Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

Despite the intensity of our discussion and all the emotions I was feeling, I slept better than I had in months. I slept like a log, or maybe I should say like a baby, but waking up wasn’t as pleasant as those hours I had spent in dreams.

A cramp shot through my whole body, and cold sweat covered my neck and back. I opened my eyes just as nausea made me start retching, and I had to hurry to the bathroom to throw up what little I still had in my stomach from the night before.

God.

I stayed there kneeling for a long time in front of the toilet, my forehead sticky, my legs trembling. When nothing more came up, I felt strong enough to get in the shower and try to look past that first bout of morning sickness.

Wasn’t that supposed to happen when you first got pregnant?

Everything with my baby was so different from what I’d read or thought. I get it, every woman is her own world, but still… I thought I’d managed to avoid it.

I had to go to class that day; I no longer had a doctor’s note, and I needed to get back to work, too. Now that midterms were over, I could focus on making some money. When I left LRB, Simon had offered to help me get a job at his former company, and I told him I’d think it over. Now that I didn’t have to be on bed rest and I could move around again, I’d called him and told him I could start Monday—a.k.a., the same day. I was terrified to admit to him that I was pregnant, but I also wasn’t going to hide it.

I threw on a skirt and a black sweater. I didn’t want to have to admit my jeans no longer fit. I went outside, ferociously hungry. My nausea was gone, and all I wanted was to stuff myself with every food that began with the letter t: tacos, tortilla chips, tamales, and tiramisu to finish… These thoughts put me in such a trance that I hardly noticed who was waiting for me leaned back against a black Mercedes.

“Good morning, Freckles,” Nick said, walking toward me. Before I had quite grasped that he was there, he gave me a peck on the lips. “You want to do breakfast?”

I nodded passively, and ten minutes later, we were sitting in a fancy brunch spot.

“How are you?” he asked as I tore through a plate of pancakes with maple syrup and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

“After vomiting up an organ? Great, I guess.”

“You were throwing up? Noah, why didn’t you call me?” I couldn’t tell if it was anger or worry speaking.

“Trust me…you didn’t want to be there. Anyway, I’d be willing to bet it’ll happen often from now on, and I can’t call you every time something as common as morning sickness happens, Nick. Just relax.”

He didn’t seem especially convinced by my response, but he did enjoy watching me stuff myself. “Are you going to work after class?”

I nodded as I finished my meal. Then I looked up at him. God, he was handsome today! How had I not noticed before? Another type of hunger suddenly scaled my list of priorities. First pancakes, then Nick… I should be ashamed of myself!

“There’s nothing I could do to convince you to come work for me again, is there?”

I dropped my guard and looked him in the eye. “I swore to myself I wouldn’t mix you and work, Nicholas.”

He nodded, thinking, and I was surprised to see he didn’t get mad; he just calmly accepted what I was saying. “How would you feel about me picking you up?”

I hesitated for a second. “You don’t have to be my babysitter, Nick. I can take the car and stuff like that.”

He seemed to ignored that. “I want to.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him, so I said, “Sure, pick me up at seven.”

When he dropped me off at school, he tried to kiss me on the lips, but reflexively, I turned and let his lips land on my cheek. I got out before he could say anything. It was still hard for me to get over what had happened between us, and I wanted to take it slow. If there was one thing I knew, it was that Nicholas’s kisses could be addictive…and I needed to spend some time in rehab.

It was weird, going back to my routine. Nobody really treated me differently, and soon I was back to doing things as if nothing had changed. I was living a white lie. I chatted with my classmates, told my professors I’d been sick, and when I was at work, I hardly even remembered I was pregnant. The office was small, and my job there was basically the same as at LRB. Plus, the people there were great.

I was happy to feel like myself again: just plain Noah, not a chocolate egg with a little toy inside.

When I walked out, I was tired; I often was now that I wasn’t spending all day in bed. I had about half as much energy as before, and when I saw Nick standing there waiting for me, I was grateful not to have to do the driving myself.

“How was your first day back?” he asked once we’d gotten inside.

“Very stimulating. No one noticed anything.” I was probably a little too happy about that. I ignored Nick’s nonplussed reaction.

It got quiet, and a few minutes later, Nick said something that made me instantly tense.

“I’m leaving New York. My apartment’s on the market. I’m going to move back here full-time and live with you.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous. Nick’s whole life was in New York: his job, his future…

“Aren’t you happy about it?” he asked, wounded, reaching out to touch me.

But I twisted away and told him, “You shouldn’t make a decision like that so fast. You think everything between us is resolved, but you and I destroyed each other before. What makes you think we’re ready to start from zero now?”

“We’re going to have a child, Noah.”

