“What are you doing here?” Destiny hissed when Connor’s large frame filled the doorway.
I stopped breathing altogether as his glare moved from my cousin to me.
“That seems to be a popular question around here.” He moved inside of the room, like he owned it, stepping around Destiny as he made his way over to the bed where I sat.
“She doesn’t want you here,” Destiny protested.
I dipped my head in shame. I told Destiny that Connor had just left without saying much and that I didn’t want to see him. I hadn’t told her that I kicked him out after yelling at him and breaking up with him.
Somehow Connor knew I hadn’t shared the whole story with Destiny because he looked at me and said, “Still keeping secrets, huh?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond as he turned back to Destiny. “What she wants has been overruled. Thank you for being with her yesterday and today but I’m taking over from here on out.”
I gasped at the same time my cousin did.
“I don’t want you here,” I insisted, speaking up for the first time since he entered the room.
“And I just finished telling your cousin, in so many words, that what you want doesn’t matter.”
My eyes bulged. “What the hell do you mean what I want doesn’t matter?”
“Exactly what I said, a stór.”
I was forced to move my head back slightly when Connor bent low enough to get his face even with mine. I’d never seen such a look of determination and fierceness in a man’s eyes.
“You seem to be under the misguided impression that I give a shit what you want right now. And that your yelling and kicking me out of your hospital room has any bearing on what the fuck I’m doing or how I’m going to treat you. Let’s get one thing straight, it doesn’t. Especially in the state you’re in.”
Placing my hands on my hip, angered, I questioned, “What the hell does that mean? The state I’m in.”
“Emotional,” he stated flat out, rising to his full height, crossing his arms over his chest. “The research I’ve done over the past twelve hours says it’s to be expected. In addition to the loss we’ve experienced, your hormones are also all out of whack which creates periods of intense emotion and whatnot. So, if you think I’m not going to be around to see you through this, or that I’m going to let you spend however many weeks at your cousin’s …” he paused to glance over his shoulder at a silent Destiny, “you’ve got this all fucked up.”
Not bothering to wait for my response, he gave me one final look before reaching around me, grabbing for the bag of my belongings that Destiny had brought for me earlier that morning. After securing the bag over his shoulder, he lifted my forest green, wool coat from the bed and held it open for me to step into.
“It’s cold outside. Let’s go,” he insisted when I obviously hesitated.
My eyes went to Destiny, who continued to stare at the two of us, as if in somewhat of a daze. Connor’s growling sound, the same one he made when growing impatient, pulled my gaze back to him. The noise only ceased when I stepped forward, spinning around to place my arms in the sleeves of my coat, allowing him to put it on me.
“I can button the damn thing myself,” I asserted only after he attempted to start buttoning it for me.
“Then do it and let’s go.”
Pursing my lips, I glared at him but didn’t say anything.
“We have to wait for the doc—” I began a few seconds later, having forgotten that I hadn’t even gotten the doctor’s approval to leave the hospital just yet, when there was a knock on the door.
“Dr. Mills,” Connor greeted with a nod of his head, catching me by surprise.
How does he know this doctor?
The doctor nodded at Connor. “Ms. McDonald, how are you feeling?”
I cleared my throat, not knowing how to answer that question.
“Physically?” he clarified.
“Okay.”
He nodded, seeming to understand that, while I felt okay physically, aside from some cramping—which was normal—I wasn’t actually okay. But he couldn’t do anything about that.
“Well, your lab work from this morning came back and all your numbers look good. So, I’m okay with discharging you. You remember the instructions given to you by your doctor, right?”
I nodded, but of course, Dr. Mills had to go over everything my own gynecologist had told me the day before, yet again. When I saw a look exchanged between Connor and Dr. Mills, I got the impression that the doctor had been somewhat coerced into the amount of care and detail he was giving me. However, I didn’t think too much about it. My head was heavy with the emotions and I just wanted to get in bed and lay down, and not get back up for the foreseeable future.
“I’ll call you later, Resh,” Destiny finally said as Connor held the door open for both she and I to pass through. “It’ll be okay. Let him take care of you,” she whispered in my ear while pulling me into a hug.
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t respond. The truth was, my heart felt like it expanded at the thought of being taken care of by Connor. Yet, my head remembered everything I’d endured over the previous twenty-four hours. That knowledge sank down into my heart and it contracted again under the weight of my grief. It didn’t feel like everything would be okay.
However, even as those morose thoughts ricocheted around in my head, causing it to spin, the moment Connor slipped his large hand around mine, walking us out of that hospital, I felt something pushing against the heaviness of the grief. I wouldn’t dare call it hope—I’d been hopeful just forty-eight hours prior, and look how that’d turned out—but I felt comfort in knowing that after experiencing such a hard loss I wasn’t walking out into the world alone.
Chapter Nineteen
Resha
“I’m going out for a few hours. I left the chili on the stove and the cornbread in the oven to keep it warm.”
I nodded slightly, not verbally responding, as I turned the pages of the book I was barely reading. Though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt when Connor moved from the balcony doorway, closer to the couch I was sitting on. A breath later, I felt my shoulders being covered by yet another fleece throw blanket, as if I wasn’t already covered in two of them.
