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Chapter 152

The dream she had been having recurred again the night, crying babies, Nick, and all, and when she awoke, Claire thought she was still dreaming. She had to be, for why else would she be lying in Nick’s arms?

But there she had found herself, curled up in a ball against him, using his stomach for a pillow, her arm draped around him as if he were simply a large teddy bear, perfect for squeezing as she slept. Only, as she blinked around at her surroundings in surprise, she realized she was very much awake.

Nick, on the other hand, was still very much asleep. She craned her neck to look at him, unable to move much because his arm, too, was around her, and like a dead weight on her back, it had her almost pinned against him. He was sleeping flat on his back, like he usually did, one arm around her and the other at his side, still fully dressed (as was she) and wearing his prosthesis as he lay on top of the covers.

They must have both drifted off to sleep, she realized, as the events of the night returned to her. She remembered his warm hug and their long talk and how much better she had felt afterwards. The feeling lingered; for the first time in days, she had not woken up with a gnawing mix of worry, guilt, and despair in the pit of her stomach.

Wondering if it was already morning, she looked around what she could see of the hotel room, searching for some indicator of what time it might be, but she was faced away from the window and couldn’t see the bedside clock. At the same time she realized this, she decided she didn’t care. So what if it was morning? So what if she’d spent the whole night with Nick? So what if Jamie was worried? It wasn’t like she hadn’t waited up and worried about him before. He deserved to worry, if he even cared enough to be concerned about her.

Smiling to herself, she let her head sink back down onto Nick’s stomach, relaxing against him again. She didn’t want to untangle herself from his hold and risk waking up him, so she stayed put for the time being. It was actually quite comfortable and oddly soothing. She could hear his breathing magnified in her ear, and her head rose and fell with every breath.

She closed her eyes, struck with the déjà vu of the intimate moment, waking up with Nick. It was something she had not done in a long, long time, not since they were living together. She was used to waking up next to Jamie instead, yet even with her eyes closed, there was no denying it was Nick she was with. He felt different than Jamie… he smelled different… even his breathing sounded different. And yet, it was the same as it had always been, the feel of his body, the clean scent of his skin and clothes, the gentle whooshing sounds of his breath.

Lying there, listening to him breathe, she felt a wave of nostalgia for what they had once had, for all the lazy mornings they had spent together in his bedroom with the ocean view, at home in Tampa. Only once she had arrived in Iowa, where there was no view to speak of and no ocean breeze to ease the stifling September humidity, with a husband who had turned on her the moment their “perfect” married life had been interrupted, had Claire realized how much she truly missed the life she had had with Nick in Florida.

It felt sinful and even adulterous to think such things, but she couldn’t keep the thoughts from coming. No matter how much she wished she could block them, in the back of her mind, she was starting to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake by marrying Jamie when she could have stayed with Nick. But then, she had left Nick even before Jamie really re-entered her life.

Maybe that had been her first mistake.

How different might her situation have been if she had married Nick instead of Jamie? She wouldn’t be living in Iowa; that was for sure. She would be back in Florida now, or maybe Los Angeles – in any case, she would probably be near the coast. Maybe she wouldn’t be pregnant… but maybe she would. Maybe Nick would have come to accept the idea of Jamie being her sperm donor, and they would have decided to finish out the in vitro anyway. If so, she probably still would have ended up in the same predicament, forced to make a decision between her own life and that of her unborn third child. It would have undoubtedly still been stressful and painful, but surely, Nick would have been more supportive than Jamie, and his reassuring presence would have made things easier for the both of them.

A sigh slipped from her throat as she subconsciously brought her arm a little tighter around Nick’s torso. He was here… he was right here, soft and warm beneath her, so close she could touch him and hold him, and yet… there was a distance between them, an invisible line she could not cross, a boundary which made him, in many ways, untouchable. Physically, he could not have been closer to her, and emotionally, he still filled a large piece of her heart, but legally and spiritually, she was bound to someone else. To Jamie. And though she felt hurt and betrayed by her husband, she could not cross that line with Nick and be unfaithful to him.

