Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

I needed Nick to come back. The baby was getting bigger and bigger, and there was no more hiding it. I didn’t press him because I knew that if he wasn’t here yet, it was because he really couldn’t travel. I was certain Nick wanted to be with me, maybe even more than I wanted to be with him. Everything was weighing on me. My mother had called me twice asking me to come see her or saying she could drop by and take me out to lunch. I told her I was busy with exams and that I’d go see her when I could. But I knew my voice sounded weird to her.

“You’re hiding something, Noah, but it’s fine. We’ll talk when we see each other,” she told me one Wednesday.

Apart from Jenna and Lion, Steve was the only one who knew what was going on. I never told him, but just the way he treated me made it evident. I supposed Nick must have kept him informed.

Three weeks after Nick left, there was a big problem: I opened my closet, and there was almost nothing in it that fit me anymore. I called Nick without thinking about whether he was busy or in a meeting. He picked up on the first ring.

“You need to come back, Nicholas,” I said, trying not to cry. “I can’t hide it anymore… I’m huge! My clothes don’t fit, people are looking at me weirdly… Please come back! We have to figure out what to say to our parents!”

I was having an anxiety attack, the kind I sometimes couldn’t avoid.

“Excuse me a second,” he said to someone, then to me: “Calm down, now, Freckles.”

“I can’t calm down!” I shouted. My room was a wreck, my clothes all over the floor. Even my underwear didn’t fit right. I looked horrible, and I was so scared Nicholas would see me and think my body had turned gross after just a couple of weeks… “I can’t do this, I need to see you, I need you to hug me and tell me everything’s going to be okay, I need—”

“I just sent a ticket to your email,” he said in a voice as serene as mine was panicked.

“What?”

“I need to see you, too. I can’t travel this weekend, so I’ve sent you a ticket to come see me. I was going to call you tonight and tell you, but since you’re freaking out, it’s better to surprise you now, right?”

I exhaled in relief and fell back on the sofa.

“I really get to see you this weekend?” I asked, suddenly excited. The last traces of my anxiety vanished like a wave hitting the shore.

“Yes, my love. Do you think you can hold on for two more days without going crazy?”

I grunted. “If you were fat enough to have your own gravitational pull, you’d be in a bad mood, too, smart-ass,” I said, trying to sound mad. It clearly didn’t work.

At last, I was going to feel his arms around me and his lips against mine.

You hear that, little guy? I thought, rubbing my belly. We’re going to see Daddy!

Since I couldn’t travel to New York with only a baggy Ramones sweatshirt, I gave in and let Jenna take me out to buy maternity clothes.

I hated that word: maternity. It sounded so weird and abstract, like something a robot would say.

“Relax,” she told me, “we’ll find something that will look good on you. You’re lucky—you’re one of those girls who stays the same except for her belly. If I saw you from behind, I wouldn’t even think you were pregnant.”

“Great, Jenna. From now on that’s what I’ll tell people: please just address me from behind.”

I was in a pissy mood, but Jenna handled it fine; she even seemed to be amused. Somehow, that only made the stress worse.

For some reason, maternity clothes cost three times as much as normal ones, and that made me freak out again because I could only afford them with Nick’s card. I still hadn’t used it yet, and it seemed stupid to pull it out just for some stupid rags.

I walked to where the athletic gear was and bought a couple of pairs of leggings and three hoodies. Meanwhile, Jenna was busy mixing and matching shirts and pants until she found three combos that worked, plus a close-fitting gray dress.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, horrified. “The idea is to hide it, not show it to the whole world.”

Scowling, Jenna said, “Stop hiding my godson, okay!”

For some reason I couldn’t quite pin down, her words bothered me. I felt the baby kicking. I knew when he was asleep now and when he was awake. I could also tell if I’d had sugar because his little legs would start dancing around, as if he loved it… I hated not having Nick there to feel those first few kicks; it had been amazing, and that was another reason I needed him back. He was missing so much.

No, I didn’t want to hide it…at least, not anymore.

On Friday, I caught my flight from LA to New York. Nick had gotten me a first-class ticket. I had no idea how thankful I’d be. If I had to puke, it was better to do it in a bathroom only a few passengers had access to. Because I didn’t have morning sickness anymore: I had morning, noon, and night sickness. Add that to the list of surprises a high-risk pregnancy had in store for me. Steve sat beside me on the way. A man of few words, he spent the whole time reading a biography of Pablo Escobar. I didn’t comment on it, but it did make me chuckle.

It took five and a half hours to get to New York, and I slept almost the entire time. We got in around nine p.m. I’d listened to Jenna and dressed better than usual, in the dress she’d picked out, plus a black coat and my favorite Adidas. I was comfortable, and my belly was sticking out for all the world to see, like, Here I am!

People looked at me differently. There’s a strange energy that surrounds you when you’re pregnant; people are at once excited, nervous, and admiring. This was my first time strolling around like a real, live pregnant person, and honestly, I enjoyed it.

Nick would be waiting for me at the airport, and we would go straight to his apartment for dinner.

I was so nervous, so excited to see him… We had told each other so much since he left, including all the things I’d been too scared to say in person, and I was dying to feel myself a part of him, a part of his life, again.

I hadn’t checked a bag, so as soon as we got off the plane, we went straight to arrivals. Steve carried my little suitcase. I could have done it myself, but he’d insisted, and finally I’d given in. I kept walking faster and faster… I wanted to see Nick, wanted to just get there, wanted to feel whole again.

It seemed to take forever. Then, at last, we walked through the doors, and I saw him: there he was, a bouquet of red roses in hand, waiting for me. He was wearing jeans and a sea-blue V-neck sweater. It wasn’t just the roses that made him easy to pick out: it was his mussed hair and his blue eyes shining like two lamps on a beautiful summer’s evening.

We smiled as if someone had just injected liquid happiness into our veins. My heart swelled until I thought it wouldn’t fit in my chest anymore.

And then…as if in a horror movie…it happened.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a traumatic experience yourself, something that marks you forever. Something that happens in slow motion right before your eyes with your brain registering all those tiny details you’d pay to forget.

I saw everything…and I still remember every godforsaken detail of the fifteen seconds that passed, fifteen seconds when I was certain I would die.

I remember the scream getting caught in my throat. I remember my legs were paralyzed, and I couldn’t even take off running.

The first shot exploded and burst the bubble of our happiness. I stopped. Nick fell to the ground. The bullet had struck him in the back.

I can still see the look of surprise on his face as he looked down and saw the blood spreading on his clothes and pooling at his feet. There was pain on his face, and I thought my heart would give out.

Then it all happened quickly. Someone hit me from behind, and I fell. For a moment, the airport racket, the people walking past, all that seemed to stop, leaving a void in which the sound of that pistol reverberated—but then it started again.

“Don’t move, Noah!” Steve shouted, waking me from my lethargy, my state of shock.

I saw four police officers tackle a man as people ran back and forth, horrified. My eyes were glued to the man I loved, who was on the floor like me, his eyes open, life draining out of him.

“Nicholas!”