All of Me (34 page)

“Screw this.” 

Stella turned to
go inside and get her car keys, but Danny’s gently grabbed onto her arm.  “You
can’t, Stella.  Not tonight.  Not after what I just saw.  He’s…not right.  I
don’t know if he’s been drinking again or if he’s just fucking heartbroken, but
you can’t go over there right now.  Because I don’t know if he’s in any state
of mind to handle that sort of emotional clusterfuck.  Let’s figure out what’s
up with him before you take that step, okay?”

Stella nodded;
crying and numb and shaking. 

She let Danny
usher her back inside.  He stayed with her for a few minutes until he was
certain she wasn’t going to do anything dumb and left. 

Stella waited
until she was sure Danny was gone before grabbing her car keys.  She paused and
went back and pulled a Tuppeware out of her fridge.  Stella shut her front door
behind her, jumped into her car, and took off.

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

Nathan didn’t
bother checking before opening the door.  He already knew it was Danny, there
to rip him a new asshole. 

“What the fuck do
you-“

But when the door
swung open it wasn’t Danny standing there.  It was Stella.

“I need to talk to
you.”  She pushed past his frozen frame and entered the living room.  “Can we
be done with this, Nathan?  Please?”

“Done with what?”
he managed to croak out, turning to face her.  

“This charade. 
This…”  Stella gesticulated in the air.  “…I don’t even know what to call it. 
This masochistic shit-show you have going on over here.”  Tears slipped down
her cheeks and Stella swiped at them with the sleeve of her sweater.  “Because
I don’t think I can survive another minute of it, Nathan.  It was hard enough
when I hadn’t seen you, but now…”  She gestured to his body.  “You have lost at
least twenty-five pounds.  In three months.  Which means you are not eating,
Nathan.  Or that you are working out to excess.  Or both.”

When Stella
stepped closer, Nathan moved back.  “And you look like you haven’t slept in
three months either.  We’ve gotta figure this out, Nathan, because whatever
plan you’ve got going on right now isn’t working out.”

Nathan crossed his
arms over his chest and went stoic.  Because it didn’t matter that having
Stella within arm’s length after three excruciating months of watching her from
a distance had thrown his body and brain into a tailspin.  Or that he’d been
unconsciously inhaling deeply over and over in the hopes of catching her scent
in the air. 

Or that he could,
for the first time, see her slightly rounded stomach.  It had been hard to
detect from far away, buried under sweatshirts and scrubs, but the tight,
stretchy top she had on beneath the sweater was making it all too obvious. 

Stella would have
been a beautiful pregnant woman regardless, but knowing that was
his
baby inside of her?  Nathan couldn’t stop staring.

“Nothing about my
life is any of your business, including my weight or sleeping habits.  And so
I’m not sure why you’re here, Stella.”

Stella laughed. 
“Oh, you
are
a character.  And if you weren’t such a terrible liar – and
stalker - that might have actually hurt.”

“Stalker?” 

“You’re a six
foot, four inch mountain of a man, Nathan.  In a police cruiser.    Kind of
hard to miss.”

And here he’d
thought he’d been so stealthy. 

Stella smirked. 
“Not to mention all of the trespassing you’ve engaged in to cut my grass, check
my oil, and replace all of my outdoor light bulbs.” 

“I never said I
didn’t care about you, Stella.  Because I do.  And I always will.  Just because
the circumstances are such that we are no longer in a relationship, that
doesn’t mean I don’t still worry about you and want to make sure you’re okay.” 
Nathan swallowed hard and nodded toward her belly.  “And that the baby is
okay.”

“I want to ask you
one question, Nathan, okay?  And please answer me honestly, okay?
 Please
. 
Will you do that for me?”  When Nathan reluctantly nodded once, she whispered,
“Do you love me?”

Before he could
formulate a lie or weigh his options or craft a sly, avoidant reply, Nathan
answered honestly.

“Yes.  More than I
ever thought possible.”

“Then
why
?”
Stella cried out; the anguish in her voice nearly bringing him to his knees.
“If I love you and you love me and we both love our baby, then why are we doing
this? Why have we wasted three months playing this god-forsaken game, Nathan?” 

