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But he didn’t turn around.
He left me.
“I can’t survive like that again.” I gasped and tore at my throat like something was restraining me as Reid held me to his chest. “Not again.” I sobbed into his chest. “Please, not again.”
I sat at my dingy kitchen table and stared out the dirty window, unseeing. The piece of toast in front of me was left untouched and forgotten as I was lost in yet another daydream.
A dream of the man I longed after and ached for but hadn’t seen or talked to in two months.
Two achingly long months without Maverick and I wondered if I’d survive it again this time. How had I survived it for ten years last time?
I was withering away physically and mentally and didn’t know how much longer I could hold out for him. He had walked away from me that night of Luke’s memorial and never looked back. He tried to take care of me from afar, making sure I had access to his penthouse and his beach home that we’d been married at, but I couldn’t force myself to go to either of those places. The memories of the love we’d shared in those places felt suffocating to even think about now. So instead I’d crawled back into the hole that I’d survived in for ten years and hadn’t come out since.
He wired money into my accounts, but I left it all untouched. He’d sent Franklin and Gunner to sit outside of my apartment building every single day incase I’d needed to go somewhere, but I never left while he was there waiting for me. I hardly left at all.
He sent his mom and dad, Reid, Dexter, and Nat to check up on me, but I didn’t answer the door when they knocked or called.
I was a just a shell of the person I’d been back in his life, and I didn’t want to let them see me like that.
The worst part of it all, was that I understood why he walked away from me. I understood his fear and his pain, and I knew he was trying to do what was right for me and our baby, but it didn’t make it any easier to stomach.
Our baby was growing rapidly, I was now in the second trimester and finally almost free of the terrible morning sickness that had plagued me every waking minute for the first few months. My baby bump had officially popped, and nothing I owned fit anymore, but I couldn’t bring myself to go shopping for maternity clothes because I’d have to acknowledge that this pregnancy was happening, and that Maverick was missing it.
He’d been so excited to be a dad, but he didn’t even contact me to make sure the baby was okay, and that hurt.
I was supposed to go to an ultrasound appointment today, but the idea of seeing the baby without him, felt wrong and I struggled to find the joy I was supposed to feel.
I’d been able to put it off so far, my OB had been willing to wait on an ultrasound until the second trimester, but she wouldn’t wait any longer. She said it was imperative to check to make sure there were no defects or worrisome problems and that she couldn’t in good conscience wait any longer.
A knock sounded on my door, and I turned to look at it quickly as I stood up from the chair and walked towards it.
My chest ached, hoping that it was Mav, but my brain knew it wouldn’t be. I silently looked through the peep hole and saw his best friend Dexter standing in the hallway, staring at the peep hole like he could see me looking through it. “Open the door Cora.” He said softly, like he was tired.
He wore a suit like usual but looked… tired.
I stepped back from the door and stood in the kitchen, waiting for him to leave, like he always did after a while.
“You forced my hand, remember that.” He said from the other side of the wood before I heard a key turn in the lock, and I watched in shock as the dead bolt turned and the door opened. The chain was drawn so it only opened a few inches before it hung up, but it was the closest I’d been to Dex since the day after the fundraiser when I was discharged from the hospital, alone. “Stand back Cora.” He said gently again, and I watched as he forced the door open, ripping my chain off the wall.
He pushed the door open and stood in the threshold and looked at me with a sorry expression on his face. “What the hell Dex?” I gasped.
He walked forward and shut the door behind him, turning the deadbolt and then turned to face me again. His eyes dropped down my body to where my belly stretched my shirt before he looked around my unkept apartment. “Come here.” He said and closed the distance between us and wrapped his large arms around my shoulders and hugged me. It was the first time I’d been touched by anyone besides my doctor, and I didn’t realize how badly I ached for touch until that moment. I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him back like my life depended on it, telling myself I’d allow it for only a few seconds more and then I’d kick him out.
I just needed a few more seconds of comfort.
I’d end it, any second now.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“How are you?” He asked me, smoothing his hand over my messy hair as he held me tight. “We’ve all been worried about you.”
I shook my head, burying it further into his chest. “Not everyone.” I said pathetically and then pulled away, wiping at the tears that escaped my lashes embarrassingly.
“Come, sit down.” He said and led me over to the couch and made me sit down as he took his jacket off and sat down at the other end, turned to face me. “Talk to me, tell me how you and the baby are.”
My hand instinctively went to my growing belly, and I looked across the room to stare at the wall. “We’re alive.”
“Barely.” He grunted and I glared at him.
