by Lexi Whitlow
“Sunshine,” I say. I stand behind the sofa and watch her as she unpacks her things. It almost looks like her purse is weighing her down.
“Hm?” She looks at her phone absently, and collapses in one of the chairs.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing. I have a stomach virus or something. I’m not sure what’s going on.” No eye contact, and she starts with her hands, twisting them in circles. “But I think that’s it. I haven’t been sleeping great since we talked...” Her voice trails off and she stops, her face growing even paler, if that’s possible.
“I told you that time isn’t an issue. We’re not leaping into it—the uh, parenting thing.” The words feel strange rolling off of my tongue. Before Summer, I’d never even considered being part of a family. Cullen’s fucked up family was my fucked up family. I was the only child of an Irish mobster, deeply in debt to a bigger, meaner Irish mobster. After I failed at fighting, I did the only thing I could do and went to pay the family’s debt.
It was Summer who made me see a way out of it. It was Summer who made me realize that staying in New York would leave me in the clutches of Cullen’s men forever.
And in the three years she was gone, I dreamed of her. Often, the dreams were about her freckled skin, her breasts in my hands, her body crashing into mine and begging for more.
But once, I dreamed of her holding a child, a toddler with bright blue-green eyes and wispy copper hair. And then the dream came again and again.
I’m glad I didn’t tell her about that bullshit, because I’ve gone and made her feel like this—guilty, sad, and alone. My breath catches in my throat as I stand over her, and I realize it then—when I told her I wanted a child, I took her back to the nightmare place, the hospital where she lost her child. Then, like a fucking asshole cherry on top of an asshole cake, I let it slip that the head of a particularly violent faction of the Irish mafia in New York was her father.
Summer doesn’t respond to me.
Instead, she quietly flips through PubMed articles on her phone. To Summer, reading studies on intestinal parasites is what reading a comic book or romance novel is for someone else. I lean forward and look over her shoulder, pretending I’m just shifting. The studies she’s reading seem to involve endometriosis and miscarriage. When I see it, pain hits me, my throat growing tight.
“Summer—” I start, but I’m not sure what I should say.
She drops her phone and covers it with her hand, then looks up at me. Her green eyes are dim. “Yeah?”
“There’s something wrong.” I reach out and touch her hair lightly. She looks like she wants to flinch, but she doesn’t. “If it’s about the other night... I’m just so...” I pause and swallow hard. “I’m just so fucking sorry I wasn’t there. I’ll never forgive myself. I just want to make it right. How can I make it right?”
She touches my hand, her caress lighter than a feather brushing against my skin. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ash.” She pulls her bottom lip in and chews on it. “I was really angry, but I’m not anymore. We were pawns in a sick game.” Pausing again, she squeezes my hand, but weakly. “I’m mad at Bianca. I’m mad at Cullen. But we can’t undo the past.”
“You mentioned the fellowship—is that something you want? I don’t care how much you work as long as I’m the one you come home to.”
She pauses, and tears come to her eyes. I stand there like an idiot, leaning over her, wondering if I said the wrong thing. But she’s still holding on to my hand.
“I don’t know what I want right now, Ash. But I know I’ll figure it out. I thought that’s what I wanted.” She leans back and closes her eyes, and I come around the couch and sit down next to her.
There’s nothing right about what’s happening to her right now, and that constricted feeling comes back to my chest. It’s unfamiliar—it’s not the same warmth I felt when I first saw her again, and it’s not the feeling of agony I had when I left her. When I look at her—sallow-skinned and deeply, deeply sad, I realize what it is. It’s fear—something I don’t usually feel, not for another person. I sigh and reach out for her hand.
“I’ll get the money for the gym, somehow. Josh’s fight is coming up. We’re going to be okay.”
She opens her eyes and moves closer, leaning her body into mine. “I know. You’re the one I’m coming home to. And that’s good, no matter what happens.”
