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CHAPTER35
NOVA
JANUARY
I wake up, and Zeke isn’t home. The apartment is filled with a heavy silence, and I rub my belly as the baby does somersaults. Immediately, tears spring to my eyes, and I wipe at them. I ache to talk to Mom. The depth of my need to tell her everything spirals through me, and I tense up all my muscles. Forcing out a breath helps, and I grab a couple bowls of snacks to take back to the counter.
The door cracks as it opens, and Zeke appears, fully wrapped in sweatpants and his signature hoodie, hat pulled low and hood up, shadowing his face.
I’m angry and sad and disappointed—and also, mixed in there somewhere, the sense of longing for him is strong.
“Hey,” he says.
“You didn’t come home.” I set the bowls down with a sharp thunk.
“I was drunk and didn’t get home ‘till about three. Didn’t want to wake you up, so I slept upstairs.”
“Oh,” I say without looking at him.
I can’t look at him, or I’ll burst out crying. The distance he’s putting between us is frightening, but I don’t know how to bridge it. I’m not even really sure where it’s coming from or why he’s doing it.
He begins to help me clean up the mess we made the night before, with games and snacks and movies. It was a fun night, and I try not to let Zeke taint it with this darkness he’s carrying around him—this blanket of protection—but I can’t figure out what the blanket is made from.
It doesn’t feel like he’s pushing me away. More like he’s retreating.
Going through the motions, but he’s not really here.
I can’t take it anymore. My arms shake, and my heart hurts, and my jaw opens and closes, but the words I want to say to him are stuck. Everything is stuck.
My back is against a wall, and the fear rises inside me as I realize that there’s no way out of this except to face it. To call him out. To say what I have to say, what I want to say.
“Are you still helping Tabby pack up the RV today?” I ask politely.
“Yup,” he says, hunching over the sink.
“Are you upset about her leaving early?” I’ve asked this before, but I need to understand where this thick tension is coming from. Is it Tabby leaving, the baby, finding out about my past, him, or possibly a combination of it all?
“No,” he mumbles, dumping a plate of dried-out cheese and meat into the garbage rather aggressively.
“It’s okay to be upset.”
He drops the plate into the sink.
“I said I’m fine,” he snaps, looking me right in the eye.
The second he does, tears streak down my cheeks. His shoulders slump, and his features soften, and he steps nearer, scooping me into his arms.
“Fuck,” he says in my hair. “I’m sorry, Nova. I didn’t mean to talk to you like that. I’m just hungover and really fucking tired.”
His arms wrap me up, and I press my cheek to his chest and grip his thick waist as hard as I can. The warmth of his body and the way we meld together makes me hold tighter because I know it’s going to end.
“I feel like I’m losing you,” I whisper, so quiet into his sweater, but it’s the most I can do. It’s the closest I’ll get to telling him the truth.
“What was that?” he asks and leans back.
“Nothing,” I say and wipe at my cheeks. “I need to blow my nose.”
I escape to my room and press my back against the wall. The baby moves around as if my stress is bothering him, too. Like he’s also afraid of what’s going to happen.
