Page 95 of Vega

“You’re pregnant?” I asked.

She folded her arms around herself. “Yes.” then her eyes filled again.

The way I saw her changed immediately. She wasn’t only a beautiful grieving woman. She was carrying the last living piece of the man she had just lost, and that made her feel even more vulnerable than she already looked.

Novi wasn’t only mourning Kash. She was preparing to raise his child without him. The protectiveness I already felt heightened into something I didn’t have the right to touch. I wanted to fix things I couldn’t. I wanted to make sure nobody got close enough to hurt her again.

Then I reminded myself that the last thing she needed was another emotionally unreliable man stepping into her life while she was grieving and while bringing life into the world.

“You need anything for the baby yet?” I asked.

She smiled weakly. “It’s early, so I don’t know yet.”

“When you know, tell me.”

“You don’t have to do all this.”

“I know.”

The TV was on in the living room. Some crime show was playing low. I was sure she hadn’t been paying attention to it when I walked in. Her mind had been wherever grief took people when nobody was there to pull them back.

I nodded toward the screen. “You know who killed him?”

She blinked. “Huh?”

“Do you know who committed the murder? The husband did it.”

“You just got here.”

“I know a guilty man when I see one.”

For the first time, she almost laughed. So I stayed. I sat on the opposite end of the couch, kept space between us, and talked enough shit about the show to make her look at the screen instead of whatever memory had been hurting her before I came in.

She didn’t laugh much, but she didn’t have to. For a little while, she wasn’t crying. And for a little while, I wasn’t thinking about my bullshit.

NOVELLA “NOVI” HART

I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe when Prodigy knocked on the door. Not regular crying either. Not a few tears slipping because I missed Kash. This was ugly, chest-hurting, can’t-catch-my-breath crying. The kind that made me press one hand against my heart because it felt like it might burst if I didn’t hold it inside my body.

I had been trying to calm myself down for almost twenty minutes, but failing. The grief kept rising until I felt trapped inside my own skin.

Then Prodigy showed up. I thanked God for that man before I even opened the door. He stood there with bags in his hands, tall, tattooed, and too fine for my nervous system to process properly. His shirt sat open enough to show the ink across his chest, his beard was lined perfectly, and his eyes moved over my face like he already knew he had walked in on me falling apart.

I hated that he saw it, but I was grateful that he had.

Prodigy was good to look at. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve had enough sense to be embarrassed by how I looked, but all I knew was that the love of my life would never meet our child so I didn’t care who saw me looking like what.

The murder documentary still played on the TV, even though I hadn’t paid attention to it in almost an hour. Some woman had been found murdered in her house, and the episode was trying to make everybody look suspicious; her husband, her best friend, her neighbor, even the lady from her job who apparently didn’t like her.

Prodigy sat on the opposite side of the couch. “You always watch these?”

I shrugged weakly. “They’re interesting”.

On the screen, the husband walked into the police station wearing khakis, a wrinkled polo, and the confidence of a man who thought being average made him invisible.

Prodigy leaned forward. “Look at his goof-ass. Why he dressed like he about to sell somebody a used printer?”

A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.