“Are you okay, Summer? Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.” She sighs and moves in closer, and I hold her. I never thought I was the type of man who would need comfort from someone else, from a woman, no less. But holding Summer reassures me that we aren’t all the things we lost—we’re bigger than the pain of the past. As long as we have each other, we’re far better off than we were before. “We’ll get good news, I hope.” She opens one eye and looks at me. “Can we still afford this apartment?”
“Barely, Sunshine.” My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I take it out again.
It’s Natalie, Josh’s stepsister. Josh is injured, it says. Might not be able to fight. And I might not be able to afford a business, ever.
Fuck.
My chest constricts again as I slip my phone back in my pocket.
“In this case, ‘barely’ is the same thing as yes,” Summer says. “Sometimes ‘barely’ is bad, but in this case it’s good.”
My phone buzzes again, but I don’t look at it this time. I’m not in the mood for any more bad news. Instead, I pull Summer over on my lap and kiss her. The kiss isn’t wild or passionate, nor is it a grand gesture. It’s meant to reaffirm everything I’ve said to her, starting with the first time I said I loved her. I kiss her until she melts into me, until color returns to her cheeks and she no longer seems on the verge of meltdown. She drops her phone, puts her hands beneath my shirt and lifts it over my head, fingers tracing each one of my tattoos.
There’s a deep, distant sadness in her eyes still, but she’s flushed pink, and she kisses me again. Her shirt comes off, and I fall into the rhythm I adopt when I want to make her come. I realize as I’m pulling off her jeans, as I’m exploring her tight, perfect sex with my fingers and tongue, that I know her body now. I crave her in the same way I always have, but there’s relief and comfort when I slide my cock into her and hear her gasp, when I ride her, slow and certain, until she shakes against me and whispers my name, telling me she loves me. I hold off for a long time, making her come twice, and then a third time before I can’t stand it anymore, and I have to let go deep inside of her, shaking and shuddering.
“You’re fucking sexy as hell, even when you’re sad,” I tell her.
She looks at me quizzically, her legs still wrapped around me. “What makes you think I’m sad?”
Her hips move against mine, and she feels so sweet and warm that I might be able to go again. Leaning over her, I cup her breasts and roll her nipples between my fingers. “You just seem like it.”
“I’m worried,” she says. For a second, it looks like she might say something more, but instead she tightens her grip around me and lifts her lips to my ear. “Fuck me again,” she whispers softly, “so I don’t feel anything at all.”
I groan and feel myself growing harder inside of her. She gasps and kisses me, moaning when I thrust inside of her again and oblige her excellent suggestion.
Later, when we’re sleeping, naked bodies entwined, I have an idea.
It’s stupid and foolish and full of grand gestures, and it’s probably a terrible idea, especially for two people who are broke and depending on Linda Colington to get her shit together and run a successful business.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Present Day
I saw the baby a week ago. The ultrasound technician said she usually couldn’t see a heartbeat at five weeks, six days. But there it was, next to the yolk sac. A tiny flicker, 156 beats a minute. Strong, healthy, promising.
For an hour, I allowed myself a tiny speck of hope.
There was an amnioti
c sac, exactly where it should be, nestled in for a long journey.
There’s no reason it won’t survive. No reason.
I lean against the wall of the locker room. My stomach is beyond fucked up, and exhaustion settles over me. Then I hear a familiar voice fill the room, and a hand settles on my shoulder. I nearly jump to the ceiling, and I turn around to see my friend, Natalie. Another girl with a thing for fighters. She pulls me into a hug, and I relax into her. Even though she’s a few years younger, she’s been my best friend since what feels like the beginning of time.
“Natalie! Congratulations on your first shift!” I put on my peppiest voice, and thankfully—for once—a blush rises in my cheeks. When I looked in the mirror this morning, my skin was positively gray. The excitement takes me over, and I jump up and down with her and squeal. She makes me feel like we’re ten again, pretending that we’re nurses. But we’re doctors now, and as I hug Natalie, a feeling takes me over that’s stronger than nausea, more persistent than exhaustion. It’s a feeling of hope.
