by Sierra Rose
Still, he offered no response; truth be told, I wasn’t sure he was even hearing me.
“You were so...certain last night, saying you don’t want kids, that they just won’t fit in your world.” My eyes filled with miserable tears, but I shook my head, trying not to cry. “I guess you’re right about that. This is no way to raise a baby. I don’t know what I was thinking, hoping we might actually try—”
“You’re really...pr-pregnant?” he finally stuttered, as if he couldn’t get past the word. He had yet to even breathe. His golden skin had paled to an impossible shade of white, and while his body was frozen, his hands were trembling.
“Yes,” I said softly, “I’m pregnant, and you’re the only person I’ve slept with. We can do a DNA test if you don’t believe me, but I’m 100 percent certain the baby’s yours.” My eyes swept him up and down, growing more and more worried with each pass because he looked as if he might black out right there on the street. “Nick, are you okay?”
He looked up suddenly, as if he noticed me there for the first time, then nodded slowly, his staggering blue eyes locking onto nothing in particular.
I tried to hold it together. “I get it. I do. You’re shocked and stunned.”
“Yeah, but I-I’m fine, totally fine. I just—”
In the next second, I saw his shoes leave the curb, moving him in one step backward, only for a taxi to send him flying into the air.
Chapter 15
My red-rimmed eyes stared unblinkingly at the gaudy tile floor of the waiting room as the horrible image of the collision played through my head over and over again, in graphic detail. It was like being trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape. I remembered the way his body turned just as the yellow cab barreled into him, the deafening honk that filled the air as he was knocked completely off his feet and tumbled up over the roof of the car, the red smear of blood left behind on the shattered window, and the impossibly quiet impact as he landed in a heap on the other side.
When tragedy strikes, it strikes us all, I thought. There is no privilege when it comes to car accidents, no gold-plated card he could pull out and play. If only his dear old dad could buy him out of this!
In the slow-motion events that followed, I had to elbow my way through the crowd just to reach him. I was lucky, because about a dozen people who were gathered around knew who we were and helped me wrangle the others out of the way. “She’s with him,” they said, over and over again.
When I finally made it off the curb, that little bit of good luck ran out. I saw instantly that Nick wasn’t moving and didn’t appear to be breathing. His eyes were closed, and even as the world erupted in chaos around him, he simply lay there, his blond hair spilling over the pavement.
Nick? It took me a second to realize I didn’t say his name out loud.
Every inch of my body was shaking, and despite everything going on around me, I kept my eyes locked on his face, expecting him to open his eyes any moment so everything would be okay again.
“Nick?” I said in a half-whisper, half-scream. I sank to my knees beside him and lifted a tentative hand to his cheek. “Nick, please...”
“Don’t touch him!” someone shouted, someone beyond my line of sight. “The guy’s pretty damn lucky we just happened to be the next block over.”
There was a sudden flurry around us, and a pair of uniformed EMTs shoved me out of the way. An ambulance was waiting behind them, blocking the street, so I assumed one of the onlookers had the sense to call 911, which was more sense than I could muster at the moment.
“We lift on three. You ready?” one of them said to the others, pushing me out of the way. “One, two, three!”
In perfect synchronicity, Nick was lifted onto a stretcher, then carried to the ambulance. I watched with tears in my eyes as he was strapped in and electronic monitors were placed on various parts of his body. A machine on the ceiling beside them sprang to life, and one of the medics called something up to the drivers.
It wasn’t until they were pulling shut the doors that I realized I was about to be left behind.
“Wait!” I screeched. A sudden surge of feeling coursed through my body as I shook off the paralyzing numbness and launched myself toward the van. “I’m going with him!”
The nearest EMT looked at me skeptically. He knew who Nick was, that he had one of the world’s most desirable men lying unconscious in the back of his car. He obviously hadn’t read the headlines, because at that moment, he mistook me for the perfect ambulance-chasing groupie. “Are you family?” he asked routinely, the flat glint in his eyes speaking the doubt and accusation he wouldn’t say out loud.
My strength crumbled, and my mind blanked as I glanced back to the small pool of blood staining the street. A tremor shook my entire body as I stared back in dread. “I’m... I’m his...” My eyes flickered back to Nick, so quiet and still on the gurney. “I was with him—”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the man replied bluntly. “Only family allowed.”
With that, the ambulance was off, cutting through the crowd in a whirl of lights and sirens with the love of my life, the father of my child, strapped to a stretcher inside, all alone and possibly dying.
“Taxi!” I broke through the rope line and tore toward the first car that pulled my way, then leapt inside before it even came to a full stop. I slammed the door shut and yanked down the window, stretching half my body outside as I pointed straight ahead. “Don’t lose them!”
Of course, in New York traffic, that was easier said than done. It was even more difficult because Nick was who he was.
The second the ambulance loaded Nick into the back and shut their door, they started racing for the nearest hospital in Brooklyn. Because they realized how precious their cargo was, it wasn’t long before they were intercepted by a helicopter, who took him to private facility in the opposite direction, leaving my taxi driver to play a desperate game of Follow that Chopper! From the ground.
