Cherry Girl (Neil & Elaina #1)(32)
Author: Raine Miller

“So you and Cora didn’t stay together?”

He flipped back toward me. “Umm, no,” he said slowly, shaking his head again, his lips slightly parted.

“Why didn’t you, Neil?”

“I didn’t want to, Elaina.”

Fear had started to bloom in the pit of my stomach and I suddenly felt ice cold again. “But the b-baby…I saw Cora after you left. She was pregnant and showing. I saw with my own eyes.” While Neil sat glaring at me, a thought rushed through my mind. Oh no. “Did she lose it?”

“No, she didn’t lose it. She had a son.” Neil had turned away again, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me. He was answering my questions while speaking to the window and looking out at the rain.

“Oh. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I only saw him one time and she didn’t tell me.”

“You don’t—you don’t see your son?” This wasn’t the man that I knew. I didn’t understand any of this. Why didn’t he see his son or even know his name?

He turned back to me once more and told me why, his eyes full of sadness I could read clearly even from the dim light inside his car. “I don’t see him because he is not mine.”

I shuddered as a chill rushed through my whole body and froze me. I was speechless for a moment, unable to speak, afraid to look at him. Terrified for what else I’d see in his eyes.

I don’t see him because he is not mine.

“But—but she said—I saw you with the doctor scan…You never denied it…

I don’t see him because he is not mine.

“I wrote you a letter. I told you I understood why you had to be with Cora…”

Neil didn’t react at first. He just looked at me, his expression growing darker and darker as understanding dawned for both of us. I realized why he was so angry.

I don’t see him because he is not mine.

“Oh, God.” I slammed a hand over my mouth, trying to quiet the rising panic flooding me.

As if that would work.

Involuntary reactions, nothing more.

He still hadn’t said anything. Neil was letting me do all the talking, giving me plenty of rope to hang myself on.

“If he wasn’t your baby, then why…why didn’t you say something? You let me go and didn’t tell me…Neil—please say this wasn’t all for nothing.”

I could feel the hysteria letting loose. The truth dawning on me with such brutal force I could barely breathe.

I don’t see him because he is not mine.

He leaned in very close and grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to own up to my horrifying mistake, gripping tightly and shaking me a little with every sharp bite of each word he spoke.

“Why did you leave without ever giving me a chance to tell you anything? You just left me there on the eve of my deployment. You let me go. Didn’t you love me enough to even listen at all, Elaina? Was I not worth even that much to you?”

I closed my eyes as my heart collapsed in on itself. My tragically grievous error now apparent, I had nowhere to escape. What had I done? I’d been the cause of so much needless pain for the both of us, all because I’d been afraid to listen and to share any part of him with anyone else.

Silent tears poured out of me as I tried to find the words. “No, no, noooo.” I sobbed, “I saw her pregnant—we all believed it was your baby…even you believed it…” I lost the ability to say any more. What could I say to him, anyway? What words were there to offer?

Very few. Actually none at all.

I’d not stayed around to find out the truth back then, why should he believe anything I said to him now. I couldn’t fathom why Neil was even beside me at this very moment, giving a thought to my needs and seeing me safely home at night. I didn’t deserve it from him. He must be doing it only out of a sense of devotion to my family, after all, they’d never let him go. I had been the only one to do that.

I spoke. The words came out of me and they were all I had to give to him. Words. Bitter sawdust in my mouth—that gave no comfort, only more pain—in the realization of what all this really meant about me and him, and our long years apart.

“You were worth it, Neil. You were. I wasn’t though. I—I—I am so sorry…”

He closed his eyes, still holding onto me, as if he couldn’t bear to hear the confession of my regret.

From somewhere deep inside me, a source of adrenaline started pumping because I pulled out of his tight grip and got the hell out of his car. I bolted.

Running was something I was really good at.

I managed to stumble inside the house, ignoring my mother’s comments about trying to walk home alone in a storm, her inquiry about Neil, and wasn’t he having dinner with us? I don’t know what I said to her.

I reached the safety of my bedroom, somehow. A sanctuary of sorts. A place where I could weep in solitude, and in peace. I’d figure out what to do tomorrow.

I just wanted to sleep and grieve for what I had done to him. To us.

To even accept it, hurt so much, I was afraid to close my eyes for fear of what my dreams would be like once I finally slept.

****

I had to see for myself. There are some things a woman cannot take on good authority and this was one of them. I had to see her and ask her why she’d done it. She may not tell me, and more pain was surely coming my way for my efforts, but I had to ask.

I stood on a street, looking at a house in a Barnet neighbourhood, the address of which I’d pried out of my brother. The house where Cora lived with her husband.

Just as I was about to cross the street, the door opened and out came a mother with two small children. A little boy holding her hand, and a younger girl in pink, riding in a pram. It was her. Cora looked mostly the same, maybe not quite as fit as before she’d given birth to two kids, but it was her.

I followed them to the park.

It didn’t take long to understand how apparent it was that Neil was not the father of her son. The children were very dark with skin that couldn’t have come from Neil and his Anglo DNA. At one point, the boy came over to where I sat on my bench and dug around in the sand pit with some toys. He was a handsome little lad, but not Neil’s son. This little boy’s father was Black.

“I thought it was you sitting here.” Cora had spotted me and made her way over. “I heard you’d returned to England.”

I stared up at her and asked one word. “Why?”

She sat down on the bench beside me.