“That’s not a reason to abandon your old life. You’re forcing things, and that’s not the resolution I want.”

He shook his head and cursed. “I’m ready to start over. I know it’s going to work… I don’t know what the hell you want from me. I thought you’d be happy. I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do.”

“Exactly, that’s exactly it: you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, not what you want to do.”

“I want to be with you,” he replied, furious.

I shook my head. We had arrived at my apartment. “Well, I’m not sure that’s true. What I think is you’re doing what you believe is right.”

I got out and walked toward the door, but Nicholas shouted at me to stop.

“Why do you have to make things complicated? We’re having a child, we have a reason to be together, and instead of accepting it, you—”

I cut him off. “I begged you to come back to me, and you said no. I’m glad to know our baby is going to have both of us, and I’m sure you’ll be the best father in the world, but for now, that’s all you’re going to be, Nicholas.”

“You know perfectly well that I can’t accept that.”

Looking him in the eyes, I knew what he was saying was true. But he had never been fully happy with me. We had hurt each other—a lot. I didn’t want to start a toxic relationship again based around the sole fact that we were going to be parents.

“I asked you for time, I told you I wanted to go slowly, I want to focus on the child… Our thing can wait; I don’t want you rushing into decisions you might regret for the rest of your life.”

“Goddammit, Noah, why won’t you believe me when I tell you I want to be with you again?”

“Because you still haven’t told me you love me!” I shouted.

A pause followed. Nick stared at me, full of sorrow and rage. He hadn’t forgiven me. Not yet. And he knew it.

“The last time I told you I loved you, you broke my heart. I swore I’d never say those words again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you and the baby.”

I held back my tears as best I could. “That’s not how it works, Nick. Go back to your job, go back to New York, because the bubble we’ve been living in these past few days just popped.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I walked inside. He didn’t follow me.

It hurt, pushing Nick away from me like that, but I knew I’d been right to do so. He needed to figure out what he really felt for me, and I needed to think about whether getting back with him was the best for both of us.

I didn’t want it to end, I really didn’t; I didn’t want to cause problems, but for Nicholas, it was all or nothing, and I couldn’t just wipe the slate clean and start over. I didn’t feel secure, especially if he wasn’t ready to love me. Attraction was one thing, and so was sex, but we’d never had problems with either of those. The hard thing was we didn’t know how to love each other, we didn’t know how to respect each other, and we couldn’t start over if Nicholas remained afraid of opening his heart to me.

Despite our argument, the next day he was there in front of my apartment building, waiting for me. He had two cardboard cups in his hands and a stern look on his face. I walked down the steps and over to him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied, grabbing the cup he handed to me.

Hot chocolate… My child was going to be a sugar junkie.

“I’m leaving in three hours. I came to say goodbye.”

I knew I’d told him to go, but his words pierced me like bullets. I looked down to hide the sadness in my eyes, but he immediately grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him.

“I’m doing this for you,” he said, his thumb stroking my cheek. “If there’s one thing I learned during our separation and all the pain we went through, it’s that I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to or aren’t ready for.”

I bit my lip.

“So I’m going. I’ll call you every day. We can start off talking, we’ll make plans, you can tell me your worries and I’ll tell you mine, we’ll talk about how we’ll raise the kid, we’ll think about names, we’ll talk about the future. Because I love you, Noah. I love you, and I’m going to love you for the rest of my life.”

My heart stopped. I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“If I didn’t say it before, it’s because I don’t think you can express love with words. I thought I had to show you with my actions, with everything I was willing to do, and deep in your heart, you do know I love you, but you’re deathly afraid of letting me in. And I get that. That’s why I’m going. I’ll be here for your doctor’s appointments and anything else you need. We’ll take it easy the next few months, but Noah, I am going to be a part of that baby’s life. I’m headed back to New York to put things in order, but my next step will be moving back to Los Angeles.”

I was speechless.

Nick grabbed my cup and put it next to his on the hood. Then he embraced me and pulled me in tightly. I could feel his lips on the crown of my head and the beating of his heart.

“But I’m going to need something before I go… Two things, actually.”

I waited for him to tell me. He turned and looked for something in his briefcase. When he turned back, he had a credit card in his right hand. He passed it to me. It was an AmEx Black Card.

“Use it,” he said.

I didn’t even touch it. “No.”

“It’s on my account—just use it for anything you need. It’s not a suggestion, Noah. I’m not going to give in on this.”

I crossed my arms, almost wanting to vomit. “I told you I don’t want to be a kept woman, Nick.”

“Why are you so damned hardheaded? What if the tables were turned? What if you were the one with all the money and I had to give birth to our child? Wouldn’t you want to give me everything, Noah?”