“It’s cold out here, a stór. Maybe you should come inside and read.”
“I’m fine,” I stated curtly, turning yet another page I hadn’t read.
Connor stood over me, staring down, but I kept my eyes on the words I didn’t truly see.
It’d been like this for three weeks, since I’d gotten back from the hospital—Connor ordering food, day after day, keeping it warm on the stove or in the oven, covering me with excess blankets as I sat outside on the balcony. Very few words were being exchanged between the two of us, even when he accompanied me to Dr. Rodriguez’s office for a follow-up visit to see how I was doing. He’d asked me how the visit went since he sat out in the lobby, and I’d told him fine, my usual answer to that question these days, but that was all I gave.
“You need to eat, Resha.”
I almost flinched at the growing impatience I heard in his voice.
Good.
Maybe he’ll get so impatient with me that eventually he’ll give up, recognize that what I said in the hospital was true and that we really have nothing in common, and he’ll let me go on my way without a fuss. Most men in my life seemed to have operated that way. Even my own father who’d been with my mom up until I was one year old, and then decided that we weren’t enough for him, and he split.
But Connor wasn’t my father. He wasn’t the type to quit so easily. I remembered that as he leaned down, placing a kiss to my temple, letting his lips linger there for just a moment. It was a brief exchange of intimacy, but enough to warm me up more than the three blankets I wore on the outside balcony on this cold, wintery day. Regardless, the coldness that still lingered in my heart, was fiercer than the outside temperatures. In spite of Connor’s devotion, the iciness lingered.
And when he walked away to wherever it was he went on Tuesday nights, although I wanted to call to him to ask where he was going, I refrained.
Probably to go see another woman.
One who could give him children if he wanted them.
That was when the tears started again. Thank God, he left just before they started because they always felt like a faucet I couldn’t turn off. I’d expected the crying bouts to let up by then but they still came and I couldn’t stop them. Not when I was alone. It was as if my body knew it was safe to let them flow, at least for a little while.
“Pull it together,” I grunted at myself, feeling foolish for yet another meltdown. I’d barely been ten weeks pregnant, how was I still so emotional over losing something I never really had?
Shoving the book aside, I picked up my tablet and attempted to go onto Instagram, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. When I clicked on the web browser, the page I’d been reading previously opened up.
What Caused Your Miscarriage?
That was the title of the article. I’d read it over and over, and at least ten others just like it over the past three weeks. But this time, instead of reading the article, I scrolled down to the comments sections. That was always where debates and arguments occurred. Women shared their experiences of miscarriage, how they changed their diets or started working out more, and viola! They got pregnant easier, or were able to hold the pregnancy for a full forty weeks. I read the comments of these articles incessantly, searching for what I’d done wrong. Was it the cup of decaf coffee I’d switched to in the morning? Some comments said that even decaf had small amounts of caffeine in it which could affect the baby. A woman commented that all the chemicals and BPA in the plastic bottles and cleaners she used caused her infertility, and when she switched to organic and natural, she got pregnant.
I read to the point of obsession, so much so that I didn’t hear or see the man sneaking up on me, until he reached out, touching my leg.
“Oh!” I jumped out of my damn seat, grabbing my chest with my free hand, my heart palpitating.
“Sorry, Resha. Didn’t mean to scare you,” Mark stated, a concerned expression covering his face. However, his hazel eyes reminded me so much of his brother’s that it was difficult to feel anything aside from relief at seeing them.
“No, no worries, Mark,” I responded, pushing out a heavy breath, trying to regulate my breathing.
“I called your name as I entered the apartment but you were so enthralled in what you were reading, I guess you didn’t hear me.” His eyebrows shot up as he glanced at the tablet still in my lap. “What are you reading?”
Closing out of the web browser, I shut down the tablet and set it on the coffee table in front of me. “Nothing. H-How are you?” I questioned, clearing my throat and readjusting the blankets over my body. Mark had been stopping by more frequently over the past few weeks, in particular when Connor wasn’t home. I started to suspect Connor put his brother up to it, to have someone watching over me while he wasn’t here.
“I’m good. Busy day at work but no big deal.”
I snorted derisively, but then felt guilty as I looked at Mark. “Sorry.”
He shook his head. “Nothing for you to be sorry about.”
I sighed. “Is Connor putting you up to this? Visiting me while he’s out doing God knows what and with whomever?”
Mark’s brows knitted in a way that signaled his confusion. “No one puts me up to anything.”
“You sound like him.”
He shrugged. “He practically raised me.”
I almost let out a smile. Almost. And then I remembered the baby that Connor wouldn’t get to raise because of my own body’s failure to sustain a pregnancy.
“You don’t have to keep coming. I don’t need to be coddled, and I’m sure you have things to do.”
“Have you eaten?”
I frowned. He obviously wasn’t about to take my bait.
“I’ll take that as a no. I think I smelled some chili coming from the kitchen. I’ll go make us some bowls.”
