"You got another woman standing in the middle of Louis Vuitton carrying your child, and I'm supposed to do what? Smile through this shit?"
Ashley looked at me but never interrupted and that was smart of her to do. Everything she came to say had already been said the second she walked through those doors.
I looked at Rome one last time before shaking my head in pure disgust. "I don't have time for this and I mean that."
He reached for my wrist, and I forcefully snatched my arm back before he could touch me. "Don't you fucking touch me," I harshly whispered.
"Navy, where you going?"
I grabbed my purse off the display table beside me without taking my eyes off him. "I'm leaving."
"Listen, I can explain all of this shit," He told me.
"I don't want a fucking explanation."
The look in his eyes told multiple different stories from pride, to rage, to hurt. "You can't just walk off Nay."
I sarcastically laughed knowing we weren’t at a place where he could just run after me and get away with it. In this very moment, I loved Aventura police. "Watch me,” I smiled and politely walked away leaving him standing there. I couldn’t say that it didn’t hurt actually seeing Ashley because after all he was still my husband, however, I needed an escape to get away from him today. I almost called an Uber until I realized that his keys were in my purse. I wiped the tear threatening to fall, continuedto smile, and left him in the mall without a ride because I was taking his damn truck.
The entire way home, I played the ordeal over and over in my mind. I called Tasha to talk about it, but she didn’t answer so turned the music down and rode in silence all the way home to swap cars. Once I was behind the wheel of my own car, I checked the time realizing that I’d be right on time for my deliveries.
“Look at God,” I said to myself as I hit the gas and sped off heading to my new beginnings. By the time I made it to my apartment, City Furniture was just pulling up, and Rome was blowing my phone up. I didn’t have a care in the world.
CHAPTER 10
Navy ‘Nay’ Prescott
Lord knows I could’ve used another day off. It was because for the first time in a long time I was excited about getting home. My apartment was finally done, and everything had a place. My couch had been delivered, my bed was finally put together, my stuff that had been in storage was unpacked and I even managed to hang a few pictures on the wall.
It still didn’t quite feel like home yet, but it was mine. Nobody could pop up with a key, nobody could kick in the door demanding answers, and nobody could tell me what I could or couldn’t do. That peace alone was worth every dollar I’d spent. I swiped my badge, pushed through the employee entrance, and headed toward the nurses’ station while tying my hair a little tighter into my ponytail.
“Navy.”
I looked up and smiled. “Morning.”
“Good morning, I need you to float today.”
That smile turned into frown mostly out of curiosity. “Where?”
“ICU.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
Floating wasn’t unusual. Whenever they were short upstairs, they’d pull somebody from the ER. I actually didn’t mind it because ICU was slower than the emergency room, and after the last few shifts I’d had, slower sounded real good right about now.
The charge nurse handed me a folded assignment sheet. “They’re expecting you.”
I thanked her before heading for the elevators. When the doors opened on the eighth floor, everything immediately felt different because the ER was loud and ICU wasn’t. The lights were dimmer and nobody was running down the hallway. There weren’t family members pacing the floor asking every five minutes when the doctor was coming back and the only thing I heard were monitors beeping, ventilators humming, and nurses talking just above a whisper.
Another nurse sitting behind the nurses’ station smiled when she saw me. “You must be Navy.”
I smiled back. “That’s me.”
“Hi, I’m Kendra. I’ll give you the report.”
I set my tea on the counter, pulled out my pen, and listened while she went over my assignment.
A few minutes later I stood outside Room 814 with his chart in my hand, reading over the same lines twice like the words were going to change if I stared long enough. Marvelous Williams was the twenty-nine-year-old gunshot wound victim who recently had emergency surgery. So far he was stable, alert, oriented, and annoying according to the little note Kendra had scribbled beside his name, which made me smirk before I caught myself because I had no business smiling at anything connected to him because whether he knew it or not, this man had paid for my whole new beginning. That thought alone made my stomach drop, and for a few seconds I just stood there listening to thebeeping monitors behind his door while trying to remind myself that I was here to do my job. Nothing more and nothing less.
