by Renee, DC
“You’re so pretty,” she said, and I laughed before I smiled. Just like Hadley to think that when she wasn’t fully lucid, and even more like her to voice it out loud. I knew at that moment that her mom was right. Hadley was going to be fine. I stayed with her for a while longer until I got a knock that there were others waiting for their turn. I reluctantly let them come in, one by one. When she was moved to a regular room, we all crowded in with her.
No one wanted to leave her, not even Sidney. I think that surprised Hadley the most. What a great friend she turned out to be.
Too bad for them, I won. Bedside chair-sleeper for the win. Yay. Yes, that was sarcasm you detected. Those chairs fucking sucked. But for Hadley, I’d sleep on the damn floor if I had to. I wasn’t leaving her. So for two nights, I slept there. I only left to shower once when her mom basically kicked me out, saying I stank. Way to impress the mom, Noah. In my defense, I was pretty sure I didn’t stink, and she just felt bad for me.
Her parents and Bella stayed in town until the day after she was released, having spent the entire day at my place. I didn’t mind, but I knew it was tiring for Hadley. She’d just undergone major surgery, one that was draining and painful. That night, I held her as she cried. I wasn’t even sure if it was tears from physical pain or emotional. If I had to guess, it was both.
“I’ll never be whole,” she told me.
“If I had a prosthetic leg, would you say I wasn’t whole?”
“No,” she said.
“Same shit, then,” I countered.
“I can’t carry a baby,” she told me. “I want to give you babies. You would have beautiful babies. You should leave me while you still can,” she rambled through tears.
“Lots of women can’t carry babies, and they live long and happy lives with kids,” I emphasized. “Not to mention that you already took care of that. If we want to have kids down the road, they’ll be ours. Yours, mine, together. So what if you’re not the one housing them for a bit. You’ll be the one nurturing them for a lifetime.” She cried harder at that. “And I hate to break it to you, but it was too late to leave you the minute you opened your smart mouth. I was a goner then. I just didn’t know it yet.”
“I love you so much,” she told me.
“I love you too,” I said.
The next two days were just as hard, both from the pain of the surgery and from the emotional toll it had taken on her. But we went for a follow-up with Ben, and she was deemed A-okay. Those weren’t his exact words, obviously, but you got the point. Hadley was officially deemed in remission, and her prognoses for the future was positive. She’d have to be monitored, of course, and she still had to heal, but it lightened both our spirits.
“My parents and Bella love you,” she told me after we made it to my home, but if I had anything to say about it, it would be our home soon. I’d taken a leave to be with her, and you could bet your ass that as soon as I felt she was feeling a little better, the hints for her to move in were going to be coming out in full force.
“Well, can you blame them? I mean, it’s not hard to love me, right?” I joked.
“Not hard at all,” she said with a smile on her face.
“Now rest,” I told her. “The hard part is over, but we still have a lot more to go.”
“With you by my side,” she said, “it’ll be easy.” I watched as her smile suddenly grew wider, despite the pain I knew she was in.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” I asked.
“I just realized that I will finally have my fantasy come true,” she said.
“I thought I was your fantasy,” I countered teasingly.
“Oh, you are. You most definitely are. You, scrubs on, no, wait, a lab coat, nope, nuh-uh, scratch that, you naked, yeah, naked, scrubbing me down. Get it? Doctor, scrubs, scrub down…”
I barked out a laugh. “Only you, Hadley. Only you.”
“Better be,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
“Always. Only you always,” I told her.
“Same, Noah. Same.”
Ten years later
Noah
EVERYTHING WAS SUNSHINE and rainbows after that, right? No. It wasn’t. But it was definitely worth it.
Hadley had undergone major surgery. I’d taken leave to be with her, but it took a bit for her to recover. She was up and about pretty quickly after because she was strong and independent, and mostly, she wanted to move forward. But she didn’t get back to herself fully for a bit after.
And having your uterus and ovaries removed caused other side effects. She had to take medicine for the rest of her life, but she sucked it up, didn’t complain and kept on going. That was actually the easy part.
The hard part was each time she had to get checked. Yes, the survival rate after a hysterectomy for stage 1 cervical cancer was greater than ninety percent, but there was still that less than ten percent something could come back up. So far, knock on wood, we were golden. Didn’t stop the butterflies from entering both our stomachs each time she had a follow-up.
“Daddy,” I heard just a minute before my little tornado crashed into me. From the minute he was born, he seemed to have only two speeds—go, go go, and crash. There was no in-between with him.
“Trey, where are you?” I heard Hadley’s voice. We’d named him Trey in honor of Tracy—Hadley’s suggestion. Our surrogate had been five months pregnant, and we’d just come back from a visit to the doctors when Hadley turned to me and simply said, “I like the name Trey. Like Tracy, but obviously for a guy since we’re having a boy. I’m gonna leave that out there, walk away, and let you think for a minute. But I expect your answer to be yes.”
