It was tearing Jesse apart and with Angel pregnant and looking exhausted, I couldn’t help but put myself in his shoes. How would I handle it if Lana was where Layla was right now? Would I be able to cope? Or would I be in a bar somewhere? I liked to think it was the former rather than the latter, but I honestly couldn’t say for sure. Of course we had gone through something just as scary when Angel had lost our first baby, but this thing with Layla was twice as terrifying.
At the moment, Jesse was upstairs helping with the feeding of the twins. Emmie was with him, so Lana had wanted to sit with her sister during ICU visiting hours. I couldn’t understand why we weren’t allowed back with her at all times, but the rules were the rules in ICU and not even Em had been able to make them bend them for us.
Angel sat in the chair on the right side of Layla’s bed, holding her hand and talking quietly to her. “Your boys are so beautiful, Layla. They look so much like Jesse right now. All bald and angry looking. They don’t keep their eyes open for very long, so I can’t tell if they have your eyes or their daddy’s. I’m so jealous that you have boys. I wouldn’t change having this girl for anything, but it makes me want a son too.”
I stood behind her, aching to hold her and take all of the heartache she was feeling away. But I was powerless to do that. I had barely been able to convince her to go home each night so that she could get a little rest, and only then because I had to remind her that our daughter needed the rest more than she did. So I just stood there, watching Layla’s chest rise and fall with each breath she took.
She was pale, her hair limp around her shoulders. The skin on her left hand, where the IV was, had bruises because her last two IV sites had collapsed. The constant beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was both soothing and annoying in the same instant.
“You know, there’s a nurse in the NICU who has been watching Jesse closely.” Angel’s statement had me turning my gaze from Layla to her. I raised a brow but she ignored me. Something she had been doing a lot of the last day. Damn it! “She’s blonde and all kinds of happy. Especially when your husband goes in to see your boys. You’d better wake the fuck up, sis, and tell her to keep her eyes to herself.”
“What are you doing?” I demanded quietly.
“Giving her a reason to wake up,” Angel said with a shrug. “We’ve just been coddling her for the last two days. Maybe if we piss her off she will wake up and take charge of her life again.”
As ideas went it wasn’t the worst one I had heard. Actually, it was the only one anyone had offered in the last forty-eight hours. Sighing, I leaned back against the wall and let Angel continue to talk to her sister without interrupting again.
She was pissed off at me and I still wasn’t completely sure why. Cole, her father, had called to check up on her and Layla as well as the babies. Cole Steel was trying to be the man he should have been over twenty years ago. He and Lana had a decent relationship now, and the fact that he was going to be a grandfather had humbled him… A little.
The call had also revealed that the meeting with Bethany, the producer’s assistant who had texted me about it last week, was also a hoax. Angel was convinced that the woman was trying to seduce me, but I wasn’t so sure. Everyone at work knew that my wife was it for me and I didn’t even look at other women. Ever. Fuck, I barely knew what this Bethany even looked like.
My protesting that Bethany was harmless had pushed a stressed out Angel over the edge and she had been pissed at me ever since. She didn’t talk to me unless she had to. Thankfully she didn’t push me away when I tried to touch her, though. If she had started doing that I might have actually found a bar and been two bottles in by now.
A few minutes later the door opened and a nurse stuck her head around it. “Visiting hours are over for now, Mrs. Stevenson. You can come back in a few hours.”
I held out my hand to help Angel up. She slipped hers into mine without hesitation and I pulled her up beside me before brushing a kiss over her lips. “Don’t be mad at me,” I whispered.
“Don’t defend stupid bitches,” she whispered back, but there was a small smile teasing at her lips. “I love you, dummy.”
Some of my tension eased. “Love you more.”
Layla
There was a beep-beep-beep sound that was annoying the hell out of me.
I moaned, not wanting to wake up, and reached out to nudge Jesse’s shoulder. He needed to turn that stupid alarm off or I was going to punch him. But I couldn’t feel Jesse beside me and reluctantly opened my eyes.
