Chapter 55

Joshua was waiting outside my door, his curly red hair darkened from rain.

August had started with a series of heavy storms. Though the raining had stopped that afternoon, the air still hung thick and musky with the smell of wet concrete and washed asphalt. It filled my lungs with every breath, reminding me of Mr. Czarn’s stormy scent.

Even so, beneath it all, I knew Joshua’s spice still remained.

I didn’t trust what my heart would do should I catch a whiff of his cologne, so I paused half-way up the stairs.

“What are you doing here?” I was proud that my voice didn’t shake.

He wore a denim jacket I knew too well. The muggy air had never gotten cool enough for me, but I wondered if that was a side effect of being pregnant. They did say you ran hotter growing a second body.

Thinking of Baby Bean, I grew self-conscious of my undone button and zipper underneath my loose blouse. I had plans to get maternity pants in the morning, it finally being my weekend after a long, cooped up week in the office. Turns out, making me stay still in one room took more out of me than running across the city several times.

“What do you mean what am I doing here?” he said. “I tried every other way to get a hold of you. Did you really have to sic your boss after me?”

“I mean how did you get my address?” I paused. “Wait, you’ve met LeFevre?”

“Definitely didn’t have the look of a secretary. Said he was the big fish.” Joshua pushed off from the wall he’d been leaning against and stepped towards the stairs.

I stepped down, ready to run if I had to.

He noticed, and his expression cracked.

“Really?”

“I didn’t give you any contact information for a reason. I don’t want to be near you.”

“Alaina, you’re overreacting—”

“Which I can if I want, leave.”

He took a step down. His worker boots still had that milk jug sticker I’d slapped on as a joke. I could never say why he didn’t take the two seconds it would take to peel it off.

“Alaina, please, you have to let me explain. I can’t live without you. I can’t sleep.”

“Sounds like you’re not trying hard enough.”

His face crumpled. Even so, those few steps had been enough for me to see the hollowness around his eyes.

“You’re not being fair.”

“Don’t care.” I took out my phone. “Leave now or I call the police.”

He gave a weak smile, but it was enough to bring out the dimples I’d loved so much. He did stop, though there were now only four steps between us, and my overactive nose could already start catching a trace of mint.

“Alaina,” it was soft, a breath. “Please, you misunderstood. She doesn’t mean anything. It was a fling; I really do love you.”

“If you love someone, you don’t sleep with someone else.”

“Like I said, it didn’t mean anything. You’re just too sensitive because you were a virgin, which I should have thought—”

“LIKE HELL!”

God hadn’t made my body to handle anger well, so my yell cracked off the cement walls of the apartment stairwell. Tears were already filling up my eyes, and my heart though pounding extra hard might do something for the problem.

Even so, when a mellow, generally quiet person yells, those who know them always flinch.

Joshua didn’t just flinch; his hands pulled over his stomach, as though to defend it, then jutted back into fists when he remembered his original intent. His freckled brows lowered, and his frown made the dimples all but a memory.

“I’m just trying to stop the worst thing in my life from happening, so please don’t go calling me a stalker or involving the police. I’m doing no such thing. You’re the one so caught up in your own hurt to throw away years of trust just because I made one mistake.”

My head was starting to hurt, and I would have kept arguing if that was it. But pain like period cramps started up in my lower abdomen, and I’d learned from my stint in Germany that if it went too long, I could lose the pregnancy. They were early contractions triggered by stress.

And a deluded cheater like Joshua was not worth losing my baby, even if my insecurities were confirmed and I had deserved it.

Thus, I took a deep breath, trying to use the smell of the wet air to calm myself, but only got a thickening smell of mint. I heard his boots hit more steps.

“She was an old fling, someone I met long before you, and she’d never left me alone, but she said she’d leave for good if I just gave her one last time—”

“I’m calling the cops.” I’d already unlocked my phone and was dialing the number.

“Wait!”

He lunged for my phone just as I leaned back to dodge him.

The heel of my shoe slipped on the edge of the step. My phone flew.

For a fraction of a second I fell, stomach flying to my throat, adrenaline flushed into every cell of my body. I twisted around to reach for the railing.

The ball of my palm hit the railing. Rainwater made it slip too. The stairs rushed to meet my face, but better my face that my stomach.

Then an arm around my beltline stopped me.

I could feel my frantic heartbeat where Joshua’s arm pressed flush against the hard round curve of my womb. My own weight pressed the undone zipper into my skin.

I heard his breath stop.