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“So, where do you wanna go?” I asked as we both got into the car.
“For what?” She asked, looking to me with confusion. I could tell after all the being poked, prodded and siphoned from that she was quite tired.
“For food. I’m guessing you’re hungry?”
She seemed to think for a moment before sinking into the passenger’s seat. “Actually, as nice as that sounds, I’m actually really nauseous right now, so I’d like to go home and lay down for a short bit.”
I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed, but I understood. After what I had seen today, she could tell me that she wanted to never have her feet touch the Earth again and I would hire someone to carry her around twenty-four seven.
“No problem. Let’s get you home, shall we?”
“Thank you,” she said, heaving a sigh of relief. “Maybe after I lay down, we can get something for dinner?”
“Sure, I’ll look around for where I want to eat and answer some emails.”
“Great,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed. I could tell from her breathing that she wasn’t entirely asleep, but that she was quickly getting there. Putting on some quiet music, I plugged her address into the GPS and drove along, my mind trying to catch up to everything that had happened.
And a lot had certainly happened, hadn’t it? Somehow, it seemed like I was in an entirely different reality than I had been this morning, and not in a bad way. It wasn’t until we were driving down the highway and I passed a billboard for a lawyer that I even remembered we were also supposed to handle divorce stuff today.
Oh well, that could wait. I certainly didn’t want to drag a nauseous Nicole into Trevor’s office just for her to vomit everywhere. No, we would go to her place and she could rest while I picked out where I wanted us to eat.
The drive was surprisingly pleasant considering that Nicole’s head kept bobbing up and down as she kept almost falling asleep. She finally perked up when we almost reached her place, sniffing slightly.
“That’s the gyro shop, right?”
I laughed. “Did you really wake up just because you smelled that?”
“Yeah. Pregnancy nose is a hell of a thing.”
“I guess it is. Does that make you hungry?”
“Kinda,” she said, wincing as she looked out the window. “But also, kinda makes me want to turn my stomach inside out and shake it a bit.”
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
“My whole life is un comfortable at this point.”
“Fair enough.”
She laughed as we turned into her complex. “I guess you-” she stopped mid-sentence and I saw her entire posture change. Suddenly she was sitting bolt upright, and I could practically feel the tension radiating off of her like electricity.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, alarm bells going off in my mind.
“Nothing. Don’t park, pull over.”
“What?”
“Let me out now!”
I’d never heard her speak that way, so I did, pulling to the side of the entrance and throwing on my flashers. Without another word, she got out of the car and stormed towards the entrance of her building.
I had no idea what was going on with her until I saw there was a strange man waiting there. He was dressed casually, but I could tell even from where he was that he was fairly built and powerful.
Who the hell was this? Some boyfriend? A drug dealer? Was I really being an idiot and the con was falling apart right in front of my face because her partner had showed up uninvited?
Suddenly all the warm and fuzzy feelings faded as I watched Nicole start to speak to him, her voice tense and angry. Whoever the hell he was, I wasn’t going to make her face it alone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
~Nicole~
A whole lot of emotions were churning through me as I marched to the man waiting at my door. Disbelief, incredulousness, rage, confusion. They all mixed together, ramping me up so that my nausea was forgotten for a brief moment.
Sure enough, it was exactly who I thought it was. Standing right in front of my building’s door, looking like a damn model in a light blue polo and dark washed jeans.
“Jason?” I asked, my tone mixed up three ways from Sunday. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nicole! Hi! You look beautiful.” He turned to me with such a movie star smile, but it only made me angrier. How dare he show up on my doorstep, acting pleasant like he hadn’t been complacent in the ruining of my life. “I ran into your mother at the supermarket and she told me that you’d move to St. Louis and were flourishing. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, naturally I wanted to drive up and see how you were doing. And, you know, maybe make up a little for the less than awesome things I’ve done.”