She brushes a silky blond lock behind her ear and looks down, almost embarrassed. “It’s so weird to be back in town,” she says.
I laugh and hug her again. For a second, it feels like there’s a stitch in my side, a throbbing pain, deep and low in my pelvis. But I ignore it. “You’re telling me, Nat. It’s weird as anything. It’s been—how long has it been?”
“Two years.” She smiles. I visited her at school on one brief trip home. I’d seen my mother and my aunt. And I had never run into Ash. The father of my child. My children. I gulp hard and almost start crying again. The idea of telling Natalie rests on the tip of my brain, but I know she has things to deal with that have nothing to do with me or that tall, redheaded man who’s wormed his way back into my life.
“You seen Josh yet?” I ask her. “He had a fight last night, right?”
“Yeah—he—I—I’ve actually got to get going.” She blushes, almost as bright pink as I do when I’m embarrassed. “End of my shift and all. There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve got to do today.” Natalie grins and squeezes me tight again before she picks up her purse and leaves, hair bouncing behind her, a spring in her step that I’m not even sure she’s aware of.
“Bye Nat!” I don’t think she catches the weird desperation that I hear in my own voice.
She turns and smiles at me, and a big part of me feels like I’m home again for good. As soon as she walks out of the door, my stomach clenches again. Or is it something lower, something in my pelvis? The pain hits hard, and I almost fall to my knees. It feels like the top half of my body is trying to separate from my bottom half, and I wish Natalie were still here. With her encyclopedic knowledge of all things medical, she’d know what to do, what to say. I walk over to the door, my lower back throbbing, and peek my head around the corner. Natalie is nowhere to be seen, so I take a deep breath and put on my scrubs.
There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong. I keep repeating it in my head.
The cramping and pulsing continues as I walk down the hall, then a hard cramp zaps through my center, followed by a hot rush of fluid. Even before I look, I know that it’s blood, hot, sticky, coppery, full of iron and terror.
“For one day. For one day, I was okay. Goddammit—” I mutter to myself, walking toward the lab. In the seconds it takes to get to there, it feels like the only thing I want in the world is this child, this life, the untenable hope that things might be okay. It’s a hope that I can’t navigate, one I can’t really have. A bright plume of blood hits my scrubs, and I start sobbing at the door of the lab.
“Can someone—I need someone to get me an ultrasound—”
At the same moment, both Priya and Zelda walk into the lab. Zelda drops the files she’s carrying and Priya grabs me by the arm firmly and takes me down to one of the private rooms. She looks at me, and I think she’s going to say something like, “What is this now?” But instead, she just nods to Zelda and places a hospital gown on my lap. The pain eases enough for me to strip out of my bloody pants as Priya draws the curtain and Zelda runs through the door. Before she pulls the curtain back, I text Ash.
Get to the hospital, now. I need you.
I stare at the screen while Zelda takes my vitals and Priya looks through my chart. To her credit, she maintains complete professionalism and doesn’t even look up as she takes down my information. “Female, twenty-eight, six and a half weeks pregnant, presenting with abdominal pain,” she mutters to herself, just like she’s in a room full of residents.
“HCG was 2000 last Monday, and 4500 on the nose Wednesday,” Zelda says as she wraps my arm in a blood pressure cuff. “Patient’s ultrasound showed a healthy pregnancy last week,” Zelda says, patting my hand. “And there’s no reason to believe it’s any different today.”
“Certainly not.” Priya looks up, and to my surprise, she smiles. “We’re just making sure,” she says softly. There are voices outside the door, and I might be hallucinating, but one of them sounds like Ash.
“My wife—” I hear him say, and there’s a tall shadow moving outside of the translucent window.
