Page 40 of Shattered

“Not your fault. Dara has a way of working people until she gets what she wants.”

“Well she won’t try it again with you. Not after this.”

“Nope.” Raising their joined hands to his mouth, he kissed the back of hers and started for the elevators.

She dialed her agent as soon as they reached their door. Going by memory and feel, he tapped the cane around to help him navigate his way back toward the master bedroom.

A few steps away from where the doorway should be, he stopped suddenly. Blinked. Blinked again.

Those spots again. Tiny dancing pinpricks of light in his peripheral vision.

It had happened a couple times before, and it always made his heart pound, always made him hope that maybe…

But no. His eyes looked straight toward the spot and saw only blackness.

Rather than allowing the crushing disappointment to take hold, he accepted it and moved on. Tired but strangely at peace after the altercation, he shuffled his way into their bedroom without bumping into a single thing, then stripped and got between the covers. Taya was still on the phone out in the kitchen. The sound of her voice soothed him, lulled him to sleep.

He jerked awake sometime later when a gasp broke the quiet. Taya was beside him, he could smell her sweet scent. Groggy, he rolled over, the cobwebs of sleep tangling his brain.

Then she bolted upright and sucked in a breath.

Alarm streaked through him and he shot up into a sitting position. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, reaching for her.

“It’s the baby.”

Ice slid through him. Shit, had something happened to it? He felt so goddamn helpless, unable to see, to help. “What do you mean?” He ran through a list of possible complications she might be experiencing, none of them good. “Does something hurt? Are you bleeding?”

She giggled and grabbed his hand to press it to the mound of her belly. “No. It moved. I felt it. Like tiny bubbles popping inside me. It tickles.” The awe in her voice made his heart clench. She pressed harder on his hand. “There, do you feel it?”

He paused, waiting, trying to detect the tiny movement beneath his palm with his heightened sense of touch. He wanted to, but… “No.” She was almost nineteen weeks along. Exactly in the right timeframe to feel the baby moving. God, how incredible was that? Another reminder of how much he had to look forward to and live for.

“It’s so amazing,” she whispered, pressing his hand harder against her abdomen. “Our son, Nathan.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hand over the small swell, craving the contact. “Wish I could feel him.”

“You will soon enough. And now that he’s woken me up in the middle of the night, I have to pee,” she muttered, and rolled away from him onto her hip. A second later the bedside light switch snapped on.

The black movie screen in front of him turned to dark gray.

Nate went dead still for a second, then rolled over and squinted at the faint light coming from the other side of the bed.

Thelight.

Taya froze. “Nathan? What’s wrong?” She grabbed for his hand. “Is it another headache? Do your eyes hurt?”

Heart pounding, he blinked, squinted harder, thought he was either dreaming or that his mind was playing a cruel trick on him. But no, those were definitely lights and shadows he was seeing. And the blurry outline of his wife, her deep brown curls a fuzzy halo around her head.

“What?” she whispered in a stricken voice.

“I can see you,” he choked out. “Tay, I canseeyou.” The outline of her anyway, but that in itself was incredible and gave him an aching sense of hope. Was his sight coming back? Even blurry shapes and shadows were better than a world of eternal darkness.

Taya cried out and flung her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. “Oh, Nathan.” Nate held her tight, overwhelmed by a flood of relief and gratitude. “We need to phone your neurologist.”

“What time is it?”

“Two in the morning.”

“No, let’s wait a while yet.”

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