No Longer Mine by Shiloh Walker

the house and locked the door behind her.
    Well, that went rather well.
    He cursed himself as he drove away, shaken. He hadn’t meant for it to go quite like that. He certainly hadn’t expected to see a cold, quiet woman in place of the stubborn, hot-tempered girl he had known.
    She was just a shadow of herself, her eyes sad and distant. He couldn’t see any of the thoughts going on in her mind.
    He had always been able to read those eyes, know what was going on in that quirky mind of hers. It was very disturbing to look into those eyes now and see nothing. Absolutely nothing.
    Hell, Wade. What did you expect? Did you think she would throw her arms around you and tell you how much she had missed you?
    While he hadn’t been expecting it, he had been hoping for a warmer reception than he had received.
    Damn optimistic fool.
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    Chapter Seven
    For three days Nikki existed on catnaps. When she finally crashed the nightmares had her waking in the night, screaming, fighting, struggling with a seatbelt that no longer held her pinned in the seat, fighting to get to a child she had buried three years earlier, while the father who had never known his son stood by and watched with emotionless eyes.
    The nightmare had been so awful, now she feared closing her eyes again. Working was impossible.
    Eating was impossible.
    Thinking was impossible, and she knew she needed to snap herself out of it.
    She couldn’t let seeing Wade do this to her—she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to stay anything even resembling sane.
    Sometimes it seemed her grasp on sanity was already pretty tenuous, and she knew if she didn’t get a grip that grasp would go from tenuous to non-existent.
    The best thing, the logical thing to do was push him out of her mind. Stop thinking about Wade. Stop thinking about the little girl. Stop wondering… Stop thinking about Jamie, what had happened .
    It didn’t concern her, after all.
    None of it did.
    But she couldn’t help it.
    Staring out the window, her computer sitting untouched behind her, she rested a hand on her flat belly and wondered, unable to stop herself, if Jamie had felt that amazement, that joy, that fear when her tiny little baby had moved inside her for the first time. Had she cried when the ultrasound showed a healthy baby? Had she cried when she had learned she was pregnant, carrying the baby of the man she loved more than life itself?
    Nikki hadn’t cried. She had been too stunned, too shocked.

    Then
    “Nikki, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation here,” Dr. Moriarty said, his eyes kind. “You almost waited too long to come in here. You’re in bad shape. We can help you, but the baby…” Logically, Nikki knew he was only telling her what was best for her. And it wasn’t like she had exactly come in either.
    That was the worst of it.

    Shiloh Walker
    She’d collapsed, passed out right in the middle of the living room. Her dad had called 911 and she had ended up in the emergency room, where she was informed about something she had never, never had expected to hear.
    She was pregnant.
    And she was in almost the worst physical shape imaginable on top of it.
    “No,” she repeated for the third time, her voice shaky, practically soundless. She sat motionless on the exam table, wearing a shirt that had fit her months before, but weeks of depression had sapped her appetite and she had lost far, far too much weight.
    “Nikki, listen to me. You have developed an irregular heartbeat, something that’s due to your malnourished state. Collapsing the way you did was nothing short of miracle, because it forced you to get medical care. We can help you—you’re young, and up until recently, you were very healthy. Despite your current condition, you’re strong. But that baby…according to the information you’ve given me, you are well over three months pregnant. You are severely underweight, badly malnourished. I imagine the blood work will show