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CHAPTER7
NOVA
The earnest sheento his eyes holds my gaze with its intensity, and I shuffle slightly. I stood him up the last time I saw him. Zeke doesn’t trust me, and I guess I deserve that. I won’t ever tell him the real reason I stood him up, so I have to live with the way he arches one eyebrow and searches through me, studying my behaviour with the depth of his eyes. It is unfair how dark and long his lashes are, and theroll out of bed looking like a dishevelled godvibe is borderline offensive. But being entranced by his looks is helping to keep me calm…ish.
There’s no doubt I am being weird, erratic, and unreasonable, but I’m afraid. The threat I got hours before I met with him is still coursing through me, mixing with the nerves of this conversation, and I don’t know where one fear ends and the other begins. Answering Mom’s call was risky, and my concern was validated. I shouldn’t have. I need to be more careful. But I can’t figure out how he will fit into this.
“Thank you,” I say, but my brain is fuzzy, and blood rushes through my ears.
My belly quakes and my heart stammers, and I notice the way the sun flickers across his face. I follow the angles of his features and the way the hood of his sweater flattens his hair, but the ends stick out in random directions over his forehead. There’s an ache in me that yearns to reach for him, brush the strands from his face, and I fight it with everything I have.
Even if I have a rushing attraction to this man who is vowing to stand by me, who never once questioned or denied my word, he doesn’t belong to me.
I cannot continue to stand here like this, looking into his eyes and remembering the way his body looks under that hoodie—the way he fits against me.This is the hormones, I tell myself.
“Nova?” he says softly, bringing me back.
My cheeks fill with heat as I realize he is talking, and I’ve been objectifying him because pregnancy makes me think of sex a thousand times more than I did before. My fears are begging for a distraction.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” The fog in my brain slowly lifts but leaves a disorienting mist behind.
“I want to be involved. Can you talk to me through this? Keep me involved. If you decide to stay or leave or whatever, I just want to know what you’re planning as you figure it out.”
“Yes. I can do that.” We’re walking again, and the cold fall air is taming the heat in my skin, the movement calming my body from my momentary lapse in judgment.
He has a girlfriend.
All he is to me now is the father of my baby. I need to focus on establishing some sort of friendly working relationship—a platonic one.
“My place is down this way. You could take a quick look and grab some tomatoes while you’re there.” Zeke’s smile is mesmerizing. He’s more handsome than any guy I’ve met on the red carpet at the countless awards shows Mom has dragged me to over the years.
At this moment, I could imprint on him like that viral video of the goose who follows that dude around everywhere.
“Sounds great.” I force a tight smile and my legs wobble as I walk beside him, wishing I’d brought my cane. But then I’d have to explain why. I’m going to have to, anyway. There’s no way I’m having a baby with this guy without telling him about the MS. A spike of adrenaline surges through me at the thought.
The threats also aren’t something to be ignored.
Maybe if nothing else, staying here for a little while will help me wrap my head around it all. Give me the chance to stop running and make a plan. I can look into Cardale. Maybe I can figure this out. If I knew who was doing this, I could go to the police.
I can’t hide forever, but I know what my mother would do in this situation.
We have to get the story straight, Nova. People like us aren’t allowed to make mistakes.
We walk in silence for a while back to the paved sidewalk in town, and I can tell by how Zeke shifts beside me that he wants to say something. He works his jaw and then scratches his short beard. He clenches his fists, then shoves his hands in his pockets. Finally, he turns to me with this pained expression, and I find it interesting how many ways he can look perplexed.
“I think I’m spiralling. That’s what Tabby calls it. There’s like four thousand scenarios running through my head right now, and almost every one of them makes me want to vomit.”
His honesty knocks my thoughts off course, and I laugh at the way his eyebrows lift, wrinkling his forehead. He’s goofy, a side of him I never got to see when we first met, but I can tell humour is his thing.
“I get it. There are so many ways this could play out.” I tug the ends of my hair and watch the cracks in the sidewalk as we pass house after house. “I have no idea what to do, Zeke. I’m as lost as you are when it comes to this. My doctor told me to take it day by day. Make decisions as they come up. Try not to focus too much on what’s going to be. Admittedly, I’m shit at it.”
That’s the truth. This small-town mechanic living with his family is a far cry from my mother’s Nashville mansion and my YouTube channel highlighting the glamorous life I once lived. The channel that touted affordable healthy living while bringing me two hundred fifty thousand dollars in ad revenue last year alone.
He stops in front of a three-story house, an old Victorian style with a steeply sloped roof, bay windows, and wooden shudders. The porch is closed in more like a veranda with paint peeling and siding cracked. It doesn’t look abandoned, but it definitely needs some love. I thought Zeke’s brother was a carpenter.
Zeke shuffles beside me, gripping the back of his neck. “This is it,” he says with uncertainty. “Jet wants to fix it up, but Mom won’t let him. Says it’s my Dad’s job.”
His deep frown and sudden throat-clearing cough indicate he maybe didn’t mean to say that. It’s the most personal information he’s given me yet. I also suspect that something he and I have in common is our aversion to getting personal.