“You know why.”

Stella threw her
hands into the air.  “No! I don’t!”

“I assume you read
my first letter?”

“The one where you
said ‘sorry’ for asking me to get an abortion and then reminded me to take my
folic acid?  Yeah, I read it.  But I still have no idea why you’re ruining both
of our lives for no reason!”

“There are reasons
and you know them.  I’m not going to waste time repeating them.  It’s
unfortunate things turned out this way, but now we have to cut our losses and
move on.”

Stella’s dark,
damp eyes widened.  “Cut our losses?  Move on?  Oh, my God, Nathan…”  She shook
her head slowly, a weird smile suddenly tugging at the corners of her lips. 
“You are so much worse off than I thought, you darling, delusion man.  If you
think you’re going to walk away from me and this baby and ever be able to go on
like nothing happened…if you think you’re not falling to pieces and that, one
day, you’re not going to wake up and
hate
yourself for all of this…” 
Stella reared back, her head still shaking in disbelief.  “You don’t know
yourself at all, do you?”

“No,
you
don’t know me,” Nathan snapped.

“Oh, I know you. 
I know you inside and out and backwards and forwards.  I see you more clearly
than you’ll ever see yourself.”  She searched his face.  “But I don’t know how
to get through to you.  And I can’t make you fight.  Not if you aren’t willing
to be honest with yourself.”   

Stella pulled her
sweater tighter around her body.  “You know, I’ve spent the last three months
sitting by the window, waiting for you to show up and tell me you’d come to
your senses.  I jumped every time my phone rang. My heart raced every time I
saw a police officer walk into the ER.  Because I figured, there’s no way this
guy isn’t going to get it eventually.  He won’t be able to live without me and
he’ll come back and we’ll live happily ever after.”  Stella shook her head. 
“But you’d rather waste away – alone and miserable – than face anything.  Than
fight
– for me, for the baby, but especially for yourself. 

Because you think
you don’t deserve it:  the love, the happiness, the family.  That’s why you
throw out the abuse and rage excuses…because those seem like convenient,
logical excuses for staying lonely and in pain.  Yeah, I’m sure on some level
you’re afraid of repeating the abuse cycle, but you should know yourself better
than that, Nathan.  You should recognize how strong you are – how gentle and
sweet and loving.  How you’ve spent your life defending people against the
precise thing you think you are:  an abusive monster.  Which is something you
will never be, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise.

But nothing I do
or say will ever get through.  No amount of telling you, showing you, and
loving you unconditionally will change your mind.”  Her next words were
strangled by a sob.  “I never realized it before this moment.  I thought my
love was powerful enough to save you – that your love for me would give you
reason enough to fight.  So narcissistic, but true.   But I see now this has
very little to do with how much I love you and how very badly I want to save
you.  It’s all on you.  You would have to want it badly enough to drop the
bullshit and see the truth.  You’d have to love yourself enough to fight for
your own happiness.  And I see now that could never happen.”

Stella exhaled a
long breath.  “I don’t really blame you, because how could I?  I didn’t endure
your childhood or your tours overseas, so I have no right to tell you what is
worth fighting for.  What is worth facing your demons for.  Maybe nothing is
worth trudging through that kind of pain. Maybe living without us hurts less
than figuring out how to forgive yourself.”

After another
quick swipe at her eyes, she gestured to the plastic container she’d set on his
end table.  “Anyway, I brought you some mostacchioli.  I need you to eat
something, Nathan.  I won’t be able to sleep tonight if you don’t promise to
eat at least a few bites.  Can you promise me that?”

Nathan nodded. 
Dumbly.  Dazedly. 

“Good.”  Stella
gestured toward his scabbed hands.  “And I’m going to need to take a look at
those before I leave.”  When Nathan opened his mouth to protest, she put up a
hand.  “Please just shut up and let me do it this one time, okay?  So that I
can make sure you don’t have a raging infection at least.  So I can sleep
without worrying that you’re going septic, okay?”

Nathan wanted to
be closer to her – to feel her hands on him so badly – that he nodded.  Knowing
it would be horribly painful and he’d regret allowing it the minute she let go.

