by Carnal, MJ
“Be there in five. I’ll get her.”
“Don’t let him take them from me,” I plead.
“Got it.” He takes a deep breath, and I know… I know how much he is holding back right there.
Greg loves Izzy, and for the first time, I realize just how powerful their bond is. He was her family and support when I couldn’t be. If anyone else can understand what my panic feels like at this moment, it is Greg.
I have to trust that he can make it in time. There is no way she can be taken from me twice.
I break every speed limit and every traffic law to make it to Dee’s in half the time it normally takes, pulling my truck right into the grass in front of her place and throwing it in park before jumping out and sprinting towards the door. I notice Greg’s truck off to the side parked at an odd angle. I check but don’t see him outside. The front door is wide open and there is no movement inside.
Silence.
Silence and sobbing.
Pulling the gun out of my ankle holster, I slowly walk through the threshold and down the long hallway. The sobbing is getting louder, and for the first time since arriving, I breathe. That is a female sob.
Hope flares to life and I rush around the corner but stop dead at the scene before me. The first thing I see is Brandon’s lifeless body in the opening to the kitchen. I don’t need to check to know he isn’t breathing. No way would he survive with that many holes in his chest. Dee is on the floor next to the tangled mess of Izzy’s and Greg’s bodies.
“NO!” I roar, running towards them, slipping on the blood that covers the floor around them. “Oh God, Izzy!”
“I c-c-called 91-1,” Dee stutters out next to me. “It isn’t hers,” she whispers.
“What?” I sob, running my hands down Izzy’s still body, looking for any sign of injury before moving her gently to the side. Her chest is rising and falling normally and her color is just slightly paler than normal. Besides a few cuts and bruises, she doesn’t appear to be harmed.
When I turn to Greg for the first time, her words register. “Fuck!” I roll him over and notice the wet hole on his side. “FUCK!” Ripping my shirt over my head, I press it against his belly and hope I can do enough to keep him stable before the ambulance arrives. “Check his pulse,” I say to Dee, but when I look over, she is weeping over Izzy’s body. My heart stills for a second when I look again at her still form. Why isn’t she moving?
Bringing my attention back to Greg, I bring one hand off his wound and check his pulse. Slow but there. I hold my shirt against him and wait.
We wait for what seems like an eternity before the paramedics start running through the house. Greg is quickly loaded up and taken away with Dee in the back with him. I drop down next to Izzy, where the paramedics are working on her.
“Sir? Sir? I need to ask you some questions,” the officer off to the side asks.
“Not now.” I run my hand over her hair and pray. She has to be all right. She has to survive. “Why isn’t she waking up?” I ask the paramedic next to me.
“I don’t know. Looks like her body’s way of protecting itself. All her vitals are fine, great actually, considering.” He gives me a look full of compassion. “She’s going to be fine.”
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding, drop my head to her shoulder, and cry.
“She’s pregnant,” I whisper to the man beside me. “She’s pregnant with my baby.” My words sound odd to my ears, and I know I won’t be able to hold it together for long if I don’t see those beautiful pale eyes soon.
“Got it. We’re going to load her up now. You the husband?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer and quickly follow them out to the ambulance.
“Sir. We need your statement,” the officer says, running behind us.
“Not. Now,” I repeat. “You want a statement? You get in your car and follow me to the hospital. I am NOT leaving her side. You hear me?”
The young officer stops short and seems shocked at the heat behind my words. Not what he was expecting. I can tell he is gearing up to protest, but I quickly interrupt him.
“Look”—I pause to check his nametag—“Officer Benson, I’m not trying to fucking run off. That woman is MY life and I won’t be letting her out of my sight after this shit. Can you just try to understand for a fucking second what I am going through and follow to the goddamn hospital, yeah?” I say but turn around and climb in without waiting for his response.
The ambulance pulls off, and I take her hand in my own and bend down to her ear. “I love you, Princess. Wake up now so I can see those eyes looking at me. Let me see that love, baby.”
I keep my head down to her ear and whisper everything and anything I can think of to let her know that she is safe and I’m here. The ten-minute drive to the hospital comes to a halt, and before they can roll her out, her eyes flutter open and she meets my gaze.
“Hey there, Princess,” I say, the emotion thick in my voice and the relief rocking me to my core. “Hey, my love.”
“Axel…love…you,” she says weakly before closing her eyes and drifting off again.
I jump out and follow the gurney into the emergency room, finally breathing easy for the first time since I answered her earlier phone call.
