by Selena Kitt
“Anyway, once a few days passed and I didn’t hear back from you, I started to think about his offer.”
My emotions take a sharp turn again.
“You can’t be serious—how could you even think about doing that to me again?” I bark.
“How could I not? Where the hell have you been the past few days?” she says angrily, dark eyes flashing. “I’ve been calling you over and over and not a single response. I’ve been here before, don’t you remember? Because I do—after countless calls and texts and instant messages, you disappeared and never looked back, never checked in once to say hi. This looked like the same thing to me!”
We are beginning to attract attention.
“Let’s finish this in my car,” I say, unable to think of another place we can privately duke it out.
* * *
“So let me get this straight,” I begin as we settle in, “you were happy to let my dad pay you off to rip my child from me and tear my heart to pieces? Who the hell are you?”
“The woman you keep leaving behind, Brent! Look at it from my perspective for once—what evidence did I have that you were coming back to us? That you weren’t going to abandon me again? You’re a billionaire, and I’m only one of millions of women you could have. I had zero reasons to think you’d stick around, Brent. Zero!”
“It’s only been a few days—how could you consider doing something so momentous after just a few days?”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like watching Bianca get so excited about seeing you, then watch it get chipped away every day you don’t show up? A few busy days to you feels quite different in our household. She asks me all the time what time you’re coming and I can’t give her an answer because anything I say she’ll plant firmly in her mind and start looking for you, and I cannot bear to see disappointment on her face when you don’t show up whenever I say.”
“I deliberately didn’t tell her when I’d be back—I just said soon.”
“Yeah, you obviously don’t know a thing about kids.”
“And whose fault is that, me not being a parent? You took that away from me without batting an eye!”
“Oh, give me a break with the melodrama—I did more than bat an eye. You know how hard I tried to reach you back then, so don’t try to blame me! Brent, you really have some nerve thinking I owed you more than I’d already given. I was willing to give you everything and you threw me away like last week’s trash. I at least tried reaching out to you—what the hell did you do? You had to know there was a risk when you came inside me, yet you never even bothered to double-check! It’s your fucking fault how this went down, Brent—if I could have found you, maybe you would have known about Bianca sooner, so don’t blame me—blame the flaky, careless version of you.”
Shit. Well, she sure as hell had a point.
Why the hell didn’t I check in at least once? I cared about her and I let myself get steered away from her in every way.
I often wondered how she was doing and I never even texted.
Even after Stacey and I broke up, I didn’t bother, and there’s really no excuse for that.
“You don’t think it looked like the old you had reappeared to me?” she continues, her voice softer, the quality of it a bit raw. “Here we are—you find out about Bianca, you tell her you’ll be in her life, yet she hasn’t seen you in days, and you wonder why I might have once felt that it was best for Bianca not to introduce her to you?”
Then she lets out a bitter chuckle. “Now she thinks you got lost again and pretends like she has accepted it, saying you need Siri. Then your dad suddenly shows up and offers me a chance to start over, to possibly wipe her memory of you—the flake. To cut ties and rebuild a whole new life that doesn’t involve you disappointing her over and over. I figured it’s still early enough and she still has a chance to get over you, regardless of how I felt.” Nina suddenly looks away. “You’d be amazed at the things you’ll think of doing on behalf of your kid,” she says quietly.
Nina is brimming with all sorts of emotions, and I feel like a total dick.
Underneath her anger, I sense that she still cares deeply for me.
I do wish I could blame someone else—Nina, my dad—but it really all comes down to me. I was careless and I fucked up royally.
I let out a heavy breath.
“I really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings back then, Nina…”
“Hurt my feelings?” She stares at me wondrously. “You broke my fucking heart! Do you have any idea how much I gave you that night, beyond my virginity?”
Of course, I did.
Her love, her body and pretty much her soul; she got stuck raising my baby alone! The seed I’d planted in her went on to determine the course of all sorts of aspects of her life.
“You turned that moment into a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am—even after I told you how I felt for you. You fucked me for no other reason than your pride or whatever the hell that sudden jealousy was!”
Her voice has gone shaky and her eyes have watered.
It kills me to see how much she’s fighting herself not to cry, to witness her raw pain on display.
