Brock sat down heavily into the chair at my side, and Lucinda dropped.
I caught her, helping her into a chair, and realized that maybe what I heard and what they heard probably weren’t one in the same.
“What… what’s going on?” I asked Brock, no bullshitting from me.
“Give her an hour to get back into her room. She’ll be in 444.”
Jason left, patting Brock on the shoulder as he left, shutting the door softly behind him.
I backed up, putting my back against the wall so I could see them both, and stared until Brock lifted his eyes.
Tears were streaming down his face.
“Tell me,” I pleaded.
“They don’t,” he swallowed. “They don’t think she will make it through the night. They wouldn’t have allowed us to all stay. The ICU has strict rules, and they don’t deviate from them unless they don’t think the patient will make it. Which is one and the same with Lennox.”
“Fuck. That,” I yelled. “Take me to her! She won’t fucking leave me. I don’t care what I have to do.”
Turning around and yanking the door open, I walked straight to my sister.
“Payton, I need you to bring that box on my nightstand. And grab my pillow and blanket off the bed. And one of my t-shirts off the floor. Got it?” I snapped.
She nodded warily. “Of course. I’ll bring it right back, okay?”
I nodded and turned to look at my friends. “They don’t expect her to make it through the night. So y’all can go home, just… keep her in your prayers, okay?”
Every last one of the people filling the waiting room nodded. My friends and family. New friends. Old friends. Parents and soon-to-be parents-in-law.
They were all here for my Lennox, and I wanted it to be for a much better occasion, but it was what it was.
Hopefully, in a few months, they’d be coming around for a completely different occasion.
Only time would tell.
***
Bennett
Three days later
I woke up to a feeling of someone running their finger down my sock-covered foot.
My eyes slowly slid open, confused.
I was in the hospital still.
Kicked back in the recliner, I had my feet resting on the bed beside Lennox’s prone body.
Brock and Lucinda had gone home last night for some much-needed shut-eye, and I was to call them the moment anything changed.
But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the only thing lighting the room a small lamp behind the pulled curtain across the room, I wondered what woke me.
“You’ve got big fucking feet,” Lennox rasped. “And they smell kinda bad.”
I don’t know how I did it, but one second I was kicked back, brain fogged with sleep, and the next I was standing beside Lennox, staring down into a face that I could barely see due to the darkness.
“How’d you know it was me?” I asked stupidly.
Lennox laughed weakly, barely, but she laughed.
“Nobody I know has feet as big as yours,” she told me softly.
She swallowed and started to cough, and I quickly grabbed my pillow off the chair that I was sleeping with and pressed it down onto her chest when the tears appeared.
“Here, hold this. It’ll help feel like you’re not breaking in half,” I told her.
She clutched at the pillow.
“Owww,” she breathed.
My heart clenched.
“They had to crack your chest open in the operating room,” I told her softly, running my finger along the side of her cheek.
“Yayyy,” she said long and drawn out. “Sounds like a fun recovery.”
I leaned down until my forehead was leaning against hers.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I told her sternly. “Don’t do that again.”
“I’ll try not to be shot at by your ex-girlfriend,” she said solemnly, making me want to laugh.
“Dead ex-girlfriend,” I informed her, trying to keep the happiness out of my voice.
It wouldn’t be good to let people know I was happy that my ex was dead.
But after what she’d done to Lennox, I couldn’t shake the feelings.
“What’s with the sad face?” she asked softly.
I opened my eyes, ones I hadn’t realized I’d closed, and smiled down at her.
“I can’t believe she did this to you. I just can’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head.
She’d almost taken everything away from me.
Over and over again.
How many times did I have to pay for that one mistake of being with her?
It was the never ending story!
“She’s dead?” Lennox asked hopefully.
I nodded, looking at her mouth, then back up to her eyes.
“Yeah, baby, she’s dead,” I confirmed.
She breathed out slowly, then smiled as her eyes closed.
“Hate to say that it’s good, but it’s good.” She smiled.
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.
“Yeah, it’s good,” I told her. “Now we can have our life back.”
“I missed you,” she whispered.
A tear, which had been threatening to spill over since I’d seen that she’d awakened, did.
“I’ve missed you too, Lennox. I’m so sorry I was such an a-hole this month. I was just so unsure of what to do that I took it out on the wrong person. God, I almost lost you, and you’d have left me thinking I’d felt that way.”
“It was worth it,” she said, her body settling a little deeper into her bed.
“What was worth it, baby?” I asked.
“Getting shot. It was worth it if it brought you back to me,” she explained.
My eyes closed shut tightly, and the tears started to leak.
“I was coming for you before I realized she had you.”
“Good,” she said softly. “I’m tired.”
