Endless Possibility: a RUSH novella (City Lights 3.5) (20 page)

I was fine with taking the subway but Noah wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t like the crowds or the idea of someone bumping into me or harassing me, and him not being able to prevent it. His protectiveness was sweet but intense too. After the mugging where I’d lost my violin, and then Deacon in the elevator all those years ago, Noah had made a vow to keep me safe as best he could. Maybe I was supposed to feel affronted by that—Melanie or Ava might think so—but I just felt loved. And cherished. And safe. I always felt safe with Noah.

We took a cab to what was now our townhouse.

At our wedding three years ago we’d insisted that in lieu of gifts, guests make a donation to the American Cancer Society. In the hospital, Noah had received the best news about his migraines and dizzy spells: a severe reaction to the very medication designed to ease them. His meds were switched, and since then he’d only had a handful of serious headaches, and no more dizziness. We’d been blessed beyond anything we could have hoped. But all over the hospital—all over the country—other patients weren’t hearing the same good news.

Noah’s parents, however, couldn’t help but do something big. Our wedding had been a beautiful event in Bozeman, Montana, in a tiny little chapel overlooking the Gallatin Valley. Small and simple—but elegant too—with just our closest family and friends. It was perfect, and I thought I couldn’t be any happier.

But when we returned to New York, my new father-in-law pressed a key and a deed into Noah’s hand, and told us the townhouse was ours now, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then my joy overflowed, and I knew exactly why. The townhouse was where my life restarted. Where my
heart
restarted; brought back to life by Noah’s resuscitative kiss. I couldn’t imagine staying in New York City and not living there.

I thought Noah would feel strange or uncomfortable, given all of those long, solitary months he’d spent holed up there. But he told me he was glad. With me there, he said, it felt different. It felt like home. Any lingering demons were cast out when we redecorated to better suit his blindness and our tastes, and then we spent the two weeks of our at-home honeymoon christening the hell out of every room in the house.

That helped a lot too.

Now, I waited in the foyer on the first floor as Noah changed out of his suit and into his usual athletic pants and t-shirt. I looked toward what had been my room when I was an employee here. It was now the guest room. The guest room on the third floor was now the baby’s room.

The baby’s room.

I smiled, and hefted my bag that held the small box I’d been given today. I kept the bag on my left side, which was awkward to me, but I didn’t want Noah to feel it and wonder why I’d brought it along on our walk. He’d know soon enough.

He came down the stairs two at a time, and I just…watched.

He was so tall. So damn tall and sexy; he never failed to take my breath away, even after three and half years of drinking him in every day.

I’d hoped I’d always feel this way.

I knew I always would.

Noah felt my gaze on him. As usual. “Got something in my teeth?”

“No. It’s just…you.”

He grinned crookedly and bent down to kiss me. And not a light, shallow peck, either. A deep, intense kiss that I felt in my lower belly that still burned for him, baby on board or not. Noah never kissed me like I was a delicate, fragile pregnant woman. Never.

“Where are we headed?” he asked, unfolding his white stick. “Just a walk? Don’t you need to rest up for your recording session tomorrow?”

“I canceled it,” I said, leading him out in the beautiful New York City spring twilight.  “Or postponed it, I should say. I warned them that might be the case. Paganini’s Caprice is insane, and I just can’t get the movement I need.” I glanced down fondly at my belly. “Just one of many schedule interruptions or changes this little bugger is going to impose on us.”

Noah made a noncommittal sound, his expression darkening. I knew he was thinking about all the other things a baby requires, and of his deep-rooted fear he wouldn’t be able to provide them. Or worse, that his blindness would hurt her somehow, or put her in danger. I couldn’t insult his intelligence and deny we had challenges, but I also hadn’t the faintest doubt he’d be nothing short of wonderful with our baby.

We crossed the always-busy Columbus Avenue, and then started up the short path to what I considered ‘our bench.’ I tucked my bag on my left side and let out a gusty sigh of relief to be off my feet.

“I remember this bench,” Noah said, stretching out, and setting his white stick aside. He turned my direction. “Feeling nostalgic?”

“Something like that,” I said, biting back a smile. “Do you remember what happened here?”

His face softened. “As if I could forget. This is where I looked at you for the first time.”

“Yes. And you told me that you couldn’t see anything. But that wasn’t true, was it?”

“No,” he replied. “I saw you. You were so beautiful. I hadn’t expected that…or what I felt, seeing you. I didn’t expect that either.”

“Oh? You felt something for me? Even then?” I teased lightly. “I seem to recall a very decisive, ‘I can’t see shit with my hands.’”

“I may have been prone to exaggeration,” he said with a cough.

“I thought so.” I snuggled up against him, and he put his arm around me. “But you said you hadn’t expected to feel what you did. And what was that, may I ask three years later?”

Noah turned his sightless gaze forward for a moment, as if trying to put his thoughts to words.

“You’re radiant, Charlotte. They said that about you on our wedding day, and now again that you’re pregnant, but you’ve always been radiant. And the first time I saw that beauty under my hands, I felt how I feel when opening a brand new book. Do you know how that is? Where you only need to read the first few pages and you’re already thinking, ‘This might be a good one. One of the best ones. One of the rare finds that stays with you forever.’”

He turned to me, a small, soft smile on his lips.

“That’s how I felt, but I was far too bottled up and ready to explode to ever say something like that.”

“Oh,” I breathed, my heart pounding as if we were on a first date instead of married three years and expecting a child. “Oh, Noah.” I sniffed and brushed away tears.

Thanks to my hormones I cried at the drop of a hat but these tears weren’t hormonal. I didn’t expect Noah to keep sweeping me off my feet, but somehow he always managed to do it.

