Return to Love. Yasmin Sullivan Y.

he’d made.

      He hadn’t lost his stride, but his heart just about broke. He never imagined that when he was ready, it would be too late.

      “I don’t need you. Now get the hell out.”

      Inwardly, he was shaking his head. Her hair had been longer, but still smooth and shiny, and her almond eyes had been as piercing as ever. She had been as beautiful and as sensuous as the day she had driven him away, and things could not have gone more badly.

      Nigel Johns sat behind his mahogany desk with spreadsheets piled up on his right and a keyboard in front of him. Today, he was off his game. This wasn’t like him, and it wasn’t good.

      He worked in the accounting department of an investing and accounting firm. He hadn’t been there very long, but he was doing well, thanks to what he was able to do for his clients and what he’d done with his own portfolio.

      “We don’t need you, so just leave, and don’t come back.”

      He hadn’t expected her to fall into his arms, but he’d thought they could talk like two rational adults—now that he was an adult. But that was admitting that he hadn’t been before. Well, it was true, he hadn’t been. Their breakup had been his fault, and now maybe it was too late.

      He’d decided to crunch numbers for the rest of the day—something simple he could do without too much thought. He always double-checked every calculation, but today he was having to triple and quadruple check because his mind just wasn’t where it should be.

      “I don’t need you. Now get the hell out.”

      He should have sent her the money, laid out a plan and put the plan fully into place before entering the picture himself. If he hadn’t gone there...

      He wasn’t getting much done. He pushed the keyboard away, shaking his head. He had clients coming in within the hour. At least their folders were ready, and the review of the accounting figures would be easy. This was a good thing, because where his head was right now didn’t leave him a great deal of concentration.

      “...so just leave, and don’t come back.”

      He’d allowed himself to be chased off once. It was the last time that they’d seen each other six years ago. It was in college, and he was in her apartment. They’d been arguing more, but he didn’t expect her to actually call their wedding off and cast him to the wind. She’d used the same kind of language.

      “Now get the hell out.”

      No way was he going to be run off again. If he hadn’t gone there, things might have worked out differently. But in for a penny, in for a pound. Now that he’d shown himself, he wasn’t backing down, and she wasn’t keeping him from his child.

      Children? Was it one, or was it both of them? The girl was bigger, but then girls grew faster. Right? He wasn’t sure, but he sure as hell was going to find out.

      He’d only found out a few months ago that there was a child—or children. He’d been working, saving, building a life that he could offer Regina. He didn’t want her to see him until he had made it—made something of himself that contradicted the waste of time he’d been in college. The news had hit him square in the gut.

      “You ever see Regina? You been in touch with her since then?”

      He was visiting his parents at home when he’d run into one of his college buddies—the one who used to date Regina’s roommate. The question put him on guard because it pried into places he didn’t want opened.

      “Why do you ask?”

      He wanted to skirt the issue and let it die, but his friend persisted.

      “Because I need to know if you ever found out.”

      “Found out what?”

      The silence and the cryptic way his friend was treading around the subject told him that whatever it was, it was serious.

      “Found out what?”

      “Look, I’m not supposed to know, but I’ve never stopped thinking that you should have known.”

      “Known what?”

      “Regina was pregnant when she graduated.”

      “Pregnant?”

      “She was pregnant, and it was yours, and that’s all I know.”

      This was all the information he could get out of his old friend, but it sent him reeling.

      Regina had called things off between them just before she graduated. They were supposed to graduate together from Howard University and then get married. Except that, by the end of senior year, he was still a year behind on his classes because he’d been partying too much.

      His parents had never given up on him, even after his near-failing grade reports. When Regina put him out, he’d felt like nothing. He’d decided not to come back until he’d made something of himself, until he could show her that he could take care of things. Although he tried, he couldn’t do much about that semester, and he mourned the whole summer over their breakup. But the following semester, after she’d already finished and moved on, he was back with a vengeance, determined to prove himself.

      He finished his undergraduate degree in accounting and did an internship within the year. Then he went on to an MBA in accounting and finance. He couldn’t get into an accelerated program because of his grade point average, but he used the two-year program to take real-estate and investment classes. He graduated at the top of his class and then sat for the CPA exam.

      In a way, his goal had become money. He joined an accounting firm and used all his degrees to start amassing a bank account. Then he made a vertical move to the position he was in now so that he could move back to the DC area, where Regina still was.

      But it wasn’t just money; he wanted everything that came with real success, real responsibility. And he wanted to be more cultured, too. No more baggy pants, no more ghetto fashion, no more looking like the hood. Everything about his life was bent on making it, looking the part, being professional, working hard, getting it right.

      She’d gone to study with some artists for a year—or so he’d heard. But other than that, she had stayed in the area after their Howard years. He didn’t have many details; after a while people had finally started to get the message and had stopped telling him her activities. By the time she got back to DC after her year away, he was immersed in his own MBA program down home in South Carolina, trying to catch up. What his buddy had said fell into place. That year away would have been when she’d had their child.

      Was it one child or two? Yes, he would be finding out.

      He just had to get through the day. Then he had to get his game back and make it through the rest of the week. This weekend he would stake his claim.

      * * *

      Regina turned the car off and grabbed her purse. She’d had an errand to run for her morning office job, and then she had to drop off some of her pieces at a gallery downtown that was having a showing of local artists. By the time she got to the studio, she was running late.

      She found Amelie finishing up with a customer. She had sold one of her large, bead-covered bowls and had a new beadwork project in process on the back table in the bead section.

      “Sorry I’m late. I hope that means we’ve been doing well today.”

      “No problem, and yes—relatively speaking. We’ve sold one of yours and one of mine. Whoo-hoo.”

      There was no one else in the shop, so Regina started pulling out her project. “I don’t know if that’s anything to whoo-hoo about. But it’s good. We have to get our front fixed up soon.”

      “I know. I registered us for the seminar you were talking about,” Amelie said, “the one at the community center on starting up a small business.”

      “Oh, good. I’ve been working on our paperwork