He huffs an exasperated sigh that I’m interrupting his beauty sleep, not that he needs to be more beautiful. He sits up too and pulls the sheet across his lap. Now that boobs and junk are covered up, it’s time to bite the bullet and have this conversation.
His eyes bore into mine as he waits for me to start talking. I have so much to say, but right now, I just don’t know where to start. No better place than the beginning, I guess.
I reach out for his hands. “I’m sorry, Reid. I’m sorry for so much. I don’t know why I ever had the nerve to think that you were cheating on me. And I had no right to snoop around on your phone. I should have just talked to you. I was just so scared.” He doesn’t say anything as I pause to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. He just stares at me intently, letting me know that he’s expecting more of an apology than that.
“And . . .” he prompts me to continue.
“And I’m sorry about calling Katelyn and getting involved in your past. It was wrong of me to tell you what to do, to tell you to make your decisions based on what’s happened in my life.” It feels so good to finally be able to say that to him. Just a few days ago, I really and truly thought I might never see him again.
I recall Momma’s words of advice that I need to get over my own past. I have to let him know that I carry as much blame, if not more, than he does. “It’s just that we both got so angry at each other, so quickly and all of my old insecurities came right back to the surface. I know it’s not fair and I’m sorry.” I must not have realized it while I was talking, but my heart is racing and there’s a pit of anxiety brewing in my stomach.
I quickly add, “But most of all, I’m so sorry for pushing you away . . . for breaking up with you.”
He releases my hands so that he can brush my hair out of my face. “I want to move past this, Maddy. I want to get everything out in the open, so yeah, you making me face my family just because you were scared was really shitty and completely unnecessary.” He runs his hands through his hair and sighs at me before saying, “I love you. My God, do I love you and my love is not based on whether or not I can forgive my mother.” He shifts in the bed so that he’s a bit closer to me and he grasps my hands again. Pulling them up to his soft, full, sexy lips, he gazes intently into my eyes.
“Maddy, please understand me when I say this, I love you.” He squeezes my hand lightly on each of his last three words. “I wish I was smarter. I wish I had more experience in this whole relationship thing. I wish I could make you understand the weight of my words, but please, baby, please understand that the words ‘I love you’ don’t even come close to expressing how I feel about you.” His eye contact never wavers; his grip on my hands never loosens.
He shifts again so that he’s now next to me and he pulls me into a tight embrace. “The way you feel when we’re making love, when we’re together, that’s how I feel about you. There are no words to express the love I feel when I’m with you.” He kisses the top of my head, which is becoming my favorite place for him to kiss me—okay, fine, not my favorite, but it’s sweet nonetheless.
I place my head on his shoulder as my hand traces random patterns through the light spattering of hair on his chest. The weight that has been hanging around us since he picked me up from work seems to have lessened, but only slightly.
I swallow back my pride and make my final apology. Well, it’s not really an apology so much as an explanation. “I wasn’t going on a date, by the way.” I don’t mean for my words to sound guilt-ridden, but that’s exactly how they come out of my mouth.
I feel his hard muscles tense under my fingertips. He sits up straighter, almost involuntarily. Through his tensed jaw, he squeezes out a few words. “Okay, tell me what you were doing, then.” That mean edginess is back in his voice and it forces me to stiffen beside him. He has every right to be angry, but it’s such a stark contrast from the Reid I know. It takes me a minute to adjust to his personality changes.
I grip the sheet tighter across my chest as if it will protect me from the impending onslaught.
Timidly, I say, “Jay is my ex-boyfriend. You know the one I broke up with because I didn’t love him.” I can only hope that the last piece will soften the blow a little. “I told you all about him. I ran into him at the deli and he saw my cast and my scrubs and he wanted to catch up. I couldn’t think of any excuse while we were standing there, so I said I would grab dinner with him, right after work. I figured it would be less like a date if I was just getting off from work.” I’m nervously fidgeting with the corner of the sheet. I just want to get this over with and move past it.
Reid moves away from me and gets out of bed. He searches around the room for his boxers. They’re somewhere at the end of the bed, I think. He’s pissed and stalking about the place is the only way he can calm himself. Once his taut, round ass is covered, he runs his hands through his silky hair. His sense of frustration is palpable in the room and I hate that I’ve pissed him off.
Throwing his hands to his side in frustration, he growls, “What the fuck did you want me to think, Maddy? I mean, we don’t talk all week and then I finally hear from you and I can’t explain how that changed everything for me. It made me hope that we could salvage us. And then when I saw you leaving with him, I couldn’t fucking help it.” He shakes his head in frustration and runs his hands through his hair, pulling hard on the ends. “Fuck, don’t you realize that you’re mine?” He plops down on the end of the bed.
I take this opportunity to find his T-shirt and slip it over my naked body. His elbows are resting on his knees and he’s holding his head in his hands. I kneel on the floor in front of him. I pull his hands apart and settle in between his legs. Cupping his roughly stubbled cheeks in my hands, I pull his face up so that he is looking directly at me.
