Prologue
The Store
Angelica
Twenty-Seven Years Earlier….
“Maybe it’s for the best, Angie.”
Looking over at the love of my life, my gut tightens. I met Romeo Williams two years ago. At the time, I was a twenty-one-year-old college senior, and he was a thirty-one-year-old truck driver. He was dropping off a delivery at the restaurant I worked for. The moment I saw the handsome dark-skinned man, I fell hard.
“How can you say that?” I sniffle. “She’s our baby.”
We’re sitting in his car in the parking lot of the grocery store. We’ve just returned from the hospital. Two weeks ago, I went into early labor and delivered a one-pound five-ounce baby girl. Nasiah Joy was the spitting image of her father. Romeo has been by our side every day since she came into this world. He is a happy, doting father. Even the nurses in the NICU talk about how proud he looks.
After four miscarriages, I don’t blame him. Nasiah was supposed to be our miracle baby. Now she’s fighting for her life. Though the doctors say she won’t win the battle.
Romeo runs a hand over his short hair. When he cuts those dark brown eyes over to me, my stomach drops. Something tells me I won’t like what he says next.
“Vanessa’s pregnant.”
Those words leave his mouth, wrap around my heart and squeeze the life out of me. I clutch a hand to my chest as if that would keep the pain away. My eyes water, but I fight to keep the tears from falling.
A year before I met the man of my dreams, he married another woman. I know some people will call me a homewrecker. They’ll say I’m a whore that’s trying to take a married man away from his wife, but they don’t know that he was created for me. Romeo was put on this earth to be mine. I knew it the first time I saw him. Unfortunately, I met him a year too late.
“I thought you said you weren’t sleeping with her?” The pain in my voice is obvious.
He shakes his head, turning in his seat to look at me. His eyes softening.
“Baby, it was a mishap. I was drunk, and she was crying about me growing distant. I felt like I had to.”
My heart believes him, but my head tells me he’s lying. He’s been telling me he was going to leave his wife since we met. He said that he just needed to wait until the time was right.
“Maybe this thing with our daughter is my punishment. God’s trying to tell me I need to do right by my wife. Be there for her like I promised in my vows.”
I can barely hear him over the roaring in my ears. My heart knocks so hard and rapidly against my chest I feel like I might pass out. I can’t lose this man. He is the love of my life, my everything.
“You can’t leave me, Romeo.” My statement sounds like a plea. It is. I would die if he walked out of my life.
He grabs my hands from my lap and brings them to his lips for a kiss. “You think I want to leave you? I love you, Sweets. You’re my entire world. But,” he doesn’t finish his sentence.
It’s then I realize that if my daughter dies, I’ll lose Romeo to his wife. I refuse to let her have him. She doesn’t love him like I do. She doesn’t value him or his hard work how I do. She doesn’t deserve him.
“My baby is going to make it,” I declare. She doesn’t have a choice at this point.
He smiles, showing off those deep dimples that make me swoon.
“If baby girl is anything like her momma, I know she’ll survive this.”
“I love you,” I tell him.
He leans over the center console in the car and places a kiss on my lips. “I love you more,” he says.
I don’t argue with him about how that isn’t possible. There’s no way he can love me more than I love him.
“Alright,” he says. “I’m going to run into the store and grab you something quick for dinner. I want you to relax and get some rest tonight. I’ll come back early in the morning and take you back up to the hospital.”
I smile big. “You’re so good to me.”
