One Day At A Time

So here is the first chapter of One Day At A Time!!!!!... I will be doing a cover reveal for this novel in a few weeks. 

One Day At A Time

Prologue

Fort Benning, Georgia 
“I’m pregnant,” Kristen voice was small. She found out she was pregnant two weeks ago, and couldn’t find the courage to tell Noah. 
“It’s not mine!” Noah yelled.  
“Are you calling me a liar? I never had sex with anyone else!” she yelled back at him. “When we started dating we agreed upon a monogamous relationship.”
Noah looked at her and laughed. “You’re pregnant with my baby?”
His laughed caused her to cringe. “I can assure you that I’m pregnant with your child” 
“I can’t have children!” he shot back at her.
“Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.” Kristen walked past him. They sounded like a bunch of promiscuous youth instead of grown professional adults. 
“No Kristen,” Noah grabbed her by her hand, “I think you should get you stuff and leave by the time I get back here.”
Kristen didn’t recognize that man she fell in love with three years ago. “We just need to calm down and think for a second,” she tried to touch him, but he moved out her reach.  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I promise this baby I’m carrying is yours.” 
“Kris stop it! Do you hear yourself? I’m not the father of your child because I can’t have children. Didn’t you think I wanted to have kids with my wife?” 
Kristen could tell that this conversation with Noah wasn’t getting anywhere any time soon. All she knew is that she loved this man and the baby she was carrying was his. “I don’t know what happen between you and her but I swear-“
“Don’t tell me you don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know you,” he shouted at her, “Trying to pin this baby on me.  You are one of those whores who spread their legs and don’t know who their baby daddy,” he spat. “Now you coming running to me and want me to take care of you and your bastard child.”
Crack. 
Kristen slapped Noah so hard she thought her hand was broken. 
Noah touched his face. “Get the fuck out of my house Kristen. I hope you find whoever the hell fathered your child.” 
Kristen laughed hysterically. “Don’t worry about it Noah. I don’t need anything from you dumb, stupid ass,” she snatch her purse off the table and looked directly at him.   “I can’t believe I’d ever love you.” Kristen slammed the front door as she walked away from the man who just abandon her and their unborn child. 
Kristen drove around Fort Benning as she tried to get her mind of the biggest fight she had with Noah. They been together for three years and not once have she cheated on him. Kristen was still in disbelief over the reaction she got from Noah. Not once did Noah tell her that he couldn’t have kids, and it wasn’t like they were trying to make a baby.  The conversation between them escalated to a point where it shouldn’t have went.  Here she was twenty-three years old and unmarried with a son of a bitch who automatically jump to a conclusion that it wasn’t his and didn’t even bother mention DNA testing.  
Kristen had no place to go, she knew she couldn’t continue driving around town all night. Reaching for her ringing phone, for a split second she thought it was Noah instead it was her best friend Laura.
“Hello.” Kristen said when Laura answers the phone. 
“Girl what’s wrong?” Laura said.
Kristen wiped the tears that streamed down her face.  “I need a place to crash.” 
“You don’t have to ask. Just come on over.” 
An hour later, Kristen sat on Laura’s sofa crying her eyes out over a man who called every name in the book.
“Kristen, your crying is not going to solve anything.” 
“What I’m going to do?” she asked with her face in her hands.
“I think it’s selfish of him not getting all the facts.”
“He said that it’s virtually impossible for him to get me pregnant.” 
“Please tell me he doesn’t think you got pregnant on your own?” Laura was getting angrier than Kristen, but said, “You can stay here as long as you need.”
Kristen gave Laura a hug. “Only for a few days, than I’m gone.” Laura was the closes thing to family that Kristen had.  
“Noah will come around Kris, he just needs time to adjust to the news or impending fatherhood.”
“You didn’t see his face?” she shook her head. “He was beyond mad and angry.” 
“Give him space.” 
Kristen nodded her head. All she knew at that moment was that she wasn’t going to be one of those mothers who put her needs before her child. “I don’t need him.” 
“Yes you do.” 
“I can’t make a man do something he doesn’t want to do.” She faked a yawn, hoping that Laura caught her drift that the conversation wasn’t up for discussion any further. 
“I get it.” Laura laughed softly and stood up. Getting up she left and came back with blankets for Kristen. “Get some sleep, and don’t stress yourself out,” she kissed Kristen’s forehead and disappeared into her bedroom.

***

Noah walked to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer. He would admit that Kristen was the best thing to him after Mya left him. He swallowed the beer that left a nasty taste in his mouth. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Kristen was pregnant and trying to pin her baby on him. He was told by a physician five years ago that he wasn’t capable of having children.  
“I’m saying that tests show you have little to no sperm count,” this was the echo in Noah’s head.
Noah always thought he had a good life. He served in the United States Army and he had the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He couldn’t wait to get Mya pregnant and watch her body grow with their creation. The day he found out that he would never be able to reproduce ripped his whole entire life. He always pictured himself as a good father with a house full of kids. He always wanted to be there for his son or daughter the way his father was there for Lucas, his brother and him.  
Not being able to give Mya the kids that she  desired, made he feel insufficient; he thought less of himself as a man. When his wife asked him for a divorce, he didn’t fight her decision or talked her out of it. After his divorce, he lost the desire to ever get married again. He didn’t want to go through the embarrassment of telling a woman that he wasn’t able to give her kids. So when Kristen came into his life she told him she never wanted to have kids. He knew their union together was a match made in heaven. Now she dropped this bombshell on him.  She had to be crazy if she thought he was going to stick around with her and raised another man’s child.

