Broken Hearts (Light in the Dark 5)

This is the biggest adventure we’re ever going to go on, and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.

Nova

I run from the kitchen into the bathroom and fall to my knees, making it to the toilet in the knick of time.

Almost immediately Jace is there, pulling my too long hair away from my face and rubbing my back softly.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he murmurs.

I managed to get by the first two months of my pregnancy with no morning sickness, but now this baby is making its presence known.

I finish retching and collapse back on my butt, exhausted. I can barely keep food down right now and it’s making me weak. I know I have to try to stomach something, if not for me then for the baby, but it’s like everything I try to eat eventually comes up.

Jace stands and grabs a cloth, wetting it with cool water.

He bends and presses it to my forehead. I give him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

He sits down beside me, stretching out his long legs. They nearly touch the wall on the opposite side of the bathroom—granted, the bathroom isn’t that large.

When I feel like I can stand without the nausea coming back, I do, and Jace holds onto my elbow to steady me.

I brush my teeth and Jace watches me in the mirror. I finish, wipe my mouth with a towel, and turn to face him.

“This baby is trying to kill me.”

He chuckles. “Nah, it just wants to show you who’s boss.”

I sigh. “Yeah, seems like it.”

Jace places his hand on my stomach. I have the slightest bump now, it’s not noticeable to anyone that’s not very familiar with my body, which Jace is, of course.

“Must mean it’s a boy.” He winks.

“I tend to agree—this baby already irritates me as much as its father.”

He tosses his head back and laughs. “You love me.”

I sigh. I do. I really do.

We still haven’t told my parents about the baby. It doesn’t seem like something you tell your parents over the phone, but then again, they’ve never really been my parents. A part of me feels like we should fly to my hometown and tell them, I think it’s the hopeful part of me that wants to think they’ll be happy for me and maybe even excited. It’s pathetic, I know. But I think there’s a part of us, no matter how old we get, that craves our parents’ approval. There comes a time, when you have to accept it’s never going to happen.

“Do you want to try to eat something else?” Jace asks.

I gag at the thought alone.

He laughs. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“A definite no.”

In the beginning of my pregnancy I ate non-stop. Now I can barely eat a cracker.

“I have to go into work early,” Jace reminds me. “Eli wants me to hang some kind of fucking decorations for Christmas—every year he ropes me into this. I think it’s so he can look at my ass on the ladder.”

I look him up and down and wag my brows. “You do have a nice ass, I’m lucky you’re my baby daddy.”

He growls and grabs my cheeks in my hands. “Say it again.”

“What part?” I challenge.