I silently watched as he rolled backwards until he had enough space to turn and head through the balcony doorway, and presumably over to the kitchen. I heard sounds of him moving around in the kitchen. I thought of going in to help him, but it felt like such a task to bother with getting up from my seat. Luckily, Connor’s kitchen had been outfitted to be handicap accessible. He told me as much when I asked about the spacing in his kitchen when I first moved in.
For when Mark comes over. He ain’t shit as a cook but if he ever gets the inkling, the kitchen’s set up for him already.
It warmed my heart to think he’d considered his brother’s needs even when picking out his own home. That was one of the first inclinations I got that Connor would make a great father.
“This looks great,” Mark interrupted my ruminations as he pushed his way over the balcony doorway with a tray of two bowls on saucers with cornbread on the side for each of us.
I just stared at the food for a moment, but then Mark said, “You know I tell the Big Guy if you don’t eat.”
I glared at him before leaning in and taking the bowl and spoon. “Traitor,” I murmured before putting a spoonful of the chili into my mouth. For a full two seconds, I savored the richness of the chili powder, onion, peppers, liquid smoke, and a touch of sweetness from the tomatoes, in the chili. Admittedly, if I’d been in a different space and mood, I’d classify the food as delicious—I might even be looking up where Connor had purchased it from to find out the recipe to recreate it myself, but not that day.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” Mark questioned.
Glancing over, I saw that he was nearly halfway done with his own bowl.
“It’s okay.”
He chuckled. “Jealous it just might be better than yours?”
I gave him a half smile. “I can do better.”
“You’ll have to prove that one to me, sis. I haven’t had your chili yet.”
I blinked at the nickname he’d bestowed me with.
“Don’t give me that look,” he stated slyly as he broke off a piece of his cornbread and popped it into his mouth.
“You called me sis.”
He gave a one shoulder shrug as he chewed. “That’s what you are, pretty much anyway.”
“Am I?”
“Any wife of my brother’s will be my sister.”
I squirmed in my seat, looking down into the bowl in my lap. “I’m not his wife.”
Mark snorted. “You live together. He’s closer to you than anyone else I’ve seen him with. Hell, he calls me to come look after you when he’s not around. My big brother doesn’t call on me to do anything for him. He’s used to it being the other way around. So, you mean a hell of a lot more to him than you realize because he does things for you that he’s never done for anyone else.”
My heart ached at Mark’s words. They should’ve made me feel better. He was saying them to lift my spirits, I guessed. Unfortunately, their impact was the opposite of what he’d intended. They made me feel worse. Connor was giving so much and I couldn’t give him anything in return.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Mark insisted, moving closer to me and placing a hand on my knee.
“Do what?” I questioned, sitting up straight and wiping a wayward tear from the corner of my eye.
“Beating yourself up over what happened.”
I began shaking my head. I didn’t want to talk about what happened.
“I know, I know,” he began, apologetically. “You don’t want to talk about it and I’m not about to try to make you. The last thing I need is for you to get upset, start crying, and Connor come home to see you upset … he might try to kick my ass, or worse toss me over this balcony.” He jutted his head toward the balcony’s railing, smirking.
That pulled another small smile from my lips. I wasn’t ready to laugh just yet. Didn’t know if I ever would be but Mark had a way of lightening my mood.
&nb
sp; Clearing my throat, I said, “Thanks for coming,” before taking another spoonful of my chili.
“Thanks for eating. Connor would be pissed at me if he knew I was here and couldn’t get you to eat something.”
I rolled my eyes as I placed my half empty bowl and half a piece of cornbread onto the coffee table. “Well, you can report to him that you saw me eat.”
“Good. Now that that’s out of the way, wanna play cards or something? What? What was that look?”
I blinked and shook my head, not even realizing I’d worn my emotions in my expression. “Nothing.”
“It was something.”
I sighed. “It was just your asking to play cards reminded me of the night I was attacked in that alleyway. Connor stayed with me all night at my apartment. One of the things he did to keep me awake was ask me for a deck of playing cards. He teased me about my pink cards.”
Mark snorted. “Sounds like my brother. Who the hell has pink playing cards anyway?”
“I got them for breast cancer awareness month,” I defended.
Mark rolled his eyes. “Whatever. But that does explain why it’s all cute and frilly out here on his once, all-black, barely any furniture balcony,” he stated, looking around. “He did this for you.”
I glanced around as well. “He decorated it exactly how I had my balcony at my own place.”
“See?”
My gaze connected with Mark’s.
“He wouldn’t do this for just anyone.”
I didn’t say anything but it hurt too much to know that.
****
I laid in bed, scrolling through photos I’d taken of myself weeks ago, trying to decide which one I was going to post on my Instagram that day. I was getting messages from concerned readers, inquiring as to why I hadn’t been posting much in recent weeks. Clearly, I wasn’t ready to tell the entirety of the internet why I’d taken a semi-break from posting. Plus, there was the whole concern about brands and sponsors who required I post their content a certain amount of times in order to hold up my end of our contract.
Sighing, I sat up, having chosen a picture, and began typing out a caption to go along with it.
No Coincidence Page 24
