ALL NYCHELLE WANTED to do was pull the afghan up under her chin and go back to sleep, but the insistent ringing of the doorbell wouldn’t let her. Rolling to sit up, she groaned, wanting to disappear for a little while and let the world go by without her.
She’d made it as far as her couch the evening before. Haunted by the conversation she’d had with David, she’d replayed it over and over in her mind. The numbness which had allowed her to leave his place without breaking down completely had lifted, and she’d cried long into the evening. The pain she’d felt as she’d recalled David talking about his daughter had been visceral, and she’d wept as though Natalie were her own—as though David’s agony were her own.
Finally she’d forced herself to eat some yoghurt and fruit, although her stomach had threatened rebellion the entire time, and then had fallen asleep in the living room, her dreams bedeviled by images of David.
“What time is it anyway?” she groused as she blinked to try to clear the sleep from her eyes.
A glance at the kitchen clock made her wince. Nine o’clock was far later than she usually slept, but who on earth was at her house at that time on a Sunday morning without letting her know they were coming?
David.
Her heart hammered at the thought, but looking through the peephole in the door brought a mixture of shock and disappointment.
Quickly unlocking the door, she opened it.
“Aliya? What are you doing here?”
Her cousin stepped in, letting go of her bag as she did so, and grabbed Nychelle in a hard, sweet hug. Tears immediately threatened and had Nychelle wiggling out of the embrace. Aliya held on to her shoulders, kicking the door shut behind her.
“I was worried about you, so I grabbed the first available flight out of Hartsfield.” Her dark eyes flashed and her usually smiling mouth was grim. “I’m glad I did. You’ve been crying.”
“But why were you worried?” Nychelle forced a smile. “We spoke a couple days ago. You knew I was fine.”
Turning Nychelle toward the living room, Aliya gave her a little shove. “Yeah, well, when I get a call from your Dr. Warmington, saying he knows you’re upset and is worried about you, and your phone goes straight to voice mail all evening, of course I’m going to drop everything and come see what’s going on.”
Shock made Nychelle stumble, and she grabbed the back of the nearest chair for balance. “David called you? When?”
Aliya moved the blanket out of the way, then plopped down on the couch. She patted the seat beside her in invitation, but Nychelle ignored her, still too surprised to move.
Aliya sighed. “Yesterday—in the evening. I tried calling you afterward—”
“I’d turned off my phone.” Nychelle waved her hand. That wasn’t the important part. “What did he say?”
“Just that you’d had a really upsetting day and he was worried about you.” When Nychelle made a rolling go on gesture with her hand, Aliya shrugged. “Seriously, that was it.”
Forcing her trembling legs to move, and still holding on to the chair for support, Nychelle stepped around to sink down into the seat. “How did he get your number?”
“Does it matter?” Aliya raised one eyebrow.
“You flew all this way just because—”
Her cousin’s raised hand and fierce expression were enough to have Nychelle snap her mouth shut.
“Listen, you need me—here I am.”
Her face softened, and Nychelle turned away from the love shining in her eyes.
“You know if the situation were reversed you’d be at my side in a flash. Besides, that stiff upper lip nonsense comes from your father’s side of the family. This side is all about making noise and garnering sympathy. That’s what I’d be doing, so I figured I’d give you the chance to have at it—even though apparently there’s nothing really wrong with you. What I want to know is, what happened to make him feel he needed to call me?”
It all came flooding back, overwhelming her, and Nychelle covered her face to hide her tears.
“Tell me,” Aliya said softly.
The words poured out of Nychelle then: how wonderful the day had been, how she’d started telling him about her medical issues and had been interrupted by George’s accident. Even how, as she’d watched David minister to the other man, she’d realized just how she felt about him.
“You’re in love with him.”
It wasn’t a question, but Nychelle didn’t want to go there with her cousin, so instead she blurted, “I slept with him.”
“Oh.”
Aliya’s shocked expression would normally have made Nychelle laugh, but she couldn’t summon any amusement.
“Before I told him about the baby.”
“Oh...”
