Imperfections Come To Light (The Imperfection Series Book 2)

by Shaniel Watson

  I’m not telling him this or he’ll have someone taking me to work every morning and picking me up. I know he’s concerned about me and the baby, and it feels good to know he cares so much. But at times he has a tendency to be overprotective of us and it irritates me. To save myself a big unnecessary argument I just let him have his way.

  I finally manage to get off the bed without waking him up. He must be tired. I pull my robe on and go to the bathroom. When I’m finished and look down I see red spots on the tissue in the toilet. I bend down to take a closer look. “Is that blood?” I tear off a piece of toilet paper to check. Oh shit, it’s blood. I’m spotting. The last time this happened was at the beginning of my pregnancy when I thought I was having my period before I knew I was pregnant. I don’t think I’m supposed to be bleeding. My hand goes automatically to my stomach and I start to feel anxious and my breathing deepens. Is this normal? Am I supposed to be spotting this late into my pregnancy? What if something’s wrong with the baby?

  Calm down, Cat, I’m sure you’re fine and the baby’s fine. The nurse did say light spotting was fine. I close my eyes and put both hands on my stomach, taking a deep breath. Nick. I turn to open the door and drop my hand. He’s going to freak the fuck out if I tell him and rush me straight to the hospital. I feel fine and I’m not in any pain. Think, Cat, when was the last time you felt the baby move? Earlier today around lunch I felt the fluttering sensations. I think I’m okay. I’m not going to tell him unless I start to feel sick or I start spotting more. I’ll make an appointment to see my doctor tomorrow. I’m sure he’s going to say I’m fine and I won’t have to tell Nick about this.

  If I tell him now he’s going to rush me to the emergency room where I don’t want to be. He’s going to take this to a whole new level after what happened to Kate and then to make it worse, it happened after we had sex. He’s going to blame himself, and he won’t touch me for the rest of this pregnancy.

  I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and walk back into the room as silently as I can and open my drawer to find underwear and a long T-shirt to put on. Holding them to my chest, I pray he doesn’t wake up when I walk past the bed again to put them on in the bathroom. I put on the shirt, my panties, and a liner in record time. I do not want Nick to wake up to see that I’m not in bed next to him and start asking me questions I don’t have the wherewithal to answer because I’m so damn nervous. My heart is beating hard, I feel like a thief sneaking around.

  I get back in the bed and lie with my back against his chest, trying my best not to wake him up. His arm snakes around me and damn I know he’s awake; I put my arm over his and try to relax.

  “You put clothes on?”

  He would notice that half-asleep with his eyes closed. “I went to the bathroom and was cold.” Please go back to sleep. I don’t know what I’m going to do if he gets that loving feeling and wants to have sex. I’m going to have to fake all-out exhaustion and pull out the pregnancy pass, on the verge of throwing up nausea.

  I whisper, “Nick?”

  “Mmm.” He moans sleepily.

  “Nothing, go back to sleep.” I wait, listening to him breathe to make sure he went back to sleep.

  Great! I feel a sliver of relief when all I hear is his even breathing and feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against my back. Thank goodness for jet lag. I have to make sure I get up before he does in the morning, get out of bed, and be dressed and ready to go. Him being the master observer he is, I’m going to have to come up with a reason why I’m up and leaving earlier than usual. You tell one little white lie and you end up having to make up a million little ones to back up the first lie you tell. This is why I don’t like to lie, but this is for his own good and my sanity for the next four months. If he finds out I’m lying to him about this I can see him losing his mind, locking me up in here, and tying me to this bed on permanent bed rest.

  I’m dressed and ready by the time he wakes up and comes in the kitchen for his coffee. I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I was trying so hard not to think about the baby, the spotting, and lying to Nick, that I kept waking up. I couldn’t stay asleep for longer than thirty minutes.

  I get up to wash my plate and cup in the sink and hear him come up behind me, kissing me on the cheek. I turn my head and press my lips firmly against his.

  “You’re up early,” he says, rubbing his hands up and down the sides of my arms.

  “I have an early morning staff meeting before class.”

  “I wanted to wake up next to you my first morning back.”

  His hands go from my arms, to the sides of my waist, to under my belly. The tip of his nose and his lips move up and down the side of my neck. I take a fortifying breath to keep up my defenses to him. “I know what you wanted. It’s too late I have to go, I wish I could stay longer.” I finish with the dishes and dry my hands on a towel.

  “It’s not too late,” he says, his hands moving down into the waistband of my pants.

  I put the towel down and put my hand on the side of his face. “I would love to. I can’t, I’m going to be late, Nick.”

  “Come on, I missed you.”

  “I know, but I can’t. I could afford to be late if someone didn’t keep turning off my alarm.” I pull his hands away from my pants and turn in his arms.

  “It’ll be quick, promise.”

  He cages me in with his hands on the sink on either side of me, kissing the side of my mouth with a flick of his tongue. I swallow and tilt my head back. He’s making me wish I could give him what he wants. I can’t look in his eyes when he’s looking at me like this. I push his arm away and with my back pressed against the counter I slip past him. Talk about narrow escapes.

