She was crying again; she couldn’t help herself. She kept picturing what was to come—the moment when she would tell Nick about the baby—and it hurt so badly she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to be strong, didn’t want to be honorable, didn’t want to do the right thing.
She thought about all their time together, all the moments he’d held her and touched her and kissed her lips with a gentleness she’d never imagined. She thought about Izzy, and how much she’d lost, and then she thought about going back to California, to Blake’s bed, to a place where the air was brown and the earth was dry. But most of all, she thought about how desperately lonely her world would be without Nick. . . .
Annie drove and drove, until she couldn’t drive anymore. Finally, she made her way back to Nick’s house. When she got there, he was in the garden with Izzy.
It would all go on without her, this place, this family. Izzy would grow up and learn to dance and go on her first date, but Annie wouldn’t be there to see it.
She looked at Nick and was horrified to realize that tears were blurring her vision.
“Annie?”
She took a deep, shaking breath. More than anything, she wanted to throw herself into his big, strong arms. She ached suddenly to say the precious words, I love you, but she didn’t dare. She knew that if Nick could, he’d promise that the sun would shine on them forever. But neither of them was so naive anymore; both had learned that everything could change in an instant, and that the heartfelt vows of people in love were fragile words that, once shattered, could cut so deeply you’d bleed forever.
He stood up, moved toward her. With one dirty finger, he touched her chin, so gently it was like the brush of a butterfly’s wing. “Honey, what is it?”
She forced a bright smile, too bright, she knew, but there was no help for that. “I got something in my eye. It’s nothing. Let me change my clothes, then I’ll come out and help you guys. ”
Before he could answer—or ask another painful, loving question—she ran into the house.
Nick and Annie lay in bed, barely touching, the sheets thrown back from their naked legs. A big old oak fan turned lazily overhead, swooshing through the air, stirring it with a quiet thwop-thwop-thwop.
After Izzy had been put to bed, they’d circled each other, he and Annie, saying none of the things that seemed to be collecting in the air between them. Now, he held her tightly, stroking the soft, damp flesh of her breast. She’d been quiet all evening, and every so often he’d looked at her and seen a faraway sadness in her eyes. It scared him, her sudden and unexpected quiet. He kept starting to ask her what was wrong, but every time the words floated up to his tongue, he bit them back. He was afraid of whatever it was that lay curled in all that silence.
“We need to talk,” she said softly, rolling toward him.
“God, if those aren’t the worst four words a woman can say. ” He waited for her to laugh with him.
“It’s serious. ”
He sighed. “I know it is. ”
She angled her body until she was almost lying on top of him. Her eyes looked huge in the pale oval of her face, huge and filled with sadness. “I went to see a doctor today. ”
His heart stopped. “Are you okay?”
The smile she gave him was worn and ragged at the edges. “I’m healthy. ”
His breath expelled in a rush. “Thank God. ”
“I’m also three months pregnant. ”
“Oh, Christ . . . ” He couldn’t seem to breathe right.
“We tried for years and years to get pregnant. ”
Blake’s baby. Her husband’s baby, the man who’d said he’d made a terrible mistake and wanted her back. Nick felt as if he were melting into the hot, rumpled sheets that smelled of her perfume and their spent passion.
I always wanted more children. Those had been her exact words, and in them, he’d heard the residue of a lifetime’s pain. He’d known then it was the one thing he couldn’t give her. Now it didn’t matter.
He knew Annie too well; she was a loving, honorable person, and a ferocious mother. It was one of the things he loved about her, her unwavering sense of honor. She would know that Blake deserved a chance to know his child.
There would be no future for them now, no years that slid one into the next as they sat on those big rockers on the porch.
He wanted to say something that would magically transform this moment
into something it wasn’t, to forge a memory that wouldn’t hurt for the rest of his life. But he couldn’t.
Before their love song had really begun, it was coming to an end.