“I just don’t know what came over me,” I begin. “The thought of some other guy being with you completely fried my brain in a way I rarely experience. But, Nina, you must know how much you mean to me—I’ve told you so many times…”
“Oh, Christ, here we go again. They’re just words, Brent. There’s this old saying—maybe you’ve heard of it—something about actions speaking louder than words? You’ve told me all about appreciating me before and you still left. Getting the sound of crickets when you reach out to someone sure as hell doesn’t make one feel like they mean a lot.”
I am crushed again as I imagine how abandoned and lonely she must have felt, how broken I left her.
All I want to do is make everything better for her—whatever it takes.
Nina brings out such extreme emotions in me and it frightens me—I don’t like the lack of control I feel around her and anything that has to do with her.
I lost control when it seemed someone else would have her, and I lost my mind when I found out about Bianca.
Still, our paths keep crossing, despite time and distance and so many other things between us, and feeling like someone else is pulling our strings freaks me out, but at the same time, I’m grateful to whatever this force is because it kept bringing us together, and now, it has glued us together.
My dad’s got an earful coming.
I have a sense of duty when it comes to my father, of course—a commitment to our legacy—but my sense of duty toward my child trumps both.
“I’m glad you told me before doing anything because the old man was bluffing. Even if he tried, there’s not a whole lot he can take from me. The work I put in built a hell of a solid foundation for me, and my name isn’t only tied up in my dad’s companies and investments. I busted my ass to make my own money, and I have shit-tons of it locked away—far out of his reach. He can’t touch me, Nina—not in that way, so you had no need to worry about me falling from grace.”
I realize she might have left out another part of why she considered my dad’s offer—maybe she agreed it was better for me to be left with my billions and debutantes for my own sake.
Then something dawns on me.
“But at some point, you were considering staying with me, even if I was suddenly broke?”
She looks at me in disbelief.
“Of course! Brent, don’t you get it? I…” She stops and turns away, but I know what she was going to say and I need to hear it.
“Say it, Nina, please.”
She slowly looks back at me, tears making her eyes shimmer.
“I still love you,” she says sadly—like she wishes it wasn’t true.
I can’t help but place a peck on her lips then, surprising her into a gasp.
“I love you too, Nina,” I say, and saying those words causes a massive flood of relief to wash over me.
All tension eases away, and I can’t believe how light I suddenly feel.
All this time, that’s all I needed to do?
Nina’s tears fall and her face starts crumpling, but I can see she is still fighting off a cry as she quickly wipes her face.
“You can’t just fucking disappear,” she says. “You could have texted or something—let me know when you planned to talk. You have to let me know what’s up; you have to check in!”
“I know, and I’m sorry I took so long, but I’ve been making arrangements for you guys at home the past few days. I don’t ever want to be away from you again, Nina, and all I’ve been doing is working on making sure that doesn’t happen. As mad as I was at you, I wasn’t letting you go again.”
Her face slackens.
“Wait, you want to move us into your mansion?”
“Of course! What other option is there? My child is not staying in that neighborhood, and I want you both with me.”
Nina fixes her face and mouth as if to protest, but nothing comes out of her lips.
Yeah, I’d have trouble coming up with pros of living where they are now too. A shit-ton of cons, though—no doubt.
“Fine,” she finally says. “But I want Bianca to stay at her school. It’s a good one!”
“I have my assistant on it, and if she finds that it is indeed a good one, Bianca gets to stay.”
“You can’t have things totally your way, Brent—not all the time. We’re gonna have to compromise.”
“Absolutely! And when the time for dissent comes, we’ll deal with it and present pros and cons, and whoever makes the best argument wins.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You mean, just to make you feel better, I should let you win here and there?”
She nods, smiling a bit.
I shake my head firmly. “Not when it comes to the security of a Colton heir. You are way out of your league when it comes to how this part of the world works, Nina, and if you want to insist Bianca only eats gluten-free or something, fine, but I will not have my daughter in a vulnerable position just so you can feel good about getting your way, understood?”
Her eyes widen a little, reflecting several emotions. If I’m not seeing things, I swear I see respect and even desire in them.
Well, my voice did have some added bass to it.
“Yes, sir!” she says, and I can tell she meant it to come out sounding mocking, but she fails miserably.
She likes what she just saw; she’s good with me putting my foot down.
She has no idea what she’s in for.
“Much better,” I say. “Alternatively, you can use ‘Mr. Colton…’”
She lightly punches me in the arm.
“There’s another matter we have to take care of,” I say soberly, and she regards me warily.
“I’m going to arrange to be added to Bianca’s birth certificate soon, and she will begin to be formally integrated into the family, but I don’t like the idea of having an illegitimate child.”
