Chapter Fourteen

“I’m impressed. You changed that last diaper in twenty seconds flat,” Taya said as she climbed out of the driver’s seat of his truck.

Grinning, Nate got out of the passenger seat, shut his door and used his cane to follow her toward the elevator in their building’s underground parking lot. He was getting the hang of it now. He’d been practicing a lot of things since finding out they were having a son a few days ago. “What can I say, I’m good with my hands.”

“I can’t argue with that. You should have seen the way Clay was watching you while you changed Libby. He was hovering over you the whole time, keeping an eagle eye on his baby girl even though you had her laid out flat on the floor.” She chuckled. “Zoe just shook her head at him.”

They’d gone over there for dinner, and so Nate could practice getting the hang of changing and dressing Libby. He felt way more confident now about his ability to help out with their son when he was born. “I don’t blame him. But at least she’s big enough now that I’m not afraid I’ll break her. When our little guy is born he’s gonna be so tiny.”

The team gathering the other night had gone well, better than he’d expected. The guys had been ecstatic to see him. Instead of pitying him or treating him like an invalid, they’d treated him exactly as they had before, trash talking and doling out shit like they always did. Nate had loved every moment of it. DeLuca had even promised to reach out to contacts on his behalf to see if there were any suitable openings in the Bureau for him.

“You’ll be fantastic with him. Every time I imagine you holding him when he’s born, I swear my heart will explode.”

Nate smiled at that. His sense of touch was even more acute now than it had been before the accident. Something he’d been exploring with the help of Taya’s naked body, to gratifying results. “I can’t wait to hold him. I’m gonna be right in there during the delivery. I want to catch him and cut the cord. And I plan to rub that in Bauer’s face so hard.”

She snorted. “Why does this not surprise me. I swear you guys—”

Her words cut off so abruptly that he stopped dead, his muscles tensing. “Tay?” His body was on red alert, his remaining senses scanning for the threat.

“Hi, Nate. And you must be Taya.”

The sound of that voice from over by the elevators sent a chill racing down his spine even as anger roared through him. Dara. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I came to see you, make sure you were doing okay. I kept trying to find out, but nobody would return my calls.”

No, because Taya had blocked her number back when he’d been in the coma, and Dara didn’t have his contact info.

Nate clenched his jaw and stood his ground as he faced his sister, glad he couldn’t see her. “How did you find me?”

“Really? That’s how you react to me coming here?”

“Answer the question,” he snapped. He caught the scent of Taya’s perfume a second before her hand curled around his. Nate squeezed in reassurance, drew her into his side. He wasn’t going to make this ugly. But he was going to make his stance absolutely clear.

“If you must know, I had to go through Taya’s agent to get your address. I explained that I’m your sister and wanted to see you.”

“Oh, shit,” Taya whispered. Nate squeezed her hand again. It wasn’t her fault. They would talk to the agent about it later.

“Well I don’t want to see you,” he shot back at Dara. “Pretty sure I made that plain the last time I did.”

Dara huffed out an irritated breath. “We’re family, Nate, like it or not.”

No. The only family he had was standing right beside him, and the men who stood beside him on his team. “What do you want?”

“I told you, I came to see how you—”

“Cut the bullshit, Dara. You’ve got five seconds to answer me, and then I’m calling the cops because you’re not welcome here and you know it.”

Even though he couldn’t see her, he could picture her glaring at him, a belligerent expression on a face almost identical to their dead mother’s. “I think you know why.”

Oh, I know I know. “You want my half of the inheritance.”

Dara didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to.

“You tracked me down and came all the way here for less than two grand? Really?”

A tense pause answered him. “My finances are none of your business. But not all of us have it as easy as you.”

Easy.

Nate huffed out an ironic laugh. She thought he had it easy? “You’re not getting the money. Not a single cent.” It was already in an educational savings account for his son that he’d set up yesterday. To him it wouldn’t have mattered if it was two thousand bucks or two cents.

The principle of it was the lesson here. This was about refusing to enable that sickening sense of entitlement Dara carried with her everywhere along with that giant chip on her shoulder. Like the world and everyone in it owed her something.

Nate didn’t owe her shit.

“Look, I need that money a hell of a lot more than you do,” she said, bitterness lacing every word.

Ah, she was in trouble again. Probably from racked up gambling debts or something like that. Not his problem. And even if he softened his stance and bailed her out this time, she’d just keep coming back for more. It would never end.

Oh, it’s ending. It’s ending here and now.

“The answer is no,” he said flatly. “Now get out of here and don’t come back. Ever. You show up again, you so much as try to contact either one of us again, and I’ll slap a restraining order on your manipulative ass. You and I are done. Period. Am I clear?”

