Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

The next few hours were the most painful and frightening of my life.

I had been right that it was too early, but when my water broke, Andrew got stuck in the birth canal, and that meant there was no turning back. I dilated quickly, and by the time I arrived at the hospital, they took me straight to the maternity ward. Idiot that I was, I assumed that since it had come on so fast, I’d need just a few pushes and I’d be done, but nothing could be further from the truth: I was pushing for eight hours. Eight hours of strenuous effort, until my strength gave out and I thought I’d be incapable of continuing.

“Noah…you can’t stop now, you need to push. Come on, Freckles, just one more,” Nick said softly in my ear. He was holding both my hands, and I was gripping him so tightly, I thought I’d break his fingers.

“I’m so tired,” I said in a moment of respite after a contraction. My whole body hurt, the epidural seemed to have worn off hours ago, and I was just praying for the whole thing to end.

I could hear the doctors talking quietly, saying something about my pelvis and how the baby didn’t have enough room to get out. I’d always known it: I wasn’t made to bear children.

“Nick… Get me out of here…take me somewhere, I don’t care where, far away. I can’t take the pain anymore,” I begged, watching the tears stream from his eyes.

“When all this is over, we can go, my love. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. But for now, you have to push.”

Another contraction made every muscle in my abdomen tense. I clenched my teeth and pushed. The nurses were encouraging me, the doctors, too. Someone put a damp cloth on my forehead, the contractions paused, and I wanted to die when I realized the baby still wasn’t out.

“This isn’t working…” I moaned.

“Doctor, she’s exhausted. Do something, dammit!”

“We can’t risk a Caesarian right now. It could endanger the mother,” the obstetrician remarked.

Nick went pale.

“Noah…when this next contraction comes, I need you to push as hard as you can, okay? I’m going to use the forceps; we need to get this little guy out—he’s going into fetal distress.”

My baby was suffering, and it was my fault. He was suffering because I wasn’t able to get him out.

“Sit up,” the doctor told me, and I did even though I was barely strong enough to raise my head. “Mr. Leister, get behind her and help her hold that position.”

Nicholas supported me with his chest. Feeling his arms around me gave me the strength to continue.

“You can do it, babe… Come on, just one more.”

Right then, the next contraction came. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I did. Squeezing Nick’s hands, I pushed and pushed until I nearly fainted.

“He’s out!” the doctor said, and just afterward, we heard the hysterical screaming of a very angry baby.

I collapsed into Nick, unable even to keep my eyes open.

“Noah, look, he’s beautiful.”

I opened my eyes, and the nurse brought over a tiny little thing wrapped in a blue blanket.

“It’s a boy. He’s a handsome one, too,” the nurse said, passing him to me.

My arms were quivering, and Nick helped me hold him to my chest.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed.

Andy stopped crying when he heard my voice. I was sobbing like crazy. I bent over and kissed the top of his head with its mop of black hair.

“He’s perfect,” Nick whispered in my ear. “Thank you, Noah. Thank you for this. I love you so much. You were great.”

But they took him from my hands then, and I couldn’t go on looking at him.

“He needs to be in the incubator until we know everything’s in working order. This little boy was ready to get out of there!”

I bit my lip when I heard him cry again. I was angry that he had to suffer. He had been so happy with me…

Andrew Morgan Leister was born on a Saturday in July weighing exactly 5 pounds, 5 ounces. He spent two nights in an incubator, and then they gave him back to me. I was discharged a few hours later, and Nick drove us home so we could rest. I still felt weak, exhausted. I had only slept for a few hours. All I could think about was my precious baby, the baby that was now placidly sleeping in the car seat in the back.

Nick had stayed by my side the whole time and was as tired as I was, but he looked happier than I’d ever seen him.

Our parents had come to the hospital. They were crazy about Andrew, as everyone was; they wanted to hold him and bundle him up and rock him to sleep, but he only found peace in my arms.

Journalists had mobbed us on our way out, and the scene had been so frantic, I hadn’t stopped to think about the normal people who would just be happy for us. But when we got home, I found tons of balloons and gift baskets and cards congratulating us.

Nick took Andy inside in the car seat. I was so happy to be home. The past few days had been tough.

Once we were inside, I picked up my baby and went upstairs to the bedroom. Nick was right behind me. I should have taken the baby to his crib, that cute little crib we’d set up in his nursery, but the mere thought of leaving him there stung. So we went to sleep with Andy tucked in a co-sleeper between the two of us.

“I can’t believe he’s with us now,” Nick confessed, rubbing Andy’s pink cheek with one finger.

“He’s the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen,” I said, leaning over to sniff his head. He smelled wonderful…

I wasn’t just saying that because I was his mother; he really was special, with his blue eyes and his chubby cheeks. We’d dressed him in the onesie Jenna had given him, turquoise blue with the words I’m number one printed on it.