“I will always be yours. Please believe me.” He looks away from me and it twists my gut. Grabbing his face in my small hands, I pull his attention back to my eyes. Brushing the pads of my thumbs across his cheek, I soften my voice and say, “I screwed up, Reid. I fucked up so bad and I know it, but when I went back to Ithaca and you weren’t there, I thought you left me. But even despite that, I was not in any way moving on from you. No matter what the future holds for us, you will be my forever. There will never be anyone else for me. You’ve ruined me for every other man. I’m yours and only yours and I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me and be mine.”
“And I will always be yours. No matter what. No matter what happens at home with my mom, no matter what has happened in my past, I will always love you the best way I know how.” I’ve never heard words said with more sincerity in my entire life.
His gorgeous lips curl up into a lopsided smile and I can see the fight leave his body. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me up onto his lap and I wince in pain. I curl into a ball on his lap and hug my belly.
“Are you okay, Maddy?” He’s rubbing circles across my back and his tone is a bit wary.
I try to straighten in his lap, but the pinch in my side that just made me wince will not go away. “Yeah, I think so. I just got a cramp in my side.” I try to stand in the hopes that stretching my body upright will relieve whatever this pain is.
Standing is not a good idea. Rather than dulling it, standing has caused the pain to radiate like a band of searing heat across my pelvis.
The baby. It’s the baby.
Reid is at my side in an instant. “What is it, Maddy? Please tell me. What should I do?” The panic rising in his voice fans the flames of my anxiety, but I know that one of us needs to stay calm.
Speaking from a hunched over position, I say, “I don’t know, Reid. It hurts.” A huge cramp races through my belly and I cry out in pain.
He helps me sit down on the bed, but as I do, I feel a gush of dampness spread between my legs. I shuffle back slightly and, because I’m only wearing his T-shirt, the bright red splotch of blood seeps right into the cream-colored comforter.
He sees it at the same time I do
and we both stare at each other in shock for a split second. I want to cry, I should be crying, but in this moment of pain, all I can do is blame myself. I don’t know how, but this is obviously my fault.
Somehow, Reid remains calm and in control. The panic that was in his voice moments earlier has vanished and in its place is calm concern.
Sitting next to me on the bed, he wraps his arm around my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “It’s okay, Maddy. Don’t cry. Let’s just get you dressed and I’ll take you to the hospital. Everything will be alright. I’m right here.” His tender kiss to the top of my head does nothing to calm me down.
He helps me rise from the bed. I can’t say anything; there’s nothing to say. In my state of numbed shock, I don’t even realize that Reid has already finished getting himself dressed and that he’s helping me step into my clothes.
He pulls his T-shirt over my head and replaces it with my top. He kneels down and lifts my ankle to step into my pants. After he’s put my clothes and shoes back on, he wraps my jacket around my shoulders and he pulls his over his bulky frame. He’s got my purse gripped in his hand, fist clenched around the strap as if he’s holding on for dear life. We stand silently at the door and scan the room once more to make sure that we have everything and then we leave.
After he helps me into the truck, which hurts like a bitch, he digs his phone out of his jacket pocket and dials Mel.
His voice shakes when Mel picks up the line. Obviously, I can only hear his side of the conversation, but when he tells her that I started bleeding and that he’s taking me to the hospital, I can hear her shocked “No.”
He hands me the phone at Mel’s request to talk to me.
Mel doesn’t even give me a second to say anything before she starts talking. “Oh my God, Maddy. Are you okay? Where are you?” I can hear that her words are being forced out past a lump of emotion in her throat. She’s trying, but failing miserably, to keep her tears at bay because before I can even answer her, her sobs carry over the line.
“We’re on our way to the hospital. Yes, Good Sam. I think we’ll be there in like ten minutes. Okay, I’ll see you there. It’s okay, Mel. I’ll be okay.” I can’t disguise the pain in my words. It runs deep right now.
As I hand the phone back to Reid, we make eye contact for a second, but I have to avert my eyes. I feel ashamed for some reason, like I did something wrong. I just want everything to be okay; I just want my baby to be safe. When he reaches for my hand, I let him hold it, but I can’t look at him. Instead, I count the trees lining the road as I stare out the window.
When we arrive at the hospital, Reid takes care of everything. He fills out all of the paperwork, prompting me for information when he comes to something he doesn’t know. Luckily, Kathy was able to get me a temporary insurance card after I filled out the paperwork the other day.
When the nurse brings me into the triage room, she takes my vitals and temperature. As she reaches down for my wrist to take my pulse, she notices the blood spreading from between my legs.
With kind eyes, she looks at me and in a hushed tone, she says “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you right to the back. I’ll get the doctor right away. No need to make you wait out here.” She waves Reid over to us from his guard right outside of the triage door. He wasn’t allowed to come in there with me, but he refused to be more than a few feet from where I was.
She brings us into an exam room that’s obviously reserved for pregnant patients. It has a door instead of a flimsy curtain. Next to the exam table which is equipped with stirrups and the other necessary tools, there is a sonogram machine. She hits a few buttons on the machine to power it up. When the screen lights up, she hits a few keys to enter in my information. She works behind me in the cabinets and pulls out a gown for me to wear and a sheet to place over my lap. She leaves us in the room saying that the doctor will be with us in a few minutes.
