Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

I don’t know how to describe the moments after the shots were fired, but I can easily say they were the worst ones of my life. They’re blurry in my mind, but at the same time as clear as if they were projected in HD.

From what I heard later, the ambulance didn’t take long to arrive. But to me it seemed like hours, days, while I was keeping pressure on a wound in Nick’s ribs. Steve was doing the same where a bullet had struck his arm. There was a pool of blood around him. I kept thinking about how fast the body makes blood and whether it could do so fast enough to replace all the blood he was losing.

I didn’t faint. I think God helped me hold it together, at least until the paramedics arrived to deal with the situation. I stood there staring at the ambulance after its arrival, my hands hanging at my sides, my mind blank. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to ask them if I could go along. Nick left on his own, on the verge of death, and all I could do was watch.

I remember that when I could no longer hear the ambulance, I looked down, saw the bloodstains on my hands, and buckled. I sobbed until I could hardly breathe, hiccupped, felt a pair of hands grab me as I started to plunge to the floor.

“Take a deep breath, Noah, please,” Steve said, holding me up. He carried me away from all the horrified onlookers who were examining the scene as if it were something out of a terrible episode of CSI.

We grabbed a taxi and took off for the hospital. The more time passed, the worse I felt.

“Why did he go alone? How come you didn’t go with him? How come we both didn’t?”

“They wouldn’t let us, Noah,” Steve said, pulling his phone out and writing rapid-fire messages.

The nearest hospital from the airport was just a few miles away, but it took forever to get out of the airport. We managed to make it in twenty minutes, and when we arrived, I took off running. All I could think about was finding someone who could tell me Nicholas was okay. I wanted to see him, I needed to see him, I was dying inside remembering him lying there bleeding; it was all too much for me. But with each step, I started seeing more and more black spots, and eventually Steve took my hand and sat me down. Someone brought me water.

A doctor came a few moments later and took my pulse.

“Miss, I’d like you to calm down,” she said, looking at her watch. “Ross, call emergency and check on that guy.”

I looked at this Ross imploringly.

I heard him talking to someone about Nick, and a horrible pain clawed at my stomach. “What’s happening?”

The doctor turned to me, worried. “You’re having contractions. You need to calm down; the stress is making it worse.”

Before I could say anything, Ross came back over.

“Nicholas Leister is in surgery. He has two bullet wounds. He’s in critical but stable condition. They’re going to operate on his lung and his left arm.”

“Oh my God!” I shouted, covering my mouth. “What are they going to do to him? What does critical but stable mean? Call back and get more details!”

The doctor looked up to ask me if Nick and I were married.

“What? No. What does it matter?”

Ross answered for her: “We can’t give you any more information then, Miss Morgan. Only immediate family can—”

“He’s the father of my son!” I shouted desperately.

It didn’t matter; they wouldn’t tell me anything else. Steve called William and my mother, and they told him they were headed straight to the airport to catch the first flight out.

I had to stay where I was, without news, able to do nothing but pray.

An hour later—the longest hour of my life—the contractions went away, and everything in my body seemed to go back to normal.

My mother called me. She and William were both hysterical. Nick’s father had talked to one of the doctors. I found out thanks to them that Nick had a collapsed lung and major soft tissue damage in his left arm. His condition was dicey, and he’d needed transfusions to avoid going into shock.

I listened to what they had to say, hung up, and sat there motionless.

Nick wouldn’t die… He couldn’t. We had a life to live together; we needed to finish what we’d started. After all we’d gotten through together, he couldn’t just leave me like that.

The event was soon all over the news. Steve tried to turn off the TV, but I told him to leave it. The would-be assassin’s name was Dawson J. Lincoln, he was forty-five years old, and he was a former employee of Leister Enterprises. He’d lost his job, hadn’t found another one, and had decided to take his frustrations out on his former boss.

“Nicholas Leister is undergoing emergency surgery for two gunshot wounds. His attacker is in custody in New York. Initial reports indicate the attack was premeditated, as the aggressor knew the exact time and place he could find Leister before making an attempt on his life. In recent months, the young lawyer and heir to one of the most renowned firms in the country had received severe criticism in the press for laying off hundreds of workers in the past year. The two companies he closed were on the verge of bankruptcy…”

I stopped listening when they started covering the attacker. Once again, they were making Nicholas look like trash. Well, I wasn’t going to listen. Someone had tried to kill him! Nick! I rubbed my face. I needed him to be okay. I needed to talk to the doctor.

I remained in the waiting room for three hours, only getting up for water or to go to the bathroom. I hated that place; there were people crying all around, waiting, like us, to hear something about their loved ones. The stink of hospitals had always made me sick, and now it was worse than ever.

The only thing noteworthy about those three hours was the appearance of two men, tall and strong like Steve. They conferred with Steve for a few minutes, looking stern as they stood by the door to the waiting room. I didn’t pay them much attention, but when two surgeons passed by them and came over to me, I shot out of my chair.

“Are you a family member of Nicholas Leister?” one of them asked.

“I’m his girlfriend,” I said, controlling the quivers in my voice as best I could.

The second surgeon, the one with the short curly hair, decided to speak, apparently not caring about hospital regulations. “He’s stable. I can tell you that much. The next few hours are critical. He lost a lot of blood, and there was significant internal damage where the bullet pierced his lung.”

I nodded, biting my lip and trying to hold it together. “Will he be okay?” I asked.

“He’s young and strong, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on him.”

That wasn’t an answer.

“Can I see him?” I pleaded.

They both shook their heads regretfully.

“Only close family members. I’m sorry.”

Steve put an arm around my shoulders. “He’s going to get better, Noah,” he whispered as I held on to his shirt, unable to keep myself from crying any longer.

