I finally slept.
There really was no other option for me. I’d cried myself sick, into dry heaves, and I cried myself into a mindless exhaustion that could only be cured by climbing into my bed. I don’t know how long I slept, but waking up was like dragging myself out of gritty quicksand. My eyes, swollen and weary, felt plastered shut, and I wasn’t ready to attempt to peel them open and face reality, face the loss of a future I hadn’t known how badly I wanted until it was gone. And face the ugly truth that my insecurities concerning my relationship with Nick, valid or not, had led me to make selfish, cowardly choices when it came to involving him in what was happening. I also just didn’t . . . didn’t want to see him hurt, and trying to protect him from that had backfired.
I loved him and I had hurt him even more.
Like a ghost, the image of those tiny shoes Nick and I had looked at while Christmas tree shopping formed in my head, and the pain rose, sharp and seemingly never-ending. In that moment, I was never more grateful for the fact that I hadn’t started shopping for anything baby related. I wasn’t sure if I could bear having to return onesies or pack them away. The ultrasound picture on the fridge had been difficult enough to see.
Every cell in my body felt like I’d been through the wringer, and I really had. The last thing I wanted to do was get up, but I needed to because of what my body was going through. As I lay there telling myself to get up, I slowly became aware of another presence in the room.
A very close presence, like in the same bed with me. I could hear the steady breaths. While I wouldn’t have been surprised if Katie climbed into bed with me, I had the distinct feeling that it wasn’t her. My skin tingled as I breathed in deeply, catching a fresh scent tinged with pine.
My heart skipped a beat. The scent . . . the scent was so familiar, so right.
I held my breath as I forced my eyes to crack open, and exhaled roughly once my vision adjusted to the low light filtering in from the hallway outside the open bedroom door.
Lying in the bed beside me, on his back, was Nick.
I still had to be asleep.
Nick turned his head toward mine. Even with the lack of light, I could see the dark shadows under his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “You’re awake.”
Unable to get my tongue off the roof of my mouth, I started to sit up. Nick rose alongside me, his gaze never leaving my face. “Katie had Roxy call me. It’s just us.”
My head was still fuzzy with sleep and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Do you need help?” was his immediate response.
I shook my head. “I . . .” I was at a loss for words as I stared at him.
“I’ll be waiting for you here, okay?” he said, voice low. “You need anything, yell, and I’ll be there.”
Pressure tightened around my chest, and I forced myself out of the bed before I lost it all over again. I shuffled to the bathroom and took care of the necessary stuff. Before leaving, I stopped long enough to splash cold water over my face and to pull my now gross hair back.
Nick was here.
He’d come back even after I’d kicked him out.
He was here.
Throat constricting, I glanced at my reflection and saw that I looked like a wreck, but I knew there was nothing I could do about that. What I looked like was the least important thing right now.
I ambled back to the bedroom, feeling like I’d aged fifty years, but seeing Nick propped against the headboard was like receiving a shot of adrenaline. Nervousness and the sweet anticipation always tied to him battled it out as I made my way to the bed, sitting down near his legs.
Nick had turned on the nightstand lamp while I was in the bathroom, and now I could fully see him. A thick stubble covered his jaw and chin, and those dark shadows under his eyes were stark. His shirt, the same one he had worn yesterday when I saw him, was wrinkled. His hair was a mess, and he looked just as bad as I felt.
His chest rose with a deep breath. “I know you don’t want me here,” he stated, and before I could respond, he forged on. “But I’m going to be right here. It took everything in me yesterday to walk out of that door and I don’t have it in me anymore to do it again. Not after knowing what you’ve been going through and seeing you now. I know you’re hurting. You shouldn’t be alone and it should be me who’s here for you.”
I lowered my gaze as I pulled my legs up, curling them under me. “It’s not that I didn’t want you here, Nick. That’s not the case at all.”
There was a beat of silence. “I’m going to be real honest with you, Stephanie, that’s exactly how it came across yesterday.”
