Their Second Chance (12 page)

His mother’s eyes filled with tears. “I understand.”

She hurried down the hall. His heart ached for making her cry. But he was hurt over her actions and knew her presence would only make things worse.

Nick sat next to
Ariana’s bed, watching…waiting. Tension gathered tight in his spine. He knew that at any moment Bella would return and with her the test results that would push him to make a decision. As if he could. What man could choose between their unborn child and the wife they love more than their own life?

He watched the rise and fall of her chest, listened to the heart monitor on the baby and the one for
Ariana. It was amazing. Their child’s heart beat so much faster, as if he were running marathons inside her. He frowned, taking in the paleness on Ariana’s normally caramel skin. The room was dimmed. Fierce panic rolled through him. What could he do? He couldn’t imagine his life without her, but he knew she’d probably hate him if he chose her over their baby.

A wave of memories played through his mind. She’d been unhappy
months back that she couldn’t help with the nursery. He’d made it up to her by decorating the room exactly as she’d described. For as long as he’d known her, Ari had never been a bossy woman, but when it came to that nursery, she’d known exactly what she wanted. The smile she’d given him, filled with love and happiness, once they’d finished was one he’d never forget.

Struggling to hold back the tears that wouldn’t stay in his eyes, he choked while grasping her warm hand to his face. Breathing hurt.
Watching his family fight to survive hurt. One of the machines started beeping a lot faster than the other. Louder. Louder. It froze him in his seat for a moment. He wiped the tears from his face and jumped to his feet. He didn’t get a chance to move before Bella was rushing into the room with two other doctors.

“What’s wrong?”

Her features were set into panic. “The baby’s in distress.”

Terror froze the blood in his veins. “What are you going to do?”

He watched Ari’s bed as it was rolled out of the room.

“A C-section.”
She rushed behind the bed.

“There’s no way you can wait?” He’d never been so scared in his life, for his wife, for their child. Nothing he did or said would make a difference at this point. There would be no need to choose, the choice had taken out of his hands.

She shook her head. “No. She’s had a placental abruption. We have to get him out.”

“Placental abruption?”

“The placenta tore from her body. We need the baby out now.”

He ran behind them to the operating room.  The moment they reached the door she turned to him, apprehension clear in her gaze. “Nick, I’d normally allow the father in a C-section, but this is an emergency, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. Please, wait out here. I’ll come as soon as the baby is out and she’s stable.”

Pacing the length of the white hospital corridor, he tried to stop his mind from going into every possible direction of what could be going wrong. Not a single sound came from inside the OR. He knew Tricia and Briana had been waiting for hours by the emergency room, but he couldn’t walk away from that OR even if a bomb went off. Time stopped in his mind and a void grew in his chest. His life hung in a precarious limbo of disrepair. His only thoughts centered on staring the door down wishing for Bella to come back out with news of his family.

He visualized the house they’d recently returned to. They’d turned it into their newly mixed home. Their photos were back on the walls. Once she’d passed the sixth month they’d started to calm down. Bella had been seeing her and things had been looking up. She’d gone off bed rest and had been allowed to work again. But it seemed her body was just not ready for the stress and carrying a baby.

A
riana blinked her eyes open
through the haze of sleep. The beeping of machines sounded right by her eyes. Exhaustion tried to lull her back to sleep, but she fought it. She heard Nick’s soft voice from a distance.

“Don’t worry, little guy. Mommy will wake up soon. When she does, she’ll want to meet you,” he whispered.

Sharp blades of pain speared her abdomen. She cleared her throat and turned her face to the window where Nick stood, holding a baby. Their baby.

“Nick?” She struggled to get the word out. Her throat felt raw and dry.

Nick turned to her. He held a little boy with a mop of dark curls in his arms. The baby, dressed in a green and blue onesie was no bigger than a baby doll. She would have believed that, until he waved his tiny fist in the air. At that moment, her heart yearned to hold him. Nick hurried to her bed. She could hardly lift her arms, but she held them up, wanting to hold their child. Nick leaned down, placing the precious bundle carefully into her arms.

“Ari…” Their gazes met, and she noticed the moisture gathered in his eyes.  She tried hard to swallow the lump in her throat. All those months of pain, and this
was the result. This tiny child that knew nothing of what his parents had gone through to have him in their lives.

“
Kayden?” She asked, looking into her child’s big blue eyes. His tiny fist curled around her finger and held on. She nuzzled the baby’s super soft hair. Happiness broke free in her heart. Finally, the deep dark void she’d had for so long filled with joy. She caressed little Kayden’s dark curls. Her heart clenched with love at his tiny baby sounds.

“Our son,” Nick said quietly. “How do you feel?”

She glanced up from the baby sucking on a clear pacifier almost as big as his face, to her husband. The glassiness made his brown eyes even brighter. “We have our baby. He’s healthy. I’m alive. We’re great.”

She hugged the baby tighter to her chest and watched his eyes start to drift close.

Nick leaned down again and kissed the top of her head. Then he sat down at the chair next to her bed and grabbed her IV hand. “I love you, Ari.”

She swallowed back the knot in her throat. “I love you too, Nick.”

“I don’t think I can go through this again.”