My phone rang. I wiped away my tears and picked up. It was my mother. One of William’s friends had lent them his private jet. They’d be in New York in about five hours. I felt so relieved to know my family would soon be with me, and William would move mountains to make sure Nick was okay. But then it occurred to me… If they came, if they saw me…

It was time to spill everything…and, just as I’d feared, I would have to do it on my own.

Since I refused to leave the hospital, Steve had someone bring me my suitcase and something to eat. I wasn’t hungry, but I forced down a bowl of soup to keep from having to listen to him. Then I went to the bathroom and changed clothes, picking the baggiest outfit possible to spare my mother a heart attack as soon as she saw me. Of course, I was going to tell her, but I needed to wait till the time was right. I didn’t want to distract anyone from the thing that was really important just then: Nick.

So, six hours later, six hours of trying and failing to sleep while my neck, stomach, and back ached as if I’d been beaten, I saw my mother and William walk through the doors of the waiting room.

I ran into my mother’s arms. I needed her more than I had ever needed her before. She pulled me in close and stroked my hair with her long fingers. As far as I could tell, she didn’t notice my belly. She must have been too afraid to pay attention to anything but what was most urgent.

I told them what had happened, and Will went to see the doctors. They wouldn’t let him through, but they did tell him there would be visiting hours in the morning. Nick’s condition hadn’t changed. Stable—not better, not worse—but the doctors seemed to think that was reason for hope.

We didn’t have much time to talk before two cops came in and took a statement from me and Steve. I told them everything I’d seen. Reciting it made the terror return. I would never forget the echo of those two shots. Never.

When visiting hours came, they would only let one person go in, and we decided it should be Will. It was hard to resist the urge to kick down the doors to the ICU and race in, shouting about the injustice of being kept away from him, but I stuffed all that down. I needed to be calm if I wanted to make it through all this, calm if I didn’t want my baby to get hurt… My baby…

I looked at my mother, who was sitting next to me, worried, her fingers interlaced with mine.

My mother… We’d been through tough times; things between us had gotten too mixed up. What had happened to how close we’d been in Canada? When had I stopped trusting her, stopped telling her things?

I took a deep breath and turned to her.

“Mom,” I said, swallowing, “there’s something I need to tell you…”

My mother looked at me with simultaneous worry and indulgence. “I know what you’re going to tell me, Noah,” she said, squeezing my fingers. “And I think it’s good, honey. It’s good that you’re back with Nicholas. I’m even happy about it, okay?”

Her words surprised me. I was also relieved to see she had no idea about the pregnancy.

“I should never have opposed your relationship… Seeing you two apart, seeing what a wreck you’ve both been this last year, has been killing me inside. If Nick’s the one who makes you happy, I’m not going to get in the middle of it. That’s all I want, Noah, to see you happy.”

I nodded in silence with moist eyes and tried to come up with the words to confess to her I was six months pregnant. Pregnant by a boy she had never wanted for me until just then—a boy who was her stepson.

How did I tell her? How do you tell a mother that in three months she’s going to be a grandmother? I could feel Steve’s stare on me, and he seemed to be telling me to be brave and spit it out.

Shit…

“Mom,” I said, taking advantage of Will’s absence, “I need to tell you something else. Something no one planned for, but that just happened…”

I mean…it didn’t just happen, but I wasn’t about to go into details.

My mother looked at me with worry. She didn’t seem to know where I was going. My mouth seemed to freeze, and I put her hand on my belly. Her eyes opened like saucers, and she pulled her hand away, scared.

“Noah…no. Tell me you’re not…”

It was time for the truth.

“Pregnant?” I finished the phrase for her in a near whisper.

She shook her head, then looked me over, her eyes finally resting on my belly, well hidden in a gigantic sweatshirt.

“How far…?”

I cleared my throat and swallowed. “Six months. But I only found out two and a half months ago… I didn’t want to hide it from you, Mom, but I was shocked, just like you. I needed time to admit it to myself, time to tell Nick, time to think about what I was going to do with my life…”

“Nicholas knows?”

The tone was a new one, one I’d never heard her use before, the tone, I guess, all mothers use when their daughters waylay them with such an unexpected secret.

“Yeah, he knows.”

Mom shook her head. Scared as I had been to tell her, I felt ready to deal with her reaction. Nicholas was fighting for his life, and the baby was the only thing keeping me from falling apart. It was all I had of him right now, a part of him, a part of us, and for now and forevermore, that baby would be the most important thing for both of us, our port in the storm, our unbreakable connection.

I took my mother’s hand and placed it on my belly again.

Her eyes filled with tears, but I knew her well enough to know everything that was passing through her head: how young I was, how hard it would all be, how many times she’d told me it was better to wait, prepare myself, grow, get an education…

But life was like that sometimes, unpredictable. You couldn’t control what came, what would be there when you rounded the corner. You couldn’t know whether you were on the right path. Fate had brought me here, and all I could do was give it my best… And my mother would have to do the same.

“It’s a boy,” I finally said.

The image of the baby in my arms appeared in my head, with his chubby little cheeks and his precious eyes… My baby, who might not even meet his father.

My mother shook her head, unable to believe it.

“If Nick doesn’t make it through this, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I confessed, deathly afraid. My mother hugged me; we cried, we cried for ages, I don’t know for how long, and we talked, and the things we said were beautiful. She did chew me out for being irresponsible and for not telling her sooner. Then, eventually, William came, and we told him. The shock almost killed him. Never before had I seen him so worried, so scared, so utterly helpless.

Everyone loves their children in a different way, and for Will, Nick would always be a little black-haired boy with blue eyes stuffing frogs into his pockets.

Nick had to get better…not just for me and the baby, but for all of us. No one would get over it if he left us. No one.