Chapter One

21 Months Later 

Noah sat in the doctor’s office with his pregnant sister-in-law, Bailey.
“Noah” she  whispered in his direction, “I think that woman is trying to get your attention.”  She nodded her head at a woman sitting across the waiting room from them.
Noah instantly recognized the woman sitting across from him. Laura Maxwell was Kristen’s best friend. She obviously recognized him too and chuckled when Lauren started to look Bailey up and down. The last time he seen Laura was when he was station at Fort Benning.
“Do you know her?” Bailey asked.
“Long story” he mumble.
“She looks like she wants to rip you from limb to limb.” Bailey said looking across the room at the woman  who were mugging them.
“Don’t worry about her” he said.
“Mrs. Davenport,” the nurse called Bailey’s last name, “The doctor will see you now.”
“How dare you get another woman pregnant when you told my best friend you couldn’t get pregnant!” Laura screamed at him causing a scene.
“Bailey,” Noah said looking at her, “Go ahead and I’ll be right behind you in a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?” Bailey eyes were glued to Lauren. Both pregnant women were refusing to back down.
“Yeah” he said and turned his attention to Lauren “Outside now.”
“Fine, but wait until I talk to Kristen: I told  her to take your ass to court for child support but no---” Laura pointed him in the chest “She said and I quote, “I don’t want shit from the son of a bitch.”
“I’m not Kristen’s baby daddy” he laughed, “besides worrying about who is Kristen’s baby’s daddy, you should be worrying about finding yours.”
“You son of a bitch,” digging in her purse she handed him a picture of Kristen and a little girl.  “You take a very good look at that little girl.”
“I don’t need to look at no damn picture, because this is not my child” he tried to hand the picture back to Laura, but she would take it back.
“Keep it, you are going to need it,” she laughed as she walked to her car “and by the way dick head I know who the father of my child is. At least he didn’t tell me no bullshit that he couldn’t have kids.”
Noah couldn’t bring himself to look at the picture in his hand; so, he slipped it into his pocket and went back into the doctor’s office. He had never been around a pregnant female until the day that Bailey came into his brother’s life. Knocking on the exam room door, he walked inside and sat on the stool next to Bailey.
“We were waiting for you” Bailey said.
“You didn’t have to,” Noah said. He saw why Bailey was the right woman for his brother Lucas. When he first saw Bailey there was this eerie resemblance to Lucas’ dead wife Georgia, who died in child birth with their first kid. Somehow, Bailey found her way to Lucas or Lucas found her way to him and they both were exactly what each other needed.
“Ok let’s get started,” the doctor said as he turn off the lights and turn the plasma screen TV on.
He watched with great interested as the doctor put gel on Bailey’s stomach. It seemed so surreal that a baby was growing inside her stomach. “Wow,” he said as the baby’s heart beat echoed throughout the room.  He watched the baby moved continuously.
“He’s so big” Bailey gushed. “Oh look, he smiling,” she laughed.
Noah saw the happiness in Bailey’s eyes. He even saw the happiness in Lucas’ eyes even though his brother was afraid to be happy for one second since Georgia died. For a split second he imagined Kristen on the exam room table instead of Bailey. Would he be the caring and dotting father to be? No, because his dreams of ever getting a woman pregnant was never going to happen. But he could have been like his brother and raised a child who wasn’t even his.
Forty minutes later, he sat next to Bailey as he drove her back home. He could tell  something was bothering him.
“What’s wrong?” Bailey looked over at him.
“The gift of creating life is amazing” he said in awed.
“What happen back there?” She frown and look over at him “Who is Kristen?”
“A liar” he grumbled.
“Her friend seems pretty convinced that she wasn’t lying about the baby,” Bailey said flatly.
“Bailey,” he warned, “I don’t want to discuss a private matter.”
Bailey gave him a shrugged and continued to look at the window. Noah breathed a sigh of relief when she dropped the conversation he was dreading.
“I just want you to know something Noah Davenport; I can see you over their battling your demons. You don’t know fact from  fiction and that’s only going to eat you up until you get down to bottom of the truth.”
“Fine” Lucas snapped. “I can see that you not going to drop it,” he took a deep breath, “I can’t have kids and this woman says that I’m her baby’s father”
“Are you? Did you take a DNA test?” Bailey rattle question after question at him.
“Didn’t you hear? It’s impossible for me to have kids” Noah repeated through clenched teeth.
“Did you get a second opinion?” Bailey shook her head at him.
He knew what Bailey was trying to say, especially since his brother wasn’t the father of the baby she was carrying. “It’s not mine” he said in a voice that told her this conversation wasn’t up for debate.
“You are going to regret this if that baby is yours,” she said softly.
After dropping Bailey off at home, he called his brother up to meet him at the gym. He needed to burn off the anger he been holding since he bumped into Lauren at the doctor office.

***

“One, two, three,” he grunted as he lifted the weights up and down. Since seeing Laura today his mind was plague with thoughts of Kristen. The night he kicked her out the house they shared was the last night he laid eyes on her, Kristen moved her belongings out the house while he was gone.
“You look like your about to pop a blood vessel” Lucas joked.
“Remember when I told you I never wanted to talk about Kristen?”