How could I explain what I was feeling and where my head was at when it was in so many places and everything was so raw? There were so many words, so many things I could say, and yet I couldn’t grasp one strong thought. It was like trying to catch the rain.
Yesterday I had pushed for a confrontation, but today, right now, all I wanted was his arms to be around me. All I wanted was to be held. All I wanted was to be with the one person who shared the same pain I was experiencing.
I lifted my gaze, and Nick’s face blurred as a wave of fresh tears rose.
He tilted his head to the side and his voice cracked when he spoke. “Come here.”
My body moved before my brain fully registered the words. I scrambled over his legs as he sat up, his arms open and reaching for me. I climbed right into his lap, planting my face against his chest as I all but fused my body to his.
Nick’s reaction was immediate. He buried one hand in my messy ponytail, and my knees bent on either side of me as his other arm circled my waist, curving his body into mine. It was like he was caging himself around me, and those tears that had welled up spilled free. I almost couldn’t believe there were any left in me, but the sobs rose again, and they were so powerful they shook my body—shook his as he held on.
“That’s good. That’s good,” he kept saying, over and over. “It’s all right not to be okay. I’m not okay either. I’m not.”
And he wasn’t. I could feel his body trembling, and as I curled my fingers around the hair at the nape of his neck, guilt and anguish tangled together, forming a poisonous knot. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Stephanie, baby, please don’t apologize.” His voice did that breaking thing again, killing me. “What happened isn’t your fault. You know that, right? This wasn’t your fault.”
I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for losing the baby or for how I treated him during it. Or maybe I was apologizing for both things.
And then he said it. “You’re breaking my heart, Stephanie. Stop apologizing. It’s ripping me apart.”
You’re going to break his heart.
My grip on him tightened. It wasn’t losing the baby. It wasn’t even the way I had acted. It was this. Damn. Katie really was psychic.
We held on, becoming each other’s anchor, and we shared that pain. Time became something that happened in the background. I had no idea how much of it passed before I opened my eyes and the only tears left were those that clung to my eyelashes. His arms had stopped trembling and his chin rested atop my head as one hand trailed up and down my back, the caress soothing and grounding.
“Are you . . . not working?” I asked, wincing at the scratchiness of my voice and the lameness of my question.
“Jax gave me the weekend off, and Kira is with my grandfather.” His hand curled around the nape of my neck. “I’m not going anywhere, Stephanie.”
“I don’t want you to leave me.” I whispered those words, and it didn’t kill me to admit something so vulnerable. In all honesty, it did the exact opposite. Relief blossomed, tiny and frail, but there.
Nick’s hand stilled. “Why would you even think that?”
I raised a shoulder.
“Don’t do that.” His voice was gentle as his hand started to move again, kneading the tight muscles in my neck. “Talk to me.”
My hand slipped to his chest and curled there, above his heart. “I just don’t want you to leave, because I . . . I think you’re going to. We got together because I was pregnant. That’s why we were together. Not because of anything else, and now that’s gone, there’s no reason for you to keep doing this—”
“No reason?” Disbelief colored his tone.
“Well, I know you’re physically attracted to me, but . . . I don’t know.” I sighed. “None of this is really important right now. We can—”
“That is important right now.” His other hand rose, brushing back a strand of hair that had escaped the ponytail and was plastered to my cheek. “Why in the world would you think you being pregnant was the only reason I’ve been with you?”
When he said it like that, it did sound foolish, but our relationship had been far from normal. “You didn’t want to see me again after the first night we hooked up.”
“I—”
“I know you apologized, and honestly, I don’t even care about that, but when you did come back around, you just wanted to be friends. There was nothing more until after I found out I was pregnant,” I said, and then rushed on. “We never called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, and you said we were stuck together. That we were going to have to make the best out of this and . . .” And I trailed off, because really, what else needed to be said after that? Those were his words.
Nick was silent for a moment and then cursed under his breath. “Jesus, Stephanie, I fucked this up. I really did.”