Unfaithful. The word rang out like a gong in her mind. She knew that was what Jamie would think she was being now if he could see her, lying on a hotel bed in such an intimate position with Nick. But it didn’t bother her much. She knew otherwise. She knew that she and Nick had lain this way long before they were “together,” long before there had been a mutual attraction between the two of them. The intimacy they shared now was the intimacy between two close friends, who had come together to share in the pain she had borne alone. But she would never expect Jamie to understand something like that. It was too personal, too deep and intangible, to be fully understood by anyone other than Nick and her. It was a kind of bond she shared only with him.

The thought made her realize again what a special kind of relationship she’d had with Nick. Had she made a tragic error in letting go of that? She had thought that her relationship with Jamie was special too; of course she had, or she would never have married him. But a lot of people married their high school sweethearts. Not a lot of people – at least, not the people she knew – experienced the kind of relationship she had with Nick, that sort of emotional closeness, kindled by the empathy of shared tragedy.

Just thinking about it made her throat grow tight, and her ears suddenly felt clogged. She could hear her own heart beating deep inside them, its constant thumping interrupting the tranquil sound of Nick’s breathing. She lifted her head from his stomach, and with the movement, his arm slid limply off of her. He soon began to stir, and, swallowing hard, she sat up and eased away from him, just as his eyes opened into slits of blue.

“Mm,” he groaned, blinking a few times and taking a moment to rub the sleep from his eyes before he squinted up at her in confusion. “Is it morning?” he croaked.

Finally able to sit up, Claire leaned over to check the clock. “Yeah. 8:30,” she read the time.

“Wow. We slept a long time.” He put his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn and surveyed her over the tips of his fingers. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah… I slept great, actually,” she replied, still surprised that she had.

“Good.” He smiled faintly, then frowned as he slowly sat up. “Ugh, I’m stiff. Damn,” he said as he reached out and touched the socket of his prosthesis. She watched as he swung both legs over the side of the bed and started to take off the artificial one. As he tended to the leg, she climbed off the other side of the bed and found her purse, pulling her cell phone out of its pocket.

10 missed calls, the notification glared up at her from the phone’s small screen. A wry smile crossed her lips; she was willing to bet they were all from Jamie. Or at least she hoped they were. It would have been a bad sign if he hadn’t called.

She checked her voicemail, and sure enough, there were several messages, all from Jamie. The first sounded concerned, reminding her that it was late, wondering where she was and if she would be coming home. The second sounded annoyed. (Where are you?? Call me.”) The worried tone returned in the third (“Claire? If you’re getting these, will you please call me back? I just want to make sure you’re okay.” ), and by the fourth message, he was angry again. (“Damn it, Claire, answer your fucking phone.”)

After that, he’d apparently stopped leaving voicemail.

She deleted the messages and glanced over at Nick; he was plugging the titanium leg back into is charger. She quickly punched in the speed dial for Jamie’s cell phone and listened as it rang in her ear. It only buzzed twice before he answered with an abrupt, “Where are you??”

His tone of voice put her immediately on the defensive, and, indignantly, she replied, “That’s none of your concern. I’m just calling to let you know I’m okay, since you sounded upset on my voicemail.”

“Well, yeah, no shit. I come home, and my wife’s gone, with no indication of where she went. Of course I was upset!”

“I left a note. It said I’m with a friend, and I am.”

“What friend?? Where are you?”

“I’m in Des Moines. That’s all you need to know,” Claire replied coolly.

“Who are you with?” he demanded, and she could hear him getting angry.

“Why does it matter?” she shot back. “You don’t tell me where you’re going or who you’re going to be with. You went out last weekend and didn’t tell me a thing. You didn’t come home, and you didn’t even call, so why should I be expected to do those things? This little game works both ways, Jamie; I can play it just as well as you can.”