I had the same trouble getting into the facility that I’d had getting into the ambulance. In fact, my only chance was to run to the gift shop and return with a magazine that had a picture of Nick and me on the front cover. Finally, they gave me clearance to the upper floors, but once I was there, there was nothing left to do but wait.
I affixed myself to the ugly green chair nearest the reception counter, ready to live there for the next fifty years if I had to. My shoe tapped a constant rhythm against the floor, and after glancing down at my phone for what felt like a small eternity, I finally caved. My eyes closed, my shoulders wilted, and I found myself doing what so many Hunter women had done before me in times of abject terror and fear: calling Harold Oates.
He answered on the fourth ring, after an internal debate over whether or not he should let it go to voicemail. “Where the fuck are you, Wilder? You and Nick missed breakfast.”
Strangely, the second Nick wasn’t around, I reverted back to the publicist pariah. I wanted to retort with something snappy, something to put him in his place. At the very least, I wanted to make him fear the loss of his job, but all I could manage was a small, trembling voice that uttered, “There’s been an accident. Nick’s hurt. He was hit by a car.”
I could practically see the shock, his face paling to the color of bleached bone, because it was that evident in his voice.
“What!?” he asked in a dreadful hush. “Are you there with him now? Where are you? Is he...” His voice quieted even more. “Is he going to make it?” he asked gravely.
“I’m at Mather Willis in Manhattan,” I managed to croak out. That part was easy enough to answer, but the rest was a little more difficult to rehash. “He was hit by a taxi, Harold, flew over the top of it. He wasn’t conscious when they brought him in, and I-I don’t know anything else.” A stream of tears slipped down my face to join the pool already on the floor. “They won’t tell me anything because I’m not family.”
My weakness seemed to unleash Harold’s inherent strength. He cleared his voice
and fired out a command he must have given a million times before: “Stay right where you are. We’ll be there soon.”
Then, without another word from him, the line went dead.
I stared at the phone for a minute before pulling it slowly away from my face. I found myself neither comforted nor upset by the call. At that point, I was simply numb.
Of course it wasn’t the first call I’d made. There was one call that came before it, and when the double-doors whooshed open, I knew that call was not in vain.
“Where the hell is he!?” James Cross asked as soon as he rushed inside. Even though it was sunny, he was inexplicably wet, shaking drops of water from his jacket. He stopped in the middle of the floor and spun around like some kind of Hollywood hero, desperately searching the room.
“James!” I waved my hand to summon his attention. “Over here!”
He was beside me the next moment, and his face went white with fear. “Abby, how bad is it? And don’t you dare lie to me, girl.”
I pulled in a fractured breath and shook my head. “I don’t know. No one will tell me anything since I’m not family.”
James paused, staring at me oddly. “Why didn’t you just tell them you’re his wife? Because the entire world thinks you’re married to him now.”
Just like that, it hit me like a ton of bricks, the obvious simplicity washing away all other emotion as a bright, judgmental lightbulb blinked over my head. “Oh. I didn’t think of that. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was upset.”
There was an incredulous pause before James let it go. He was too upset to pay attention to my lack of problem-solving capabilities; his focus was centered on one thing and one thing only. “But he was alive when you last saw him?” he asked quietly.
My head jerked up and down, answering of its own accord. “They said his vitals were steady but weak,” I said, a phrase I’d repeated to myself about a million times, grasping it like a life raft in a stormy sea. “He was alive.”
James nodded once, then fixed his lovely eyes out the window, unable to speak anymore. Seemingly without thinking about it, he reached for my hand and held it tight. The two of us sat there in silence, counting the seconds on the clock and retreating completely into our own heads, watching the sun drift slowly across the sky.
It wasn’t until a full ten minutes had passed that I finally turned to him. “How did you know he was transferred to this wing? After we hung up, I realized I forgot to tell you.”
James rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “The chief of surgery lives down the street from my house here in New York. I paid him a visit on my way, and we had a little chat about the consequences of maintaining doctor-patient confidentiality.”
I eyed his dripping clothes and damp hair with suspicion. “What did you do, James? Water-board the guy for information?”
James glanced down at his clothes before returning his eyes to the window. “It’s probably best we don’t go into all that, plausible deniability and all.”
A rush of quiet sympathy coursed through me, and I gave his hand a firm squeeze.
“Man, I hate hospitals,” James muttered, staring bleakly at the walls.
I’ll bet.
Just a few years prior, James was drag-racing in upstate New York and found himself smack dab in the middle of a horrific pile-up, the kind of accident that required several paramedics and the Jaws of Life. They literally had to pry the twisted metal off of him while he slowly bled out in the dirt. He was airlifted to the hospital, straight into an eleven-hour surgery to save his life. At one point, doctors believed they would have to amputate his left leg, so it was a blessing that he could still walk into the hospital on his own two feet.
Nick, of course, stayed by his side the entire time, keeping such a fierce vigil that the nurses didn’t dare to mention visiting hours to him. He practically lived in the hospital, slept in the chair, and brought James food every morning from his favorite bistro across town. When James was finally released, Nick actually moved into the lake house for a while to help with his physical rehabilitation.