“Yes, of course I would.”

“Let’s do this,” he said. “If you don’t want to use the card for you, fine, but use it for the baby, okay? Anything you need for him, put it on the card. And if you want to take care of your own things, fine.”

I could do that, right…? After all, Nick was the father. I wasn’t going to deprive my child of the benefits of being born to a dad who could get an AmEx Black at just twenty-four years old, was I? I accepted, if reluctantly, and he seemed to relax.

“What’s the other thing?”

“I want Steve to stay here with you while I’m gone.”

“What?! No! I don’t need a babysitter, Nicholas! I don’t want Steve following me around all day. It’s ridiculous!”

“He’s a bodyguard, babe. His job is to follow people around.”

That was just insulting. “Why? Why the hell do you want me to have a bodyguard?”

With a stern expression, Nick explained, “First, because it will keep me from going insane while I’m in New York. Second, because you’re pregnant and alone, and if anything happened to you, I could never forgive myself.”

I shook my head, but I also knew there was nothing I could say to change his mind. “Fine,” I said, giving in.

I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face.

“Noah, leaving you here is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

I didn’t want him to go either, but we needed to do this right; we couldn’t screw things up again, not with everything that was at stake.

That week, everything seemed to go back to normal. I went to class; I kept hiding my pregnancy. Every day, Nick sent me a bouquet of flowers and had my breakfast delivered. I ended up making friends with the delivery guy. There was always enough food for a horse: coffee, tea, muffins, croissants, pancakes, chocolate donuts, eggs, toast…everything hot and ready to eat.

“You’re crazy, you know that, right?” I told him the seventh day after he’d left. We talked every day, twice a day, sometimes more. Anytime he had a free moment, he’d call me, and I did the same during my breaks, or at least tried to. It was almost better just to wait because he obviously had a harder time getting away than I did.

During one call, I had to hold my phone between my shoulder and ear while I filled one of my last empty vases to put the enormous bouquet of blue roses he’d sent me inside.

He was justifying the daily deliveries. “It’s a good way to be sure you’re eating,” he said. I could hear him typing on the other line.

I rolled my eyes. My eating enough wasn’t going to be a problem. I was hungry all the time, and not just regular hungry: I was craving weird things, like buttered bread and bananas or spaghetti and peanut butter. Either I was losing my mind or my sense of taste or both… I don’t know, but the weirdest things suddenly felt like delicacies to me.

“How were your spicy oranges?” he asked, amused.

“Interesting. I’ll make you the recipe one day,” I replied, sitting down and kicking my legs up on the table. I sighed wearily and stroked my belly distractedly.

He told me he was wrapping everything up to make the move to LA as soon as he could but that it was taking longer than he’d imagined. He needed to hire someone to replace him, a new set of eyes and ears up there, and he hadn’t found anyone he trusted.

I told him how classes were going. Summer break was coming up fast, and we were all focusing on our papers and getting ready for our finals in a couple of weeks. I was due in August, so I’d have at least a few weeks to deal with Mini-Me’s arrival before figuring out what to do about work and school.

It made me sad to think I might need to drop out, but after thinking it over, it seemed like the best thing.

“You don’t have to, Noah,” Nick replied when I told him. “There are tons of women who study and have kids, there are day cares, and I’ll be there to help you…”

“I don’t want my son being raised by babysitters. I don’t want to screw this up. I’m afraid if I stay in school and try to raise our child, I’ll end up not doing a good job at either. And you barely have time to call me; you’re not going to be able to stay home and take care of a baby.”

“My baby,” he said, and I grinned. “And you’re forgetting one small detail: I’m the boss. I can do whatever I want.”

“Yeah?” I answered sarcastically. “Then tell me something: Can you be here for my next gyno visit?”

It was silent on the other line.

“I’m not judging you. I get it, you’re going to have to work and I’m going to have to take care of the kid… We’ll see what I do about school. Maybe I can do online classes…”

I didn’t love that idea—I liked going to class—but you can’t have everything, and I just couldn’t see myself leaving my child with someone else.

“Noah, this is temporary,” he said, stopping my head from spinning. “Things are crazy right now, but I’m putting steps in place so I can be there for you one hundred percent.”

We hadn’t talked about us as a couple, but in all our conversations, we always included the other person in our plans. I liked that, but I was scared that what we were building could fall apart. That was why I didn’t press him when he told me he couldn’t come back just yet.

What I didn’t expect was to see him earlier, on the news at four. When I heard his name on the TV, I turned the volume up and listened with worry.

“Former employees of Leister Enterprises are picketing in front of the new LRB headquarters and asking for their jobs back.”

