by Lane Hart
“Oh my God,” I mutter as I watch the coach dab at Senn’s cut with Vaseline, trying to get the bleeding to stop.
“That’s nothing. It probably looks worse than it feels,” Luke assures me.
During the second round, the two men keep swinging at each other, narrowly missing each other’s heavy fists. When they’re in a clench again with Senn trapping Chad against the cage, he pulls the other man’s head forward at the same time he lifts his knee and rams it into his face. There’s a loud crunch that makes the audience gasp. With what has to be a broken nose, Chad crumbles to the ground and the ref jumps in to stop the fight. Thank goodness.
“Woo-hoo!” The whole team jumps to their feet and cheers as Senn’s arm is raised as the winner.
One of the announcers shoves a microphone into Senn’s face and starts asking him questions.
Senn doesn’t thank God or his parents like most people. He gives a shout out to everyone at Havoc for supporting him and helping him train hard to get the win.
When the announcer asks if it was a tough fight, Senn hesitates before answering.
“Chad’s a tough opponent, but this fight is nothing compared to the one my girlfriend is battling. She’s the strongest person I know because she’s up against unfavorable odds and her life is on the line. She’s risking it all to save my daughter, which is incredibly brave but scares the shit out of me. If I could fight cancer for her, I would. There’s nothing I can do except promise to stay in her corner and be there for her, loving her with everything I’ve got to give no matter what.”
I stare dumbfounded at Senn in the center of the cage as he continues to answer questions. Did I just imagine his words? It feels like I’m floating. Maybe this is just some dream because Senn isn’t the type of guy to make such a romantic statement in front of thousands of people in the stands and millions watching on television.
He walks out of the cage and is directed out of the arena by a circle of security guards. Fans grab for him in excitement.
“Abby!” He yells my name and crooks his finger, indicating I should follow him.
“Come on. I’ll help you get through security,” Luke says, grabbing my hand. I follow along behind him, wiping the moisture from my face. We have to show our team passes three times to finally get to the changing room door.
“I’ll find you later,” Luke says with a wink before he disappears.
The door is unlocked, so I turn the knob and step inside. My heart stops beating when I find Senn alone, already taking off his shorts. His skin is slick with sweat and there’s still blood on his face from the cut above his eye, but I’ve never wanted him more than I do right this second.
Senn’s on me a second later, grabbing my hips when he kisses me and plastering his hard, damp body against the length of mine. My back hits the door, making it feel even better when he grinds himself on me. He jerks the one-sided shoulder of my dress down my arm and pushes the rest of the material to my ankles. Lifting one of my legs and holding it against his hip, his fingers quickly stroke through my wetness before he penetrates me with two of them, making me moan into his mouth.
“I need you,” I tell him against his frantic lips. “Now.”
Growling his agreement, his hands lift my ass higher on the door, so he can enter me.
“Is the door locked?” I ask as an afterthought, feeling around for a lock.
“No lock. But no one’s gonna get this door open,” he tells me before he slams home.
“God, yes!” I exclaim, wrapping my arms around his neck to hold on tight when he’s filling me up.
“Tell me if I’m too rough,” he says, his mouth lowering to my neck because he knows that’s my most erogenous zone.
“Feels good,” I assure him.
“A little different from last time,” he says against my skin, and I know he’s referring to the night of conception. The one time we had sex with a condom against the wall and he somehow knocked me up.
“Just a little different,” I sarcastically agree since so much has changed now. “You love me?” I ask as he drives me farther up the door with his deep thrusts.
“I love you. So fucking much,” he says against my ear. “You scared me this weekend.”
“I’m sorry,” I say with a sniffle. “I love you, too.”
“I can’t share you anymore,” he says, resting his forehead against mine, his amber eyes revealing all of his insecurities.
“You never had to,” I tell him. “I’ve just been waiting for you to say you wanted to be with me.”
“Thank fuck,” he says on my lips before kissing me softly while we grab and pull each other, trying to get closer even if it’s impossible as our releases rock through our bodies.
“Are you okay?” Senn asks when we start to come down from our high.
“Oh yeah,” I assure him. “I forgot to tell you congrats on your win.”
“Thanks,” he says with a chuckle. “I forgot I had a fight.”
“How’s the cut over your eye?”
“Don’t even feel it,” he replies. “All I feel is you.”
Looking down at our still connected bodies, seeing my big, round belly against his rows of perfect abs is quite the contradiction.
“She’s getting big,” Senn says, noticing the same thing.
“Yeah, she is.”
“I’m glad we’re having a girl,” he tells me, brushing his fingertips over my side.
“Really?” I ask with a grin. “I thought you’d want a boy like Linc, one to follow in your footsteps.”
“I wanted a girl so she wouldn’t have to follow in my footsteps,” he replies with a shake of his head. “Fighting was never my choice. It’s just the only thing I’m good at. A son might’ve felt obligated to try…”
“You would rather buy dresses than a pair of gloves?” I tease.