We’d gotten lucky with a surrogate the minute we looked for one. It was Ben who had actually directed us to an agency some of his patients had used. We found someone who lived just twenty minutes away, in great health, and happy with her own family. She didn’t even need the money like many others did, not that she didn’t take it. She deserved it and more. But she did it because her best friend couldn’t get pregnant and asked her to do it. She did, and when she saw the immense joy she gave her friend, she decided she wanted to help others too. Enter us.
There were days during the pregnancy that I found Hadley staring off, her hand on her stomach. I knew she felt like she was missing something. On those days, I held her tighter, squeezed her harder, and loved her gently. The good thing was that our surrogate was open and let Hadley basically stop by or be there for her as often as she wanted. They grew so close during that time that they were actually now friends.
Every time we hung out with her and her husband, I couldn’t help but look at her with gratitude.
That was five years ago. “Should we hide?” I asked Trey.
“Nah, mommy’s gonna be mad,” he said, shaking his head.
“He’s here, Hadley,” I called out to her.
“There are my favorite boys,” she said as she walked into the backyard. I’d been grilling us dinner, and my little man had wanted to help apparently.
“I’m a man, Mommy,” Trey said.
“So am I,” I mumbled. “And I’ll show you just how much later on,” I added quietly, but loud enough for her to hear before adding a wink. I loved that she still blushed.
Oh, you want to know about the first five years, huh? All right. Guess I could tell you. While Hadley was recovering, I recorded the interview for her magazine, but it wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined it would be.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be the one to interview you,” she told me after she realized I had done it. “I know how uncomfortable it must have been.”
“It wasn’t too bad,” I said with a shrug as I brought over my laptop so we could watch my video together.
“Hot damn,” she said when I saw my face on the screen, the small thumbnail on the contest page of the magazine’s website. I smiled and then clicked it.
“I’m Dr. Noah Shields,” I started. “Or as Hadley lik
es to call me, Dr. Hottie.” The interviewer chuckled. So did Hadley as she turned to me for a moment with questions in her eyes. I pointed back at the screen, and her eyes followed.
“If the readers are watching,” Hadley’s co-worker said, “then you’ll know that the way these interviews have been going is I ask a series of questions to get the most truthful answers out of our finalist, followed by some clips of them in their environment, doing their thing. We’re going to do things a little differently this time. This one’s special. Hadley, girl. This one’s for you. Oh, and get better soon. Next contest will be here before you know it.”
Hadley looked at me again. “Just watch,” I told her. She turned back to the screen, where I came back on.
“I’m not a hero,” I said. “At least, I never thought of myself as one. But many of you seem to see something in me that I haven’t in a very long time. You see, my mother-in-law was actually the one to enter me in this contest against my knowledge. I lost my wife to cancer over three years ago, and the irony is that I’m an oncologist. That messes with your head, and my mother-in-law wanted me to snap out of it. She thought this contest might do the trick. Enter Hadley. Who’s that? She’s one of the women running this contest. Or rather, she was. She stepped back so that I could keep going since it was a conflict of interest. That piqued your curiosity, huh? Hadley also saw something in me, and she wouldn’t give up on me. We became friends, then friends turned into more, and now she’s the woman I am going to spend the rest of my life with, she just doesn’t know it yet. Or I guess, now she does. Hadley, baby, turn around.”
She gasped as she turned, finding me on one knee beside her, holding a diamond ring nestled inside an open black box.
“Cancer sucks,” I said, and she laughed. “But it taught me something very precious. Life is short, and we shouldn’t waste our time if we know what’s right. And you’re what’s right. We’re what’s right. You showed me how to love again. You showed me how to be strong again. You showed me how to live again, and I want to do all that with you for the rest of my life. Is this too soon? I don’t give a damn. I love you, and I know I want to grow old with you. That’s not going to change. So, please, Hadley, say you’ll marry me.”
“Yes,” she cried, big fat tears trailing down her cheeks as she grabbed my face and kissed me before I slid the ring on her finger.
I grabbed my phone, directed it at us, and shot a short video. “She said yes. I humbly withdraw myself from the contest. There is no way I could win anything better than Hadley’s heart.” She kissed me again, and I sent it off to Sidney. It was uploaded right next to the other video within minutes. Damn, they worked fast.
We got married nine months later—since it took time to plan, according to Hadley—in a small ceremony with our family and friends…on the roof of the hospital. Again, Hadley’s idea.
“It started it all,” she told me. “Now it’s going to start another part of our journey.” Whatever Hadley wanted, Hadley got. I would say that with the help of an event planner, the roof looked absolutely nothing like a roof. There were some fancy drapery, couches, tables, and even a bar. I wasn’t even sure we were allowed to do half the stuff we did up there, but being a member of the staff had its perks.
Before the wedding, when she was up for traveling, I took her to meet my family. They fell in love; of course, they did.
“Damn, bro,” my sister said, “how the heck did you get so lucky twice in life?” The first time, I didn’t know, but the second—that was all Tracy.