“Well, there’s nothing you can do about that, can you? Too late! She was born that way.”
“You’re wrong, Nina—there is something I can do about that.”
I squeeze her hands then reach into my glove box and pull out a small box.
Even while I stewed over the situation, I had no doubt what I wanted most of all.
Two days after our silent falling-out I picked a ring out, and now, two days after that, I finally get to show it to her.
Over the past few days, I’d been thinking about how to bring it up—how to get us back together and talk things through, and how to set up a proposal, but now, partly because of my dad’s intrusion, the two of us tucked inside my Ferrari somehow seems like the best time.
“My sweet, brave Nina—my oldest friend and intermittent lover…” I earn another punch in the arm for that, and I’m impressed by her aim since her eyes are glued to the ring box.
I flip it open and her trapped tears catch the light of the diamond.
“Will you marry me?”
She finally looks up and stares at me for at least ten seconds—the longest ten seconds of my life.
“You’re kidding me,” she says.
“How could I possibly be? I have been denying how I felt about you for years, and now my love for you has not only come to the surface but stared me in the face relentlessly. I love you, Nina—this version of you and Nina 1.0. I can’t imagine my life without you again. Even before I found out about Bianca, I realized how much better my life was with you in it. You really do make me feel complete.”
She is breathing hard and flicking away fallen tears.
Still, she manages to say lightly, “Well, when you put it like that…”
I slip the ring on her finger and grab her to me, squeezing her so tightly, she can barely get the words “I can’t breathe” out, but I relax my grip when I hear her strangled whisper.
I can’t get enough of her soft curves against me, and out of the blue, it occurs to me how much more of her I might get to know—a pregnant version of her. I suddenly remember our little mishap in my bedroom and find myself imagining her belly growing with our second child.
Just when I thought my chest couldn’t swell more with love and joy, it does; I might get a second chance to be there from the beginning.
Until we know for sure, though, for now, it’s just her, me, and Bianca, and I am more than fine with that.
I finally release her.
“I have so much to learn about my daughter,” I begin. “What’s she like, generally?”
Nina graces me with a sly glance.
“Tantrum-prone. Like her father.”
I grin.
I’m not sure if she’s pulling my leg or not, but the thought of Bianca being anything like I was as a kid? Nina’s life has definitely not been boring the past few years if that was the case.
“I get to name our second kid,” I say. “Since you named the first one without my input,” I add quickly.
“I’m gonna get my way in something,” she says.
“You did for the past few years! Anyway, most likely, you will—women have valuable opinions sometimes.”
“Wow. You sound like your dad.”
“Regardless,” I continue, “in the most important ways—the best way—I have already won. You and me, Nina—the two of us with Bianca and whoever else comes along—we’ll be a family. I truly can’t think of a single thing better than that.”
A sense of duty alone is one thing; passion, love and commitment together all at once is quite another.
Epilogue
Every time I think I can’t get happier, I’m proven wrong.
My wife is wobbling around our mansion with a swollen belly, our second child happily kicking her at this moment and it’s making her smile at me in a way that makes her eyes twinkle, sending my heart leaping.
Nina has redecorated a bit here and there, sending me a sly glance each time I let her get her way with some embellishment or other.
In fact, she’s gotten away with changing quite a bit here in the mansion, but I’m not bothered; whatever makes her happy makes me happy.
My dear Bianca has adjusted quite happily to her new home and room, and I haven’t seen any sign of the tantrums Nina promised me.
Perhaps having more space to roam has evened my little girl out. Or perhaps—and I hope dearly that this is the case—finally having me around and in her life as a constant has helped calmed her.
Or perhaps seeing how happy her mom and I are together has mellowed her.
Perhaps I haven’t seen anything yet—god knows I’m dreading the teenaged years.
Nina has shown me every photo and video of Bianca she has, and I’m overjoyed that with the new child, I’ll get to see the whole thing from the beginning.
Bianca glances at Nina’s belly with an odd expression sometimes, and I really hope she doesn’t think she’ll be replaced in any way.
&nbs
p; I’m beyond grateful for the second chance I’ve been given, but there’s no way Bianca has a damned thing to worry about; I love her fiercely, and if she thinks I won’t get more meddling, she’ll quickly discover how wrong she is.
Nina has stayed on as a teacher throughout her pregnancy, but she has agreed to leave it behind temporarily for the beginning of our next child’s life.
