Imperfections (25 page)

What time is it? Shit, I'm supposed to meet Kate in forty minutes. She called me on Saturday and told me she scheduled an appointment with her doctor for Monday afternoon at one thirty. I had to push back a few of my appointments so I could make it. I need to know when Kate can safely take this paternity test. The sooner the better so I can find out how to proceed with Cat. If this isn't my baby, it would make things so much easier with me and Cat. I can get her to stop running from me. From what we feel for each other every time we're together in the same room.

On the other hand, if this is my baby, I don't know if she will want anything to do with me. She'll keep running from me as fast as she can. And I'm going to go after her. I'm not going to let her turn and run away from us, from what I know we could be together.

Every time I look into her eyes and she smiles, those lips, I want to bury myself deep inside her in a place where there's no beginning and no end to the beauty that is inside her. She makes me want to do things I've never wanted to do before. I want to be better for her. I want to be the man that will never hurt her, that will stand by her on not only her best days but her worst days.

I've never wanted that so fucking bad with anyone in my life. I've never wanted that with any woman! Not even with Paige and we lived together. It must be love, if it's not, I don't know what it is. I know it's not lust; I've had a lot of that in my life. With lust, it's screw them and leave me. I don't need to make small talk and we don't need to hang out. The only thing we need to do is exchange numbers because if the sex was good we're going to do it again.

This is something completely different. We've had the sex and it was amazing, it was more than amazing, it was so good I had to stop and catch my breath. Catherine is not just any girl. She's Cat, the little girl with the ponytail bouncing every which way. Trying to prove she was tough enough to keep up with me and Chris on the playground.

I smile and cringe every time I think about the time she flew head first off her bike into the concrete. She was so little. She was trying to prove she could keep up with Chris and our friends by doing a bike stunt. She tried to jump a fence with her bike. Something she saw us do all the time. Chris was angry at her for following him around. No guy wants their little sister hanging around him and his friends all the time.

He told her to go home she was just a stupid little girl that wasn't tough enough to hang with us. That was the wrong thing to say to her. She was so angry. She screamed at him, "I'm going to show you, Chris, I'm tough enough to do what you boys can do!" When she jumped the fence, the takeoff was good but the landing was bad. Everyone's heart dropped and hit the floor with her. When I saw her little body fly off the bike I was scared shitless and didn't know what to do. We ran toward her, all I remember thinking was I hope she's not dead, I hope she's not dead. I've never been so scared in my life.

That was the first and only time I saw Chris cry. There was a gash on her head and he was covered in blood, crying, and shaking. We brought her home and Sophie was the only one there. She saw the blood and freaked out. She rushed her to the hospital and took us with her. We were so relieved when the doctor came out and told us she was going to be fine. She had to get ten stitches. After that day we became a trio. Chris never told her she couldn't hang with us again and when he did he was more sensitive with his approach.

I see Kate sitting in a chair in the waiting area going through her phone. Nice office. It looks like Kate. Upscale, well-polished, sleek, and modern. It all looks brand new, like you should only look not touch. I walk up to her when she sees me. "Sorry I'm late."

"You didn't miss anything. All I did was fill out the paperwork."

"Do you know how long it's going to be before you see the doctor?"

"Why, do you have somewhere more important to be? Or is it that you don't want to be seen with me?"

"I'm only asking because I need to know if I should cancel my four o'clock appointment."

"Oh, that's not my problem," she says, still looking down at her phone.

"Look, Kate, I didn't come here to argue with you. This is not an easy situation for either of us. Drop the attitude and stand down." I finally get her attention and she looks at me. "This would be easier for both of us if we're civil to each other for however long we're here." I don't know if I can keep my temper in check for even an hour with the attitude coming off her.

"Fine."

Ten minutes later, after sitting in complete silence watching her and her phone, the nurse calls her name.

"Ms. Reed."

"Yes."

"Should I come in with you?"

"That's why you're here, right? You had some questions you wanted to ask my doctor."

"Do you have to get undressed or need privacy for whatever you do at these exams?"

"What, are you scared I'm going to get undressed in front of you? If I do, it's nothing you haven't seen before."

Yeah, nothing I haven't seen before, but I don't want to see it again.

"Don't worry, Nick, you can take the crease lines from your forehead. The only skin I'm exposing today is my stomach."

"Are you sure you don't want me to wait outside till you're finished?"

"Fine, wait outside the exam room. I'll tell the doctor to get you when the exam is over."

I don't feel right being in there with Kate, it's too personal. She follows the nurse down a hallway into an examining room. There's a chair outside the door. "I'll wait here until you're finished." The nurse looks at me, she has a warm smile. Cute redhead with dark brown eyes and shoulder length hair. I'd say she's around twenty-five.

"You don't have to sit out here, Mr. Reed, you can come in with your wife."

My eyes move over to Kate. I uncomfortably wait for her to correct the nurse but she doesn't. She smiles at me, turns around and walks into the room. I look down at the nurse standing in front of me. "She's not my wife, we're not married." I put on a smile and try not to sound annoyed.

"I'm sorry, I assumed you were together, you looked like you were a couple."

"It's okay. I'll wait out here until the doctor's finished with the exam."

Thirty minutes later, the doctor walks out of the exam room. Dr. Horn, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair. I met him on his way in to examine Kate, we shook hands and I told him I had a few questions to ask him after he was finished with Kate.

"Mr. Alexander, you can come in now. Ms. Reed said you wanted to be in here for the last part of the exam."

I enter the room and I see Kate lying down on the table with some type of gel on her stomach. What the hell, I told her I did not want to be in here for this. She takes one look at my face and I know she can see I'm not happy. She looks away quickly like she's not sure what or if I'm going to say anything to her. I stop looking at her and turn to the doctor when he speaks.