~~*
(Izzy)
The first thing I notice when I wake up is the quiet humming. Opening my eyes, I look around the dimly lit hospital room, trying to orientate myself to my surroundings. I feel a soft tickle on my arm and move my head to the side to look down.
Axel is sitting next to my bed with his chair pulled as close as he can get it. My right hand is held firmly in his and his lips are pressed against my skin. The humming I keep hearing is coming from him, his soft whispering against my skin. He is speaking low enough that I can’t understand the words, but the tone is light and loving.
“Ax-xel?” I say, my throat dry. It hurts to get the word past my lips.
His head shoots up and his red-rimmed eyes meet mine.
“Princess…” he whispers. Tears are forming in his eyes and a small smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “My girl, my brave girl,” he says, and a few tears fall over his lids. He closes his eyes tight and more spill over. “I thought I had lost you. When I walked around the corner and saw you…saw you lying in all that blood…” He trails off but not before his words hit my ears.
Blood? I wasn’t bleeding. Was I? Oh no! The baby!
“The…the baby?” I whisper hoarsely. “Please…” I shake my head back and forth violently, tears of my own streaming down my face. Not our baby! Please, God, not our baby!
“What? Oh, Izzy, no baby. The baby is fine. You are fine. I’m so sorry I didn’t mean your blood. Princess, stop crying, I promise, our baby is fine.” He is quick to reassure me over and over telling me that our little miracle is safe and fine.
When I finally calm down, I look into his eyes—his beautiful eyes. “We’re okay?” I ask.
“You’re both perfect,” he responds smiling before giving me a soft kiss.
“Greg? Dee?” I ask when he moves away to sit down on the side of my bed.
“Dee is going to be fine. She’s shaken up. Shaken up pretty fucking bad, but she will be okay. From what she said, Brandon had just tied her hands and taped her mouth. He had only been there for about an hour before you showed up. I think the worst of her injuries are where he clocked her when she opened the front door and a split lip. She’s fine, baby.”
“Where is she?” I ask, looking around the room again.
“Beck made her leave. He is taking her back to his place for a while. She said she was putting the townhouse on the market.”
I take that in and try to process it. I understand. I wouldn’t want to be there anymore either.
“I offered for her to stay with us for a while, but she said she would have to think about it.”
I scrunch my nose at that. “Why would she need to think about staying with us?”
“I don’t
know, Princess. That’s something you will have to ask her yourself.”
“What about Greg?” I ask, almost afraid to know.
“He’s going to be okay. He came out of surgery a little while ago. It wasn’t anything serious even though it sure as fuck looked like it. Bullet went straight through and missed everything important. He’s one lucky son of a bitch.”
“He’s really okay? There was so much blood, Ax. And he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving at all.” My panic is coming back again, at remembering the way Greg looked—lifeless. He looked dead. “Axel, I need to see him!” I yell.
“Hey, hey…calm down, baby. I promise he’s okay. He’s in recovery, but I’ll see what I can do about getting you on a field trip, okay?”
I look up and catch the slight concern that crosses over his eyes before his quickly masks it. I know he has to be a mess over everything that happened, but he is holding it in and being strong for me.
“Okay. I just really need to see him, Axel. I need to see with my own eyes that he is going to be okay.”
“I understand, Princess. I’ll make it happen.” He leans down and gives me a gentle kiss. “Got room for one more on there, baby? I need to feel you close.” His mask slips slightly for me to see the vulnerability simmering under the surface.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” I respond and shift slightly so he can lean his body close to mine.
His feet are hanging off the end and a good portion of his body is hanging off the edge, but he wraps his arms tightly around me and I cuddle close, breathing him in and letting the peace only he can give me wash over my body.
“I never want to feel that fear again, Izzy,” he whispers into my hair and squeezes me tightly. “Never been so scared in my life.”
We lie like this, together and entwined, until the nurse comes in. She fusses until he moves back to his chair. I can’t help but laugh at the pout he is sporting while she finishes up her vitals checks. When he hears me, the look is instantly gone and he looks over with a huge smile.
“Love that sound, Princess. Most beautiful sound in the whole fucking world.”
I stayed in the hospital overnight. There wasn’t anything wrong with me, but they wanted to monitor my vitals and make sure that my head wound was okay. Luckily, I came out of the whole ordeal with only a small bump right next to my temple.
When I’m released, Axel and I make our way to the floor Greg is on. Maddox and Coop are in the room when we get there. Greg is awake but groggy. I walk into his room on the arm of Axel, who hasn’t let me go once since I woke up. Greg looks up and a small smile forms on his pale lips.
