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“Don’t thank me,” he says. “I should thank you for telling me what’s going on.”
My bottom lip trembles. “You were the first person I wanted with me. I miss you, Noah. I miss everything we had.”
His jaw tenses and emotion takes over his face. “Lauren I—”
JoAnn comes back into the room, readjusting the monitors on my belly and turning off the alarm.
“Is she okay?” Noah asks, not moving away from me.
“So far everything looks good on the monitors,” JoAnn tells us. “No contractions and baby’s heart rate looks good.” I relax a bit.
“But Lauren’s blood pressure is still high?”
“Yes, it’s elevated.”
“Why?”
“There could be a number of things, and once we get the results from the blood work back we’ll know more. Has the lab come in yet?” she asks me.
“Not yet.”
“They should be here soon.” She gives us a smile. “Do you want anything?”
“Some water would be nice,” I say. She gets me a cup then tells us to relax while we wait.
“Easier said than done,” Noah mumbles and pulls a chair up close to the bed and takes my hand. I close my eyes and link my fingers through his. It feels just like how it used to be, despite not speaking for over a week.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine, and I get my stitches out in a few days.” He rolls up the sleeve of his shirt, showing me a two-inch line on his bicep. “I thought about you, about Ella, as the bike was going down. All I wanted was another chance to see you.”
“I’m glad you got it.” I blink back tears.
“How has everything else been?” Noah asks.
“Same as before, really.”
“Is Ella moving a lot? I miss feeling her little feet.”
I smile to cover my guilt of making Noah miss out on that. “She moves all the time. What about you, well, other than the accident?”
“Same too. Just trying to stay busy and keep my mind off of you.”
I close my eyes. “I don’t want to do this,” I whisper.
He takes his hand back. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No. Not at all. I mean, I don’t want to not be together. I want things to go back to how it was before.”
“Me too. Lauren,” he says, voice heavy with longing. “I would do anything to redo things.”
I turn, looking at his handsome face. “I would too.”
“Is that your way of saying you forgive me?”
I give him a half smile. “Kind of. I want us to be together.” Ella kicks me hard, causing me to flinch.
“Then we should.”
I close my eyes, trying not to cry … and I can’t look at Noah when I say this. I don’t want to see the hurt on his face. “Sometimes what I want isn’t what I need. I can’t take care of a baby and have you getting drunk, so drunk you’re passing out and puking. And I can even forgive special occasions, like you overdo it at a New Year’s Eve party or something. But for no reason … I don’t want Ella growing up around that.”
Noah inhales then slowly lets his breath out. “I know. And I agree.”
I open my eyes, looking right at him.
“I don’t want to be that dad. I don’t want Ella thinking I’ll run out when times get tough. I don’t want to be like my own father. And, Lauren … that’s why I drank that night.”
“What?”
“My dad. He showed up outside the studio Friday before the shower. I’ll just say it brought up a lot of bad memories and old feelings I didn’t know I still had. It freaked me out. My dad left when I was just a kid, and it still gets to me, still hurts. I … I don’t want to be a bad dad too. I don’t want to let you down or ruin Ella’s life.”
I take his hand again. “That’s why you were acting weird Friday night.”
“Yeah,” he admit.
A few beats pass in silence. I trace a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had enough going on. I didn’t want to add to it.”
“Noah, you have to tell me these things. If we want to be a couple—a family—then we can’t keep things from each other like that.”
“I know now.”
“You know what will ruin Ella’s life?” I start. “Bottling up your feelings and drinking away the pain. Not trusting me enough to help.”
“It’s not that,” he says definitely. “I do trust you, more than anyone, Lauren. I didn’t tell you because there’s no need for you to know how I spent my eighth birthday at the police station because my dad got arrested for a DUI on the way to the football game he was taking me to.” He shakes his head, looking at the floor. “But the real kicker? My own mother used Ella as an excuse to call that asshole, even after I said I don’t want anything to do with him. He doesn’t deserve to meet Ella, and Ella doesn’t need to be anywhere near someone like that. Bad parenting, a life of disappointment and hurt, it’s in my blood.”
