“Secondhand smoke kills, McCabe.”
“So does a whole lot of other stuff. Tell me about this black out.” I roll my eyes.
“I lost consciousness for a split second. I didn't even know it was happening until it was over. I feel fine. I'm tired, a little dizzy, nauseous and horny as hell. Basically, I'm infected with your seed again.” Ty blows smoke out of his nostrils, and I have to look away because it makes me want to jump his ass right then and there. I figure he's going to keep teasing me, so I sit down on the porch swing and wait. When the barbs don't come, I look up at him and see that he looks miserable, stretched thin. It only lasts for a second and then he's blinking it away, focusing on me and running his tongue across his lips.
“Never, I can't wait anymore,” he tells me as I look up at him, confused. “I want to make a decision. No, I need to. Are we keeping this baby?”
The question surprises me although it shouldn't, really. This is an important decision, something I don't take lightly, but that needs to be made. Last time, it wasn't really much of a choice at all. In my heart, I knew all along. Just like I do now. I might be insecure and a little damaged, but if you give me some time, I get it. Eventually, I figure it out. I look down at the dirty fabric of the swing and start to pick at the fraying fibers with my fingernail.
“Why?” I ask him. “I mean why right now, why this second?”
“Because I love you more than fucking anything, and if it comes down to you or her, it's always going to be you.” Ty gestures angrily with his cigarette and then falls down to his knee in front of me, leaning his forehead against the front of my legs. I tangle my fingers up in his hair and inhale deep, tasting smoke and the promise of rain, the whisper of snow. It's like last year all over again, but this time, I'm better prepared, this time I'm stronger and I'm ready to fight harder. If I'm so worried about not being worthy, then I have to prove myself. I have to become worthy and validate myself in my own eyes. I know that in Ty's, I'm already perfect.
“How do you know it's a her?” I ask softly, noticing that our dog is sitting on the foot of the steps looking up at us, eyes brown but wise, like she knows a whole fuckload more about this earth than I do. I don't doubt that for a second.
“Because our son is a freak in the Regali family line, the only boy, the only one without copper hair.” Ty taps my flat belly with his knuckles. “If we don't have a copper clone in there, I'll be surprised.” Ty pauses and inhales sharply. “If you think you can do this, if you want to do this, know that I'm right there with you.” Ty doesn't say it so many words, but I know he wants this baby, that he'll want all our babies because each one is a symbol, a physical manifestation of us. I swallow and try to speak as Ty adjusts himself, filling the ear the sound of bells as his bracelets hum down his arm and clank against the bars of the swing. He looks up at me and waits patiently, his young face pretty and perfect, his eyes filled with old soul.
“You … ” I start to speak, and I choke. I try to talk, and I stumble. Ty is there to catch me, always and forever.
“I promise not to put an eye patch on her,” he says, completely and totally serious.
“Are you sure you want to make that promise?” I ask him, also serious. “Because I don't know if it's one you're necessarily going to be able to keep.” Ty smiles and he knows without hearing my answer that he's won.
“I get to see you all cute and preggers again?”
“Ty … ” I begin as he takes my hand in his and kisses my wedding ring with ardent fire raging through his mouth and infecting me through the skin, heating me up to my boiling point and right over the edge. I have to hold back a gasp and a wave of dizziness.
“Never.”
“Ty.”
“See a doctor for me?”
“McCabe, I think you'd know by now. I'd do anything for you.”
15
It's no secret that after highs, come lows, that after hills, come valleys, so it shouldn't surprise me when I wake up early the next morning with shaking hands and fearful thoughts. I imagine giving birth to a daughter, one with hazel eyes and copper hair, and I imagine her hating me with every ounce of herself the way I hate my mother. I imagine Ty becoming disgusted with me when he sees what a horrible person I am, when my true colors come out around my kids and I fuck it. Fortunately, I make it into the bathroom and switch on the shower before I start sobbing. Off I go again, crying even though I shouldn't, acting like a little bitch when I should be strong for Ty. I sit there on the tiles with warm water streaming down the sides of my face, soaking my pajamas and dragging me down in folds of heavy fabric.