“And then he told me he’d lost a daughter when she was born at twenty weeks.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say his wife had miscarried—not when David so obviously saw it as a premature birth.
“My situation brought it all back to him. I saw it on his face, in his eyes—the fear and the agony. The regret. And I knew, no matter what had happened between us, it was over. He’d never take the chance of going through that again.”
“Oh, honey.” Aliya got up and came over to perch on the arm of the chair, pulled Nychelle into a hug. “You can’t know that for certain. It was a shock, and once he’s thought about it...”
“You didn’t see him. He was gutted.” Nychelle buried her head in her cousin’s lap, tears flowing to dampen Aliya’s dress. “He’ll never forgive me. And I’ll never forgive myself for hurting him that way.”
Aliya sighed and stroked Nychelle’s hair, seemingly unable to come up with a reply. After a while, she sighed again, then said, “Listen, you’re upset, and probably overtired. Did you sleep much last night?” When Nychelle shook her head, Aliya coaxed her out of the chair and over to the couch. “Lie down for a while. I’m going to cook some soup.”
“I’m not sick,” Nychelle pointed out as she allowed her cousin to tuck the afghan over her legs. “I don’t need soup.”
“Maybe not, but cooking clears my head and I need to think about everything you’ve told me. And you need to eat. My goddaughter or godson needs nourishment, and Auntie Aliya is going to provide it.”
Nychelle felt herself relax as the sound of her cousin bustling about in the kitchen filled the house. No matter how David had gotten Aliya’s number, she was grateful he’d cared enough to make sure she wasn’t alone. At the same time it was just more evidence of the kind of man he was, and the relationship she’d missed out on.
Shifting around so she was sitting up against the cushions, Nychelle said, toward the kitchen, “You can say it, you know.”
Aliya glanced over her shoulder to ask, “Say what?”
“That you were right to tell me to wait.”
Aliya put chicken in the pot. “I’ll say I told you so if you want, but what good will that do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe justify how horrible I feel about all of this?”
Aliya didn’t answer immediately, and when she did her tone was musing. “If you had waited, and gotten involved with David, because of how he feels chances are you wouldn’t even have tried to get pregnant. Is that what you would have wanted?”
“No!” Pushing herself farther up on the cushions, Nychelle glared at her cousin’s back. “Of course not. I won’t ever regret doing what I did.”
“So, then, you’re going to have to accept the situation as it is.” Aliya’s rueful and kindly tone softened the prosaic response. “It isn’t like it’s a binary situation, where you can only regret either trying for a baby or not being with David. You’re going to have to deal with loving both the baby and David—even though it seems as if you can only have one but not the other.”
Suddenly exhausted, ineffably sad, Nychelle slid back down on the couch and pulled the afghan up so only the top of her head was exposed.
“I kind of hate him right now,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Aliya. “For being the perfect man and coming into my life at the worst possible time.”
“No, you don’t. It’s yourself you’re hating, and you need to stop. Poor David’s probably as messed up about all this as you are.”
It made sense. Too much sense. “I hate it when you’re right.” Sitting up, she grabbed a tissue and blew her nose in an effort to be able to breathe, but her next thought just made her tear up again. “I doubt he cares about me now.”
“I don’t know, honey, and neither do you. And you won’t know until you talk to him. At least then you’ll know for sure where you stand. You want to know that, don’t you?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to deny even caring about where she stood with David Warmington, but they’d both know it was a lie. “Yes...”
Aliya chuckled at the grudging admission, then said, “Think about it. Talk to him when you’re ready.” When she continued, her voice was soft, yet serious. “I know you’re in love with him, Nych, even if you won’t come out and say it. You wouldn’t have slept with him if you weren’t. Maybe it’s time to take stock, figure it all out, before you try to move on. He’s all wrapped up with this period of your life, and sometimes you have to deal with everything that’s happening rather than just bits and pieces.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Through her tears and stuffiness Nychelle found some laughter, let it roll over her. “You sound like a TV psychologist. Or your mom.”
“Ha!” Aliya sounded suitably outraged. “Could be worse. I could sound like your mom.”