  “You are never quick.” I grab my blazer off the chair. He sighs, pouts his lips, and leans back against the counter with his hands across his chest. He looks adorable, but I can’t. I bite down on my lips and smile at him, putting my bag over my shoulder. “This will teach you to stop turning off my alarm.” I can’t leave him like this. “I gotta go.” I walk back over to him, pin one of his arms down, making sure he doesn’t trap me. He smiles down at me with a wicked gleam in his eyes and I grab him by the tie. “Come here. Let me leave you with a little something to hold you over till tonight.” His soft firm lips cover mine and he gives me a deep kiss, sucking my tongue so deep in his mouth I can hardly breathe. Giving me a pulsing ache between my legs with each gentle suck of my tongue pressed against his. Oh shit. This is more than I bargained for. I wanted to turn him on, not the other way around. If I don’t get a hold of myself I’m going to be fucked and in big trouble after he curses my ass out for lying to him. It’s hard when he knows exactly what to do, he makes it feel so good. The muscles in his arms move and I quickly jump back, placing my hand against his chest to distance myself from him. Taking a ragged breath, I wipe my fingertips across my lips and hustle to the door with a wave of my hand.

  With a comical look of disbelief he says, “How is that holding me over?” I give him a smile in answer to his question and he yells across the room when I open the door, “You going to leave me like this, hanging up high and dry?”

  “I got you all hot and bothered? Don’t worry I’m saving it all for when I get home. Bye, babe.” I throw his words back at him from when he refused to have phone sex with me.

  “I can play too, Cat!”

  “I know you can, but remember, I can give as good as I get.” I close the door and leave him sneering at me.

  I’m sitting in the exam room waiting for my doctor to come in to examine me when the nurse finishes with me. The office called me two hours ago and told me they had to push back my doctor’s appointment for today because he was held up at the hospital. I told her it would be fine. It’s always cold in here, and this little paper gown is making it worse. I told the nurse what happened and she took my blood pressure and everything, the normal routine. Which is a good sign.

  My doctor comes in and asks me some questions. I tell him I wasn’
t feeling any pain or discomfort. After he listens to the baby’s heartbeat and asks me more questions I lie back with my feet in the stirrups. He examines me and says he didn’t see anything, the bleeding’s stopped, and the baby’s heartbeat is strong. Lying there staring up at the ceiling I was nervous he was going to tell me something was wrong. The only thing that came to my mind was what I was going to tell Nick. When he was finished with the exam it was like a ten-pound anvil was lifted off my chest when he said the baby and I were fine.

  I realized how much I was worried trying to convince myself everything was fine. I feel better about lying to Nick now that I’m sure the baby’s fine.

  Sitting up on the exam table I ask the doctor, “The bleeding is nothing serious to worry about?”

  He stops typing in the computer and spins around on the stool to face me. “In some cases bleeding can indicate a serious problem. In your case, no. I’ve examined you and I haven’t found anything that would indicate anything serious.”

  “Could…how can I put this?” This is embarrassing but I have to ask. I look down searching for the right words to use. He smiles and waits for me to finish. “Could vigorous intercourse have been the cause of me spotting?” How embarrassing for me to have to ask this question. Nick wouldn’t be embarrassed at all. He would have gone so far as to ask about positions having a factor in me bleeding, he would have gone into full detail, total disclosure without censor. I would be beyond embarrassed.

  “Typically light bleeding in the second and third trimester can be caused by interference with the cervix during intercourse, the vaginal exam I gave you, or pregnancy hormones making expanding blood vessels more sensitive.”

  “I can go home and tell my boyfriend I’m fine, nothing to worry about?”

  “I assure you, you and the baby are fine. If you start to feel pain, swelling, or if you start bleeding like a period give us a call and come in or go straight to the hospital.”

  “I’ll do that if anything changes. Thank you.” That’s a relief.

  He picks up my chart and looks at me with a friendly smile. “You might want to take it easy with the sex for a day or so. Other than that you’re good, see you at your next visit.”

  I barely maintain eye contact when I say, “Okay, bye.” Glad this crisis is over. I get off the table and put my clothes back on.

  The only thing is, I still have to tell Nick. How am I going to do that without him blowing up at me for not telling him in the first place? You know what…the most important thing is the baby is fine. I’ll figure out a way to tell him, I have to leave to meet up with Ava at the house. We were supposed to go out but when my appointment changed I couldn’t make it. I didn’t tell Ava about my appointment because I didn’t want her to be an accessory after the fact. She’s going to tell me about the crazy date she went on last night.

  “What? What is a golden shower?” I ask Ava, putting my hair up in a ponytail sitting on the couch where she’s telling me about her date.

  “It’s not what you think. You will not be getting showered with gold.”

  “What is it?”

  “As I found out, it’s when you pee on a guy to get them off.”

  “Are you for real?” I say to Ava uncertain of whether she’s joking or not.

  “I’m smiling, but I’m dead serious, Cat. Not only does he like to receive the gift, he likes to give a golden spray at times.” She pulls her lips together, one of her dark eyebrows raising over her dark blue eyes.

