Chapter 22 Nick
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nick
The silence hits first. A sharp, suffocating stillness that settles deep in my chest. It drowns everything else, leaving nothing but the sound of my own heart beat. For a moment, I can’t breathe.
Laura’s words are still hanging in the air, a smoldering wreckage I can’t avoid.
I’m guessing you finally got him alone to tell him about the baby?
The baby.
The thought takes root in my mind, cold and heavy, and my body reacts before I can stop it. Meatball shifts on my chest, but the movement does nothing to relieve the weight pressing down on me. Every beat of my heart is thunderous in my ears.
I glance at Sara, sitting there, tangled in a blanket, her eyes wide, her lips moving, but the words don’t make sense. It’s as though I’m watching a person scream underwater. Everything’s distorted. Out of reach.
I stand, my body moving cautiously. I shift Meatball off me, and he gives a disgruntled huff before hopping off the couch with a shake. I barely notice him.
“Is it true?” I ask, and I don’t recognize my own voice. It’s too controlled. Too calm.
Too fucking cold.
Sara’s gaze snaps to mine, and I see the panic in her eyes. “Nick—”
“Why the hell would you keep that from me?”
“Because we had to keep our distance, and—”
“Don’t,” I cut her off, the words coming out sharper than I intended. Before I know it, I’m standing. Buttoning my shirt with trembling hands, each movement mechanical, almost disconnected.
“Don’t lie to me, Sara. You still could have told me.”
“I’m not lying,” she says quickly, panic in her voice. “I… I was going to tell you. I swear. Today.”
I laugh, but it’s empty. It’s the sound of disbelief, not humor. “So Laura just beat you to it?”
She nods, clutching the blanket tighter around her. “Yes. I was panicking. You’d been distant, and I didn’t know what to do. There’s been so much drama, and you’ve been cold…”
I start pacing, my mind spinning, every step an electric current running through me. “And what? You were going to spring it on me? Just casually drop it over coffee? Oh, by the way, I’m having your kid?”
Her face falls, the pain clear. “It’s not like that.”
“No?” I ask, the words escaping in a sharp bite. “Because that’s exactly what it feels like.”
“I didn’t plan this!” she shouts, her voice trembling. “Do you think I wanted this to happen like this? That I wanted to—”
I don’t let her finish. “You should have told me.” I feel the anger rising, thick and suffocating. “You should have told me the second you knew.”
Her jaw shakes. Her eyes fill with tears. “I was scared.”
The word freezes me. Scared?
Of me?
I stop in my tracks, staring at her, trying to piece it together. “Why?”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Struggles for words.
“Because… because you’re my boss. And you’re older. And intimidating. And rich. And powerful. And you backed away once, and I thought…” Her voice cracks. “I thought if I told you, you’d run.”
It’s as if she slapped me. I take a step back, shaking my head in disbelief. “You thought I’d run?”
“I didn’t know what else to think!” she shouts, her voice breaking. “You were pulling away. You barely looked at me after that night, Nick. And then I started feeling sick, and I missed my period, and… God, I thought I was losing my mind, but the test came back and…”
I press my fingers to my temples, trying to push away the fog in my mind, but it’s no use. “When did you find out?”
“About two weeks ago.”
Two weeks.
The words hit with the force of a freight train, leaving me no space to breathe. My chest tightens, a slow, suffocating pressure building in the hollow of my ribs.
Two weeks. She’s known for two weeks.
Fourteen days of… nothing.
Fourteen days of her pretending she wasn’t holding something that could shatter us both.
Fourteen days of me thinking I still had time. Time to sort out whatever the hell this is between us. Time to keep my head above water while I tried to decipher the mess I’d let myself get caught in.
And she’s been carrying this, this secret, our secret, without a word.
“I was trying to find the right moment,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. It trembles, but there’s still that edge to it, the one I want to reach out and touch, the fraying end of a rope. “But there’s no right way to say it. I didn’t want to lose my job. I didn’t want to lose you.”
My jaw clenches, hard enough to crack teeth. “You don’t trust me.”
Her eyes widen, desperate. “It’s not about that.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not!” she insists, voice rising. “I’m not used to people showing up for me, okay? I grew up thinking the other shoe was always going to drop. I’m not good at… asking for help.”
Her words hit hard as a punch, unexpected but deep. I wasn’t ready for that. For the cracks in her armor to reveal something so raw, something I’d never imagined under all that bravado.
