Having The Soldier's Baby (Parent Portal 1)

Shaking, and cold now, too, Emily looked up at him. He turned over, giving her his T-shirted back. He’d never even opened his eyes.

Chapter Eight

Winston lay awake most of the night. It took stern discipline to remain still, his back to the woman he’d once thought of as the other half of himself, knowing that she was hurting. He couldn’t tell if she was crying, but he was fairly certain that she was. The Emily he knew would have been. But to roll over and console her, would, in the long run, be cruel, knowing as he did that things weren’t going to get better for them.

That any consolation she took from him would be a lie. He wasn’t her soul mate. Their love wasn’t real because love wasn’t real.

Duty. Loyalty. Those were what truly mattered. They came with a price, but he believed in their existence. Stood for them.

She fell asleep at 12:03, almost four hours after her botched attempt at sex with him. He knew by the sound of her breathing. The way her hand fell to the bed between them, her fingers in contact with his back. As gently as he could, he leaned far enough away that if she awoke, she wouldn’t find herself touching him.

Otherwise he didn’t move at all. Not even when, shortly after five, she got up. Left the room. Presumably to make coffee. She’d pulled on a robe on the way out.

He’d give her long enough to get a cup of coffee in her hand and then go out to her. Ask her if she had any questions. Or wanted him to find another place to stay.

She’d say no. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like a failed hard-on come between them. But he had to make the offer.

Just as he had to tell her anything else she wanted to know. Like why he couldn’t have sex with her and never would again.

Even if she asked, even if she listened to his explanation, he knew the dream wouldn’t die easily. He knew what she was in for in the coming weeks, because he’d already been through it. He’d clung, too, at first. Refusing to give up. To give in.

But when it had come to choosing either his dream or the lives of his countrymen, his dream or the ability to help protect Americans from terrorist threats, the dream hadn’t had a chance.

Truth was, the dream was just that, a dream.

She’d get it. And if he could make it hurt less, he’d do that. She was a good person. A great human being. He respected her more than anyone he’d ever known.

In boxers with cars on them—the first pair he’d encountered in his drawer the night before—he made a stop at the master bath before heading out into the hall. Maybe he’d be wrong and the night before would have been enough for Emily. Maybe she’d be more ready than he thought to discuss legal disentanglement.

They could afford it more easily than he’d expected.

Two steps into the hall and he stopped. Stared at the closed bathroom door halfway between him and the living room. Because it sounded to him like Emily was puking her guts out.

Painfully, brutally regurgitating. Even when there didn’t seem to be anything left in her stomach.

What the hell? She was ill? And she hadn’t said anything?

Jackass, what chance did you give her? You, firmly focused on your plan, failed to factor in the unknown. You looked, saw she was buried in the life you’d left and assumed nothing else had changed.

Was it cancer? Wouldn’t someone have told him if she was taking chemo?

Or...jackass, maybe she just had the flu.

Maybe he was making her sick. Maybe this was coming from the trauma of finding out he was alive, followed by him on her doorstep the next morning, and then finding out that he wasn’t at all the man she’d thought she’d married.

If positions were reversed, and he’d still been believing in their fantasy, he’d probably have felt sick, too.

Reaching in the hall closet for a washcloth, he tapped on the door and opened it, taking in Emily’s body, in the blue silk robe he’d bought her for an anniversary weekend at a luxury resort on the beach. She was pretty much hugging the toilet, her head resting on her arm. The sink was on, cloth beneath the flow within a second. And then he was on his knees, gently wiping.

She flushed the toilet without raising her head. Looked up at him, seemed to be grateful and then had another bout of dry heaves.

Back and forth between her and the faucet he spent the next ten minutes cooling the cloth and wiping her forehead and face, her neck.

And then she was done. Sitting up. Standing. Apologizing.

“I put coffee on for you,” she said, heading back out to the kitchen, where he found her picking up a cup with a tea bag hanging out of it. Tea? Since when did Emily start liking tea?

Morning coffee had been the only way either one of them had been capable of starting a day.