  “He asked you to let him do that to you? Did you?”

  “What do I look like? I wouldn’t piss on myself for a hundred. As soon as he said that I said, ‘check please!’ And got the hell up out of there.”

  “People are really into being peed on?”

  “Apparently there’s a market for it. I mean, I’m not knocking anyone’s turn on, but that’s not for me. That’s not first date conversation either.”

  “No, it’s not. That’s something you want to work in after a year or two of dating.”

  “Exactly, even then it would be like, whaaat!”

  “You just got up and left him there?”

  “No, I finished my meal, an unusual fetish is no reason to leave a good four-course soft-shell crab meal behind. I told him I had to go to the bathroom to pee.”

  “Why did you say you had to pee?”

  “What? I’m sure he didn’t mind, it should have made him happy knowing I could perform. He probably wanted to come with me so I could shower him down, hot and wet.”

  I make a face and say, “Eww,” and we both laugh.

  “When I came back I told him he seemed like a nice guy but I can’t have anyone spraying me with piss.”

  We’re laughing when Nick walks in the room and asks what’s so funny. Too bad I don’t realize he’s not smiling.

  Cat

  He says hello to Ava and gives me a kiss on the cheek. Still no smile. Why is he so serious? I don’t think he knows about me going to the doctor. He walks out of the living room without saying anything. Ava and I send each other looks and I shrug.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ava says under her breath.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he had a bad day in court.” We go in the kitchen and he’s sitting at the table with a drink in his hand. I lean against the table beside him.

  “Had a bad day?”

  He puts the bottle down, folds his hand on the table still not looking at me. “You know what I hate?”

  “What?”

  “When a client is not completely honest with me. We both know you’re guilty. By withholding information from me you’re working against me. You don’t know how that pisses me off.”

  I smile and look at Ava who’s standing against the fridge drinking a bottle of water. She smiles back, recapping the water bottle. We’re both thinking about the shower of gold.

  When I look at Nick again I can tell he’s not happy. This look he’s giving me is making me think it’s not only his client he’s upset with for lying to him. Do I want to know why he’s looking at me like I did something to him? Why today of all days would he come home upset with me? He doesn’t talk about his clients with me, only the one time when we were first together and he didn’t want to tell me about that.

  “Where were you today, Cat?”

  I take a deep breath, straighten up, and look down at my stomach. Oh God, he knows. Not good. I swallow, keeping the butterflies from rising in my stomach. I’m going to keep my answer short, on the off-chance he doesn’t know. “Work.”

  “That’s it? The only place you went was work?”

  From the corner of my eyes I see he’s watching me intently, staring at my face. I look at Ava uncovering her water bottle taking a big gulp because if I look at him he’s going to see I’m lying. “And hanging out here with Ava.”

  “I received a call today from your doctor’s office.”

  “Why would they call you?” I think I know but I’m playing along with the little hope I have he doesn’t know. God, I hate trying to fool myself.

  “When you filled out the contact information you accidentally put my number where yours should be, remember that?”

  I remember at the time I didn’t think it was a big deal. Didn’t know it would come back to bite me in the butt.

  “Your doctor was running late at the hospital. They wanted to know if you wanted to push your appointment back two hours or reschedule. I don’t remember you telling me you had a doctor’s appointment today. I have them all written down in my schedule, and Karen reminds me. I gave them your telephone number since I was clueless.”

  I finally look at him and I can see he’s not happy. I need to explain, he looks like a dark-haired lion ready to pass down judgment with cool hard transparent steely blue eyes. It’s enough to make me want to shrink back a little. “Nick, I…” I stop talking and pull my bottom lip in my mouth nervously when he stands up, pushes the chair back squeaking across the floor. Ava gives me a weak I-can’t-help-you-girl smile
and retreats into the living room. I know she’s glad it’s not her that’s about to get chewed out.

  “I’m going to ask you again, hopefully this time you can get the truth out before I lose my cool; you’re lying to me and I don’t like it. Where were you today besides work and hanging out with Ava?”

  I face him with my fingers skimming the table and my other hand on my stomach. “I went to see my doctor today.”

  “No shit,” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “You don’t have to do that. Don’t be nasty.”

  He folds his arms over his chest and stares me down. I know he’s angry but we don’t need to get into a big argument where we’re both yelling. It’s going to happen if he keeps using this tone with me.

  “I’m fine and the baby’s fine. Something happened and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

  “What happened! Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you if it wasn’t necessary.”

  He drops his hands squinting at me, takes a step, stops and steps back away from me again. “If it wasn’t necessary? Worry me?” he says under his breath more to himself than me, like he didn’t hear me correctly. “Listen to me, if you find it necessary to go to the doctor, you should tell me. Why were you at the doctor’s without me?”

  I’m trying to keep my voice calm. One of us should remain calm. “Like I said, I’m fine and the baby’s fine.”

  “Cat!” he yells at me voice booming.

  My hands ball up at my sides with my temper. “I was spotting a little, I saw a little blood last night—”

  With two steps he’s almost touching me. He’s yelling but I see more concern than anger in his eyes. “And you’re only telling me now!”