“Some game,” Jamie snorted derisively. “Hope it was fun for you, cause it sure as hell wasn’t for me. I was up most of the night; I’m going on, like, an hour of sleep here, and I’ve gotta be at work in half an hour. I was just about to call in because I thought something had happened to you.”

“I told you, I’m fine. Go to work; you can’t miss a day already.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said sarcastically. “It’s because of you that I was going to miss it. You could have at least answered your damn phone.”

“Sorry,” she replied without much sincerity. “I fell asleep, and I didn’t hear it. But like I said, I did leave a note. You had no reason to worry.”

“Well, excuse me for caring, Claire. Christ,” he muttered.

“Oh, so now you care?” She couldn’t help herself.

“I’ve always cared,” he snapped. “I love you, Claire.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

Jamie’s only response to that was a long sigh. She held the phone away from her ear and shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Nick watching her.

“I gotta go,” Jamie said curtly a moment later. “Wherever you are, you better be resting, like the doctor said.”

“I have been. I was perfectly relaxed until I called you and got the Grand Inquisition.”

“Yeah, well, some good that did. You still won’t tell me who you’re with. But so help me god, Claire, if you’re with that fucking Backstreet Boy-“

“What? You’ll what?” she challenged him, feeling her face getting hot as she gripped the phone tighter.

Jamie didn’t answer. Instead, she was met with dead silence, and when she pulled the phone away from her ear a few seconds later, she saw that the call had been ended.

He’d hung up on her.

She clicked off the phone in a rage and jammed it back into her purse, slinging the whole thing across the floor. God damn him. He knew just what buttons to push to get her riled up, and even more infuriating, he’d figured out exactly what “friend” she was with. She supposed it wasn’t hard to figure out – she’d told him she was still in Des Moines, and what other friend had the means to get to Iowa so quickly? And in a way, maybe she had wanted him to find out, to know that there was another man in her life who could show her the support and compassion Jamie seemed incapable of.

“Hubby’s not happy?”

The dryly-voiced question made Claire look up and over at Nick, still red-faced, her blood boiling. She forced a tight-lipped smile. “Gee, was it that obvious?”

He returned the grim smile. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. He just… argh! He pisses me off. He’s got all these double standards, and he-” She stopped herself and shook her head, forcing the angry words out of her mind. She didn’t want to spend her time with Nick just ranting about Jamie.

Nick didn’t reply, just simply nodded. She didn’t blame him; what could he possibly say back to that? She knew what he must be thinking, that it was all her fault for marrying the guy in the first place. But, to her gratitude, he didn’t tell her so.

Instead, he just patted the spot on the bed next to where he was sitting, his back to the headboard again, massaging his uncovered stump. She climbed back on and sat beside him, sighing as she leaned her head back against the pillows. “Thanks for putting up with me,” she offered. “I doubt many guys in your position would have much sympathy left for me, after what I’ve put you through.”

Nick shrugged and didn’t look at her. “That’s got nothing to do with this,” he said. “You told me when we broke up that you still wanted to be friends. Well, I’m just being your friend.”

“Well, in case I didn’t tell you last night, you’re an amazing friend,” she replied, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t say anything back to that, but she could see the smile flicker across his face.

Now that Jamie knew she was at least safe, Claire couldn’t think of any good reason to go home, and so she didn’t. She spent the rest of the morning in the hotel room with Nick, doing a lot of nothing, except for just talking and flipping through the crappy selection of TV channels, but enjoying herself just the same. She took a shower and freshened up in his bathroom, and he called for room service and ordered a big breakfast for the two of them. For the first time in well over a week, Claire actually felt hungry and made sure that the food Nick had ordered did not go to waste. After all, she was still eating for three.

“Is there anywhere you wanna go? Anything you wanna do?” Nick asked, as the noon hour approached. “What is there to see in Des Moines? I’ve been in this area on tour, but I’ve never actually done much else in the city.”