As Reid helps me out of my blood-stained pants and into the gown, I notice that his hands are shaking. I hold on to his strong forearms for balance and look up into his deep blue eyes. There’s fear in them.
He wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head before assisting me up onto the table. He inhales the scent of my hair, and with his lips still pressed to my scalp, he says, “I’m right here, Maddy. It’ll be okay.” He sounds uncertain and afraid, but he’s feigning confidence.
We wait in a tension filled silence for what feels like forever. The doctor gently taps on the door and asks if it’s okay to come in.
She stands at the end of the exam table and quickly reviews my chart. Placing on the counter next to her, she leans against it and says, “Madeleine, can you tell me about what happened?” Her words are even and professional, but I can’t help but notice the nervousness in them. Then again, maybe I’m just being paranoid.
I clear my throat in the hopes that it will make speaking past the ball of nerves a bit easier. “You can call me Maddy.” She smiles kindly at me and I fill her in on the details—waking up in pain, the cramps getting progressively worse, the gush of bright, red blood.
After she fills in a few comments on the paperwork, she instructs me to lie back on the table and put my legs in the stirrups. She notices the look of nervousness that passes over Reid’s face. Looking at Reid, she says, “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want.”
I look up at him. He’s pale and obviously nervous. “It’s okay, Reid. I understand if you don’t want to stay.”
He reaches out for my hand and laces our fingers together. “No, I’ll stay if that’s okay?” The doctor looks at me for my approval and I nod.
Reid lightly presses his lips to our entwined fingers and then sits on the stool that is up by my head.
The doctor busies herself under the sheet and I swear, whoever invented the speculum must have been an inventor of torture devices. In my very limited experience, I can’t help but wonder why they always have to be so cold?
My little bit of internal laughter serves as a much needed distraction from her poking and prodding. I must admit that it’s quite uncomfortable having her fingers probing around inside of me while Reid is standing next to me quietly holding my hand.
She peeks up at me over the sheet, still sitting on her chair in between my legs. “Okay, Maddy. From what I can tell, your cervix is still long and closed so I don’t think the cramps you were experiencing were miscarriage related. But let’s do a sonogram just to be on the safe side.” Both Reid and I let out a collective sigh of relief in clearing what seems to be the first hurdle.
She grabs for this long wand sticking out of the compartment on the side of the sonogram machine. As she’s squirting some clear liquid on to the tip of it, she says, “Based on your last period, you’re not far enough along to do an abdominal sonogram.” She slides what looks like a condom over the wand and returns to her station between my legs.
After she slides the wand into place, she clicks around on the screen. It’s not painful as I expected it would be; it’s just uncomfortable—a feeling that I know is multiplied by the uncertainty that looms heavily around us.
Through the black and white fuzziness of the screen, an image starts to take shape. It looks like a tiny little gummy bear, but as the doctor zooms in, it becomes more focused, more precise.
I look up at Reid through tear filled eyes. “That’s our baby.” My words are barely a whisper as the tears spill over and pour down my cheeks. He moves closer to me and kisses the side of my head. He whispers into my ear, “I love you.”
I vaguely feel the doctor moving the wand around, but when she stops abruptly, I can’t help but feel the panic set in. I brace myself for bad news, but what I hear instead, is, quite frankly, the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my life.
Choking on the sobs that threaten, I ask, “Is that . . . is that the heartbeat?”
She rubs her hand reassuringly on my calf and a bright smile graces her young face. “Yes, that is your baby’s heartbeat.” She turns up the
volume slightly and Reid and I gaze at each other in pure joy and wonderment as the rhythmic thudding of our baby’s heart fills the room.
Clicking on a few more buttons, she prints out a picture for us and hands it to Reid. “Here you go, Daddy.” He looks at it in amazement before sliding it into his pocket.
As I sit up, I ask her, “So everything is okay then, right?” I know she can hear the uncertainty and concern in my wobbling voice. It’s just too hard to believe that we might just be in the clear.
She pulls out my chart and writes down a few notes before saying, “It seems that way. Plenty of women experience some bleeding in early pregnancy. There’s no way of telling what the cause was, but when was the last time you had intercourse?”
I can’t help but blush a furious shade of red. I shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit that I had sex just last night, but this is all still so new to me. “It was just last night. I didn’t realize we shouldn’t.” I look up at Reid and feel slightly comforted knowing that he’s just about the same shade of red that I am. This is definitely uncomfortable territory for him as well.
She finishes writing down her notes and says, “I would say that was most likely the cause. The baby looks good and is measuring nine weeks which corresponds to your last period.” She rifles through the pocket of her lab coat and hands me a business card. “Call me this week in the office and schedule an appointment for the end of the week and I’ll do another check to make sure that everything is okay. For today, stay on bedrest—no stairs, lie down as much as possible and stay hydrated. In the meantime, refrain from intercourse. If everything looks okay at the end of the week, then I’ll clear you for sexual activity.” She makes eye contact with both me and Reid to make sure we understand her.
The doctor shakes our hands on the way out and tells us to call her if the bleeding returns.
The Love Series Complete Box Set Page 34