Chapter 2
Nick
March
I pick up the phone and swing my chair around to the window away from my father, Paige intently watching me, and the others at the boardroom table.
“Karen, I told you to hold all calls, we’re in a board meeting here.” One I wish I could get the hell out of. My mind is drifting to where it always drifts, especially when Paige is in the room: Cat. Always Cat.
Paige, the mistake of a lifetime. Well, make that the second one; the first was Kate.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Alexander, but I thought you would want to take this call, it sounds urgent.” I tense.
“Who is it?”
“Manhattan Hospital.”
Why would the hospital be calling me? I turn my head to see my father staring at me impatiently. I can see he’s fine. I hope it’s not Gage, my sister, or anyone else in my family. “Put them through.”
“Hello, is this Nicholas Alexander?”
“Yes.”
“This is Manhattan Hospital. We’re calling about Catherine Reed.”
My heart drops when I hear Cat’s name. What the hell? The breath I’m holding whooshes out of me, blocking out everything and everyone I practically yell into the phone, “What’s wrong with her, is she hurt?”
The voice on the other end of the phone changes with the panic rising in my voice.
She sounds more soothing than informative when she answers my question, but it’s not helping me.
“She suffered a concussion, and we can’t release her from the hospital unless someone is here to take her home.
She gave us your name and telephone number. ”
She doesn’t need to say any more. I get out of the chair, tell her I’m on my way, and hang up.
I turn to my father. “This meeting is over for me. I have an emergency I have to take care of.” My father isn’t happy, and I don’t give a shit.
Ava stopped updating me on Cat weeks ago; she said it wasn’t doing me any good.
She was right. The first time I hear about her in two months, a faceless voice is telling me she’s hurt and in the hospital.
I was afraid I wouldn’t see her again after everything I said to her.
I didn’t mean it. I was pissed off seeing Matt there and her state of undress when she answered the door.
What really set me off like a skyrocket was when she said she slept with him, confirming what he said to me outside her building.
I’ll admit it to myself: that shit hurt.
It felt like she punched a hole straight through my chest. I didn’t think she was going to do that with Matt again; she knows how I feel about that guy.
But when she said, ‘I want a man that didn’t fuck my sister and get her pregnant, can you give me that?
’, I knew it was over. Like my father said, she probably would never be able to be with me without thinking about me and Kate, even with no baby.
Not once in the short time we were together could she bring herself to tell me she loved me. I understood, though. I wasn’t going to force her to say something she wasn’t ready to say.
Out of all the people she could have called, she called me. I’m glad she did. It gives me a little hope. Well, to be honest, it gives me a lot of hope. After two months, I know more than before how much I need her in my life, and I’ll take her any way I can get her.
Cat
The weirdest feeling is waking up in a strange room with a strange man standing over you. It’s like an episode of The Outer Limits, minus the creepy music.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“Welcome back, Ms. Reed.”
“From where? Did I go somewhere and no one told me?”
The cute guy standing over me—I think he’s a doctor—is now smiling at me with a full row of pearly whites. “Yes, you’re in Manhattan Hospital.”
“Good, I thought this was a one-night stand gone wrong. I don’t do those.”
His eyes crinkle in amusement. “That’s good, those can be dangerous.”
I try to get up, but my head feels fuzzy.
“Don’t try to get up so fast, take your time. I’m Dr. Vega. Can you tell me your full name?”
“Catherine Emerson Reed.” He asks me a few more questions then he lets me sit up.
“Good. You suffered a concussion.”
“That explains the fuzzy feeling in my head.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I was at school in the middle of a lesson when I started feeling weird. I asked one of my coworkers if she could keep an eye on my class for a few minutes. I stepped out into the hall, and everything started shifting and turning. I tried to steady myself, everything went black, and I woke up in here with you.”
“You hit your head on the floor when you fainted. That’s what gave you a concussion. You were out for a few minutes. We gave you an MRI, and everything looks fine.”
“Do I have to stay here?” I don’t like hospitals; they make me nervous. Especially given my recent experiences.
“No, you don’t have to stay. You can go home today, but you’ll need a family member or friend to take you home. They also need to check on you for the next…forty-eight hours.”