I blinked as I focused on the room around me. I was in a bed that wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the one we slept in at home. There were rails up on either side. Beside the bed was a machine that was producing the beeping noise that was still irritating me. I shifted to get a better look at it only to have my entire body explode in pain.
My abdomen felt as if it had been split open and I had this sudden empty feeling where I should have felt stretched and full. My hands went to my stomach and a cry of distress that had nothing to do with pain filled the room. Where were my babies?
“Jesse?” I called, but he wasn’t in the room. Where the fuck was Jesse? “JESSE!”
The door across the room opened and a woman with her dark hair pulled into a ponytail stuck her head around the door. “You’re awake,” she said with a smile. “Welcome back,” she greeted as she walked into the room.
“Where’s my husband?” I demanded. “Where are my babies?”
“Hubby is out in the waiting room where he has been since you were brought in. Those babies of yours are doing remarkably well and might even be moved down to the nursery this evening.” The nurse was cheerful and that just made me want to punch her in the face.
I was in pain and she was all smiles? I was freaking out but she was more interested in checking my blood pressure. “I want my husband. Now.”
“Of course. You can see him in just a few minutes. First I have to get your vitals. Are you thirsty? I’ll get you some ice water. Or would you rather have something else? Sprite maybe?”
“I don’t fucking care! I. Want. My. Husband. NOW!” I shouldn’t have yelled. It only made me hurt worse, but I was desperate to see Jesse. I needed him and he had to be going out of his mind with worry over me.
My yelling caused the door to open again and another nurse stuck her head in. “Everything okay in here, Mrs. Thorton?”
“She wants her husband, Vanessa,” my nurse told her. “If you could peek your head out and let him know she’s awake?”
“Sure… It’s good to see you awake, Mrs. Thorton,” the other nurse commented. “You had us all worried for a minute there.”
I frowned after the woman. “What’s she talking about?”
“You had an unusual reaction to the anesthesia that they had to give you,” my nurse informed me. “You’ve been asleep for a while… About two days now.” She wrinkled her nose. “How are you feeling on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst?”
“What?” I demanded, dazed by her statement that I had been out for two days and then quickly followed by my pain level. “I’m in some pain.” More like I was in agony, but that didn’t matter at the moment. If I told this perky girl that I was barely able to see through the haze of pain she would drug my ass up and I wouldn’t be able to see Jesse right away.
“Would you like anything for it? Your doctor has a few things that you can take for any pain level, but it’s your choice.”
“Maybe later.” Maybe never. I wanted her gone.
When the door opened again Jesse flew into the room at the speed of sound. All the pain I was feeling was pushed to the back of my mind as his arms wrapped around me. His face buried in my neck. “Fuck, woman.” He groaned. “I thought I was never going to see those chocolate eyes again.”
I lifted my arms to wrap around him but found an IV in my left arm. “Are you okay? Are the babies okay? Where’s Lucy?”
“Shh.” He pulled back to look down at me and covered my mo
uth with his hand. “Just shut up and let me look at you, okay?” I nodded and he dropped his hand. Those ever-changing eyes were a kaleidoscope of browns as I met his wet gaze. ‘Gods, you are so fucking beautiful.” He brushed a kiss over my lips. “I love you.”
Some of my anxiety was fading away and I leaned my head against his chest. “What have I missed?” I finally asked.
“Can you give us a minute?” he asked the nurse over my head and a moment later the door closed behind her. I looked up at him, worry wrinkling my brow. “The boys are doing great. They’re still on the oxygen for now, but the doctor says that today they will be moved down to the nursery.”
A small sob escaped as relief washed over me. The babies were okay. Despite the fact that they were so early… “Lucy?” I couldn’t forget that we were on the verge of losing our daughter.