“Then sleep, baby. I’ll be here when you wake up,” I promised.
But she didn’t. She had more to say.
“You should probably get used to it, husband to be,” she said, putting emphasis on the last part.
I laughed against her mouth.
“How’d you know?” I asked.
“I could hear everything everyone was saying. Even that stupid shit you spouted about being thoughtless and ruining your life for a second time,” she informed me.
I swallowed hard. “I was thoughtless. If you weren’t awake right now… if you would’ve died… I’d have ruined my life for a second time. And this time so irreparably that I wouldn’t be able to dig myself out of the hole I prepared.”
She lifted her arm, and the IV tubes got tangled around my arm as she did, tying us together unintentionally.
“I would’ve been disappointed in you had you not taken the time you needed for yourself and your daughter. She’s a baby in this big, harsh world. You have to take care of her first, and me last,” she said softly.
My heart felt so full I could barely stand it.
“You’re not ever last, Nox. You’ll never be my last. You’ll always come first, right along with Reagan. And any other children we have,” I informed her. “I’ll always come last.”
She grabbed hold of my beard with her tiny fingers, and held me still as she said, “You’ll always be my first, too.”
“Good,” I said, starting to stand. “I need to call your parents and tell them that you’re awake.”
However, she kept a hold of my beard, holding me still.
“What?” I asked her.
“Don’t you have something to ask me?” she asked.
I blinked. “Ask you?”
“Yes, ask me. You know, it has something to do with us being together for the rest of our lives. And it rhymes with carriage?” she teased.
I feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking abo
ut.”
She pulled my beard.
I’m sure it was hard for her, but it only felt like a small tug.
Still, I laughed.
“I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you,” I informed her.
“You’re telling me… what?” she whined.
“That you’re mine and I’m yours. And that’s the way of it,” I said sternly.
She snorted. “Typical you.”
“That’s right, typical me,” I agreed.
She sighed and finally loosed my beard. “I fucking love you, Bennett.”
Those words, coming from her mouth right then, only minutes after she woke up from a three-day coma, were the best words in the world. Words I thought I’d never hear again.
“I love you, too,” I told her. “Now let me call your parents before they try to take back their approval of our impending marriage.”
Epilogue
Wooden spoon survivor.
-T-shirt
Lennox
Three years later
“Are you ready, baby girl?” I asked my daughter, Way.
Her full name was Calloway Rhea Alvarez, but we’d shortened it to Way about two days after having her.
She was a full-of-life two-year-old with so much energy that it was hard to keep up with her at times.
“Yes,” Way agreed, running down the hallway to the garage before I’d even told her where we were going.
Shaking my head, I walked in the opposite direction, knowing the door was locked up high so she couldn’t get out.
“Reagan,” I called as I headed to her room. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, Mom. I can’t get my dress all the way zipped, though,” Reagan called from behind her closed bedroom door.
“May I come in?” I asked, hand on the knob.
“Yeah,” she called.
Opening the door, I tried to ignore the absolute pigsty that she had going on and stepped over the mess to walk up behind Reagan.
She’d really grown into her body in the last three years and was already just as tall as I was.
Reagan had the majority of the zipper up, so all I had to do was do up the last three inches, and she was ready.
“You look great,” I said truthfully.
She turned to me and smiled.
Her big brown eyes, so much like her father’s, shined with annoyance, however.
“I hate wearing dresses,” she muttered.
I snorted.
That was an understatement.
She hated them so much that I’d had to go buy the one for tonight.
“Let’s go. We’re already late,” I said hurriedly.
She sighed and slipped her feet into her Chucks.
I didn’t say a word, knowing there were some battles that just weren’t worth fighting, this being one of them.
“Mom, I think we should stop for ice cream after the banquet,” Reagan said behind me.
“Ice cream, ice cream!” Way shrieked from in front of us.
I snorted.
The kid was a fatty.
Literally, if anything sweet came in her general direction, she was going to eat it, whether you wanted her to or not.
Me, I had to sit there and watch them do it.
Diabetes sucked.
“We’ll see what your daddy wants to do,” I offered.
I didn’t want to say yes and Bennett be too tired.
Last night had been a long one for him, and then he’d had to go to work this morning, followed by the banquet directly after work.
So I was fairly sure ice cream would be off the table.
Then again, Bennett was a sucker for his two girls.
I was tired, too.
But not for the same reason that Bennett was tired.
I hadn’t worked in a little over two weeks because I’d been on maternity leave.
Tomorrow night would be the big day for me and our newest addition.
“I’ll get her strapped in,” Reagan told me as we got to the garage where my SUV was parked.
An SUV that Bennett had bought when we’d found out I was pregnant with Way.