Stella stepped
closer and Nathan’s body responded, fast and fierce. 

God, it felt so incredible
to be this close to her again.  And her scent had his body primed and ready to
go in three seconds flat.

Nathan stared down
at the top of her head as she gently grabbed his hands and turned them palms
up.

“
Oh, Nathan
,”
she murmured as she assessed the extensive damage.  She ran a fingertip over
the torn skin and he shuddered in response.  Stella looked up into his eyes. 

And Nathan fucking
drowned
.

“I can’t stand the
thought of you doing this to yourself,” she whispered, eyes still latched onto
his.  Stella lowered her head and brought his palm up to her lips.

She pressed
excruciating, exhilarating soft kisses to his palm before holding it against
her cheek.  “Please stop hurting yourself, Nathan. 
Please
.  It is
killing me.  Can you please stop?  For me?”

His voice came out
strangled and hoarse.  “I’ve tried, I can’t.  I’ve done it for so long I don’t
know how
not
to do it.”

Stella met his
eyes again.  “You seemed better about it while we were together.”

Nathan shrugged and,
after a few minutes of silence, she finally exhaled a resigned sigh and dropped
his hand.  “Please get me a washcloth, some antibacterial ointment, and some
Ace bandages.”

Nathan gathered
the supplies and sank down next to her on the couch. 

As he watched her
work, Nathan soaked up her every movement, facial expression, and word; storing
them away for the future.  He studied her freckles and her long lashes and the
way she bit her lower lip as she meticulously applied the Neosporin. 

Nathan’s eyes traveled
down to the soft, smooth skin of her neck, over her breast, until his gaze
rested on the slight rounding of her belly. 

“Can I touch it?”
he asked before knowing he was going to. 

Stella looked up,
brows furrowed.  “Touch what?”

“Your stomach.”

Stella’s eyes
welled.  “Of course,” she said softly, already pushing aside the folds of her
sweater. 

When Nathan didn’t
move, Stella grabbed the hand she hadn’t worked on and placed it palm down on
her belly.

It felt
differently than Nathan had expected.  It was very firm and smooth.  He moved
his hand around a little. 

“I felt her move
for the first time this week,” Stella said with a small smile.  “I can barely
feel it – it almost feels like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings.  But she’s
definitely bouncing around in there.”

Nathan looked down
at his hand resting on Stella’s belly.  “Do you think maybe I could hold her? 
One time.  After she comes out.”  Nathan knew he was about to cry, but he
didn’t give a fuck.  “Would that be okay?”

“She’s
your
baby,” Stella whispered, the tears streaming down her face and splashing onto
the back of Nathan’s hand.  “Of course that would be okay.  You can hold her as
much as you’d like.  You’re her father.”

Father
.

That word
triggered something deep within Nathan and suddenly he couldn’t do this a
second longer.

“I need to follow
you home now,” he choked out, already standing. 

“But your other
hand…”

“It’s fine.” 
Nathan gently pulled her up off the couch and ushered her out the front door.  

Stella got into
her car and Nathan got into his.  He followed her around the block, pulling
into her driveway behind her.  When Stella got out of her car and turned to
face him expectantly, he rolled down the window.

“Take care of
yourself, Stella.  And the baby.”

A dozen different
emotions crossed her face in the span of a few seconds. 

She wanted to
scrap, he knew that.  Because Stella was a fighter:  tough and stubborn and
tenacious.  Stella wanted to badger, question, and dig in until this was
fixed.  Because she sincerely thought Nathan was worth fixing; thought he was
capable of being fixed.  And he loved her for it.  All of it. 

But in that
moment, she seemed to finally realize she was never going to win this
particular fight.  Because there wasn’t a fight to win.  You needed to two
people to tango and Nathan had thrown in the towel a long time ago.

“You take care
too, Nathan,” she said softly.  “If you ever change your mind, we’ll be here
waiting for you.”

Nathan managed a
nod and Stella walked up the porch steps.  She dug out her keys, opened her
door, but didn’t walk in. 

She turned
suddenly and walked back down to Nathan’s open window, tears streaming down her
cheeks.  “I don’t know how to do this, Nathan.  I don’t know how to give up on
you.”