My mom even visited a couple of times to help with the wedding planning. She had been so excited that Hadley was going to be her daughter-in-law. I thought they might have even liked her more than me.
Did I mention her parents were pretty damn happy too? I’d actually told her dad when I found him alone at the dinner before her hysterectomy that I was going to ask her to marry me.
“Are you asking my permission?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not. Hadley is everything, absolutely everything, and I’d be a damn fool not to make her mine if she’ll have me, and I can’t risk you telling me no. The least I could do was give you a warning.”
“Well, shit,” he said. “You truly love her,” he added, then seemed to think for a minute. “For the record, if you change your mind and decide to ask for my permission, I’ll give it.”
“In that case, may I have your daughter’s hand in marriage?” I asked, giving him the respect he clearly wanted and deserved.
“No,” he said and then broke out into a wide smile. “Yeah, Noah, ask away, and if she’s smart, she’ll say yes.”
“Thank you,” I told him.
So when Hadley called them right after she said yes, they were ecstatic, but not surprised. She didn’t bother emailing Bella; she called her. Her groggy friend managed to wake up quickly and scream so loud I was sure the neighbors heard. She called Sidney right after even though she already knew from my video, who proceeded to congratulate her.
About a week after she met my parents, we went to Tracy’s parents for dinner.
“Thank you,” Amber said, wrapping her in a hug the minute we walked in. “For bringing him back to life.”
“And you were nervous,” I told her. She elbowed me in the ribs. She had been nervous.
“Um, hello, what if I don’t compare to Tracy?” she asked.
“You don’t,” I told her. “Two different people. You can’t compare yourself to her any more than she would have been able to compare herself to you. But I love you, Hadley. I love you with everything in me. And her parents do too.”
“They don’t even know me.”
“Don’t forget they were rooting for us,” I pointed out, having already told her everything about how they helped.
“Still…”
“They’re going to love you.”
And they did. We spent the entire evening with them falling in love with Hadley the same way everyone else did. When Trey was born, they cried. “Hi, Trey,” Jay said as Amber wiped her tears. “I’m your other grandfather, Jay. But you can call me Pop.”
And you can bet that Trey had three sets of loving grandparents. Lucky kid.
So that was that. That was our happily ever after.
Maybe Trey was lucky, but you know what? So was I. Lucky in love. Lucky in life. Just lucky.
The End
Want to keep up with all of the other books in K. Bromberg’s Everyday Heroes World? You can visit us anytime at http://www.kbworlds.com/ and the best way to stay up to date on all of our latest releases and sales, is to sign up for our official KB Worlds newsletter HERE.
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I’m truly honored to be a part of the KB Worlds community! Huge thanks to Kristy, who gave me this chance. She was not only patient and encouraging, but she also cared as well. And the amazing other authors part of this wonderful bunch. What a truly special group! Thank you, KB Worlds authors! I’m lucky to call you all friends.
As always, thank you to my family, without whom none of this would be possible. They support me and inspire me. Big shout-out to my hubby, my two kiddos that want to “work like mommy,” my muse and best friend – my sister, my parents, my in-laws, and my nieces & nephews.
This story would simply be a pile of misspelled pages if it weren’t for: Jenny Sims, my editor at Editing4Indies, Rebecca Pau, my graphics designer at The Full Wrap, Elaine York, my formatter at Allusion Graphics, and the awesome team with Grey’s Promotions.
Thank you to some very special gals: Shelly Wygant, Emily Goodman, Kacie Spiros, Stephanie Caldwell, Suleika Santana, ChaShiree Mixon, Jen Wilder, Monica Perez, Brianna Maddox, Heather Cicio, Cat Gray, Christina Gragg.
Thank you to my Diamonds. Love you all!
Thank you to all the blogs, bloggers, groups, fellow authors, and readers that took a chance on me and my story, for all your help with this book and thr
oughout the years!
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DC Renee is a contemporary romance fiction author who tends to write stand alone novels that always shock you with a twist. She's been writing all her life. It started with adorable rhyming poems as a kid for anniversary and birthday presents, moved onto monologues and short stories as a teen, then transitioned to fan fictions before she found the courage to publish a book.
DC lives in sunny and (mostly) warm Los Angeles with her husband and their two toddlers—a girl and boy who want to “work just like mama,” often climbing in her lap and “writing” on her computer. She's very close with her entire family—extended included, and her sister is her muse.
When she's not working, writing, and spending time with the family, she loves watching mindless TV, tinkering with DIY projects, and of course, reading.
ALSO WRITTEN BY K. BROMBERG
Driven
Fueled
Crashed
Raced
Aced
Slow Burn
Sweet Ache
Hard Beat
Down Shift
UnRaveled
Sweet Cheeks
Sweet Rivalry
The Player
The Catch
Cuffed
Combust
Cockpit
Control
Faking It
Resist
Reveal
Then You Happened
Hard to Handle