“Hey.” He stepped over and around the rocks strewn around her and stood before her. “You’re sitting on my rock.”
She lifted her face to him and pasted on a smile. “Your rock? This is my rock.”
He immediately frowned as he took in her face. “What’s wrong?” He dropped to a squat before her, his eyes intent and questioning.
She sighed. “I got my period.”
He blinked. “Oh.” Then, “Well, shit.”
“Yeah.” Afraid tears were going to start again, she blinked rapidly. “This is where I always come when I need to think about stuff.”
“Ah. I’m sorry, Krissa.”
She nodded, shifted over. “There’s probably room for you, too.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
“No, it’s okay.” He sat beside her, his big body pressed to her side as they shared the rock, gazing out to sea.
“It’s so huge,” she commented. “It’s like it goes on forever—boundless.”
“Mmm. Infinity.”
He slid his arm around her waist and she snuggled closer into him. The warmth and strength of his embrace comforted her like nothing else.
“I feel responsible,” he said.
She tipped her head to look up at him. “For what?”
“For not getting you pregnant.” He rubbed his face.
“Don’t,” she said, putting a hand on his chest. “We’ve been through this so many times. Sometimes there are no reasons for why it doesn’t happen.”
“Yeah.”
“Sometimes I think if conception is so difficult, it truly is a miracle every time a life is created.”
“People take it for granted.”
“Oh, yeah! Do they ever.” She shrugged. “This time, I think it hurt even more because I was so sure…every other time, at least for the last year, I was getting to the point where I almost would have been more surprised if I was pregnant. The hope was definitely wearing out. But this time…” She couldn’t help the little sniffle. “I was positive it was going to work.”
“Maybe there’s something wrong with me, too.”
She huffed out a little laugh. “I guess since you’ve never tried to get someone pregnant before, you wouldn’t know, but it’s not likely.”
He shifted beside her and his body tensed. He said nothing.
“Really, Nate, don’t worry. We’ll just try again next month.”
He again remained silent, staring out at the ocean.
“What?”
“I don’t know how long I’ll stay here,” he said, voice so low she almost couldn’t hear him.
“But…” She wanted to insist he stay, but then remembered he was only there to recuperate from his own illness. She couldn’t make him stay for her own selfish reasons. She fought to breath air into her constricted lungs.
“I can stay another few weeks,” he said, as if knowing her thoughts. “My eyes don’t seem to be getting better, but I can’t mooch off you guys forever. At some point I’ll have to make some decisions…what to do with my life.”
“Oh, Nate.” Her heart squeezed and she turned into him. His other arm came around her and the coffee mug thunked to the sand. She pressed her face against his chest, loving the feel of him, the smell of him. “Your eyes will still get better, I know it.”
But if they did, he would leave.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nate felt the acute disappointment too. Maybe not as much as Krissa, who’d been wanting this for so long. But he, too, had somehow become invested in this. He, too, had been certain they’d been making a baby. His first experience with this and it confounded him that they could have had sex that many times and not conceive. How many girls got pregnant with one sexual encounter? And then didn’t want the baby. How unfair was that?
He stroked Krissa’s silky hair. His heart ached for her and he found himself wanting to do anything to be able to give her what she wanted. “I’ll stay at least a few more weeks,” he said again. “And we’ll try again.”
“Thank you.”
He did wonder if there could be something wrong with him, except he knew that he may have fathered a child before. Lauren had been pregnant. It could have been his. Or not. He would never know. What if that had been the only chance he’d ever have to be a father? And that unborn child had died along with Lauren in that car crash.
A hot knife sliced through his intestines. Christ! It hadn’t hurt that much when Lauren had died. What was happening to him? He should be over that pain, not feeling it worse now.
“I was thinking about going to that gallery show in L.A.,” he told Krissa. “Greg, the owner of the gallery called yesterday. He really wants me to be there.”
“You should go,” she said, voice muffled in his sweatshirt.
“I told him I’ll think about it.”
He couldn’t imagine going and standing around looking at his work through dark glasses, having to explain to people what had happened to him, feeling their pity for him as they realized he was a washed up photographer with no future. Who was going to buy his prints after that? As far as he was concerned, it was just a big disaster in the making. Greg would be better off without him there.
He watched a sand piper run across the flat, wet sand, its tiny legs moving so fast they were a blur. It followed a wave out, then turned and ran back in when another breaker rolled toward it. Nate lifted his gaze to the water stretching far into the distance, all the way to the sky.
“Hey,” he said. He narrowed his eyes, wished he could take off his glasses. “Look, Krissa. I think it’s dolphins.”
She lifted her head and followed his direction. “It is!” She sat up straighter. “Wow! Look at them. They’re coming this way.”
They sat and watched the pod of dolphins slowly make their way up the coast, exclaiming in awe when one jumped right out of the water.
“Jumping for joy,” she murmured, eyes staring out to sea.
“Dancing,” Nate said. He wished he was closer and had his camera and could take the damn glasses off. Fuck! He yearned to capture their joyous playfulness, their grace and beauty.
“They’re always there,” Krissa said. He dragged his gaze away from the dolphins and looked down at her. “They live in the ocean. They’re always there, we just don’t see them.”
Many things were always there that weren’t always seen. Nate swallowed hard, unable to take his eyes off Krissa and her sweet allure, her magic more powerful than the arcing dolphins. When they’d passed by, Krissa turned to Nate, excitement shining her eyes up. Her eyelids and nose were still pink, but a smile turned up the corners of her pretty mouth. He was glad that had happened just then. They’d both needed that. He leaned over and kissed her mouth. “Come on,” he said. “I’m hungry. I bet you didn’t eat breakfast either.”
“No.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, retrieved her empty mug. “I didn’t feel like eating, but now I could.”
“Have you got meetings today? Work to do?”
As they strolled along the beach toward home they talked about the routine things that make up daily life, the things that seem insignificant but which glue all the big important things and hold it all together.
Derek had been disappointed, too, in the news that Krissa wasn’t pregnant, but he took it with a shrug and a more practical response. “Maybe we should go ahead with the sperm donations,” he said to Nate when Krissa wasn’t around. “I know you aren’t going to be here forever, buddy.”
And Nate, who’d already said and thought the same things himself, felt strangely as though Derek didn’t mind that. Or was he imagining things? This whole situation was so bizarre, he didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling half the time.