I smiled, happy to be home, happy to be with Nick, happy the worst was over… Or so I thought.

Strange as it may seem, we didn’t have any trouble adapting to Andy. He wasn’t the type of baby who cried all day long. We even had to wake him up ourselves sometimes to get him to eat.

For some reason, I could only breastfeed for the first two weeks after he was born. He struggled to get enough milk out on his own, and we had to look for other solutions. It pained me to lose that special bond. It had felt magical to feed my baby, to feel him against me like that. But there was nothing we could do.

“Look at it from the positive side,” Jenna said, cradling Andy in her arms. “Your tits won’t sag.”

I rolled my eyes. If she ever had her own baby, she’d understand why this depressed me so much.

“I want one,” Jenna said right afterward, catching me off guard.

I laughed. I was busy folding Andy’s clothes and putting them away in his little dresser. There was so much of it, and he’d probably never even get to wear half of it. He was growing fast—he looked nothing like the tiny thing he’d been when he was born. Now he weighed almost ten pounds.

“Tell Lion,” I said, sitting down in front of her and watching Andy chew the pacifier with his thick little lips. Some parents said pacifiers were bad, but when he stopped nursing, we decided to give him one, and he couldn’t stand to have it taken away.

“I told him…but he says he wants to wait.” She grimaced. “I might have to have a little ‘accident.’” She put this last word in air quotes.

“Jenna!” I exclaimed and slapped her on the shoulder.

She laughed so loudly, the baby woke up. I took him from her and laid him in the crib.

“I was kidding!” she said.

She and Lion left a little later, and Nick came upstairs. By then, I was sitting on one of the sofas, holding Andy in my arms. He wouldn’t stop staring at me. It was almost as if he wanted to tell me something.

Nick kissed the top of my head and sat in front of me on the ottoman.

“You look good,” he commented with a smile, bending over and looking back and forth between us.

“I can’t believe it was just three weeks ago that I nearly pushed my guts out trying to bring this little guy into the world,” I said, rubbing Andrew’s soft, fuzzy hair. His skin was so smooth, I could touch him and hold him for hours.

“I wanted to tell you something, Noah,” Nick said, suddenly serious.

I looked up at him. “Did something happen?”

I knew he was nervous about the trial against his shooter, which would start in two weeks. Miraculously, he was out on bail, and neither of us could wait until he was locked up for good.

“No, nothing…or actually everything,” he said, grabbing my hand and kissing my knuckles. “What I wanted to tell you, Freckles, is that you’ve made me the happiest man in the world.” He bent over and kissed Andy’s head, but he had closed his eyes again and was back to sleep, oblivious to the world. “All the stuff we’ve been through, all the situations we’ve had to face together, just think… It’s been a long time now since that first kiss in the car on a summer night just like this one, under the stars. I remember I was dying to find an excuse to taste your lips, touch you, caress you. You’ve made me a better person, Noah; you saved me from a lonely, empty life, a life with no love, a life governed by hate. You’re always able to find a way to forgive others for their errors. You always want to see the positive side of all the people in your life… And if there’s one error I’ve made, it’s not doing this earlier…”

My heart was fluttering as I saw him bring a little box covered in black velvet out of his pocket. When he opened it, my breathing stopped as I saw a beautiful, dazzling ring.

“Marry me, Noah… Share your life with me. Let’s do it. Be mine, and I’ll be yours forever.”

I covered my mouth with my hand. For a moment, I was speechless.

“I…” I paused. Then I looked at Andrew there, asleep between the two of us, and my hands shook. Nick picked up the baby and laid him carefully in his crib.

Coming back, he kneeled before me and looked me in the eye. “What do you say, Freckles?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Then I pulled on his collar and kissed him feverishly.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“Hell yes, it is,” I replied, tears of joy in my eyes.

He grabbed my hand and slid the ring onto the third finger of my left hand.

“I love you so much,” he said, kissing me again.

He picked me up and took me to our bedroom. We made love as if possessed, touched and kissed each other, promised each other the moon and the sun. I wanted him to kiss me all over, and he did. I wanted to feel him close to me, and he fulfilled my every wish…

When Andrew was a month old, Nick had to go back to work. In reality, he’d been working the whole time, but from home, sitting on the sofa with his computer on his lap. I loved going to the living room and seeing Andy asleep on Nick’s chest while he typed away, his eyes focused on the screen. It made my heart melt. Two heads of black hair, two pairs of sky-blue eyes…they looked so much alike, it sometimes bothered me.

“You must be happy,” I accused him once while we were playing with the baby in bed. “He doesn’t look a damned bit like me…”

Nick smiled proudly but shook his head. “He’ll have your freckles… I know he will.”