When I finally pull myself far enough out of my slump to get undressed, I find red in my underwear. White splotches cover my vision and I slump back against the wall. What is this? What's wrong with me? I stare at the fabric for so long that the shower watches most of the stain away and leaves me wondering if I imagined it all along.
I bite my lip and toss the panties out with the rest of the clothes, grabbing my shampoo and scrubbing at my scalp like I've got a bone to pick with it. I scrape my skin with my nails, and the pain feels good, makes me feel better for a brief moment, long enough that I can pull my emotions together and get control over myself. I touch a hand to my stomach, drop it down low, feel around my vagina, teasing, probing. Everything was fine last night when Ty and I made love. Everything felt okay, but … I don't know what to do. Tell Ty should be the obvious choice, but then I wonder again if I'm just imagining it. The panties look clean now, and I have been a little off lately. It can't have been as bad as I thought. It was just some spotting. I tell myself to woman up and get over it. Being pregnant is like earning a badge of courage or some shit. It separates the girls from the women.
By the time Ty climbs in beside me, I'm feeling better, but I don't want to lie. Out of fucking everything that's happened, I know that's one sacred bond I won't break. So I tell him about it and he looks sick to his freaking stomach. I promise him I'll go to the doctor at some point in the not too far off future and change the subject, but the fear is still etched around his mouth.
I watch it follow him out of the shower, into a black T-shirt with and jeans, a pair of brown boots. I watch it chase him as he switches out his facial piercings for silver studs. I watch it harangue him while he moves down the stairs and into the living room, searching for his son.
“Hey Mini McCabe,” he says as he takes the baby from India and gives him a kiss on the head. I pause at the bottom of the stairs and feel suddenly shy, like I don't know what to do with these two men. Ty and me alone is okay, but with the baby, I just … I'm not good at family dynamics. I love my sisters, but I've been out of the loop for so long. Ty just stands there and stares at me. “You okay?” he asks, concern lacing his voice. I nod and try to smile, but it doesn't reach my eyes and he can tell. He tries to hand me the baby, but I don't hold out my arms and instead cross them over my chest.
You are a mom, Never. This is your son. This is your baby. Kiss him and hold and let him know that you love him more than you love yourself, that you wouldn't trade him for anything in this world, that you care.
I find myself frozen, embarrassed, ashamed. Ty takes the baby back and presses him into his chest, tilting his head to the side and examining me like he isn't quite sure what to make of this.
“Nev, he wants to see you,” Ty tells me, and I almost breakthrough the storm cloud that's hanging over my head, shirk off the dark for a brief moment, and step forward. But then I see Angelica, and I just go blank. The bitch will always affect me, no matter what I think. I've cut her off, but the emotional ties I had to sever still bleed every now and again.
“Can I see him?” she asks, fairly unceremoniously. Ty looks at her and then back at me, asking what he should do with his eyes. “Hello?” Angelica asks, getting annoyed. Ty waits for another second, but when I don't respond, he spins the baby around and lets my mother look. Just look. Maybe touch. But not hold. Not without my expression permission. An
gelica purses her pretty lips and adjusts a copper curl that's fallen into her face. “I'd like to hold my grandson.”
“You forgot your daughter's birthday,” Ty responds, not at all apologetic about it. He's pissed, and he isn't even talking about me. He's talking about Darla. Beth planned a huge party for her last month, decorated the whole house, even convinced Ty and me to get on Skype and participate. She told my mom a hundred times; my sisters told her a thousand; Darla a million.
She didn't show up.
“It was a mistake,” Angelica grounds out between her teeth. They used to be pretty and straight, but now they're starting to yellow, and they look crooked to me. I could be imagining it, but maybe not.
“It was a date,” Ty says with a shrug. “You can say hi to my kid, but you're not holding him. You haven't earned that right.”
“I raised eight fucking kids in this house, and now you're telling me that I'm not qualified to hold a damn baby?”
“I'm telling you that you haven't earned the privilege.” My mother scoffs.
