Page 63 of Don't Forget Me
She’d spent so long hating Corey for what he did to them, but now she knew maybe he’d done the right thing. Not in abandoning his kids but in leaving her. They’d fallen out of love. He’d never made her feel what Nick did.
And still…
“Hey.” Nick dropped a kiss on her head before lowering himself into the chair beside her. “What are you doing out here?”
“Just thinking.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t ask him about the future. All they had was now.
“You look tired.”
She offered him a weak smile. “I am, Nick.” Tired of not knowing if she’d survive, not knowing how the twins were coping, if seeing their mother unresponsive in a hospital bed would forever change their lives.
“You’re a million miles away tonight, aren’t you?”
“Not a million, but I am back in Florida.”
He nodded in understanding, but he couldn’t possibly understand. “I almost don’t want to go back.”
The admission sat like a weight between them, an immovable object.
“Don’t say that.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “We have to go back.”
He slid from his chair and dropped to his knees in front of her, taking her hands in his. “What if it’s a choice, Liz? What if we get to decide when we wake up?”
She shook her head. “It’s not. We don’t get to select our fate like it’s a multiple-choice question.”
“But we don’t know that. What if the thing that’s keeping us here is us?”
“No. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to, Nick.”
He put a hand on her leg, lifting his eyes to meet hers. “At this house, in this strange place, it’s like we’re the only people in the world. And I won’t say it doesn’t feel good.”
“But we aren’t the only people in the world. There are those who are counting on us. I have kids. They’re my world. I can’t live in a world that doesn’t have them in it, no matter the cost of waking up. Even if it means I lose…”
She didn’t finish that sentence, but she didn’t need to.
“Me.” He sat back on his heels. “Even if you lose me.” Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he looked tired, not physically but mentally. “I know. I’m selfish, Liz. I know I am. And you’re right. Your kids should be the center of your world, even if you’re the center of mine.”
That deflated everything in her. “But I shouldn’t be.” She blinked away tears. “I remembered something else I’d heard. You’re going to be a father.” She tried to smile. “Becoming a parent is the best thing in the world, and your wife is pregnant.” The next words nearly killed her to say. “You can’t divorce Sherrie when she’s pregnant.”
For a moment, he didn’t speak, and she thought she’d stunned him by revealing she knew what he’d been hiding from her. But he seemed to shake himself and leaned forward. “It’s not mine.”
“What?”
“Sherrie’s baby. There is no possible way it’s mine. She lied to try to force me to stay in the marriage because it helped with her Hollywood status. I probably would have, but that was before I met you. I can’t be with her when everything inside of me wants to be with you.”
As if a damn broke, tears cascaded over Elizabeth’s cheeks, and she lunged forward into his arms. Nick wasn’t having a kid. That knowledge eased any worry she had about it. It was okay to love him, to kiss him as if their very existence depended on it.
And she never wanted to stop.
“Truths make the world keep on spinning.” She hadn’t realized she uttered the words until he stilled, his arms going slack.
“What did you just say?”
She sat back on her heels, her lip wedged between her teeth. “It was nothing, I—”
“That was not nothing.”
He was right, it wasn’t. It was a prominent line from his brother’s manuscript, the one she stole from the office. “Nick, I—”
