by Liz King
I’m cut off by Seth and Marcus both interjecting at the same time. “Baby?”
“I let her fall. I practically shoved her! I could have killed her and the baby!”
Marcus, still squatting in front of me, shoves my shoulders back. “Back up a minute, man. She’s pregnant?”
Again, all I can manage is nodding my head. My heart is constricting in my chest. It feels like the walls in this tiny as hell room are squeezing in even further. I should be there with her when she finds out. I should be there holding her hand, supporting her through this, not sitting here falling apart. Lynae is hurting, and I can’t do a fucking thing to make it right. I’m the reason she’s in so much pain.
“Talk to me, man,” Marcus urges.
I look into the eyes of my lead guitarist and take a deep breath. “Not two seconds before Lynae woke up, Dr. Greene was doing an ultrasound. She’s pregnant. It looks like the baby is fine, but they are gonna run some more tests. He hasn’t told her yet, he wanted to wait until John got here. I was going to talk to her, but she started remembering what happened and started crying. The nurses kicked me out. She doesn’t want to see me. She fucking hates me.”
“Well, hell.” Seth sighs.
Marcus climbs up into the chair next to me. “Connor, Nae doesn’t hate you. She loves you, I know it. She’s just confused right now. I know that when she finds out about the baby, and gets out of here, she’ll talk to you. I was a damn fool to let you think anything of seeing her and Sly in her window. You were drunk, pissed as hell at the shit you’re dealing with, and your emotions run high when it comes to her.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back. My eyes are stinging. I try to take deep breaths in and out. My body is itching to run out of this room and right back into hers. I want to pull her in my arms, hold her close and make her believe that nothing bad can ever touch her again. A frustrated growl leaves my chest. “Agghhhh! God!”
“Alright. Connor, get your ass up. I’m taking you home. You need to clean up, and rest. You aren’t going to be worth a damn if you don’t take care of yourself too. She’s gonna need you, even if she doesn’t know it right now.” Marcus stands up and tugs on my arm.
Chapter Two
Lynae
Everything is dark. My eyelids feel like they are glued shut. I can sense Connor’s presence beside me, but I can’t seem to get my arms to reach out to him. I feel like I’ve been lying here forever. It could have been minutes or days. I don’t know. Wisps of what could be memories or dreams filter in and out of my mind. My heart constricts in pain at the thoughts drifting in my mind. Surely it can’t be real. Slowly, voices start to filter through the pounding in my head. I feel pressure on my belly and something cold gliding across it. I try to move my fingers again, and this time I manage to squeeze the hand I feel holding mine.
Cracking my eyes open, I see Connor sitting beside me. He looks exhausted. His strong jaw is covered with more than his usual dusting of stubble and there are bags under his eyes. Connor looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
“Connor?” My voice sounds like I’ve swallowed glass. It hurts to talk, it hurts to breathe.
Connor is all over me in an instant. He’s holding my face, gazing into my eyes, looking at me as if I may disappear. He’s talking and asking questions, but I can’t keep up. I try to push myself up in the bed to get more comfortable, but a sharp pain claws at my sides. It’s then that I realize I’m not in my room, but in a hospital bed. As I look around more, I see a doctor that I don’t recognize and an ultrasound technician. I don’t understand why I’m lying here.
Connor and the doctor I now know is Dr. Greene fill me in on what has happened the last forty-eight hours. I’m still a little foggy as to what happened in Connor’s apartment, but he keeps apologizing, saying that he didn’t mean what he said.
While Connor and Dr. Greene step outside to speak privately, a slideshow plays over and over in my mind.
“You fucked Matt! You probably asked for it! You probably begged for it!”
Small snippets of memory flash in my mind. Suddenly, I remember what Connor was accusing me of that night. I remember the violent and frightening look in his eyes. The Connor that I had grown to love was gone, replaced by a total stranger. One that made me feel like I did eight years ago: powerless, ashamed and alone. Looking into Connor’s eyes, I see that these are in fact memories, not a horrible nightmare. I still can’t believe he could have said all those things, but he did. He pushed me away when all I wanted to was to be there for him.