“I’ll buy her both if that’s what she wants,” he says with a smile that warms my heart because I know he means that. He’s gonna spoil this little girl, give her anything and everything to make her happy. While he doesn’t have any experience with babies or kids, his love for her is all she’ll need.
“You’re gonna be a really good father,” I tell him, biting my lip to hold back the tears at the thought of never seeing the two of them together.
“I promise you I’ll try my best, mama bear,” he says before going completely still. “What was that?”
“Ah, what?” I ask.
“Felt like a finger poking my stomach.”
“You felt that?” I ask him with a smile, looking down at where my belly’s pressed into his abs. “That was the baby.”
“She poked me!” he exclaims, and she does it again. “That’s her?”
“Yeah. She’s getting stronger.”
“Holy shit! That’s amazing…to know she’s in there and touching me…”
“Maybe she’s retaliating for you poking her,” I tease him. His forehead scrunches up while he thinks that over, and then his eyes widen before he steps back until his semi-hard cock slips out of me.
“You think I…when we were…and she felt it?”
Laughter bursts from me, seeing him look so concerned about poking the baby with his dick. “No, Senn. I’m fucking with you.”
“That’s just wrong,” he says with a grin, pressing his body back along the length of mine. “But now you’ll never get me off of you because I want to feel her poke me again.”
“I think I can handle that,” I tell him. “Take me back to the room for more poking?”
“God, yes. I have to do another quick interview, and then I’m done.”
“How about I order room service and meet you up there?”
“Hell yeah,” he says with a quick kiss. “Guess I should let you get dressed. By the way, you, in that dress? So damn hot.”
“Thanks.” I laugh, picking it up from the floor. “And thanks for not ripping it up like the yellow one.” One night at his house, he ripped the material off me when we were goi
ng at it.
“What can I say? Yellow’s my favorite color, and it was see-through.” Senn chuckles while strolling naked across the room.
He’s massive and so freaking hot that I sigh in contentment just watching him get dressed. I wish this moment could last, this taste of happiness, like the three of us are a real family. Time is running out, but tonight I’ll forget everything except enjoying each second I have with this incredible man who loves me.
Chapter Seventeen
Senn
I wake up spooning Abby, which is probably a first. Usually she sleeps draped over me. My palm rests on her bare belly since we went another round last night after we ate. I move my hand around seeking out more pokes from the baby. Abby doesn’t stir from the contact, and her usual soft snores are absent. In fact, I’m not really sure if her chest has moved with her breathing.
“Abby?” I call her name while shaking her shoulder. Nothing. “Abby!” I practically shout her name and get no response. Jumping out of bed, I roll her to her back and keep shaking her. Blood covers her nose and face, soaking through her pillow and the sheets. “Fuck!”
I feel for a pulse on her neck, finding one, but it’s weak. With a shaky hand, I pick up the hotel phone and dial nine-one-one.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the operator asks.
“My girlfriend won’t wake up. She’s pregnant and lost some blood. She needs an ambulance.”
“We have the address you’re calling from, and an ambulance has been dispatched.”
“Room 3178,” I tell her.
“I’ll notify the rescue squad. Until they get there, I need you to check to see if she’s breathing. Is her chest moving?”
I place my hand over her heart and hold my own breath while I wait to see if she takes one. When she does, I exhale in relief.
“She’s breathing,” I tell the operator. “Hang in there, Abby.” I sweep the hair from her face and notice her skin feels warm. Feverish. Fuck. How did I not notice her nose bleeding and her body radiating heat? How long has she been this way?
Since I’m naked and want to stay with her on the way to the hospital, I set the phone down and scramble around to put the clothes I was wearing yesterday on, then I open the door and step out in the hallway, ready to flag down the emergency responders.
I go back and forth from feeling Abby’s chest on the bed to the room door until finally a man and a woman in uniform come off the elevator with a gurney and a first-aid bag.
“Down here!” I yell at them, and they jog toward our room. Pressing my back to the wall to stay out of the way, I watch as they examine Abby. She looks paler than normal and almost lifeless as they work on her.
“How long has she been unconscious?” the female technician asks, and it takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me.
“I-I don’t know. We fell asleep…and I woke up, but she wouldn’t…” Fuck! I was so exhausted after the fight and sex that I didn’t notice…
“Does she take any medications? Any pre-existing conditions other than pregnancy?”
I grab her purse from one of the hotel chairs and start pulling out the prescription bottles I know are in there for nausea but don’t know their names, offering them to the tech. “She has cancer. Some type of leukemia. Myloid or something like that. I don’t remember.”
“How far along in the pregnancy?” she asks.
“Almost twenty weeks.” Abby was so worried about the twenty-week mark. God, I hope the baby’s gonna be okay too. This can’t be it. I can’t lose them both so soon. Not like this, without even a goodbye…
I quickly try to text Luke, which isn’t easy with the moisture clouding my vision. He instantly replies, telling me he’ll meet us at the emergency room. By then they’ve strapped Abby onto the gurney with a sheet covering her. A quick elevator ride later, and we’re in the back of the ambulance.