Confused, I drew back and my gaze found his. “What?”
“Shit.” He lifted a hand, dragging it down his face. “Remember that night I came here to apologize for the way I acted in the bar? When I said I wished things were different between us? I wasn’t screwing around then. You have no idea how hard it was for me not to see you again after the night we hooked up. I wanted to. Fuck. I wanted to more than anything I’ve wanted to do in a long time.”
What the what . . . ? “Then why didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “My focus has been my grandfather for the last couple of years, and I didn’t want any other complications. I didn’t have time for one.” He dropped his hand. “But I’m also a fucking idiot. It’s not something I realized until I got to know you. That’s not a good enough excuse, but with everything that has happened in my family—losing almost all of them, and then the girl I thought I was in love with in college left me when shit got tough? Getting in a relationship again wasn’t something I was looking forward to. I’m going to be honest. The idea still . . . yeah, it scares me a little.”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say as I shook my head.
“I wanted to be different for you—I wanted everything to be different for you, and that was before we knew you were pregnant,” he said, his shoulders hunching as he shook his head. “I just didn’t think I was capable of being that person.”
My brows rose. “You are.”
His lashes lowered. “You know, a couple of months ago I wouldn’t have been sure of that statement, and honestly, I didn’t know until you came over for Thanksgiving. Seeing you with my grandfather made me realize how much of an idiot I was, not going after you the moment I left your apartment. And talking to you about what happened to my family, how it’s tied to Calla. Actually saying that shit out loud helped me let it go. I should’ve . . . I should’ve said that to you, because I get why you’d think there was nothing else between us. I do. I should’ve made it clear that there was more I was feeling.”
He pressed his hand to his chest. “I was feeling more for you in here, and it had nothing to do with you being pregnant.”
I almost couldn’t believe what he was saying. “But if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, would we ever have gotten together?”
“I don’t know, honestly I don’t, but I like to think we would’ve found our way to each other.” His gaze flickered to mine. “I want to believe that. I have to.”
I struggled through the ball of emotion that was building again. Hope was there, swelling so beautifully, but it felt tainted with loss and with lingering, thick confusion. My lips trembled and I pressed them together for a moment. “I don’t know. You were wonderful—you have been wonderful. I should’ve known there was more there. I’ve just been so . . . everything has been new to me.”
“Yeah.” His eyes searched mine. “Neither of us are very good at this relationship thing, huh?”
A dry, cracking laugh escaped me. “No. We’re not very good at it.” I lowered my chin. “But we were really good at it when we didn’t even know we were doing it.”
“Damn straight,” he murmured, gently touching my chin. He tipped my head up so our eyes met. “Would you like to be my girlfriend? Circle yes or no.”
Another hoarse laugh rattled as I lifted my finger, drawing a circle on his chest. “That’s me circling yes.”
Nick’s lips twitched into a grin. “Maybe I should’ve asked you that a while ago.”
“Maybe I should’ve asked you.”
His grin faded as he leaned over, pressing his lips to my temple.
“You know what?” I whispered, closing my eyes as I tried to grasp onto that hope and almost immediately felt guilty for doing so. How could I be happy about anything right now? But at the same time how could I not be, now that I knew the man I was in love with wanted to be with me? Even if he hadn’t spoken those three words, what he had told me meant so much.
He curled his arm back around my waist. “What?”
“I wish . . . I wish this hadn’t happened.”
“I know. I wish the same thing.”
I drew in a shallow breath. “It hurts. I can’t believe how much it hurts, and I can’t stop thinking that I . . . I could’ve done something differently.”
“Babe,” he said, kissing my forehead, “don’t let your head go there. Promise me you won’t let your head go there.”
Promising that was harder said than done, but that’s what I did, and he cupped my cheek. “It’s going to be hard. I know it is. For both of us, but you know what?”
“What?”
“We got each other. No matter what. There is a you and me.” Nick lowered his forehead to mine. “And that is all we need right now.”