He turned to face me, and took his sunglasses off, his hazel eyes sweeping over me. I didn’t say a word but leaned close to my husband and let him find me with his lips. He kissed me slowly, a deep pull of his mouth on mine, before breaking off gently to brush a stray hair from my cheek.

I caught and held his hand. “What do I look like now?”

He touched my eyes, my cheeks, my lips, gently feeling the contours of my face.

“You look…happy,” he whispered.

“Yes,” I breathed, “that’s exactly what I am. I love you, and I’m so happy with you. And…I have something for you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I bit my lip, excitement for my surprise ballooning in my chest. “Before your accident, did you ever see one of those 3D ultrasounds they can do now? Instead of grainy black and white, you can really see the contours and details of the baby’s face. It’s amazing.”

Noah nodded. “I think I remember seeing something like that. A long time ago,” he said dully. “Did you want one? We can search around for a place that does them.”

He sounded casual but his fingers drummed the back of the bench, and my heart ached a little. It hurt him that he couldn’t see his baby growing inside me. At our regular ultrasound appointment, Noah had clutched my hand and asked the tech over and over, “How does she look?” He was concerned for the baby’s health first and foremost, but I knew too, he felt blocked from the special moment. He couldn’t see what the tech, my doctor, and I could all see—his baby in my womb, wiggling and kicking, her heart beating fast and strong. It broke my heart.

Which is why, earlier that day, I’d gone back for another.

“Well, I already found a place that does that and I had a new ultrasound done.”

“And she’s okay, right?” he asked, automatically tense with worry. “Everything looks good?”

“Yes, honey,” I said soothingly. “She’s perfect. And beautiful. The pictures were quite stunning. So vivid. This place had the latest equipment…even one of those new 3D printers.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the square white box and opened it. I took out the cast—a square of plaster—and pressed it to Noah’s hand. My voice fell to a whisper. “It’s amazing what they can do with technology these days.”

“What…?”

I watched, my heart in my throat, as he trailed his long fingers over the cast, investigating. He stopped at the center with a small gasp, and his hand began to tremble. He found the curve of a tiny, chubby cheek, then a dimpled little chin, and two eyes squeezed shut tight.

“Is that…?” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Is that my baby?”

My eyes blurred with tears to see his. I leaned close, kissed his ear, his cheek. “That’s your baby.”

He moved his fingertips over her again, and again. “I can see her. This is her. Our baby...”

He sat very still for a moment, but for his fingers that looked at his daughter because his eyes could not. A strangled sound erupted from deep in his chest, and he bent over his knees, one hand covering his eyes, the other holding the 3D print. I held his shoulders as they shook, and snuggled close to kiss neck, my tears falling on the shoulder of his shirt.

“God, Charlotte,” he said hoarsely, and then pulled me close, his lips brushing against my hair. “Thank—”

“No.” I shook my head, cutting him off before he could thank me for what was already his. “She is our baby, Noah. Yours and mine. We made her together. This…” I touched the print. “This is just what you deserve. As her father. And I know you are going to be an amazing father.”

He nodded, wiped his eyes on the crook of his sleeve, chagrined at his loss of control. “I’ll do my best.”

His best. This from a man who spent six weeks traveling across Europe blind for me. For us. Noah’s
best
meant his heart and soul, blood and guts, sweat and tears, and my heart was filled with so much love for him, I could hardly contain it.

“She looks just like you,” Noah said, still looking at the baby.

“Mm, she has your chin, and God, do I hope she has your eyes.”

“My eyes,” Noah murmured.

He didn’t finish his thought and I didn’t ask. Noah pulled me to him, holding the 3D print tight in one hand—as if he’d never put it down—and rested his other on my stomach. We listened to New York all around us, and felt our baby move beneath our hands.

It felt like it had always been this way, he and I, together. Amazing to think there’d been a time when we weren’t. We traveled so far to get here—across continents and great stretches of the black unknown.

I thought of the angry, bitter man who’d holed himself up in one room, listening to someone else read, and the heartbroken young woman who’d just needed a decent job and a little bit of peace. We’d both been smashed up by life and rearranged until neither of us knew ourselves. But somehow we’d found each other, helped each other put our broken pieces back together to make something new and whole. And something even more than that. I rubbed my rounded belly and smiled. We’d started with a maybe, and that maybe turned into a miracle.

The last caramel-colored light began to slip away, and we rose from our bench. Noah’s hand found the crook of my arm without having to reach, and I sighed to feel his strong grip there. Everything was where it was supposed to be.

“Come on, baby,” Noah said, bending to kiss me. “Let’s go home.”

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Here is a sneak peak at the next novel in the City Lights series, coming

February 2016

Beside You in the Moonlight

City Lights Book IV: Paris

Janey

September, 1970

Paris, France

I dream of Danny every night.

A little sliver of a dream and nothing more. Always the same. He is standing in my family’s vineyard, and the rows of grape trees—each perfectly cut, evenly spaced—roll across the land, curving and climbing up the mountain behind him. It’s always twilight, just before the sun slips below the horizon completely. Gold hues, bruised with purple and blue, paint the sky above Danny. He wears his army fatigues and his helmet; a battered pack of cigarettes is tucked into the band. There is an M-16 is strapped to his shoulder, and he carries it as if he were born with it, though he’d never touched one before the war. His sleeves are rolled up to reveal grimy, sweat-and-blood covered arms, and his boots are caked with mud. It’s as if he’s stepped out the jungle to be here. His smile is sweet but there are infinities of sadness behind his eyes as he raises a hand to me in farewell. He never says anything, but for that silent goodbye, but I don’t tell him goodbye in return.