4EVER

Chapter 31 - Reconciliation

Sometimes there are stories between you and God.

Stories so close to your heart that even if the narrative was uttered in a whisper, your already broken heart would shatter into an indecipherable number of tiny shards making it impossible to recover.

These stories become secrets that nobody can guard better than you. Once you tell someone, it's like releasing it into a light breeze where the wind finds it hard to not share with the trees, flowers and birds.

Noelle's baby with Jack was this type of secret.

No quicker had God gifted Noelle her precious cargo He had him...or her...delivered back to Him.

Not only did she have to put on a brave face navigating Truth, Lies and Deception of the Jack Chronicles but suppress any symptoms of a miscarriage and disguise it all as the horrific tumble down the stairs and the stress and exhaustion from straddling work between two clinics.

She did a number on herself that was for sure. Even in her state of absolute madness at Jack, she still had it all figured out...how she would have told him if they had stayed together. In her fantasizing, she imagined finding out about the baby just prior to the wedding and romanticized about how she would have told Jack.

Maybe during their first dance as a married couple. Daydreaming about it a thousand times she did. It never would have happened that way, she didn't even know she was pregnant at that time, but it was how her mind was working through her loss.

Eventually she'd snap out of it and remember how it all fractured with the tumble down the stairs attempting to clear her life of Jack's...shit.

In doing so, Noelle's life became the shit.

Once Noelle decided not to include that chapter in her book, that's what she concluded her baby with Jack would forever be...hush-hush...covert...classified information.

The situation with Jack was miserable enough with all the sordid details he was collecting about their life together, along with canceling the wedding at such a late date she was completely mental. The breakdown didn't soar under the radar either, her friends knew Noelle was messed up but they solely attributed it to Jack's betrayal, breakup and the fall.

After Prince put the file folder of unpublished chapters back in her bag, he began to wonder what else was in those unpublished chapters. What else did he not know about her?

Scatterbrained he was, so much so that he packaged up the broken eggshells in tupperware and placed them in the refrigerator and put the scrambled eggs in the trash not to be discovered until morning.

Locked up for the night and with a flick of the bathroom lightswitch he crawled into bed with Noelle careful to not wake her, she needed her rest.

In the dark, on his back, forearm draped over his forehead, his body begged for her touch...to be close to her and their baby. Everything that happened between them seemed like nonsense now.

Disgusted with his inability to keep his mouth shut sometimes, her too.

When Noelle turned over, her hand lightly brushed his naked shoulder signaling he had finally joined her in bed. Not a minute wasted, her body drowsily latched onto him, awake enough to share her honeyed words.

"I've missed your smell on me."

And that's all it took for forgiveness to wash over the both of them. Bathed in one another's kisses absolving the other of any unkind word or deed from earlier that evening.

"I miss everything." He countered.

"You always have to top me." He could hear a small smile in her words.