“Okay,” I say, relieved I don’t have to spend the night in this place. A nurse comes in and hands him a chart. He thanks her and closes the door.
“Your other tests came back and everything is good; you’re perfectly healthy.” He pauses and looks at the papers he’s flipping over. “I see here you’re pregnant,” he says, looking at me for confirmation. I stare back at him.
“No, I’m not,” I tell him calmly. He needs to look again.
“Yes, you are,” he says again like it’s the truth.
I have to sing it to him so he can understand. “Nooo.” I point to the papers in his hands. “That’s a mistake, you need to run that test again.”
He closes the chart, and with a charming, unassuming smile says, “I guess this pregnancy is a surprise?”
There’s that word again!
“You are now with child. Congratulations.”
What the hell!!!
One minute I’m at work, the next I wake up in the hospital pregnant.
Crazy. Unbelievable. Alone. What am I going to do?
I’m pregnant. And I’m surprisingly calm.
I gave the nurse the only name I could think of in this situation.
Not Matt—it should have been him since we’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately.
Oh, God. The nurse said she would come back with a prescription for me, and I should lie back and relax.
The door opens. I sit up, thinking it’s her.
“If you wanted to see me, all you had to do was call. I would have come, you didn’t have to go through such elaborate lengths. The hospital? It’s a bit much.”
There he is, well-dressed personified masculinity.
“Get over yourself,” I say, feeling a little awkward and self-conscious, seeing as we haven’t spoken a single word to each other since I told him I was done with his ass over two months ago.
We smile at each other for a minute before he walks fully into the room.
He drops into the bedside chair, His legs close to where mine are dangling off the bed.
We’re silent for a while, not looking at each other.
“You all right?”
“I will be.”
“You scared the shit out of me. I was in the middle of a very important, albeit boring, meeting when I got a call saying you were in here with a concussion.”
“I’m sorry you had to leave your meeting for me. I shouldn’t have called.”
“Yes, you should have, you’re more important to me than any meeting. They’ll be fine without me. I was surprised I was the person you chose to call, though.”
“I would have called Ava, but she won’t be back from Nashville for weeks. I haven’t spoken to my family in months, except for Chris. You were next on my list.”
“Glad you called me. Hell, I’m happy I even made it on the list. The last time we were together was pretty heated.”
“I remember. It was a major blow out. I can’t recall us ever having one that bad,” I say, fidgeting with my gown as he clears his throat.
“I called you. I don’t know if—”
“I got every single one of your messages. Beyond my better judgment, I listened to one or two.”
“I was wrong for a few things I said—no, I was wrong for way more than a few things. I let my anger and jealousy get the better of me, and I apologize. I know I was selfish, and I had no right, after all the shit you put up with and had to go through with me. You deserve better than what I was offering and bringing to the table for you to accept…I’m truly sorry. Please, is my apology accepted?”
“If you really mean it, I accept,” I tell him, watching what I would consider relief of some sort cross his face as he bites down on his bottom lip and nods his head.
“But make no mistake, I was angry and beyond upset with the words you chose to throw at me. Since then I’ve had some time to think and I’ve cooled down some.
” Besides, he wasn’t the only one throwing around words; I said some stuff I knew would set him off.
An unexpected pregnancy puts things in perspective.
If I wasn’t pregnant, I wouldn’t have called him, but I am, and that changes things.
My feelings for him haven’t completely changed; I can’t shut those off overnight.
We’ve always been friends, and he’s still the boy who fell in the mud with me.
Who made me fall head over heels in love, and gave me my first kiss at thirteen. It was messy and real, just like us.
“I know I can’t take any of it back, but give me time. Time to show you I can change, I can be a better man. I can be the friend that you deserve.”
Hmm, friends. I don’t know if I can just be his friend anymore, especially with this new development in our forever-complicated relationship.
“I don’t want you to change. Well…not completely.
Maybe we can work on some things that need some polishing, because the bad usually works itself out with the good stuff. ”
“I’ll work on them. I promise.”
“Good.”
“I mean it. Again, I’m glad you chose to call me. So, what happened?”