Page 88 of Dr. Bell

Smacking my teeth, I said, “This isn’t a joke, Adir.”

“Ooh, I’m Adir?” His head tilted, and his lip slightly lifted with the way he screwed his face up.

“I’m just saying… Genika was a part of your life.”

“Which I’ve already agreed to. My concern is my family.”

“What about her baby?”

For a second, he said nothing.

“Exactly.”

“That’s not why I’m quiet, my baby.”

“Then, why are you?”

He sighed heavily as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “He looks just like I did as a baby.”

His admission stunned me into silence.

“I wanted to deny it, but…”

“You can’t,” I mumbled.

“I can’t. It didn’t help that my mama confirmed it.”

I should’ve prepared myself for this. The devastation caused tears to well up in my eyes. All the time I spent going back and forth with Genika and now she was dead. There was no way I could apologize to her for thinking that she’d been lying.

“Don’t cry,” Adir uttered. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Wiping my eyes, I hated to feel like we had taken a step back. Through everything we’d been through, this was something that I truly wasn’t prepared for.

“This doesn’t change the way I feel about you or what we have.”

“It changes everything,” I whispered.

This time his face read something deadly. “Like what?” he asked.

“Like the fact that you can’t let someone else raise your child, Adir.” There was no way he would allow that. Which meant Genika’s…hisbaby was likely to be raised in this house. His office door opened, snagging his attention. Briefly, he talked to the person who entered.

“Baby girl, I have a patient I need to see. We’ll talk when I get home, aight?”

I simply nodded.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too, baby.” And I did. Regardless, I had to find a way to be okay with the turn of events. Hanging up the phone, I placed it down, put my face in my hands, and cried. Just that quickly, things seemed to shift.

Feeling like I needed some fresh air, I donned my slippers and slipped out of the room. The backyard was my second sanctuary. Sinking my feet into the grass was what I needed right now. Especially since I felt myself filling with anxiety over what was to come for our household.

Stepping out of my shoes and removing my socks, I sank my feet into the lush grass and walked the perimeter of the yard. It was newly evening, and the insects of the night had yet to make their appearance. As I walked, I thought about what welcoming another child into our home meant. I wouldn’t dare mistreat the baby Adir made with Genika. Welcoming their son into our home wasn’t even the issue. My issue was…this was no longer starting to feel like the fairytale I’d thought it to be. Especially since the shooting. Reality was that my husband was a Bell, and his ex gave birth to a Bell.

“You can have ten of his children and my baby will still bear the Bell name. My baby is a Bell.”

Right. Genika’s last statement to me rang so loudly in my head that the tears started again. To think I’d been so smug and sure that my man hadn’t impregnated her, and now she was gone.

Leaning my head toward the sky, I inhaled a deep breath, then slowly released it. I wanted to call Haven. However, she was still mentally recovering from being shot. The last thing I wanted to do was dump my problems on her.

---