The reporter was someone I’d seen before on the BBC. Behind her was the entrance to the building where I’d once worked, surrounded by workers carrying signs. The police had cordoned the area off, but no one looked like they were going anywhere.

“Just over a year ago, the son of prominent lawyer William Leister inherited the empire Andrew James Leister had built through many years of struggle, making Leister Enterprises one of the most prosperous and highly regarded companies in the United States. There were many who thought it rash to cede all that responsibility to a young man who had never run a business before.”

I turned the volume up, staring indignantly at the screen.

“Leister’s first action as CEO was to shut down two large companies his grandfather had begun, letting more than five hundred employees go as a part of an ambitious restructuring plan that would see him opening a new subsidiary. It remains to be seen whether this gamble will prove successful or will be the first major failure in the Leister saga. Today, his former employees have gathered at the doors to LRB demanding their old jobs back…”

This was ridiculous. I knew Nicholas was working just then, but I needed to talk to him. He picked up on the third ring.

“Are you okay?” he said, immediately worried.

“Yeah, I’m great, but I’m guessing you’re not… You’re on the news… What happened? Were you planning on ever telling me, Nicholas?” I couldn’t believe he was having problems and hadn’t even bothered mentioning it.

“You don’t need to worry about it.”

I laughed sourly. “I don’t have to worry? They’re raking you over the coals!”

“That’s what the press does. They take a few rumors and lies and make it a breaking story.”

“But…what about the employees you let go and what they’re saying about LRB?”

I felt personally wounded. I didn’t like hearing bad things about Nick; it was no different than if they were saying the same things about me.

Nick sighed. “I had to let those people go. Both those companies were headed for bankruptcy within the next four years. They were basically unprofitable, and they were being run into the ground. Closing them now meant making enough out of the liquidation to start a new company and hire everyone back. But things like that take time!”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I know you didn’t do it for fun.”

“In this business you have to make tough decisions sometimes. Decisions you might even fucking hate.”

“Nicholas, you’re a pro. These people have no fucking idea.”

He paused for a moment, then said, “Leister Enterprises is making record profits. My idea is to open another branch of LRB in a year. That will allow us to hire back something like seventy percent of the people we let go.”

I knew Nicholas would never let people go without having a backup plan. Those people were criticizing him at the very moment when he was working to take care of them.

“So what’s going to happen now?” I asked, worried he’d have to stay in New York longer than we’d imagined.

“Nothing. Let my lawyers do their job. I told you, you don’t need to worry about this.”

“Okay…”

We had more conversations like this one over the next three weeks as things got more and more complicated. It turned out that being separated and talking every day was even harder than it had been to go a year without talking to each other. I needed him with me, and as the baby grew, so did my urge to beg him to come back.

“I need to touch you, Noah,” he confessed to me one night. “So much time has passed that I don’t remember what it feels like to be inside you.”

“Nicholas…”

“I shouldn’t have left, I should have been more selfish, I should have selfishly made love to you every goddamned morning in that tiny apartment you’re so proud of.”

I smiled at that small loss of control and felt the heat provoked by his words spreading through me. “I hope nobody heard you say that.”

“I’m at my apartment, in my bed, in the same bed where you drove me crazy taking off all your clothes, remember?”

I closed my eyes. Of course I remembered. Nicholas between my legs, kissing me, licking me, making me his. That hadn’t been right. We’d caused each other so much pain then, and yet I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything…

“Come back, Nick,” I said, provoking a longer-than-comfortable silence.

“What?”

I smiled at the ceiling, nervous, the phone starting to make my ear hot. “Come back to me.”

“Are you serious?”

“I want to try. For real. I want you with me every day. I want to kiss you, I want you to hold me, Nicholas. I want you back here, and so does Mini-Me.”

He laughed. “I’ll catch the first flight I can, and I’ll do all the things to you that are passing through your head right now.”

I covered my mouth with one hand, as though my instincts told me to hide my joy and embarrassment even when nobody was there. It was true: I had naughty thoughts passing through my head…

“Speaking of Mini-Me…I’ve been thinking about a name.”

“What? For real?” That caught me totally by surprise. He’d already thought of a name? Mini-Me, I mean Mini-Nick, is going to have a first and last name?

I touched my belly without thinking.

“Yeah. I’ll tell you when I see you. But if you don’t like it, we can always pick another. You’ve probably already got others in mind…”

My cheeks felt hot. The truth was it hadn’t even crossed my mind.

We said goodbye and I love you and promised we’d see each other again soon. Meeting again would be special, because at last, we were on the same level… I was dying to kiss him, to let him do everything he wanted to me, give me all he wanted to give. I could see the future, and it was so beautiful.

I was finally ready to start from zero.