“Oh, Nick—”

He shook his head and cut her off. “You don’t seem to understand how much you mean to me. You’re my life. My everything. If something happened to you, I’d be lost.”

She caressed his bristly jaw and pulled him to her for a kiss. It was soft and over fast, but the emotion delivered overflowed her heart with love. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“Good. I won’t let you.”

She didn’t think she could handle another nine months of what she’d just been through either. Her pregnancy had been difficult to say the least, but the reward was worth the price.

The room door opened. Bella strolled in with a smile. “Look who’s awake. How’s mommy doing today?”

She smiled. “I have some pain, but I feel better than I have in the past months.”

Bella nodded. “I know.” She sat down on a chair across from Nick. “Here’s the thing,” she glanced back and forth between Ari and Nick. “I don’t know what would happen if you tried to have another baby, Ari.”

She frowned. Christ. Bella was way ahead of them. She’d just gotten out of one pregnancy. The last thing she could think of was another.

“So what are you saying?” Nick asked before she could.

“I think you should reconsider any thoughts of trying to conceive again. This was a difficult and dangerous pregnancy. And while each one is different from the last, I don’t know how Ari’s body would react to going through this again.”

“I understand.” She kissed Kayden’s head. “We don’t need to have a biological child to be parents again.”

Nick lifted her hand to his lips and nodded. “That’s right. As long as we’re a family, it doesn’t matter how we get there.”

Nick and Kayden had fallen
asleep in Ari and Nick’s bedroom. Ari took that time to clear some of the clutter from their impromptu visit from friends. After two weeks of quietly getting to know their son, Ari was on the mend and little Kayden owned both his parents. Tricia had arranged a gathering for baby Kayden and Ari. Gift bags and baby toys littered their living room. She’d just reached the front of the house when someone knocked. She opened the door to find Grace standing there.

She didn’t know how to handle seeing Grace after their last argument. Bella was sure it had been the cause for her blood pressure to rise to a dangerous level and cause her to go into distress.

“Hello, Grace.”

“
Ariana, may I come in?”

She hedged for just a second before stepping back and allowing her to enter. She was still Nick’s mother, and no matter what Nick said, it would hurt him if she and Grace couldn’t find a way to deal with each other.

Grace walked around the toys and gifts all over the living room. She turned to Ari with a look of pain Ari had never seen before.

“Grace, are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry,” she choked out. “I never meant to hurt you. I just didn’t really think you wanted your marriage with Nick to work out.”

Her chest squeezed around the feelings of inadequacy Grace had always brought out in her. “Why wouldn’t I, Grace? I love Nick with all my heart.”

Grace nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You were so involved in your career. I was raised to believe that family came first. So it was clear that if you put your job ahead of Nick that must mean you didn’t really love him.”

Oh boy. Generational gap for sure.

“Please, sit down.” She hoped it would help Grace relax a bit. She moved a baby blanket from a sofa and faced Grace. “I was born to a family that believes we must work hard to succeed, Grace.”

“I understand.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you do. Your family has been successful for…forever. So when I wanted something, like to go to college, I had to get scholarships. I had to work hard. I had to sacrifice things to move forward. It wasn’t easy. But having Nick by my side helped me deal with it.” She swallowed hard. “I knew we came from different backgrounds, but that didn’t matter, because when we’re together all that matters is making each other happy. Nick’s drive helped me focus on what I wanted. I wanted to be independently successful.”

Grace frowned. “But you’ve done that already. I didn’t think you would ever put the career to the side and focus on your family.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. My family has been my priority from the beginning. But just like Nick wanted to be a success in his own right, I wanted to be on equal footing with him. It wasn’t about who had the most money. It was about knowing I could bring something of value to this relationship too. I would give up my company in a second for Nick if I had to. But he loves me enough to never ask me to do that.”

“I’m sorry,
Ariana. I didn’t realize what I said had such an effect to the point it sent you to the hospital.” She glanced down at her hands. “The last thing I would want is to hurt you or Nick. Seeing him at the hospital, looking so lost, it made me realize I need to understand you are the woman he loves and nothing will ever change that.”

Hearing Grace
speak of something she hadn’t witnessed made the time in the hospital even more difficult to cope with. Nick had suffered while she’d been asleep. He’d been hurting for the pain she’d been in and nothing could ever change that.

“I love Nick. I always will.”

Grace stood and sat next to her. “I am so sorry for causing you pain and distress. Please forgive me. I can only hope you understand I was only thinking of Nick’s happiness. But now that I see his happiness is you, I won’t ever interfere again.”

She patted Grace’s perfectly manicured fisted hands. “I forgive you on one condition.”

“What?”

“That you spend more time with us now. I’m not the enemy. We’re all family.”

Grace smiled through her tears. “I will. I promise.”

Kayden’s
cry broke through the quiet house. “In that case, let’s go get the little guy so he can spend some time with his grandmother. What do you say?”

“Thank you,
Ariana.”

“
It’s okay, Grace. I’m a mom too. I also want the best for my boy.”

She’d known Grace hadn’t tried to be deliberately mean. She had wanted Nick’s happiness. It was why it was easier for Ari to forgive her. She wanted Nicks’ happiness too. And she knew if she distanced Grace, Nick and
Kayden would end up hurt in the process. All they had was each other. And family came first. Always would.