An ugly laugh answered him. “Fuck you, Nate.”

No, fuck you. He didn’t bother saying it. Thinking it was enough. He’d said all he had to say to her.

As her stomping footsteps on the concrete faded away in the distance, Nate stood where he was, his arm curled protectively around Taya’s waist.

“Okay, she’s gone,” Taya said softly, then rubbed a hand over his lower back. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Surprisingly fine. In the past any interaction with her had left him stewing and upset for hours, even days. Now he just felt a sense of finality. Maybe he’d file a restraining order anyway, just to ensure she wouldn’t think about disrupting their life again at some point in the future.

“I’ll phone my agent as soon as we get upstairs. I’m sorry, I can’t believe she would give our address to anyone.”

“Not your fault. Dara has a way of working people until she gets what she wants.”

“Well she won’t try it again with you. Not after this.”

“Nope.” Raising their joined hands to his mouth, he kissed the back of hers and started for the elevators.

She dialed her agent as soon as they reached their door. Going by memory and feel, he tapped the cane around to help him navigate his way back toward the master bedroom.

A few steps away from where the doorway should be, he stopped suddenly. Blinked. Blinked again.

Those spots again. Tiny dancing pinpricks of light in his peripheral vision.

It had happened a couple times before, and it always made his heart pound, always made him hope that maybe…

But no. His eyes looked straight toward the spot and saw only blackness.

Rather than allowing the crushing disappointment to take hold, he accepted it and moved on. Tired but strangely at peace after the altercation, he shuffled his way into their bedroom without bumping into a single thing, then stripped and got between the covers. Taya was still on the phone out in the kitchen. The sound of her voice soothed him, lulled him to sleep.

He jerked awake sometime later when a gasp broke the quiet. Taya was beside him, he could smell her sweet scent. Groggy, he rolled over, the cobwebs of sleep tangling his brain.

Then she bolted upright and sucked in a breath.

Alarm streaked through him and he shot up into a sitting position. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, reaching for her.

“It’s the baby.”

Ice slid through him. Shit, had something happened to it? He felt so goddamn helpless, unable to see, to help. “What do you mean?” He ran through a list of possible complications she might be experiencing, none of them good. “Does something hurt? Are you bleeding?”

She giggled and grabbed his hand to press it to the mound of her belly. “No. It moved. I felt it. Like tiny bubbles popping inside me. It tickles.” The awe in her voice made his heart clench. She pressed harder on his hand. “There, do you feel it?”

He paused, waiting, trying to detect the tiny movement beneath his palm with his heightened sense of touch. He wanted to, but… “No.” She was almost nineteen weeks along. Exactly in the right timeframe to feel the baby moving. God, how incredible was that? Another reminder of how much he had to look forward to and live for.

“It’s so amazing,” she whispered, pressing his hand harder against her abdomen. “Our son, Nathan.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hand over the small swell, craving the contact. “Wish I could feel him.”

“You will soon enough. And now that he’s woken me up in the middle of the night, I have to pee,” she muttered, and rolled away from him onto her hip. A second later the bedside light switch snapped on.

The black movie screen in front of him turned to dark gray.

Nate went dead still for a second, then rolled over and squinted at the faint light coming from the other side of the bed.

The light.

Taya froze. “Nathan? What’s wrong?” She grabbed for his hand. “Is it another headache? Do your eyes hurt?”

Heart pounding, he blinked, squinted harder, thought he was either dreaming or that his mind was playing a cruel trick on him. But no, those were definitely lights and shadows he was seeing. And the blurry outline of his wife, her deep brown curls a fuzzy halo around her head.

“What?” she whispered in a stricken voice.

“I can see you,” he choked out. “Tay, I can see you.” The outline of her anyway, but that in itself was incredible and gave him an aching sense of hope. Was his sight coming back? Even blurry shapes and shadows were better than a world of eternal darkness.

Taya cried out and flung her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. “Oh, Nathan.” Nate held her tight, overwhelmed by a flood of relief and gratitude. “We need to phone your neurologist.”

“What time is it?”

“Two in the morning.”

“No, let’s wait a while yet.”

“Is the light hurting your eyes? I can turn it off—”

“No.” He stopped her, drawing her down beside him where he lay staring at her face. It was inches from his own, but he could make out the dark lines of her eyebrows and the shape of her mouth.

He slid a hand into her hair and kissed her. Kissed her again and again and again before lowering his head to the pillow, facing her. “Leave it on. I want to stare at you for the rest of the night.”

The sight of her lips curving into a smile filled his chest with a gratitude that made him want to weep.

His vision would return. He just had to be patient. This was a fight he had to win.

With his little warrior by his side and their child on the way, he was going to beat the odds and regain his sight. He wouldn’t accept any other option.