“I want you to leave,” I grind out when he returns to my bedside. I want him out of my room. I can’t look at him right now. I can’t deal with him. I need Daddy and Sly. I need Michelle.
Connor tries to reach for me again. “Babe, please listen to me. I swear on my life that I didn’t mean a damn thing I said. I love you. I need you.”
The tears that have been stinging behind my eyes start to spill over. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. I shake my head, trying to push him away.
“No. Sweetness, I’m not leaving. I love you. I’m sorry. Please believe me.” He grabs at my wrists again, trying to pull me to him.
“I don’t want to fucking hear it, Connor!” I cry. “You ripped my goddamn heart out! I was hoping it was all a really fucked up dream, but it wasn’t.” I yank my body away from him. The stabbing pain in my ribs shoots through me like a knife.
“Baby, please. I—“
“Don’t ‘baby’ me! I said get out!” I scream, as two nurses come rushing in through my door.
One of them quickly forces Connor out, while another comes to my side immediately. I can’t hold back anymore. The sob that was locked in my throat comes out in a painful rush. I cry harder than I think I have ever cried.
“Miss Michaels, please calm down. It’s not good for the baby. You need to slow your breathing down.” The nurse at my side is stroking my shoulder gently.
Baby? Oh my God! The room starts to spin. I feel lightheaded. My face is tingling.
“Slow, deep breaths. You’re hyperventilating,” one of the nurses tells me. I try to follow her commands. I focus on her face. I try to breathe in and out with her. It’s helping. The room doesn’t seem to be on a tilt-a-whirl ride anymore. “Good. My name is Sharon. I’m one of the nurses taking care of you, this is Kelsie.” She points to the other nurse who has come to my side as well.
I look between the two of them. I need to get some answers. Baby? I’m pregnant? Does Connor know? Of course he knows. Dr. Greene was doing the ultrasound right in front of him when I woke up. Holy shit! “I’m calm.” I keep taking slow breaths. It’s getting easier to breathe now. “Can I call my dad? Or can you call up to the Cardiac Lab and ask for Michelle?” I ask.
Kelsie takes my blood pressure while Sharon is looking at the monitors and IV pumps that I’m attached to. “Sure, honey. I’ll call Michelle for you. Dr. Greene said your dad was on his way up here. He already called to tell him you were awake. Do you want some water?” Sharon asks while she adjusts the IV drip.
“Thank you. When can I see Dr. Greene again? I need to ask him some questions.”
“I’ll go get him right after I call your friend. She was down here this morning before her shift started,” Sharon says as she leaves the room. Kelsie finishes assessing me, then follows Sharon out the door.
~
I look up at the clock on the wall. It’s a little after three in the afternoon. They said I was out for two days, so that makes today Monday. I feel so lost. I place my hands on my belly. There’s a life growing inside me. I’m having a baby. I can’t seem to wrap my mind around this concept. I don’t know what to do about Connor. Deep down, I know that I still love him, but I don’t know if I can be with someone that won’t let me in and can treat me the way he did. I just kicked the father of my child out of my hospital room. I lean my head back on my pillow and the tears start to fall again.
My door slams open and Sly, Michelle and Gabbi co
me barreling in, all talking at once.
“Don’t ever fucking scare me like that again, bitch!” Gabbi shrieks.
“Thank God you’re ok!” Michelle cries as she plops down on the side of my bed making me wince.
“What did that bastard do to you?” Sly growls as soon as he sees my tear streaked face.
Looking at my friends, I lose it all again. The little composure I had gathered is obliterated. I remember every word that Connor said to me Saturday night at his apartment. The accusation, the hate, and the pain come crashing back down on me.
Sly is instantly at my side, gathering me in his arms. “Shh, baby. It’s ok. I got you.” He rubs his hand up and down my back as I cling to his shirt. “I won’t let him hurt you again.”
I feel Michelle shift closer to me on the other side of my bed and she wraps her arms around me too. “Honey, talk to us. What’s wrong?”