“How is she? How’s the baby?” I ask the male technician while I squeeze her hand, wishing she would wake up.
“The doctors will have to hook her up to the monitors,” is all he tells me. And then when we get to the hospital, they force me to wait in the fucking lobby.
Luke, Linc, Claire, Hailey, and Mace all show up a few minutes later and keep me from throwing chairs at the windows and breaking everything else…for the most part. My fist plows into the wall a few times.
Two and a half hours later, I’m about to go nuclear from being kept in the dark when a doctor finally comes out and tells us Abby is in stable condition but has been admitted for more observation. He says two of us at a time are now allowed back to see her.
Luke and I, of course, go first, taking the elevator to the fourth floor and following the signs to room 4203. My breath whooshes out of my lungs in relief when I see Abby’s eyes are open. She even smiles when she sees us.
“Hey,” she says, pressing the button to raise the head of her bed.
“Hey. How are you feeling?” I ask, going to the side of the bed and reaching for her right hand that’s free of tubes.
“Tired. My hemoglobin was apparently really low, so they’re giving me a few pints of blood. The baby’s fine. See?” She nods to a computer screen that shows a zig zag line and a number read out of one-hundred fifty two.
“Is that the baby’s heart beat?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s strong, not too high or low. They did an ultrasound, and she was moving around like normal.”
“Good,” I say on an exhale. “I was so fucking worried about you. Both of you,” I tell her, bending down to kiss her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly.
“You don’t have to apologize for passing out on me. I should’ve noticed with the bleeding and all…God, you scared the shit out of me.”
“See, this is why you need two men in your bed, so both can keep an eye on you,” Luke teases. I really don’t want to hear his shit, though, mostly because I know he’s right. If he had been sleeping on the other side of her, then he probably would’ve noticed the blood or the fever.
I watch with barely contained rage as he kisses Abby’s cheek. He’s here because I told him what was going on; but at the same time, I’m still jealous as fuck watching him touch her. Abby squeezes my hand, drawing my gaze back to her face, like she knows what I’m thinking.
“Luke, could you go ask the nurse if I could have more ice chips, please?” she asks sweetly.
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you for calling him,” Abby says when he leaves the room. “He’s my best friend, but just my friend now, like he’s been for the last three or four weeks.”
“He said he went down on you,” I argue. “I’ve never got on my knees for my friends.”
“Oh, yeah,” she blanches, her face finally having a little more color to it when she blushes. “I forgot about that. But it won’t happen again.”
“Are you sure this is what you want? Just me?” I ask her, even though the words scrape my throat like razor blades. “Because I don’t want you to regret anything…”
With more strength than I gave her credit for, Abby grabs a handful of my t-shirt in her fist and pulls my mouth down to hers. Her tongue slips into my mouth, and then she kisses me like the tiny seductress tease that she is, making me forget that she’s in a hospital and that I’ve spent the last few hours worried to death about her and our daughter.
“You feel that?” she asks when she releases the grip on my tee. “Because I do, all the way down to my soul. But only with you.”
Thank fuck. I know I could share her if I absolutely had to, but it wouldn’t be easy.
“I’ve got your ice, ice, baby,” Luke sings when he comes back into the room with a Styrofoam cup in his hands that he offers to Abby from the other side of her bed.
“Thanks,” she says to him with a smile. “So, um, it doesn’t look like I’m gonna make the flight this afternoon.”
“Shit, I forgot all about it,” I say. “How long do they think you�
�ll be here?”
“A few days, maybe?” she says with a shrug. “I would rather go home and see my doctors, but the ones here say that I’m too weak and dehydrated to travel.”
“Then I’ll stay here with you, too,” I tell her.
“Me, too,” Luke offers, and I’m proud of myself when I don’t shove him through the wall or bark at him to get lost. He’s worried about her, I know that, so it’s not fair to make him leave.
“Oh no you don’t!” Abby says with a shake of her head. “You’ve got a date tomorrow night that you better not miss,” she tells him, then to me, she says, “My sister set him and one of her friends up on a blind date.”
“Ha!” I can’t hold in my laugh when I see him cringe. I’ve never actually met Abby’s sister, Whitney, but she’s told me stories about her and her snobby friends. It’s also a relief to know Luke’s thankfully gonna be dating other women.
“I’m sure I can reschedule,” Luke says, fidgeting with his Clemson hat, spinning it around his head.
“No way!” Abby replies. “Get your butt out of here and on that plane. Senn’s gonna stay, and having one person stuck here in the hospital with me is plenty.”
The soft spot I have for this woman gets a little bigger when she tells him to go and doesn’t insist that I leave her, too. She wants me to stay with her, to be the one to take care of her, and it’s a nice feeling. No one has ever depended on me before.
“You sure?” Luke asks, and I somehow withhold my adamant response of fuck, yes.
“I’m sure,” Abby responds.
“Well, I’ve got a few hours. Do you want me to go back to the hotel and get all your luggage and bring it over?” he asks looking between the two of us, making me feel like a dick for hating him when he offers to do something so helpful.