“Why the fuck wasn’t he paying attention?” James asked softly. “What was he doing in the street? Nick’s not an idiot. He knows better than that. His dad didn’t teach him much, but the kid knows to look both ways!”
My head bowed to my chest as a wave of guilt threatened to strangle me where I sat. “He wasn’t paying attention because... Well, we were fighting,” I answered in a whisper.
James peered at me out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze.
“He was distracted by that, I guess, and he stepped off the curb. It was because of me, James, because of what I said.”
James didn’t press the issue; he was much too discreet, considerate, and kind for that. Instead, he clasped a second hand on top of mine and held it firmly as he gazed out the window. “It wasn’t your fault, Abby. Whatever you’re thinking, it wasn’t your fault.”
A generous assessment. I wonder if he’d feel the same way if he saw it or heard it himself.
The two of us lapsed back into silence, freezing to frightened statues as we stared around the little room in alternating positions, looking mindlessly at the ceiling, the windows, and the walls. James even tried glancing through an outdated issue of a fishing magazine for a while, until he saw Nick’s face and threw it back down.
A fishing magazine? Man, he’s everywhere!
It wasn’t until a doctor walked down the hall that we showed any signs of real life.
“Are you two here for Nicholas Hunter?” he asked routinely.
“I’m his wife,” I answered promptly, refusing to be denied information any longer.
The surgeon scribbled something down before turning his slightly narrowed eyes on James. Almost everyone alive knew that Nick and James were the closest of friends, not relatives. It was a distinction that meant nothing in the real world but everything in terms of health information protections, so the doctor had to ask, “And you, Mr. Cross?” He theatrically emphasized the different last name.
James met his gaze with a sneer. “I’m his twin.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, James! Do you really think that’s going to work? I thought with a roll of my eyes.
The doctor stiffened, jutting his chin up smugly before turning back to the gorgeous celebrity with an air of professional exasperation. “Listen, I understand you’re concerned, but—”
Not only was James unaccustomed to being told no, but he’d also reached the end of his patience. “No, you listen,” he cut in, his voice lowered to a deadly calm. “My family has paid for over half of the building of this hospital, including the wing you’re standing in now. Now, Doctor, you either you tell me what happened to my friend, or we may have to start making some cuts.”
That should do it, I thought, unable to hide my smile.
The doctor blanched for a moment before glancing down at his notes. “I see,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Well, Nick fractured his triquetral—”
“No, no, no!” James wailed, clapping a hand over his mouth as the intimidating British shipping heir was immediately replaced by a beautiful boy who was frightened of hospitals.
The doctor looked up in surprise, but I was used to such irrational responses.
“What does that mean?” I interjected quickly, ever the realist, hovering the tip of my pen anxiously over a pad of paper, desperate to grasp every possible detail.
“Basically, he broke his wrist.”
James sank a few inches lower in his chair, looking as if the world was coming to an end, even though the doctor was acting as if it was good news.
“Wait,” the doctor said. “Wrong patient. That was the motorcycle accident victim. This is the taxi accident. No broken wrist.”
“What is it then?” James demanded, freaking out once again.
“Sorry,” the doctor said, clearing his throat again. “Uh...other than some bruises around his ribs and a mild concussion, he’s
rather well off. Those are the worst of the damage.” He looked James up and down with a comical expression before turning to me with a faint smile. “Your husband is very lucky.”
Lucky? I wasn’t sure Nick was going to see it that way.
“Can we see him?” I pleaded.
James bolted upright, literally sitting on the edge of his seat.
The doctor nodded slowly. “He’s still unconscious, and he’s on a pretty high dose of painkillers, but yes, you may visit him.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I gushed, glad he was willing to comply. I knew if he refused, there was a good chance that the good doctor himself might have been in need of medical attention, because James might have dangled him from the rooftop until he otherwise agreed. More relieved than I could possible say, I elbowed James sharply in the side.
“Yes, thank you, Doctor,” he said gratefully.
The two of us leapt to our feet, pushed past the nursing staff, and darted around corners before skidding to an abrupt stop in Nick’s room.
Oh, sweetheart...
He looked so vulnerable lying there in the hospital bed, surrounded by a tangle of wires and beeping machines. He was so still, and his eyes had yet to open.
There was a sharp intake of breath, and I felt James shrink back beside me. When I glanced over at him, I saw him staring at the scene like it was his own nightmare come to life. I squeezed his hand again, and together, the two of us ventured slowly near the bed, pulling up chairs on either side.
We were quiet for a while, simply keeping watch, before James shifted restlessly in his chair. His eyes darted around the bed, taking in every detail, and then he reached out tentatively to take Nick’s hand. I watched as he wrapped his fingers carefully around it, taking great pains to avoid disturbing the IV taped to the front. “Do you think we should get him some ice chips or something?” he murmured.
If not for the fact that I was still crying, I might have actually smiled. “Ice chips? He’s sleeping, James,” I said.