“Now it's a privilege to hold your little brat? Fuck you. I want you out of my house.” Ty gives her a look that says I'm not going fucking anywhere. He doesn't even have to say anything. Ty McCabe communicates with his body as much as his voice. He's so animated and passionate and just … God, he's too good for me. Really. He is. “You better be gone by the time I get back,” she snarls, shoving past him, not caring that he's holding my infant.
Darkness descends on me, violent and tumultuous. I want to sob, but I also want to kill her. Stupid hormones. I turn away and try to take shallow breaths, so I can get a hold of myself. When I look back, Ty is staring at me.
“Never,” he says softly. “It's okay. You are not her. You will never be her.”
I don't know what to say, how to respond to that and tell him my fears, let them spill from me like a tsunami and overtake us both. I open my mouth once and snap it shut. When my phone rings, I answer it. Ty looks disappointed which makes my stomach drop, but I have to deal with these issues on my own. I can't burden him with anymore darkness. We're both finally crawling out of the cave and into the light. He might be a few feet ahead of me, but if I dump this on him, I could leave him behind. I won't do that.
“Never?”
It's Lacey.
“Hey,” I answer, glad for the reprieve. Ty raises his eyebrows and moves away, giving us some privacy. “How's it going?” I miss my roommate sometimes. I mean, I was never really that good to her when I was there, but she was my only friend. I shiver a little. Just thinking of what it was like, alone and desperate, grasping straws in my quest to find something worth living for, dreading weekends because I was most suicidal then. I bite my lip so hard it bleeds.
“Okay, I guess. We have finals next week, so you know, ugh. What are you up to?” I lick the blood away and decide to test my news on Lacey before I use it on the rest of my family. Beth seemed okay with it, but you never know how the others might react, and I don't want to do anything to disappoint them, to make them doubt me. I just want to be loved by them.
“Um, guess what?” I ask her, and she gets all excited. Being around Lacey is like being around a cocker spaniel or something. I can already imagine her tail wagging happily at the thought of good gossip. “I'm pregnant again.”
“Shut the fuck up!” she says, and I think I hear giggling in the background. Trini, I assume. The two of them are inseparable now. Lacey keeps saying they're going to run away to Massachusetts and get married, but who the fuck knows? “That was quick. I didn't even know you could get pregnant that soon after giving birth.”
“Yeah, neither did I.” I sit down on the bottom step and sigh heavily. “But yeah, I guess it's possible.”
“Without condoms, it's not just possible but probable,” Lacey says and I narrow my eyes. She thinks it's funny because her partner can't knock her up if she tried. Mine can impregnate me with a single kiss, a glance, the touch of his hand across mine. Fucking stud.
“Thanks for the education,” I say. “I sure hope you're using dental dams.” Lacey doesn't take offense to this. In fact, she really doesn't take offense to much of anything. She's so … light. It's nice to see there really are people like that in the world, that not everybody has to be dragging around enough baggage to sink an ocean liner. That gives me hope for my sisters, my son, my … whoever it is that's inside of me now. I feel a little flicker of proud for saving Lacey at the convenience store. If she'd gotten raped, a little monster might've climbed into her heart and darkened the skies around her. This, of course, makes me think about Ty and how we met, really met, how we picked me up out of the glass and carried me outside, pulled shards from my skin, and sat on the beach with me to talk. Just talk. About nothing and everything, open and honest. I hope to God I don't screw things up with him.
“I was calling to see what you're doing for Christmas,” she says, and I can already tell that she has something in mind.
“Apparently, we're going to my ex-boyfriend's cabin wherein lies an anatomically correct statue of a buck and the opportunity to convince my younger sister to bite the bullet and try to get in his pants.” Lacey laughs, but only because she isn't looking Noah Scott in the face in one of those epic oops moments that haunt you for life. “Shit.”
He pauses awkwardly by the door, but it's too late for either of us to pretend he hasn't heard. We both stay very, very still.
