Can’t Hurry Love by Nadine Millard (primary phonics books .txt) 📕

furtiveness around her phone, guarding her privacy like a miser with her treasures.

He should leave well enough alone. Call her cell, meet her at the car, and have a calm, rational conversation when they got home.

But his feet had a will of their own, and they walked him to the pool house, even though he knew he wouldn’t see anything he liked.

Before he got to the entrance though, the light flicked off, and he stood there in the darkness, watching as the door opened, and Elaine stumbled out giggling, her dress creased, her hair ruffled.

And he stayed watching while Jeffrey Weller wrapped his arms around her and kissed her in a way that could only be familiar.

He watched as they broke apart and turned in his direction.

As Elaine’s face blanched, shock lighting the brown depths of her eyes. And then, the flick of a red lock of hair, the defiant tilt of her chin. She didn’t care. Didn’t care that she’d betrayed him. Didn’t care that she’d been caught.

Wordlessly, Josh turned and marched around the side of the house to where the cars were parked. He wondered if he should feel angrier. Shouldn’t he want to beat the shit out of the man who’d just been having sex with his wife?

But he felt nothing. Relief maybe. Which spelt a word of trouble, especially with a baby on the way.

He had no idea how long he sat there in the car, waiting for her to make an appearance.

And when she finally slid into the seat beside his, he tried to muster some emotion. Any emotion. But there was nothing. Nothing except a sense of inevitability.

They’d probably loved each other once, he reasoned as he drove down the winding driveway of the ostentatious house and toward home.

But he couldn’t for the life of him remember how that had felt.

“You’re not going to ask about it?” Elaine’s bitter tone broke the fraught silence, and Josh heaved from the depths of his soul.

“What is there to talk about?” he asked wearily, a strange mix of exhaustion and empty acceptance coursing through him. “If you want to spill all the sordid details, then have at it. I don’t really care.”

He could feel her anger at his words as if it was reaching out to strangle him.

“That’s always been the problem, hasn’t it, Josh? You’ve never cared. You’ve—“

Her rant went on and on. The tantrum of a petulant child.

Had he ever found it endearing? Her spoilt princess bit? Perhaps. But now, it grated on his last damn nerve.

Outside, the wind screamed, and the snow lashed against the car. He needed all of his concentration to keep them alive. He couldn’t think about her betrayal right now. Couldn’t think about his baby growing up without—

The thought, insidious and gut-wrenching, slithered into his mind, interrupting his thoughts.

“Elaine.”

Something in his tone stopped her incessant screeching, and she came to an abrupt stop.

“The baby,” he managed past a sudden lump in his throat. “Is it mine? And don’t lie to me, Elaine. It wouldn’t do any good now anyway.”

His words triggered a sudden and complete change in Elaine. Her face, ordinarily so beautiful, became ugly as her mouth twisted with a sneer filled with contempt.

“What baby?” she hissed.

He took his eyes off the wrong for a second to frown at her.

“Our baby,” he snapped. “Or so I thought.”

Elaine’s laugh was the cruellest sound Josh had ever heard.

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see. If it comes out with a God complex, then it’s yours.”

He took his eyes off the road again, shocked by her callousness. Wondering when the hell things had gotten so bad between them that combat was the only thing left.

Yes, he’d taken his eyes off the road.

And he hadn’t seen it coming. The truck on the opposite side of the white line losing control and skidding across the central reservation. It was only when he was blinded by the lights that he realised.

And it was way too late.

All he could do was throw his arm across Elaine in a futile attempt to protect her and the baby.

The seconds to impact felt like eons. Elaine’s scream reverberated around his head.

There was a moment of terror.

And then — nothing.

Josh awoke, his body dripping in sweat, his heart hammering loudly in the quiet room. It had been two years since the accident. Eighteen months since their divorce.

Why now? Why did the nightmares still come? Why was the guilt an ever-present noose around his neck?

He threw back the covers and pressed the home button on his iPhone, wincing as the brightness of the screen stung his eyes.

As a former ER doctor waking suddenly at — he checked the time on the screen — 4:30 am wasn’t that big a deal.

But the panic clawing at him? That had nothing to do with the ER and everything to do with the fact that Elaine had lost her baby because of that crash. And her life had spiralled out of control afterward.

Josh knew that sleep would elude him now.

Thankfully being a small-town MD allowed him the luxury of being tired on the job every once in a while. It was unlikely that anyone’s life would be endangered by his lack of sleep.

Rising to his feet, Josh made his way to the window of the apartment that looked out over Main Street.

Sometimes, he couldn’t quite believe that he lived here. That this was his life.

Certainly, his mother was hoping that it was nothing more than a phase. A blip in reaction to the accident for which he blamed himself, no matter how many people told him he wasn’t to blame. He hadn’t attended Harvard to end up as a partner in a tiny practice in Colorado, his mother had insisted.

But Josh had insisted harder.

He couldn’t say that this was where he wanted to be forever. But he’d needed a life that was the exact opposite of the rat race where he’d been living. He needed the peace and quiet. He needed to heal.