“It hurts so bad! Make it stop hurting. Please?” I whimper. But I know that there is no medicine that can take this pain away. This pain is too deep, too raw. You can’t fix a broken heart that’s stopped beating.
Sly gently pushes my shoulders back. “What was that, baby?”
I shake my head “no” and bury my face back in his chest. I need to be held. Despite the aching in my chest, my heart really wants to be held by another set of arms, even though at the same time, all it wants to do is push those arms away.
Sly and Michelle continue to hold me and rub my back. Gabbi paces the room back and forth. “Ok, whose balls to I need to cut off? Tell us what happened. All Wade told me was that you and Connor were at the top of the stairs, and you tripped and fell. This doesn’t seem like that’s all that happened. Did y’all have a fight? I’ll castrate that shithead if he hurt you. And Wade too for not telling me the damn truth!” Gabbi stops at the foot of my bed and crosses her arms over her chest.
Sly visibly tenses at Gabbi’s comment. I know he thinks that Connor is at fault. He thinks that Connor pushed me down the stairs. He may be the reason I’m a crying mess right now, but not because he physically hurt me. These wounds aren’t visible. Well, aside from the bruising on my arm from where Connor grabbed me, they aren’t physical.
Sly pushes me away again, and this time, he braces his hands on my shoulders to hold me in front of him. “Lynae, tell me he didn’t hurt you. I will fucking kill him if he laid a hand on you.”
I shake my head again and take a deep breath. “We had a fight. He saw us Friday night through the window.” My voice starts to crack. “He said I had been fucking around on him. Said that I had been lying all these years. Said that Matt didn’t rape me. Told me that I asked for it and that I was messing around with you.” I wrap my arms around my middle, trying to curl in on myself, but the pain in my ribs makes me groan.
“What the fuck!” Gabbi gasps.
I hadn’t told her everything about Matt. I couldn’t rehash all that pain more than I already had to with Michelle and Daddy. I thought I was moving past it. I thought that with Connor’s help I was going to be able to bury that subject. I can’t get into it right now. I can only handle so much trauma at one time, and right now, Connor is at the forefront of my mind.
Sly’s hold on my shoulders tightens to an almost painful grip and I can see the tension in his jaw as he grinds his teeth together. I have never seen him look so fierce. “I didn’t do anything to protect you while we were in school, but I’ll be damned if I let him get away with treating you like this. I will end him,” he says determinedly before stalking out of my room, slamming the door behind him.
“Sly! Stop!” I call out to him, but he doesn’t turn around. I’m left sitting in Michelle’s arms. I lean back into her embrace and let her rock me back and forth. Gabbi comes to sit in the spot on my bed vacated by Sly as she takes my hands in hers.
“Nae-Nae, honey, tell us everything that happened with Connor,” Michelle urges.
I start from the beginning, telling them everything I can actually remember. I’ve recalled everything from the moment I pulled into the garage and saw Marcus and Seth to walking up and finding Connor and Wade practicing in the living room. I tell them about Connor acting distant at first, then coming back and accusing me of messing around with Sly, and him seeing Sly carrying me into my room that night. I remember everything up to the moment I looked into his eyes and saw he was realizing that he was wrong about everything he was saying. I still can’t believe all that poison came out of his mouth.
Michelle and Gabbi sit there stunned, silent. “I don’t remember what happened exactly after our argument, I just remember trying to get away from Connor, and then a sharp pain in my head,” I mumble. I feel emotionally and physically drained.
“From what Wade told us, which wasn’t everything apparently, that ass, you tripped over the ledge of the threshold of the loft, fell, hit your head on the railing and tumbled down the stairs. Luckily, Seth caught you before you landed at the bottom,” Gabbi finally speaks. “Babe, you could have been killed. You could have broken your neck!”
Realization of how close I actually came to losing my life, and the life of my unborn child, hits me hard. I didn’t know about the baby an hour ago, but I already feel the intense need to protect and love her. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I instantly think of the baby as a “her.” I instinctively place my palms over my belly.
