Free Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson

tight, and felt incredibly alone. She hugged herself with both arms. She needed to talk to someone besides
     Guinevere and Merlin. Ironically, the person she wanted to reach out to was on Martha’s Vineyard. As much as she wanted to,
     she wouldn’t call him. She would call her friends Laurie or Gilda or Susan, but not Matt.
    Her eyes moved over to the bookshelves she had built into her walls. Her apartment was like a small bookstore. Very independent.
Orlando, The Age of Innocence, Bella Tuscany, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The God of Small Things.
She’d been reading voraciously ever since she was seven or eight. She read everything, anything.
    She was feeling a little queasy again. Cold, too. She wrapped herself in a blanket and watched
Ally McBeal
on TV. Ally turned thirty in the episode, and Katie cried. She wasn’t nearly as crazy as Ally and her friends, but the show
     still hit a nerve.
    She lay on her living-room couch and couldn’t stop thinking about the baby growing inside her. “It’s all right, little baby,”
     she whispered.
I hope so, anyway.
    Katie remembered the night when she had gotten pregnant. She’d had a fantasy in bed that night, but she dismissed it, thinking,
I’ve never gotten pregnant before.
She hadn’t ever missed a period—except one time in college, when she’d been playing varsity basketball at North Carolina
     and learned that her body fat was too low.
    That last night with Matt, Katie had felt that it had never been like this before. Something had changed between them.
    She could feel it in the way he held her and looked at her with his luminous brown eyes. She felt some of his walls come down,
     felt
This is it.
He was ready to tell her things that he hadn’t been able to talk about.
    Had that scared Matt? Had he felt it, too, that last night we were together? Was that what had happened?
    She had never felt as close to Matt as she had that night. She always loved being with him, but that night it was urgent;
     they were both so needy.
    Katie recalled that it had started so simply: all he had done was wrap his fingers around hers. He slid his free arm beneath
     her and stared into her eyes. Next their legs touched, then their entire bodies reached toward each other. She and Matt never
     lost eye contact, and it seemed as if they were really one in a way that they hadn’t been before that night.
    His eyes said,
I love you, Katie.
She couldn’t have been wrong about that.
    She had always wanted it to be like that,
just like that.
She’d had that thought, that dream, a thousand times before it actually happened. His strong arms were around her back, and
     her long legs were wrapped around his. She knew she could never forget any of those images or sensations.
    He was so light when he was on top of her, supporting himself on his elbows, his knees. He was athletic, graceful, giving,
     dominating. He whispered her name over and over:
Katie, sweet Katie, my Katie, Katie, Katie.
    This was it,
she knew—he was completely aware and attuned to her, and she had never experienced such love with anyone before. She loved
     it, loved Matt, and she pulled him deep inside, where they made a baby.

Three
    K
ATIE KNEW what she had to do the next morning.
Seven A.M.
—but it wasn’t too early for this. This was it.
    She called home—Asheboro, nestled between the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina—where life had always
     been simpler. Kinder, too. Much, much kinder.
    So why had she left Asheboro? she wondered as the phone began to ring. To follow her love of books? It was her passion, something
     she truly loved. Or had she just needed to see a world larger than the one she knew in the heart of North Carolina?
    “Hey, Katie,” her mother answered on the third ring. “You’re up with the city birds this morning. How are you doing, sweetie?”
    They had Caller ID in Asheboro now. Everything was changing, wasn’t it? For better or for worse, or maybe somewhere