“Honestly,” Claire laughed, “I have no idea. I was only here a day before all of this stuff started up, so I haven’t had a chance to see anything. This is Jamie’s terrain, not mine.”

Nick nodded, offering a sympathetic smile.

“Are you bored?” she asked. “Cause, really, I’m perfectly content right here. But if you’re bored, we can find somewhere else to go.”

“Nah, that’s okay. I’m up for whatever you feel like doing,” said Nick with a shrug.

And so, they did nothing. But doing nothing with Nick was a lot better than doing nothing while she was cooped up at home by herself, worrying and grieving. Nick listened to her when she felt like talking about everything that had happened, and helped take her mind off of it when she didn’t. He was truly wonderful.

Still, Claire knew the escape he was providing her could only be a temporary one. Sooner or later, he would have to go back to LA, and she would have to go back “home” and try to rectify things with Jamie. Despite the way he had been treating her, she wasn’t ready to give up on her husband yet. She had to try to make things work, for the sake of their unborn children. She only hoped he was willing to do the same.

The afternoon hours ticked by, and when it came to be close to the time when she knew Jamie would be getting off work, Claire finally turned to Nick and said, “I should probably head home soon… see if I can catch Jamie before he disappears again. We really need to talk.”

Nick nodded, his expression blank. “I’ll walk you downstairs whenever you’re ready, and we can get you another cab.”

“You don’t have to walk me down,” she started to assert, but Nick just smiled patiently.

“I know. But maybe I want to,” he said, and she smiled back, conceding. She got her purse and, still wearing the loose clothes she’d arrived in, went with Nick down the hall to the elevators and rode to the main level. He escorted her through the lobby and out to the main entrance, where a row of taxis were parked nearby. He walked her to the front car and handed the driver a wad of bills before she had a chance to protest, leaning through the open window to add, “Keep the change.”

“Thanks very much,” replied the slightly surprised-looking cabbie. “You got any bags you need help with, Miss?” he addressed Claire.

“No, thanks,” said Claire, who only had her purse with her. She turned to Nick on the sidewalk. “Will I see you again? When are you heading back?” she asked.

“I haven’t decided yet. I mean, it depends on what you want me to do. I was gonna just stay the weekend, but if you need me to be here longer-”

“No, no,” she said quickly, “I know you need to get back to LA. But the weekend would be great, if you want to stay.” She smiled at him. Today was only Friday.

He nodded, returning the smile. “Alright. So then you will see me again… won’t you?”

“Absolutely. Let me see how it goes with Jamie tonight, and I’ll call you, okay? I promise we’ll do something… later tonight, tomorrow, whatever works. Does that sound okay?”

“Sounds great. Whatever’s good with you,” Nick agreed.

There on the curb, Claire came forward and impulsively pulled Nick in for a tight hug. “Thank you so much, for everything,” she said quietly in his ear as he leaned down to embrace her. “I feel so much better than I did yesterday.”

“Good. I hope things go good with Jamie. Call me, and I’ll come kick his ass if they don’t. Solid titanium, baby,” he added, patting his artificial leg as he let go of her.

She grinned. “Yeah, well, maybe having your titanium foot shoved up his ass would do the trick. I’ll let ya know.”

“I’ll be here,” he winked.

Claire had a hard time forcing herself to climb into the cab; she dreaded the thought of leaving Nick, who had been so good to her, and going home to face Jamie, who had been so cold. But she knew she had to, the sooner, the better. And so, she forced herself to tell Nick goodbye, repeating her address to the cab driver as she climbed into the back and pulled the seatbelt loosely across her front.

The cab soon pulled away, leaving Nick standing on the curb in front of the hotel. Claire glanced back once, but as the car rounded a corner, he was quickly lost from her view.

What she did not see and would never know was that as soon as her taxi had driven off, Nick walked up to the second cab in line and climbed inside.

***