Chapter 5

Neema pulled the phone away and checked the caller ID again to be sure her mind hadn’t played tricks on her. It hadn’t. Phone back to her ear, she pressed. “Jerome?”

“Actually, Jerome is taking a shower. But I thought we should talk.”

Neema blinked. That was definitely a woman’s voice she heard, and she had a pretty good idea who it belonged to. Still, denial dug its claws into her. She shook her head. It couldn’t be.

“Hello? Are you still there? You didn’t faint, did you?” Callie’s mocking cackle followed the taunt.

No, she hadn’t fainted, but the world around her was suddenly hazy. Neema squeezed her eyes shut as though that would somehow change what was happening. This had to be a bad dream. Had she dozed off while standing against the wall? Right then, the air shifted, and an icy breeze caressed her cheeks just as an empty bottle someone had discarded rolled over and bumped her shoe. Nope. Not a dream, then.

Neema sucked in a breath. Her heart beat a war in her chest, and she felt nauseous from the truth she was being forced to face. There was no other reason why one of her closest friends would be answering her fiancé’s phone in the middle of the night, sounding like a villain in a low-budget movie production.

Jerome was cheating on her. Oh, God, no. Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. What was she supposed to say? Her brain stalled like a broken Wi-Fi signal. Neema’s throat felt too tight; an invisible melon had wedged itself in her airway while a constrictor wrapped itself around her chest. Unfortunately, Callie didn’t have the same problem.

“Are you surprised? Really, Neema. You shouldn’t be. This is on you, sweetie. You should really have kept a better eye on your man. And maybe met his needs while you were at it. Then he wouldn’t have come chasing after me like a starved man desperate for a bone.”

Neema winced as though she’d been slapped. To hear that Jerome had chased after her friend was like a knife to the chest. It hurt, but anger was quick to slip through the cracks and fuel her enough to finally find her voice.

Too bad she could only think of one question to ask. “How long?”

Callie snorted, clearly amused by the entire exchange. “Long enough to be pregnant for him, sweetie. Did you hear that, Neema? I’m having Jerome’s baby.”

For a second, Neema thought her chest had caved in. It was either that or her heart had exploded and the shards had punctured her lungs. She couldn’t breathe no matter how hard she tried to suck in some much-needed air. Callie was still talking, but she heard none of it. Pregnant? She was pregnant. Was that why he had done it? Then, as though the universe just needed to hit her with the final nail, another voice came through the line. This one was male and distant, like the speaker wasn’t close to the phone but still in the same room.

With her brain busy at work, trying to convince the rest of her body to keep functioning because the world hadn’t ended even though it felt like it, it took Neema a second to recognize the speaker in the background as her fiancé Jerome.

He was there. This wasn’t some strange coincidence that Callie had simply stolen his phone or something. That was confirmed, and the knife twisted in her chest when she made out the word ‘baby’. That was what he called Callie when he asked who she was talking to. Neema didn’t wait to hear Callie’s response. She had heard enough.

Cutting the call, Neema squeezed the phone until she heard a crack. She didn’t care. In fact, she had the urge to crush the gadget against the wall until it was nothing more than rubble. Only the knowledge that she couldn’t afford a new phone kept her arm down and shaking with rage.

The sound of heavy, choked breathing filled the silence. It took her a beat to realize it was coming from her. The world around her blurred, and bile rose to the back of her throat. Neema had a split second to turn and hunch over to the side before everything in her stomach came up along with what felt like her stomach lining.

The acidic stench of puke filled her nose, and she was sure she hadn’t completely missed her shoes. But all that didn’t matter as Neema fell to her knees on the cold, hard cement and broke down, letting the pain swallow her whole.

How could Jerome have done that to her? He’d been in her bed just hours before. Had that been the reason he hadn’t wanted her over for the weekend? Because Callie would be warming his bed instead? And last weekend?

Neema squeezed her eyes shut. More tears rolled down her face. The taste in her mouth was as bitter as the emotions that swirled in her chest. Callie was pregnant with Jerome’s baby. If Neema was honest, that cut deeper than the betrayal of her fiancé sleeping with her friend. Especially after Jerome had promised Neema that it didn’t matter whether she gave him kids or not. “Mavi ya kuku,” Neema spat in Swahili. That was all Jerome had been, chicken shit.

What the hell did she do now? They were engaged, and everyone knew they’d been planning their wedding. Thankfully, the wedding invitations hadn’t gone out because they’d still needed to complete the payment on the venue first. That didn’t change the fact that everyone she knew had known about them. Why had Jerome done this to her? They’d been together for three years, and he’d just thrown everything away. For what? A baby? The ache in Neema’s chest threatened to cripple her.

She needed to get out of there. There was no way she could go back inside and continue working, not only because she now smelled like puke, but there was no way she would be able to function after that call.

As she staggered around the building to the front, a small voice at the back of her mind told her to call her mother or Samantha to come get her, but she wouldn’t do that. Her parents lived more than an hour away, and her best friend, Samantha, occupied an apartment opposite Neema’s. It made more sense to just go home than have her friend come fetch her when neither of them owned a car.

Except Neema didn’t go home. She wasn’t sure when she made the decision, but she didn’t even blink when she gave the cab driver Jerome’s address. It was past one in the morning by the time the cab came to a stop in front of Jerome’s gate, an electric monstrosity that guarded the six houses that made up the complex.

Was she really going to do this?