Page 52 of All We Could Still Have

My shoulders slumped as I shuffled toward the swing set. “I just met her.”

Sharon raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

“Casey. Kyle’s ...” I’d been about to sayslutbut stopped myself because of Noah.

“You met Casey?”

“She’s my manager’s nanny. She brought the kids into the office today. She’s young.”

“Wait—she’s your boss’s nanny? Are you sure?”

“I mean, I didn’t ask her if she slept with Kyle, but she said she sings at the Penalty Box.”

“That’s just wack,” Sharon said. “What are the chances?” Noah’s swing had come to a stop, and she gave it a shove. “I guess in this rinky-dink town anything’s possible.”

I lowered myself into the swing next to Noah’s. “She’s like twenty-three or twenty-four.”

Sharon blinked fast but didn’t say anything. A few nights ago, when I’d told her Kyle cheated on me with a woman at the Penalty Box, she hadn’t seemed surprised, and she didn’t curse him out, like I had expected. Instead, there was a long, uncomfortable silence on the phone. Finally, she’d said, “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t hear sympathy, though. I heard an accusation.What did you think was going to happen? I told you to give the baby quest a rest.

That blame I thought I heard made me defensive. “We were working things out. Things were good.”

“But they weren’t for a long time.”

“You’re blaming me?”

“Of course not,” she’d said. “I’m trying to understand how Kyle could do something like that. It’s so out of character.”

She was right. Until he’d hooked up with Casey, Kyle was the most dependable man on the planet. So dependable, in fact, that he was boring. At least that was what I thought when we first started dating. Past boyfriends hadn’t been reliable. I loved trying to tame them more than I loved them. Kyle was different. He called when he said he wasgoing to call. He meant what he said. He didn’t have cheating in him, or so I thought.

“How did you find out?” she’d asked.

“He told me.”

“Couldn’t live with the guilt. That sounds like Kyle.”

I’d let her think that. Didn’t tell her the part about Kyle getting Casey pregnant. Not because I was trying to protect him but because I was trying to protect myself. If I told her, she would know that Kyle’s and my fertility issues were all my fault.

“Have you heard from him?” she asked now.

“He called a few times. I haven’t answered.” I pushed off the ground to move the swing.

She stopped pushing Noah. “You can’t ignore him, Nikki.”

I pumped my legs, trying to go higher and higher, like I had when I was a kid. Maybe if I pumped hard enough, I could soar through the sky, reach heaven, and talk to my mother. I wondered what advice she would give me. When I was a kid, I’d fallen off a swing and landed facedown in the grass. I lay there crying until my mother reached me. She helped me up and hugged me. “No crying. You’re tougher than this swing.”You will be fine without Kyle,I imagined her saying now.

“I’m not ready to talk to him.”

“You can get past this.”

I flung my feet to the ground. The heels of my shoes dug into the lawn. Grass, dirt, and pebbles flew through the air as the swing came to a screeching stop. “She’s pregnant.”

Sharon’s eyebrows knit together. “Who’s preg—” Her mouth gaped. “Casey?”

“Yes, she’s having Kyle’s baby, or so she claims.”

“Oh, Nikki. I’m so sorry,” Sharon muttered.

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