“I want to see you, and we don't have any plans, and I really, really need to see little Noah, so … ”
“I'll text you the address here,” I say and she squeals. My eyes are still locked onto the baby blues of the man I lost it to, who was so sweet and kind, who I totally and completely fucked over. What if, somehow, I damage Ty the way I damaged Noah? What if I'm just not meant to be with any one person? Maybe that's why I slept around so much … because I'm not worthy of keeping. I shake my head to clear it of this bullshit. “I'll send over our schedule when we know what it is.”
“Yay! Okay, love you, Nev. I'll talk to you later. Trini and I are about to hit up the beach.” The phone call ends and I drop it into my lap. I clear my throat and get ready to apologize but Noah interrupts me.
“We had a one-night stand, Never.”
“Yeah, I mean, I guess you could call it that,” I say, feeling offended that that's how he remembers us. It might've been one night, but it wasn't a stand, it was a declaration. I pined for him for years, and that's how he thinks of us? Noah lifts up his hands and looks back and forth, flicking his eyes here and there like he expects Ty to jump out and growl. And you know, he just might do that.
“Not you and me, Zella and me.” My brows climb high and kiss my scalp. Nausea climbs my throat when a meaty smell wafts out of the kitchen, but I push it back. Noah sighs and leans against the wall, closing his eyes and sucking in a humongous breath.
“When?” I need to know everything, all the details. This is such bull. That little bitch has been keeping secrets from me. I wonder what else Zella is up to back in Texas.
“The day you left to go to New York. I, we, I knew for sure we were done for good, and I just … I lost it. I cried and I … I broke a window in your bedroom.” I think about it, but can't picture anything different. I must not have been paying attention. Either that or the midwestern wind has already coated the window is so much dirt and gunk that it doesn't look new anymore.
“Why?” Now it's my turn to look around and see if Ty's listening in. But my reasons are different than Noah's. I want Ty to hear. I want him to know the pain I inflicted on another person. I want him to know he can't trust me. But most of all, I want him to sweep back in here and take me in his arms. God, I'm fucking needy.
“I loved you so much,” Noah says, keeping his eyes closed, doing his best to control his breathing. “I waited for you for so long, and then not to even have a chance … ” He finally drops his chin and cracks his gaze, focusing all of that longing and need into a single beam. I have to glance away be
cause it's not right for me to accept this. I have no hold on him, and he will never have a hold on me. I've got to convince him to move on. I thought he was okay, but this look, these feelings. Maybe he's not? “Zella was there, and we'd been talking for years, so … we had sex.” He swallows hard. “And I told her I wasn't interested in a relationship. I mean, I told her that before we had sex, so she'd know. I wasn't over you yet.”
“Have you talked about this with her?” Noah shakes his head.
“After we … finished, she got up and left. It was like you all over again. She went back to fucking Texas.” He sounds exasperated, tired, worn out. I feel sorry him, and guiltier than ever. “I wrote her a really nasty email and then, I don't know. She won't talk to me anymore.” I blink at him slowly, trying to come to terms with this. Noah Scott made a mistake. Noah Scott is capable of making mistakes. Noah Scott is not perfect. Huh. “I want to apologize, Never. I want to see her again. But I … she sent me that note about the cabin, but it was clinical. She wasn't really talking to me. She was just asking to use my place.” I cock my head to the side and automatically go for a cigarette. Gossip and smokes are like cheese and wine, they just fucking go together. Plus, I'm liking this. Noah is getting further and further away from boyfriend and lover status and closer to friend, cementing himself into that space where I always knew he'd be. Now to figure out this little dilemma. I try not to admit it to myself, but I like drama when it isn't related to me. I mean, not directly. The baby and the mom thing and Hannah … those things are my problem. This is just far enough away from my black soul that I can get into it and be helpful. I think.
“She knows that you'll be there, Noah,” I say, thinking of my sister. There's a five year gap in our relationship, sure, but I'd like to think I know enough about her to predict her behavior. “She asked because she wants to see you.” He doesn't look like he believes me. I watch as he runs his hand though his blonde hair. His buff new body is starting to make sense … “Are you interested in her?” He stares at me, and I can see in his eyes that he doesn't want to answer the question.
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