“Thanks, baby,” I told her, walking to the driver’s side and hefting myself in.
After getting Way strapped in, Reagan got in the front seat and buckled herself in, signaling her readiness to go.
As we drove, I realized just how lucky I was to be where I was today.
Three years ago, almost to the date, I’d woken from a coma that resulted from Corrinne shooting me in the belly.
I’d been informed by the doctor, upon waking, that I would likely never carry a child to full term due to the fact that the bullet hole had torn my uterus upon entry into my belly.
We’d proved them wrong, though, much to Bennett’s absolute terror.
I’d gone full term with Way and then had done it once again with this baby that we’d yet to name.
Mostly because the baby never cooperated with the ultrasound tech each time we’d tried to determine the sex.
“Mom, you just passed a cop going sixty,” Reagan said worriedly.
I looked down at my speed and winced.
“Oops,” I muttered, wincing once again when I saw him flip his lights on and turn around. “Dammit to hell.”
Fifteen minutes late, and a three hundred dollar speeding ticket later, the three of us were hurrying inside.
Bennett, who was dressed to perfection in his dress blues, stood at the entrance with his arms crossed, and a stern look on his face.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to speed right there?” he asked grouchily.
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Apparently, you didn’t do it enough, because I got a speeding ticket by that rookie, Maus.”
He snorted. “That’s his job.”
“Fuck his job,” I snapped, handing his child to him and wrapping my hand around the railing, and painfully climbed the steps.
“It was stupid. She was only going five over,” Reagan said to her father, trying to defend me.
“Yeah, but she’s gotten a ticket there before,” Bennett shot back.
I rolled my eyes.
What would possess a cop to sit there, behind the trees, at the bottom of a hill?
It was inevitable that I was going to speed!
Wasn’t that entrapment or something?
“What are you doing out here, anyway?” I asked crossly. “This whole event is about you and the rest of the SWAT team. You should be inside.”
“I would be inside, had my wife not been late,” he growled, shifting Way to his other hip so he could open the door.
I went in, tossing him a glare over my shoulder, and stomped as well as I could stomp at forty weeks pregnant in high heels.
“You shouldn’t be wearing those,” he growled from behind me.
I tossed him the bird over my shoulder, causing him to laugh.
“Bite me,” I snarled.
***
Three hours later
“Did you check your blood sugar?” Bennett called from the bathroom.
“Yeah,” I said.
I checked it every night. And every afternoon. And every morning. And every time I was supposed to.
Geez!
“My feet are killing me,” I groaned, easing down onto the bed, and hugging a pillow.
I was in an improvised downward dog, with my knees up underneath me, on either side of my big belly, with the pillow holding my chest up high enough to allow my belly room.
I felt the bed dip behind me, and Bennett found the small of my back with his impressive hands.
“Ohhh,” I moaned when he started to massage me. “That feels like heaven.”
“What was that you were saying earlier about your shoes?” he asked, moving his hands in a miraculous way.
“Maybe you were right,” I admitted on a groan. “Lower.”
He moved
lower, hitting the spot right above my tailbone. “Harder.”
Jesus, the man knew how to make me beg.
Then, suddenly, it wasn’t a massage anymore.
Mostly because I felt the bare length of Bennett’s erection press into the cleft of my ass, and I was a goner.
“God,” I said, pressing back into him.
His impressive fingers moved from my back, down lower to the apex of my thighs, where he moved his whole hand over the length of my core.
I could feel my panties getting wet with each pass of his hand.
“Bennett,” I panted.
“Yeah, baby?” he asked, moving his hand to the band of my panties, and slowly working it down over my ass.
They caught at the bend of my knees, but that was all he needed as his fingers found my entrance and slipped inside.
“Fuck,” I breathed, that feels good.
He worked his fingers in and out of me, the wet sound of him moving in and out of me filling the still room air around us.
“You ready for me, Nox?” he rasped.
I moaned into my pillow in answer, I felt the bed dip behind me, and then the wide head of his cock line up at my entrance and slowly ease inside.
“So tight and hot,” he moaned as he filled me, stopping only when he met the end of me.
I pushed back, urging him to go faster.
This pregnancy had turned me into a nympho.
All it took was a suggestive look on Bennett’s part, and I was ready to ride him like a crazed cowgirl.
I came even faster, much to Bennett’s amusement.
And right then was no different.
“Please,” I said, pushing back into him. “Please.”
He gave me what I wanted, but only barely.
He didn’t go all out anymore. Not this close to the end of the pregnancy. Then again, not at the beginning or middle, either.
I couldn’t wait to have the roughness back after this baby was born, but the sweet Bennett was just as good as the rough one.
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 122