Jesse grimaced. “The test results came back this morning. Lucy is Grady’s.” My heart turned to lead. “But… Emmie is still working on it. She’s been working her ass off since you were brought in, baby.” He lifted a hand and pushed my hair back from my face. I probably looked like a hot mess but he didn’t seem to care so I wasn’t going to worry about it right now. “Gods, it’s so good to hold you.”
“Have I really been out for two days?”
“Fifty-two hours, actually. But who’s counting?” His lips lifted in a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Something about electrolyte levels was the reason for the reaction, but you’ll have to ask the doctor to be sure. Good thing it was twins because we are never doing this shit again, baby.”
I was suddenly very exhausted. Now that I knew that my kids were okay and that Jesse was sane, I could relax. At least for the moment. I rested my head against my pillows. The pain level that’d had my eyes unfocused fifteen minutes ago was back times a million. “I love you,” I mumbled.
“Are you hurting?”
“A little,” I lied. A lot. A lot, a lot. So this was what Emmie felt after her C-section with Mia? Fuck!
“I’ll get your nurse.”
“Wait!” I called after him when he turned for the door. “Don’t go away, okay? I want you with me.”
“Baby, I’m not going anywhere. Except to see the boys when it’s visiting hours… Okay?”
The nurse appeared a moment later with a syringe in her hand. I ignored her and focused all my attention on Jesse. “You get to visit them in the NICU?”
“Yeah. I got to feed them yesterday. They were stubborn at first and the nurse had to help me a crap load, but I finally got the hang of it. They wanted to teach me how to change their diapers… And they want to know if we want to circumcise them.”
“Oh…” I yawned as the nurse tossed the syringe in the red box on the wall and quietly left the room. “What are your thoughts?”
“I’m not against it. I’m circumcised. But it’s your call.” He leaned over me, brushing a sweet kiss over my forehead. “Since you’ve known all along what we were having I figured you had already done research on it and decided one way or another.”
I had, but I wanted his opinion on it too. Something I hadn’t been able to get until now because he hadn’t wanted to know what we were having. I however, hadn’t been able to wait to find out if we were expecting girls or boys. “Can I see them?”
“I’ll talk to their nurse. But it might have to wait until they are moved down to this floor.” Another kiss over my forehead. “How are you feeling now, baby?”
“No pain.” I yawned again. “You’ve done a good job taking care of our family, Big Daddy.”
“It wasn’t the same without you. Don’t scare me like that again. Okay?”
I wished he could have lain down beside me and held me. “Okay…” That was the last thing I remembered until someone tickled my toes sometime later.
My eyes snapped open and I found Lana and Emmie standing over my bed. “Hi,” I greeted sleepily.
“Do you hear that, Em?” Lana glanced at Emmie standing beside her with her arms folded in front of her. “She scares the shit out of us for days on end and can only say Hi.”
“Sounds like a Daniels’ female to me,” Emmie said, reminding us all that Lana had once done the same to us a few years before. “The nauseating thing about it all is that you tend to wake up still looking beautiful as ever.”
I couldn’t help the grin that teased at my lips. “Am not.”
“I’m sure you will get tired of hearing people ask you this, but how are you feeling?” Emmie asked, moving around the right side of the bed and reaching for my hand. Her fingers felt ice cold in mine. “Do you need anything for pain?”
I shook my head. “I’m good for now.”
“I have pictures.” Lana handed over her iPhone as Emmie pushed a button on the bed to help me sit up a little better. “Jesse said that you were dying to see the boys so I thought I would show you these. They won’t be moved down until morning because Baby 2 is still needing more oxygen and they don’t want them to be separated.”
“Baby 2?” I frowned. “Jesse hasn’t given them their names yet?”
“He wasn’t sure which was which for you so he was waiting on you to wake up,” Emmie informed me. “It can wait another day, Layla. Wait until they are in your arms before you start handing out names.”
