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My nights are longer and colder, darker and lonelier than ever. My soul aches with every breath that I take, and the morning nausea gets more intense with each passing day. I know it’ll get worse before it gets better. I went through a similar cycle of symptoms with Mikey. All I can do is make sure I eat well and drink plenty of water.
I miss coffee, but it’s been nothing but herbal tea since I found out about the pregnancy. It will be twice as hard with two children to raise, though not impossible. Granted, I did have Derrick while Mikey was a baby. I didn’t have rent to pay. Derrick covered most of the expenses, even if that came at the cost of my emotional well-being. It’ll be different this time.
There’s a voice in my head that keeps asking: why the hell am I doing this? Why can’t I just tell them the truth? I know the answer. I just don’t like it.
I’m afraid of rejection. I’m afraid they’ll say that they never planned for us to have kids. I’m afraid I’ll feel like a burden, that my children will feel like a burden, and I absolutely do not want them to ever feel like they were not part of the plan.
Even if they weren’t.
The doorbell rings, startling me out of my thoughts.
My heart’s throbbing with fear and anguish as I cautiously approach the door and look through the peephole. My jaw hits the floor and I lose my breath.
“Oh, God,” I whisper but still manage to open the door with a quivering hand.
Kace stills at the sight of me. He looks so handsome in his black slacks and white shirt. Seeing him again feels like part of my soul returning. I haven’t seen any of the guys since I left the estate a few weeks ago, and I can tell that Kace hasn’t been sleeping well.
Shadows linger under his usually bright blue eyes. His stubble is a tad more pronounced, his curly hair longer and untamed.
“How did you find me?” I gasp.
“You did leave a forwarding address with reception,” Kace says. His tone is clipped, his jaw twitches angrily.
Of course, he’s angry. He has every reason to be angry. I didn’t do anything right, and I keep doing everything wrong, for that matter. “Kace, I only gave Tanya my address in case there was an emergency. None of your texts mentioned an emergency.”
“Oh, so you have been getting our texts. You just chose not to respond,” he snaps.
“I chose to ask you to leave me alone,” I shoot back.
“Why, Amaya? Why walk out on us the way you did?”
My ego is quick to flare up. “If you came here to argue, I’m not going to entertain that,” I say and proceed to try and shut the door in his face.
“I know he’s my son.”
His words stop me cold. I am frozen in place. It’s not the first time he has had that effect on me, but it is the first time I realize that I no longer have a choice. I have to confront the very situation that I’ve been avoiding ever since Kace and I reconnected.
“What did you say?”
“I know Mikey’s my son, Amaya. I had my suspicions, to be honest. Looking back now, despite your lies, it was obvious from the get go that he’s mine.”
“He is my son,” I reply, fear tightening its grip on the back of my neck. “I raised him. I am his mother. His father doesn’t exist!”
“I’m right here, Amaya. And I was always ready to do right by you. I still want to do right by you. If only you’d let me,” Kace says, his shoulders dropping in defeat. “I’m tired, dammit. I’m tired of trying to figure you out, of trying to understand why you didn’t tell me. I could excuse a lot of things, Amaya. I could excuse your reservation in disclosing Mikey’s paternity, too. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you left the way you did.”
“I have my reasons, and I’m not in the right mindset to talk about it. I’ve made myself clear,” I say, taking a step back.
It’s not meant to be an invitation for Kace to come in, but he does anyway. As soon as he sets foot inside the apartment, the air begins to shift and thicken between us. All this time that we spent apart, it wasn’t without repercussions.
My body responds to his presence. To his proximity. My pulse picks up, my heart thudding as his cologne invades my space. Oh, such a tempting and familiar scent. It plays games with my very consciousness, the kind of games I risk losing if I’m not careful.
My resistance is shot to hell as I realize that I’m strangled by my own fears, my own pride.
“Amaya, we deserve the truth. I deserve the truth, more than anyone, for that matter,” Kace says. I can tell that he’s trying so hard to keep it together, to stay calm and civil when every cell in his body is screaming at me, begging for me, for my love. A love I was so happy to give and so quick to withdraw when he least expected it. Maybe I was the cruel one. “Why didn’t you tell me about Mikey?”
“Who told you? Mira?” The thought fills me with dread.
He shakes his head. “I told you, I put two and two together. And the look on your face just now after I confronted you tells me everything I need to know. You lied to my face, Amaya. I asked you, point blank, and you said—”