And then she keeps going. Talking faster now, words tripping over themselves. Her eyes don’t meet mine, flicking around the room, looking for an escape.
“And then I thought… what if you didn’t want it?
What if you were angry? What if you thought I trapped you or something, God, like Rebecca said would happen, and I thought maybe you’d believe her and then I…
” She pauses, her breath hitching as if she’s just crossed some invisible line she can’t come back from.
“I started thinking maybe I could just handle it on my own. Like my mom. Just… figure it out.”
I freeze.
Her mom.
I can barely hear her over the thundering in my head. The walls are closing in.
“What?” I manage to rasp.
Sara’s shoulders shake, her hands twisting in her lap.
“She was sick,” she stammers. “Growing up, she was always sick. And she raised me by herself and never asked for help and she…” She falters.
Stops. Presses her hand to her mouth as if she’s trying to shove all of this back inside.
“She did it alone. Until she couldn’t anymore, and then it was my turn to look after her, which is why I was freelancing and jobs weren’t secure… ”
I’m trying.
I swear, I’m trying.
But none of it makes sense. Her mom, illness, fear, loneliness, all of it’s tangled. All of it’s jumbled.
I can’t focus. Can’t breathe. Can’t make any of it fit into place.
Because beneath it all, one truth is screaming at me, louder than everything else:
She didn’t tell me.
She didn’t trust me enough to tell me that I was going to be a father.
I take a deep breath. “I need a minute,” I mutter, backing toward the door.
Her face falls, eyes wide with panic. “Nick, please…”
I don’t look at her. I can’t. Not now.
I need space. I need air. I need to think.
I can’t do this. Not now.
“I just…” I pause, my hand gripping the doorknob because it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to this moment. “I need to think. I can’t… I can’t do this right now.”
I don’t wait for her response.
I just walk out. I don’t even hear her.
The door slams behind me, but I don’t hear it.
My heart is beating too loud.
I don’t look back. Not yet.
If I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave.
And right now, I have no idea what the hell I’m walking toward.
Only what I’m walking away from.
I make it down the stairs, but it’s a blur. My feet are moving as if they belong to someone else.
I don’t remember the neighbor who might’ve greeted me on my way out. Or the world that’s still moving on, oblivious to the chaos cracking inside me.
The sun’s too bright. The air’s too sharp. It’s too much. Too much of everything.
A baby.
That word spins around my head, a buzzard circling, getting louder, and louder.
Sara’s pregnant.
With my child.
And I didn’t know.
For fourteen days, she knew. And I didn’t.
My jaw clenches so tight it hurts. My hands curl into fists at my sides, but it does nothing to ease the pressure building in my chest.
She looked me in the eye. Kissed me. Let me feel things again, things I thought I had buried years ago. And all the while, she was sitting on the biggest truth of our lives, holding it back from me.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting in my car, engine off, hands locked around the steering wheel so tight my knuckles are turning white.
I don’t even know where I’m going.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
What’s the next move?
How do I even begin to process any of this?
There’s only one person I’d normally call.
Only one.
Evelyn.
She’s the one who kept me grounded when everything else was falling apart. Every scandal. Every mess. Every damn heartbreak I thought I’d never crawl out of.
She’s the one who would know what to say. The one who’d talk me down, remind me that it was temporary.
But she’s not talking to me.
And I get it. After everything that went down, all the wreckage I dragged into her life…
But goddamn it if I don’t miss her.
I lean back, head hitting the headrest as I drag my hands down my face. I exhale, hard, like I’ve been holding my breath since I walked out that door.
I want to be angry. I am angry.
But underneath the rage, there’s something worse. Something quieter.
Shame.
Because maybe she was right to be scared. Maybe I would’ve reacted the same way no matter when she told me. I’m a selfish asshole, too wrapped up in my pride to show the grace I should’ve had.
I was just inside her. Not even twenty minutes ago. Telling her she was mine. Kissing her, knowing I couldn’t breathe without her.
And now I’m here.
Outside.
Alone.
Same as every damn man she’s ever had to survive.
I slam my palm against the steering wheel, hard enough to rattle the car, but it doesn’t help. Doesn’t even come close.
She should’ve told me.
But I should’ve stayed.
And now?
Now I’m fucking lost.
And for the first time in years, I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.
Am I the man who walks away?
Or the one who finally steps up?