"Okay, we're all ready." He places something on Kate's stomach and tells her to watch the screen. He starts moving it around her stomach and I hear a swooshing sound.

"Kate, are you ready to see your baby?"

She doesn't say anything until she looks at me. "Yes."

I look at the screen intently. The swooshing sound starts to get louder and louder then I see it. The doctor touches a few buttons and points to the screen while he's talking. He points out the arms, legs, head and body of the baby. I sit still staring at the screen listening to the doctor. He points again at the screen.

"This is the baby's heart. As you can hear, it sounds strong and everything looks to be progressing normally."

Kate looks at me, and she's smiling a genuine smile. She can't stop smiling at me, she's so excited. I don't know what to do; at a time like this you should be happy. I wasn't expecting this. I could be hearing my baby, my baby's heartbeat for the first time. This could actually be my baby I'm looking at. I take a step forward and look at the screen while Kate talks to the doctor.

"Can we find out the sex of the baby or is it too early?"

I look at her and then the doctor curiously. "Isn't it too soon for that? She's hardly even showing yet."

He looks up from the machine at me. "No, at sixteen weeks if the baby is positioned right, there's a very good chance you can see the sex of the baby."

I'm not sure I want to know. This is not what I signed up for when I came here today; all I wanted to know was when she will be able to take a paternity test. I scrub my hand across my face. The doctor sees the uncertainty on my face. Kate answers for me before I can say no; I don't want to know anything but this is not my child.

"Yes, we want to know!" she says firmly all excited.

The doctor turns his head to me with his bushy eyebrows knitted together. "Are you sure you…both want to know?"

I must really look uneasy. I take a shaky breath to steady myself. "Yeah."

He turns back to the monitor moving the machine around Kate's stomach a few more times hitting more buttons.

"It's a boy. Congratulations, you're having a boy."

Oh shit! I'm having a son. I'm going to be a father.

"I come waving my white flag!"

"Get in here, Ava." I told Ava to meet me at my house and for once she's on time. I follow her into the living room. She sits on the couch with her coat and bag still on. One hand's on the strap and the other one in her lap. In case she has to make a fast getaway.

"Ava, you look nervous. You can relax I'm not going to bite you." I sit down on the other end of the couch. She watches me and slightly arches one of her eyebrows. "I only bite the women I take to bed but only if they ask me nicely."

"Honey, they should be careful, they don't know where your mouth has been. I'm surprised they don't leave foaming at the mouth. If your bite is anything like the tongue-lashing you put on me yesterday morning, I'm surprised they're not dead already."

I shake my head and smile at her. "Good one, Ava, good one." I sit back, put one hand over the couch and watch her take off her coat.

"I'm not joking. I can still feel the whip marks going across my back. All because I took my friend out for a few drinks to relax, which I wouldn't have had to do if it weren't for you. I think you owe me an apology."

"No, I don't think I do. What I owe you is another tongue-lashing for taking her to a club with Matt!" She pouts and tilts her head to the side with her eyes open wide like an innocent blue-eyed doe. This look might work on most men, including her father but not on me. Ava is a lot of things but innocent isn't one of them.

"In my defense, the only reason I took her out was because of you! She was really upset. She was coming down on herself hard for what happened between the two of you in the car. I told you to talk to her and tell her the truth, not make things more complicated. You know that's what you did?"

"I had to. I couldn't tell her the truth first; you know Cat as well as I do. If I told her the truth first, she would have bolted out of that car and that would have been the end."

"Probably."

"I had to buy some time."

"And how is complicating matters going to do that? I don't want her to get hurt."

"I had to hurt her. There is no getting around it."

"How is hurting her going to get you more time?"

"If I'm lucky, I unintentionally bought myself enough time to at least let her give the idea of us a chance."

"What does that mean?"

"I did something stupid. Something I hardly ever do."

"You've been doing a lot of that. You should stop, especially if it involves a female member of Cat's family."

I lean my head back and close my eyes. I hate that I hurt her. "I tried to talk to her, but she was so upset and angry. She wouldn't return any of my calls."

"She told me everything about Kate, the fake marriage, and the pregnancy. This is a lot of shit to deal with. She needed to get her mind off having sex with her pregnant sister's fake fiancé. I'm not sorry for taking her out to forget her problems for a while and showing her a good time."

"I'm glad you were there for her and she had someone to talk to." I sit up and look at her. "What I'm pissed off about is you taking her out with Matt. You know how I feel about him and Cat together. Saying I was angry when I found out he was with her doesn't describe it. I know that fucker wants her."

"That doesn't mean she wants him. You've been friends for years with Matt. I don't understand why you're ticked off because they hooked up once a million years ago."

I get up off the couch and walk into the kitchen to get a drink. "If I would have known back then, I would have cut his ass off at the knees and hung him out to dry. He took advantage of her."

"Don't rewrite history, Nick. He didn't take advantage of her as I'm sure Cat told you. I think she was the one taking advantage of him."

"Whatever, Ava. He was wrong. He was our friend, he should have thought about her like a little sister." I take a drink of my beer, turn around and lean against the counter.

She puts her knees under her on the couch and puts her hand over the top of the couch. "Like you did? You were holding back your feelings for her because of your friendship with Chris. You spent a lot of years thinking of her as a little sister, watching her grow up from when she was a little girl into a girl with a rocking body. You had a lot of conflicting feelings in regards to the relationship you had with Cat and Chris. Matt didn't have that problem. He didn't have the same emotional attachments, his conscience was free and clear to let himself be with her."