! Kick for Daddy!” Cat’s laughing at me.
“She’s not going to kick on command.”
“Did you feel that one? He did it again. That’s my boy.”
“Or girl.”
I decide to stay in bed with Cat and look over my cases when she falls asleep tonight. Feeling my baby move and seeing its little imprint in Cat’s stomach is amazing. It’s an amazing reassuring feeling things are going to be fine.
Cat
“We should come up with names,” I say.
“Now?”
“Yes, you can come up with the girls’ names and I can do the boys’ names.”
“Why not the other way around?”
“This way we both have a say. You won’t feel bad when we have a girl, at least you’ll get to name her, but it has to be a name we both like,” I say, lying back in his arms.
“All right, but I’ll be just as happy if we have a girl. You go first, what name do you have for our son?”
“Jacob.”
“Maybe.”
“How about Stanley?”
“Stanley Alexander,” he says, scrunching up his face like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “No.”
“Does sound kind of old, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds like the planter’s peanut man. All he’ll need is a monocle and a kick-me-in-the- ass sign on the playground.”
“No one’s going to do that to him.”
“They will if we name him after the planter’s peanut man.”
“Ha ha ha. What do you have?”
“Cassandra. We can call her Cassie for short.”
“Cassandra Alexander. It’s okay.”
“You know it’s good. I have another one. Reese.”
“Like Reese’s peanut butter cups.” I make a face and say, “No.”
“Like Reese Witherspoon. I had a girlfriend named Reese, she was cute.”
“Hell no! We are not naming our child after any girlfriend you’ve had. That’s enough names for you, I have one.” His chest rumbles with laughter and I push back against him. “Jace. I’ve always loved that name. Jace Alexander sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
“Jace, it doesn’t sound like an Alexander name.”
“When did you become traditional?” I turn my head to the side to look up at him.
“I can hear my dad, he’s going to hate it.”
“No offense, your brother is named Gage. Isn’t that an instrument?”
“Gage is his middle name, his mother wanted that name. My father wasn’t going for it, they compromised and named him Gabriel. Gage doesn’t like it, no one calls him by his first name.”
“Well this is not your father’s child, I like Jace.” My phone rings and I look over at it. Oh no. I’m going to ignore it. “That’s my first choice.”
“You’re not going to answer your phone?”
“No, it’s your turn, what’s your next name?”
Dammit. He reaches over me and picks it up.
“You still talking to him?” He looks at me eyebrows raised.
“He texted me to say hi and I texted back. Nothing more. He only wanted to know how I was doing.”
“Answer it, he’s desperate.”
“I’ll call him back later or tomorrow.”
“No, talk to him now. You can tell him the good news. Here.” He swipes his thumb across the screen and hands it to me.
He can be annoying at times. I’m surprised he doesn’t insist I put it on speaker. “Hi, Matt.”
“I haven’t heard your voice in so long it’s a wonder I know what you sound like.”
“It hasn’t been that long.” I shift to the side uncomfortably while the warden stares at me.
“Yeah it has.”
“What’s up?”
“I tried to get Ava to get you to come out with us tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Tell him you’re with me, your boyfriend,” Nick says, louder than necessary.
I look at him and mouth, “Stop.” I move to get up and he holds my arm so I can’t.
“You got back with him, huh.”
“Yeah, we’re living together.”
“He wasted no time. I’m not surprised. Does that mean you can’t go out with us? Are you on lockdown for the duration of your stay with him?”
“No, be nice.”
“Are you only allowed out an hour a day during daylight hours?”
He laughs and I laugh too. Right now Nick is making me feel like a prisoner getting monitored calls.
“At least he hasn’t gotten rid of your sense of humor. Come out with us, you know you’re guaranteed fun with me. It’s the MAC train of fun. Matt, Ava, and Chloe, how can you not have fun.”
He’s right; how can you not have fun with those three. Nick would have a major coronary heart attack. “I would love to come, it sounds fun. I won’t be having that much fun for another four months. I’m five months pregnant, we’re having a baby.”
Another one I’ve shocked into silence.
“You blew my mind. You’re having a baby.”
“We are.”
“Congrats. Is this happy news?”
“Yes.” Why does everyone keep asking me that? It’s a little shocking at first. A baby is a good thing.
“I didn’t have a chance, did I?” he asks with humor in his voice.
“You did.” If Nick wasn’t shadowing me I would say more. But what more would there be to say? I’m with Nick, I’ve made my choice.
“It was slim to none. At least I tried. I hope you’re truly happy.”
“I am.”
“Good. If you need anything you can still call me. I’m going to get a stiff drink. In
fact, I’m going to get a round of drinks, drink away my regrets, and make some lucky lady happy tonight.”
“Take it easy on the drinks and the ladies. Be safe.”
“I will. Bye, baby girl.”
“Bye.” I turn my phone off and look at Nick. “Happy now?”
“Yes, I’m very happy. He can stop sniffing around you and find someone else.”
I lie down against the pillows and he kisses me on my bottom lip and I look at him from underneath my lashes.
“I love you,” he says.
The only thing to do is smile. “You’re driving me crazy.”
“You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
No, I wouldn’t.
Cat
After yesterday I know what I have to do. I can’t go see my family with Nick. Someone’s going to get hurt. I promised him I wouldn’t tell them by myself. There is only one thing to do, give them a call.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, Catherine.”
She’s still so formal.
“This is an unexpected call.”
“Yeah. How are you doing?” I’m nervous I can feel the pulse beating in my ear.
“I’m well.”
“And Dad?” I miss my dad. I miss his hugs, the way he’d scoop me up in his arms. “Baby girl.” The look in his eyes in the hospital when I couldn’t deny being with Nick, told me I’m not his baby girl anymore.
“He’s doing well.”
I want to know about Kate but I can’t bring myself to ask. Now wouldn’t be the right time considering the news I’m about to drop on them. After what Nick told me last night I know this is going to be harder on her than I previously thought.
“Why haven’t you called till now, Catherine?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me. A lot of things were said the last time we saw each other. You and Dad were really upset. I figured if you wanted to speak to me you would call and you never did.”
“You’re calling now, is there a reason for this call? Did you realize we are your family and you did and said things that were hurtful to others? Are you ready to apologize to those of us who you have hurt the most?”
Imperfections Come To Light (The Imperfection Series Book 2) Page 18