“And he’ll hate me for it.”

Nicholas laughed. “Our baby’s going to be a heartbreaker, Noah. I don’t have the least doubt about that.”

Andy laughed for the first time, and we both looked down at him, enraptured. We’d fallen in love with that little boy, and now we were completely at his mercy.

One Monday not long afterward, Jenna picked us up for a drive around the city. I was nervous, I’d barely left the house since I’d had him, but she pushed and pushed, and eventually I brought out the robot carriage—which I still wasn’t very skilled at using—so we could take a stroll through a nearby mall. It was hot, and I didn’t want Andy to get too much sun, so we stopped at a café to talk about the wedding and all the preparations—Jenna, of course, was already making plans.

“I already told you, Jen,” I warned her wearily. “We’re engaged, but we won’t actually get married until the kid’s a little older.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not. I can’t organize a wedding and deal with a newborn!”

“I’m going to organize it for you, stupid!”

I shook my head, exasperated, and went on listening to her tirade. Our parents had been happy when we told them we were getting married. Doing things backward—having the baby first—hadn’t sat well with them, and they were glad we were fixing that little oversight. They had raised us to follow conventions: love first, then marriage, then cohabitation, then children—but I guess it was evident by now that Nick and I were far from conventional.

Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about getting married; I was too focused on the baby and Nick, and the proposal had taken me completely by surprise. We were really young to be making a lifelong commitment, but we were young to be having a kid, too; then again, we’d been young when we’d gone through things most people never had to experience.

I was happy, Nick was happy—that was the important thing.

A few hours later, it was time to go home. By then, Steve wasn’t constantly following me around anymore. I’d kept telling Nick it was too much, having someone trailing me all the time. Steve was the best in his profession, and honestly, the poor bastard was bored to tears following me to the park or to the store to buy diapers.

Nick was a different case: he ran around with important people, his trial was all over the news, and someone actually had tried to end his life. I was scared for him.

Nick finally agreed, and that same day, he and Steve took off for San Francisco. He’d told me he’d try to come back that night, but I knew his meetings there usually stretched on for a long time. This was the first night I’d spent without Nick since I’d had Andrew, and he was nervous. I wasn’t worried; I knew perfectly how to handle the baby, and I declined his offer to go along. I didn’t want to get on a plane with a tiny baby, and I also didn’t want to interrupt Nick’s work.

I explained all this, and Nick stopped pressing me.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Jenna asked when I told her to drop me off at the pharmacy. Andrew had a diaper rash, and it was really making him ornery.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, telling her I’d walk home once I was done there; it wasn’t far, and it had started to cool off now that the sun was setting. I hugged her and said goodbye, and she crouched to kiss Andy on the head.

“All the outfits I bought him are the best ones,” she said, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. That day, he was wearing little white shorts and a tiny T-shirt that read: Party tonight at my crib.

“Take care of my godchild!” she shouted as she went back to her car.

I went inside and bought ointment. On the way home, pushing the carriage along the same street where I took a walk almost every day, I felt something strange. A chill went up my spine. I turned my head to look, but there was no one there. Suddenly, I missed Steve being by my side. I’d nearly forgotten what it was to be alone. I kept walking, hoping to get home as soon as possible and shake off that sense of foreboding.

Andy hadn’t stopped crying since we’d gotten out of Jenna’s car. His rash was bad, and anytime he rustled, it stung, and he shrieked hysterically. The only thing that calmed him down was being held, and it had to be belly down along my forearm, with his head tucked into my elbow. I picked him up like that once we got home, leaning back a little, and it reminded me of how Nick would hold him on his chest. At last, he fell asleep again, and I wrapped him up and laid him in his crib. I stood there for a moment, gawking at him.

How could you love a person so much and so instinctively? My little man with his pacifier in his mouth and his chubby cheeks was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It hurt me viscerally when he cried, and I was over the moon when he smiled. I couldn’t believe I’d lived a whole life without him… Now just thinking about being apart from him was agony.

By then, Nick was back at his hotel—no surprise, he’d had to stay the night. I called him from bed, and we talked for a while. When I hung up, I fell straight to sleep. I was exhausted.

When I opened my eyes, every hair on my body was standing on end. Don’t ask me why; they just were. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but I had a feeling that made me sit up. I was breathing fast, and I got up, trying not to make any noise.

Calm down, I told myself. I’d probably just had a nightmare. They weren’t as frequent as before, but with Nick gone, it was normal for them to come back.

I couldn’t remember what it was about, if I’d even had one, but I tried to readjust to reality and relax before I went to see the baby. Andy was attuned to my mood, and if I was upset or nervous, he would instantly get angry and start crying.

Once I felt normal, I walked out of my room and down the hall to Andrew’s.

My heart stopped.

Someone was there.

My baby wasn’t alone.