“I could have lost the baby,” I whisper, more to myself than to my two best friends sitting in the room with me.
“What did you just say?” Michelle squeaks. “Did you say you could have lost the baby? When in the hell were you going to tell me that you were pregnant?”
Gabbi is sitting there with her mouth hanging open, speechless. I don’t think I have ever seen her speechless before.
“I just found out today. I didn’t know,” I murmur.
“Does Connor know?” Michelle’s arms around my shoulders tighten.
I nod my head. “The doctor was doing the ultrasound when I woke up. He knows.”
“I can’t believe it,” Gabbi says after a while. “I just can’t believe it.”
Michelle moves from behind me to sit facing me on the bed. Placing her hands over mine on my belly, she looks up at me. “You’re having a baby,” she repeats the words, almost like she’s trying to make sense of them.
“Yeah.” My voice seems small, even to me. “I don’t know what to do. I’m so confused.”
“You mean, you don’t know what to do about the baby?” Gabbi asks cautiously.
“God, no! I’m not confused about the baby. I’m confused about Connor. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know how to handle him.”
Gabbi looks at me with knowing eyes. “You need to talk to him. As much as I want to totally kick his ass right now, I will tell you that he’s been a wreck these last couple of days. He never left your side except when your dad or Sly came in.”
Connor had looked like a wreck when I woke up. He had bags under his eyes, and it looked like he hadn’t showered or shaved in I don’t know how many days. My heart warms at the thought of him not leaving me, but it also aches to know that I wouldn’t have been where I am if it wasn’t for our fight. I want to hit him, but at the same time, I want to pull him to me and hold on for dear life. “I don’t think I can talk to him right now.”
“You don’t have to, babe.” Michelle gives my hands a gentle squeeze. “Just get some rest before Pops gets here. I know he’s gonna flip his lid.”
Oh God! Daddy! He’s going to be livid. Connor may not be around for me to talk to after Daddy gets through with him. That is, if Sly hasn’t already done something.
Chapter Three
Connor
After getting a shower and shaving, I actually feel a little bit better. I hated leaving the hospital, but I know that sitting in that waiting room is just gonna eat at my nerves too much. Knowing that my sweetness was three doors down, refusing to see me, kills me.
The look in her eyes as she was yelling for me t
o leave her room haunts me. The light that had shone so brightly is gone; Lynae looked like a shell of herself. All I want is to rush right back over there, lock her in my arms and refuse to let go until she finally gives in and tells me that she still loves me. She has to still love me. I don’t think I can go on living if she doesn’t. When she said the words “I hate you” that night, it was the worst feeling ever.
I throw on a pair of jeans and dig through my drawer for a t-shirt. As I’m shuffling things around, I find a few of Lynae’s skimpy little shirts that she likes to sleep in that she left here. I bring one of them up to my nose and inhale. It smells like her. She made me buy some girlie fabric softener to do her laundry. Said that if she was gonna stay here, she might as well just do her laundry here too. God! I’m such a pussy. Just the scent of her damn night shirt brings me to my knees. I fold it, place in back in the drawer and grab a shirt for myself. Lynae will be back. I will beg her forgiveness every single day if I have to. I will prove to her that I am not the man that said all those poisonous words to her. I will earn her love back. I have to.
Just as I’m about to head back into the living room, I hear Seth’s raised voice. “Damn, man! What’s with you?”
“Where the fucking hell is he?” Sly bellows.
Shit! Shit! Shit! This is not going to go well. I take a deep breath and leave my bedroom. I deserve everything Sly is going to throw at me. The second I see him, I can practically feel the rage coming off his body. I square my shoulders and enter fully into the living room. “I’m right here.”
Sly is in my face in three long strides. His hands grip my shirt as he shoves me back against the wall with enough force to knock one of the pictures off the wall. “You piece of shit! I knew you were no good for her!” Sly cocks his arm back and slams his fist into my face. I feel and hear my nose break under the impact. “Motherfucking asshole!” he growls.