Full-on giggles caused Nychelle almost to suffocate, since she still couldn’t breathe through her nose. “That is too darn true.”
* * *
He’d been unable to sleep, to eat, since Nychelle had left the night before, and finally David took his tortured mind and tired body down to the beach for a run. It made no sense for him to sit at home waiting for text updates from Nychelle’s cousin. They obviously weren’t coming. She’d been kind enough to let him know she was in Fort Lauderdale and on her way to Nychelle’s house. He really couldn’t expect more than that. After all, she didn’t even know him.
But it didn’t stop him from checking his phone every couple of minutes, anxiety like a tangle of barbed wire in his gut.
Pounding along the sand, he let the events of the last couple of days play over and over in his mind. It was surreal—life swinging from ecstatic to familiar nightmare in just a few hours.
Nychelle was pregnant. Not just pregnant but at high risk for miscarriage too.
Just the thought made him shiver, his skin pebbling with goose bumps despite the heat.
Hearing that had filled him with a fear so strong he’d felt nauseated. Memories of Natalie and the aftermath of her too-early birth had flooded his head; Kitty’s screamed recriminations, coming at a time when he’d hardly been able to handle the loss of their baby. The slamming of the door when she’d left to go back to South Carolina, which had seemed to echo like a gunshot in his soul. The agonizing pain and guilt.
He’d lost everything when Natalie died, and now he was facing the same heartbreak all over again.
The fact that it wasn’t his child didn’t make a difference. It was Nychelle’s child, and that made him or her special. Important.
He couldn’t love a woman and not love her child.
And he loved Nychelle.
But he couldn’t be with her, even if she wanted him to be. The terror pushing at him wouldn’t allow it. The devastation he’d endured couldn’t be repeated.
It would break him completely to go through it all again.
He’d felt the cracks opening in the armor keeping him safe as he’d listened to her. Her words had rendered him too broken to react—he’d barely been able to breathe. After she’d left the room he’d realized his hands were shaking, as though with ague. She’d been so upset by what he’d said, had looked so fragile as she’d walked into the bedroom, and his stomach twisted with anxiety as he thought of her being alone after she left.
He knew her independent streak, knew she wouldn’t tell any of her family what had happened, and that spurred him to move.
Nychelle’s handbag was on the floor, where it had fallen earlier, and he fished her phone out, glad to find she didn’t have a lock code on it. He looked up her cousin’s number, transferred it to his own phone, planning to call her once Nychelle had left. It was doubtful Nychelle would thank him for interfering, but there was no way he could watch her leave without knowing someone else would be checking on her.
He couldn’t do it himself without falling apart.
When Aliya had said she would call Nychelle, and then, unable to contact her, that she’d be catching the first flight out of Atlanta, David had closed his eyes, fighting tears of thankfulness. Nychelle deserved to be taken care of right now, and he knew her parents wouldn’t do it. They’d probably lecture her instead of nurturing her, and that was the last thing she needed.
Although he’d wanted to lecture her too—ask her why, with her medical problems, she’d taken a chance on getting pregnant. Didn’t she know the heartbreak she was courting? Realize how devastating the loss of her child would be?
No. No. No.
He wouldn’t think that—even as he feared it might happen. The baby would be fine. It had to be. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—go through the agony he’d experienced.
Gritting his teeth, he quickened his pace, even though his legs and lungs burned. Even as he prayed everything would work out for her, his anxiety built, growing to fill every nook and cranny of his soul.
“Stop it,” he panted aloud. “Stop it!”
She would be all right. She had to be. The bright, beautiful light that shone in her eyes shouldn’t be dimmed by that kind of pain. He couldn’t bear to see that happen. Needed to force himself to believe everything would work out.
It was too hot to be running for this long. He knew he should turn back toward his car but he pressed on, the pain of overexertion a physical manifestation of his inner agony, tears mixing with the sweat running down his cheeks.
And when finally he collapsed on the sand, dragging air into his tortured lungs, there was only one thought left in his mind.
Despite everything, he wished he’d told her he loved her.