Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

Dozens of journalists were gathered outside the hospital, and Steve refused to let me get out where they could see me. No one had any idea what information the press had about me, but exposing myself to them in my current state was the last thing any of us wanted to do just then.

Steve called the director of the hospital to get him to let us in through the back door, which was reserved for ambulances. When I finally reached Nick’s room, an hour had passed since he supposedly woke up.

I entered with my heart in my throat, and when I saw him open his eyes for me, smiling at me from the bed, wounded but with happiness in his sky-blue eyes, only then did I feel I could finally breathe.

“Where’d you run off to, Freckles?” he asked, opening the one arm he could move, and I wanted to get under it, squeeze him tight, and never let him go.

And that’s pretty much what I did.

I buried my face in his neck and let him hold me as much as he could. When I felt him pulling back, I climbed up into the bed and stayed there silently, listening to the beating of his heart.

I couldn’t speak: the words were caught in my throat.

Nick didn’t say anything either. We knew the terror we’d both felt. I had learned firsthand what it would mean to lose him, to really lose him, while he had lost his mobility, his strength, and very nearly his life.

I was scared to open my mouth, scared to put into words what could have happened.

They didn’t give me much time with him, and strange as it sounds, I felt better when I left. The pressure in my chest when I saw him vanished. I knew it was crazy, I knew Nick was suffering more than I was, more than anyone, however much he tried to pretend he was able to deal with the pain like it was nothing.

The next three days, I spent as little time with him as I could. I kept finding excuses to be busy. I started organizing his return to LA on the same private plane that had brought our parents out there. I found a nurse who could travel with us once the doctors said Nick would be discharged soon, and I cleaned his apartment so it would be ready for him to sell or go back to.

I would go in to see him when I knew he was asleep, and when he opened his eyes and pulled me into him without saying anything, I knew he was doing it for me. He didn’t understand, but since this was what I needed, he gave it to me without asking questions.

I… Once again, I became that girl whose head operated contrary to everyone else in the world. It was well known that traumatic experiences threw me into a mental fog it was difficult to emerge from, but why the hell couldn’t I just let it go? Just be myself, the person Nick needed in those moments?

But I just wasn’t, and Nick didn’t complain. We didn’t even talk about the baby. The subject only came up once.

“Steve told me you had contractions on the day of the accident…” he said on one of the few occasions when I got close enough to let him kiss me on the neck while his hand caressed my belly tenderly. I got a knot in my throat.

I didn’t respond because I couldn’t stop thinking about that word, accident. It hadn’t just been an accident, had it? The idea of this being an accident made it sound like an act of fate, a bad throw of the dice that had led to an outcome nobody wanted. Why would he say this had been an accident when the truth was that someone had tried to kill him?

“Noah, where are you?” he whispered in my ear. “Come back from wherever you’ve gone off to, because I’m dying to see you.”

I didn’t understand his question, and I was happy when the nurses interrupted us and told me I needed to leave.

I didn’t want to be with him, I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t understand why. As soon as I walked into that room, I wanted to break down. I felt cornered, trapped, and that feeling only went away when I left.

I had everything perfectly organized on the day we flew out. Our parents were already back in LA, and Nick was getting better, too. He’d have to see a physiotherapist who could help him recover the movement in his wounded arm. They’d said it would be a long process, but he should be thankful even to be alive. Not everyone in similar situations was so lucky.

I’d never been on a private plane. Nor was I really excited to do so. Flying in general was unpleasant for me. Doing it on a tiny plane made matters worse.

They rolled Nick on in a wheelchair and settled him into the beige leather seat in front of me and next to a huge window of a kind I’d never seen on a regular plane. The only passenger besides us was Judith, the nurse.

During the flight, Nick seemed less energetic than usual. The stress of traveling and getting discharged from the hospital had probably worn him out.

He fell asleep, and I was glad because it meant I didn’t have to talk to him or explain whatever the hell was going on with me, but when I went to the restroom, I found him with his eyes open, staring at me on my return.

I stopped, realizing Judith was gone.

“I told her she could go sleep for a few hours in the cabin in the back,” Nick said, knowing what was going through my head.

He was finally clean-shaven again, his hair was washed, his old hairstyle back. He was wearing a dark T-shirt and faded jeans. He had bags under his eyes, and each of his handsome features reflected tiredness.

This trip could have been so different… We could have been taking off with a coffin instead of Nick, organizing a funeral instead of a move…

I bit my lip until it hurt.

“Noah, come here,” Nick asked, holding out a hand with a look of combined worry, uncertainty, and anguish.

“I almost lost you, Nick.”

“I know…but I’m here, Noah,” he said, leaning forward, wanting to reach me, but unable to stand.

I started crying where I stood. I’d been holding back the tears for two weeks now, trying to be strong for him, for me, for the baby…but I wasn’t strong anymore; I was the very opposite: weak, or something worse than weak…

“Noah…” Grief stifled his voice, and he reached toward me while I cried, feeling paralyzed.

“You can’t die,” I said, wiping away my tears clumsily. “Do you hear me?!” I was suddenly furious with myself, with the world… What was happening?

Nick took a breath and nodded. But I still had more to say.

“You promised me you wouldn’t leave my side, you swore that nothing would separate us! And you almost left me again!”

Nick didn’t respond. But his eyes were moist now.

