"I can't give it up, to someone else's touch, because I care too much." – Infinity, The XX
He was reeling.
Abigail was pregnant.
Suddenly, everything that had happened in the last few weeks made sense in glaring, horrific, and painful detail. It explained so much of the recent course of his life. It also created an insurmountable problem that he had no idea how to solve.
For the first time in his life, Chad Dimera was at an utter loss as to what he could do.
Chad remembered the day he had gone to return's Ben's watch. Abby had genuinely looked nauseous then. She'd been off and he had chalked it up to the fact that Abby was prone to motion sickness. What if it hadn't been a stomach flu, motion sickness, or something she ate? Could it have been morning sickness?
Then he'd seen her in Kayla Brady's office at the hospital. She'd insisted she wasn't a patient, but now he began to wonder. Had she gone to see her Aunt to get a pregnancy test done? Had Kayla also arranged for the paternity test Abby said she's had done? Chad had been worried about her then and when she found him in the park with Arianna, but she'd been so abrupt and unsettled by his concern that he'd let the subject drop. Perhaps far too easily, Chad thought with the benefit of hindsight. He had been sure something was wrong, but now he knew exactly what it was.
There had been Abby's overly sentimental reaction to his sharing his feelings about Grace. She had known by then she was pregnant – possibly with his child – and her own feelings had been influenced by his. The connection he had felt when they were together with Arianna had been fed and heightened by her knowledge that she might have been pregnant with his child. Yet, she'd said nothing.
Shaking his head, Chad realized he had no one to blame for that but himself. He had shattered Abby's trust and faith in him, and her keeping her pregnancy from him had been his own fault, Chad mused.
When he'd finally bowed to this internal conflict and pressure he was feeling and went to her to make amends, she had told him she needed time. She'd needed time to get the results of the paternity test so that she would know whose baby she was having – his or Ben's. Believing he couldn't accept another man's child, Abby had chosen Ben instead of him. And the rest, as they say, was history.
The moment Abby had found out she was carrying Ben's child, Chad had lost his infinity with Abby.
The sound of his fist hitting his desk was a hollow representation of the frustration and hurt Chad felt roiling inside of his soul.
"…the stillness of the night could only have been a gift from God." – Jack Deveraux
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Author's Note: My first attempt at a Chad/Abby story. I felt inspired by the short promo that "ChabbyLovers" made and posted on YouTube for Chad/Abby using the song 'Infinity' by The XX. The usual disclaimers apply here. I don't make my living writing fiction. I'm a non-fiction writer in real life.