The door opens, and I see Debbie peaking her head around the corner. “Your friend is here. Says he’s your husband.” Debbie raises her eyebrow and looks at me meaningfully. Tears sting my eyes. This isn’t exactly what I had planned when I thought about revealing the secrets that I thought weighed me down. Life often doesn’t give you what you expect, however.
“Send him in,” I say, lying with my feet hanging off the edge of the table, covered only in my scrub shirt and a hospital gown draped over my lap. Zelda begins to set up the ultrasound machine, and Priya’s eyes go wide when Ash walks in. It wasn’t a decision to contact Ash. It was more like instinct. With the anxiety, the pain, the horror rising in my body, I reached out to the one person who made me feel truly safe.
“What’s wrong, Sunshine?” He comes and kneels next to me, taking my hand and holding it, his touch firm and reassuring.
There’s no more tucking these memories away, no more denial or separation, only him and me no matter what our history.
“I’m—I was—” Tears roll down from my eyes, pain dredging up from the past as Zelda brings the ultrasound machine around to the front of the bed.
“Best just to take a look,” she says, eyeing Ash. He grips my hand, and Zelda puts on gloves and nods to me. “Here we go, Dr. Colington.”
The touch of gel against my skin shocks me into reality, and Zelda moves the wand right to the spot where she saw the sac yesterday. There’s a click, and the sound turns on in the room. “See there?” she says. “Nothing to worry about in the slightest. You should have taken a few days off—but now you will, won’t you? The hematoma is shrinking, but you still need some rest.”
Ash’s jaw drops, and he looks at me, his brows knitted together, eyes questioning. The sound of the tiny, flickering heartbeat ticks on inside the room. There are only little leg buds and arm buds, and the picture looks eerily alien, a tiny life glowing on a screen, causing all this trouble inside of me. Ash grips my hand so tight it feels like it might fall off, and then he smiles.
“That’s our—you’re—is it?” He stumbles over his words, sounding more like me than himself. We hadn’t ever talked about this until a couple of weeks ago—it was never a part of the plan for us. But here we are, together in a cold hospital room, looking at our future child on a screen, together, our lives intertwined and finally—almost—resolved. There’s the small issue of money, and the fact that Ash’s whole business is failing. That doesn’t seem like something that should worry us, not when something far more important is right here, in front of us.
Whatever.
“Ash—I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it could be real. I was waiting until next week. I hadn’t told anyone—”
“It’s okay, Sunshine. Don’t say you’re sorry. Just let me look.” He stares at the screen while Zelda takes pictures of the wiggling jelly bean, its heartbeat as stro
ng as ever.
But with the way he’s holding my hand, I’m sure he’s not going anywhere right now. He’ll be here, by my side, even if everything goes south. There’s more than just a marriage certificate connecting us, and there always has been, ever since that night we went home together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Present Day
Summer is still leaning on me when we come into the apartment, and she jumps when she flicks the light on. I have the passing thought I haven’t told her that my whole professional life has gone to shit, but who’s counting?
She’s what’s important right now. Her, and only her.
“Shit,” she says. “Why is Josh here?” Josh is in fact asleep on my couch, shirtless, with a pillow pulled over his head. There are papers strewn all over the floor that I keep immaculately clean, and there’s a whining sound coming from behind the sofa. Josh doesn’t stir, and Summer looks at me with wide eyes.
“Look, Sunshine, I forgot to tell you. I thought you were sad about not being able to have a kid the other night, and now it turns out that you can—with all the monitoring and stuff that they suggest.”
There’s a disconcerted yap from behind the sofa, and Summer raises an eyebrow like she can’t possibly comprehend what she’s hearing. “And you did what, exactly?”
“I got a—”
Josh sits bolt upright and looks at both of us in confusion. “Is it time to walk the puppy?”
“No,” she whispers. But it’s not the same kind of “no” that I heard when I told her Cullen was her father. It’s quite a bit better than that. She rushes behind the sofa, and I hear a crate opening, followed by excited yapping and girlish squeals—the kind I haven’t heard from Summer in a long time.