“We were going to fix things! We were going to raise this child together!” The sobs began choking me.

“Noah…”

“What would I have done if you’d died, Nicholas?!” I shrieked, disconsolate. I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t take it…

I imagined getting up in the morning knowing Nicholas wasn’t there…not being able to kiss him, hug him, feel his skin against mine, get lost in his eyes—not knowing ever again what it was to feel safe… I opened my eyes a moment later, wiping the tears from my face and looking up at him.

A tear rolled down his cheek, and I felt as if I were having a spasm, an electric shock that passed through my whole body. I came close to him and let him wrap his arms around me. I sat on his lap, but carefully, and cried and cried, not knowing if or when or how I would ever stop.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” I confessed as my tears left dark blotches on his T-shirt, and I trembled all over.

“I know,” he said, stroking my hair and squeezing me. “I know because I was just as scared as you were… But I’m not going anywhere, Noah. I’m staying right here…”

I let him go on talking and inhaled the scent of him, his heat, his nearness, the sound of his heart beating hard against mine.

“I’m sorry for telling you to go… If I hadn’t done that, this never would have happened; it was all my fault, Nick. Once again, I almost lost you and it was my fault…”

“You’re not to blame for anything, okay?” he said, almost angry.

“If I’d just known how to accept what you wanted to give me…if I hadn’t been so scared of us getting back together…”

“Noah… Stop it, okay?” he said and gave me a kiss meant to replace my terror with desire. He kissed me the way only he knew how, the way I had been longing for him to do ever since he’d left for New York… That was the kiss I’d wanted when we broke up, when he’d told me he could never love me again…

“I love you, Nick,” I said, pulling away to catch my breath. His eyes traveled over my face, trying to memorize my every feature. I put a hand on his smooth cheek and stroked it. I never wanted to be apart from him again.

He kissed every inch of my face, lifted my shirt, put his hand on my belly. “Nothing will ever separate us again, Noah, I swear that on our child.”

I hugged him again. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to feel any distance from him. And I remained like that until, eventually, we fell asleep.

I don’t know how long it was until I opened my eyes again, but it must not have been long, because we were still in the air. Outside, it was night, and it was completely dark apart from the faint lights lining the cabin.

Nick was awake and looking at me, toying with a few strands of my hair.

“I don’t think I ever told you how much I like your freckles,” he said, tracing out circles with his long fingers on my cheek, my ear, and my neck.

“You have,” I said, looking him in the eye.

“I’ve given you that impression, maybe, but I don’t think I ever put it in words. I know where each and every one of them is, and I know when new ones have appeared… They drive me crazy.”

I smiled. He was so intense when he talked. I had always hated my freckles before I met him.

“You think our baby will have freckles like yours?” he asked, amused.

“I don’t think babies have freckles, Nick,” I replied with a smile.

Now he rubbed my belly. “You’re so much bigger than the last time I saw you,” he said, his thumb rubbing the edge of my belly button, making me shiver.

“That’s a very subtle way of telling me I’m fat,” I said, frowning.

“You’re perfect. I’ve never seen you looking more beautiful, my love.”

I felt a sudden vertigo and got lost in his blue eyes.

But then I remembered something.

“You told me you were thinking of a name…” I was curious to know what it was.

“I was…” he said. I think he was actually nervous!

“I promise not to laugh at you if it’s terrible.”

“I’d like to call him Andrew.” He was excited but tense, awaiting my reaction.

“Andrew? After your grandfather?”

Hearing my reaction seemed to relax him somewhat.

“Yeah. After my grandfather. He was a person I could always count on. He loved me, and he gave me the most important opportunity in my life. He trusted me blindly, he left me everything he had, and if he were alive, there’s nothing that could make him happier.”

“Andrew Leister,” I said. “I like it.”

Nick kissed my lips and smiled meekly. He was happy.

“Andrew Morgan Leister,” he corrected me. “He deserves to have his other grandfather’s name, too, right?”

The memory of my father came into my mind, and my eyes filled with tears. Nick had never understood exactly how I felt about him or how, despite all that had happened, I could still love him. I didn’t understand it either, but that’s how it was. You can’t control or manage how you feel sometimes. I loved my father despite everything he’d done, and the little girl inside me was still sad he was gone.

“We don’t have to,” I replied.

Nick kissed me on the neck. “He was your father. Without him, you wouldn’t be here, in front of me, with my first child inside you. We do need to do it.”

“I’d have figured you’d prefer Nicholas,” I said.

“There’s only room for one Nick in your life, Noah, and that’s me.”

I laughed at his possessiveness. Nick was just like that, but it was also true: there would only ever be one Nick in my life.

“Andrew,” I said, looking at my belly. Just then, I felt a powerful kick, then another, and it was almost as if I’d received a seal of approval.

“Give me your hand!” I shouted. The baby seemed to have caught my enthusiasm. He kicked a third time, right as Nick placed his hand where mine had been.

“Can you feel it?” I asked, happy that he finally had the chance to experience the thing I’d first noticed weeks before. He nodded, looking enchanted.

“Fuck…” he said when another one came, even more powerful. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever felt, my baby alive and kicking, literally.

Nick looked into my eyes. “Thank you, Noah… Thanks for this.”

There was nothing more to say. I let him hold me while an amazing sensation suffused me: the sensation of happiness.