Chapter 12 #2
“What do you have there?”
I stare through him, licking my lips as I try to find an excuse not to show him. What is wrong with me?
“Earth to Nina.” He walks towards me, and I hold out the file, widening my eyes, amazed that I’ve even offered it to him.
He frowns and takes it. “What is it?” He must feel its weight and carries it to the kitchen island, sliding onto the chair and placing it down in front of him. He looks over to me before opening it. “Come show me.”
“It’s just some pictures.” I brush him off as if they aren’t important. “You probably wouldn’t even want to see them, but I knew I should keep them. You don’t ha—”
“Nina.” He stops me. “Come here, now.”
I slide onto the stool next to him and he flicks over the first page, letting it drop with a thud to the counter. “I was four months. That was the day at the hospital. We cut my head out of the picture because I was being miserable, but Elliot insisted we should take the photo.”
“You had a bump?” he asks, but it comes out scratchy and he clears his throat.
“I don’t know. It all seems like such a blur now. It just looks like a little bloat.”
“How did I not notice? Surely I would have?”
“The girls noticed on holiday. They had their suspicions.”
He snaps his head towards me, his eyes glazed and wild. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was possible. I’ve always taken my pill.”
He turns the page and stares down at the pictures on the paper. “You grew fast.”
“Thanks.” I laugh.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. I wasn’t looking after myself before. Once I knew I was pregnant, I made sure I fixed that. I knew I had to be better.”
He looks down at me again, his brows drawn in. “You are; better. You’re a wonderful mother.”
“I do my best. There are far better mothers I’m sure, but I’m not the worst.”
He continues to look through the photos, each one getting closer and closer to my due date.
“That one was taken just a few hours before he was born.”
“Did it ever get uncomfortable?” He flicks back a couple pages, looking at the photos again.
“At night. I found myself reading a lot more. Sleep was definitely harder than normal.”
“I can imagine,” he says in surprise. “Christ, no wonder you didn’t dance.”
“Yeah, there was no way.” I chuckle.
Flipping over the last page, I cringe, wondering why I even put the photo in. I had completely forgotten it was in there.
It’s the only picture of the three of us, the one with Mason sitting behind me in the hospital bed.
Ellis is on my chest and his small hand grips my finger.
It would be normal to have the picture in the album, but Maggie caught us right as our lips brushed.
It’s a moment I don’t quite remember fully but can’t seem to forget.
It makes my cheeks flame and my body tense.
I wait for his reaction, hoping he doesn’t think I’m a loser for keeping the picture.
“I didn’t know this was taken,” he whispers.
“Maggie,” I say in explanation.
He flips it closed and I jump. “Can I keep this?”
“Uh, yeah.” I want him to take it, that’s why I made it, but the last picture is the only photo I have of us all together. I’d have to ask Maggie for another print and that would just be weird.
“Thank you, for this.” He stares at me, as if he has more to say but doesn’t want to. Or maybe he doesn’t know how.
“Of course!” I snap out of it. “I have more pictures of Ellis. I’ve tried to keep on top of printing them and putting them in the album. I will sort through and make copies.” His eyes are still locked on me and it has me squirming in my seat. “Unless you don’t want them, you don’t have to.”
“I want them.”
“Cool.” I drop my gaze to my lap, hoping my hands will tell me what to say because I have lost all coherent thought.
“I know everything there is to know about you all the way down to the sounds you make when you come. Yet you still get shy and can’t look me in the eye?”
My cheeks flame. “You don’t—”
“Yo?!”
My eyes snap closed and I roll my lips as Joey lets himself into my apartment. His smile drops when he sees me and Mason sitting at the kitchen island. I may be imagining it, but I swear I hear Mason growl.
“Hey, Joey. Everything okay?”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he walks towards us, nodding his head at the wild animal beside me. “Mason.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Mason!” I snap.
“What?” He glares at me. “Do you always just stroll on in here?” he asks Joey.
“Always, always,” Joey says smugly.
“Well don’t. My son lives here, and I don’t fucking like you. Nina may think she knows you, but I don’t.”
“We aren’t doing this now. Joey, can you come back later tonight, please?”
“No. He can come back in the week when I have Ellis,” Mason tells us.
“Joe,” I plead, sensing the animosity in the room.
He nods, gives Mason a look that says I want to punch you in the face and then leaves.
“What is your problem?!” I blurt once the door is closed.
Mason rolls his eyes and spins around on the chair. “Don’t get all irate. I can’t stand the prick and I don’t want him around Ellis.”
“Joey is my friend! A good friend who has helped me through a lot—”
“You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you! You don’t get to judge my friends.”
“I can and I will.”
My nostrils flare. “Has your little stripper met my son?”
“Here we go.”
Unbelievable. The man’s an idiot. “How can you not see that she is the problem here? Things wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for her.” I’m deflecting the blame and I hate myself for it, but right now I have a whole load of fire inside of me that I want to unleash.
“Jasmine isn’t the problem,” he snaps. “You are the problem. You, and your inability to trust me! Take Jasmine out of the picture and we still wouldn’t be together. You would run, every fucking time.”
“You do not say her name in my home again,” I grit out, my blood nearly at boiling point.
“Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine!” he recites.
“You’re acting like a damn child. If she wasn’t in the picture of course things would be different.”
He stands, gathering up the folder and pointing to the door. “He doesn’t come into this house again. Got it?”
“Why?! Why the fuck not!” I counter, stepping up to his chest.
He grasps my throat, pushing me back into the counter before loosening his hand where he grips me, setting my pulse racing freely again.
His head drops, bringing him far too close and his lips mere inches from my own.
I can feel the heat radiating off his body as it pushes up against me.
Every solid inch of him. “Don’t push me, Nina.
You may not be mine to fuck anymore, but you are mine in every other sense of the word.
You’re the mother of my son and if you think I’ll watch you fuck around with that—”
A throat clears at the door and Mason all but drops me like a hot potato.