My fingers were shaking as I took the phone Lana handed over. The first picture was of two of the smallest babies I had ever seen in my life. They were only in diapers with oxygen sticking from their little noses while they lay in incubators beside each other. Tears leaked from my eyes as I traced a finger over their bodies on the screen. Was it me, or were they trying to get closer to each other even through the incubators?
The next picture was of Jesse sitting in a rocking chair with one of the twins in his lap. From the way he was holding his son I could tell he was nervous, probably afraid that he was going to hurt the tiny little guy. But the smile on Jesse’s face and the tears in his ever-changing eyes tore at my heart and a small sob escaped me. The next picture was almost the same thing, except I realized it was the other baby in this one. A dozen other pictures of the babies and I was shaking with the force of my crying.
“They’re so beautiful,” I breathed, holding the phone’s screen to my chest. The last picture was Jesse holding both of his sons, our sons. My guys, all three of them. “Are they really okay?” I asked Emmie. She would tell me the truth no matter how hard it was to hear.
Emmie nodded. “The doctors said it was a miracle that they didn’t have more wrong with them. The breathing thing will work itself out, but other than that there isn’t anything we should be worried about. They are eating great and their diapers are filling up the way they should. They might have to go under the fluorescent light because of their bilirubin levels, but we both know that isn’t unusual. Mia was under there forever.”
The door opened without so much as a knock and the perky blonde stuck her head around the corner. “Everything okay in here, hun?”
My eyes narrowed on the nurse. I had no reason to hate her. I didn’t even know her, for Pete’s sake. But I hated her to my very core. “I’m fine,” I gritted out, dislike shooting out of me at her from every pore in my body.
“Okay, then.” The door shut with a slight snap behind her.
“What was that about?” Emmie asked, her brows raised in surprise. It was usually her snapping at people, not me.
“I can’t stand that chick,” I told them honestly. “I don’t even know why.” Lana’s snort followed by a giggle had us both looking at her. “What?”
“Maybe you could hear me after all…” Lana snickered again. “I might have attempted to wake you up with a few fibs. Like a blonde nurse pawing your man and a few other things.” She shrugged. “Looks like I brainwashed you to hate her. Sorry.”
“Lana!” Emmie scolded, before grinning. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Chapter 15
Nik
I wasn’t able to stay at the hospital around the cloc
k like Emmie was doing. Mia didn’t need to be around all the sickness that was in the hospital and it wasn’t like she could see her Aunt Layla or her cousins anyway. So other than visiting Em and Jesse for a few hours at a time, I kept her home.
Lucy didn’t want to, but Jesse insisted that she go to school today. So I took her to school when I dropped Mia off at her preschool and then picked her up instead of letting her take her usual carpool home again. She had been sleeping in the guest room for the last two nights.
The poor baby was terrified. Not only because of Layla and her brothers, but because of what Jesse and Emmie had had to explain to her about her real dad. I had heard her crying herself to sleep last night, but when I had gone in to check on her she had pretended to be asleep. It ate me alive that she was hurting so much. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a scared little Emmie unsure of what tomorrow would bring.
Mia slept cuddled beside me last night because I hadn’t been able to sleep until I knew she was safely tucked in with me.
As soon as I picked up both of the girls I drove us to the hospital. Shane and Harper were sitting in the ICU waiting room, but their grins told me that something was going right for a change. “How is she?” I asked, placing Mia in a plastic chair beside Harper.
“She’s awake and cranky, from what we’ve heard the nurses muttering,” Shane informed me with a chuckle. “And Jesse is upstairs with the boys, but he should be down soon. They still want to keep them up in the NICU for another night.”
“Can I see my brothers today?” Lucy asked me as she placed her backpack in an empty chair. “Dad said maybe yesterday.”
“I don’t know, Lucy. They are still upstairs and the nurses said yesterday that kids under the age of twelve aren’t allowed in there.” I hated letting her down, but it was for the safety of all the babies in the NICU, not just her brothers that we had to think about. “I’m sure as soon as the twins are moved down to this floor you can see them all you want.”
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