“Baby girl,” he said with a tear falling from his eye. “Baby girl, you are a sight.”
I walk over to the side of his bed and push Coop out of the chair he was sitting on, pulling it close to his bed. “Hey.” Yup, that is all I have before I break down and bury my head in the bed next to his hip. Axel comes up behind me and rubs my back.
“Baby girl, I’m okay. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“I thought you were dead, G!” I cry harder into the bed. “Don’t ever do that shit again!”
He laughs but agrees, and I sit there holding his hand while the conversation continues around us. Coop tells Maddox about all the good-looking nurses who keep popping in offering sponge baths and how he might have to get shot if that is what’s waiting for him. Maddox was shakes his head, but his eyes never leave mine.
“You okay, girl?” he asks when Coop finally shuts his mouth.
Axel gives my shoulder a squeeze in support, and I climb to my feet and walk over to Maddox. He opens his arms when I get closer and I wrap mine around his back. “I’m okay,” I say into his chest.
“Good. That’s good,” he says and gives me a small squeeze before releasing me.
“Get over here, Izzy,” I hear Axel say behind me. I roll my eyes at Maddox before turning around and walking back to Axel. “Mine,” he says to Maddox and pulls me into his body.
We get a rare laugh out of Maddox, and just like that, the tension in the room is lifted and we are able to breathe easy again.
Greg and Dee are fine. The baby and I are fine. And Axel’s arms are around me.
Life is good.
Chapter 21
(4 months later)
“You almost ready, baby?” Axel asks, sliding his arms around my waist and rubbing his hands over my swollen belly. I started to really show a few weeks ago. My small pouch went gone from making me look slightly overweight to a definite baby bump. I love it, but I love it more when Axel comes up behind me and places his hands over my small bump.
When I have moments like this, just Axel and me, I am reminded how lucky we are. It’s been a hard road for us both since that day with Brandon. I have been plagued with nightmares, and Axel has been dealing with his worry about my mental state. About two months after Brandon’s attack, I made an appointment with Dr. Maxwell. We both knew I wasn’t dealing with taking his life well. Finally, four months later, I have come to terms with everything that happened. My nightmares are few and far between, but I am alive and so are the people I love. I have become stronger and stronger every day, and it is all because of this man.
I continue to fix my make up while he rolls his fingers around my skin. “We need to get going soon if we’re going to make your appointment.”
“Okay, I’m hurrying. I would have been ready by now but there is nothing that fits anymore.” I put down my mascara and turn in his arms.
I step up on my toes and wrap my arms around his neck, burying my hands into his thick hair. I look at myself in the mirror and can’t help the small smile that forms. My hair is hanging in long waves down my back. My makeup is done in neutral tones to match the soft yellow color of my sundress. The material stretches across my ample chest but flares out against my belly.
“Worth it, baby. I love seeing you carrying my baby.” He brings his hands down and pulls me up by my hips, placing me on the counter.
“Be careful, Axel. Right now you’re asking to be really late,” I warn, opening my legs up for him to walk closer to my body. My dress pushes higher up my thighs.
My belly pushes into his hard stomach. He barks out a laugh before pressing his lips to mine and making my toes curl with the heat of his kiss. “Princess, I could take you right now and you wouldn’t even fucking care if we missed that appointment, and don’t think I don’t know you’ve been crossing the days off until this one.”
He is not wrong. We have our twenty-week baby appointment today and we are finally going to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Axel is firm that it is a boy. I keep going back and forth, but deep down, I hope it is. I can just picture a little version of Axel running around the house.
I curl my hands into the fabric of his shirt, humming my agreement, and lean in for another kiss. Right before his lips hit mine, there is a sharp kick against my belly. Axel snaps back and looks down in complete shock. We have been trying to get him to feel the baby kick for weeks now, but either the baby wasn’t having it or Axel just wasn’t there when the baby was active. Either way, this is the first time he has felt any movement.
He looks down at my rounded stomach and then quickly back up to my eyes. The look of pure wonder in his eyes brings a smile to my lips. He is completely transfixed with this little person in my belly.
I reach down and grab his hands before placing them on the center of my bump. The baby kicks a few more times. I keep my eyes glued to Axel’s face, watching the emotions play across his handsome features. Shock, awe, and enchantment. He is fascinated with this feeling—feeling of our baby.
“What are you thinking?” I ask him after a few minutes.
He looks up at me with his smile wide and his eyes bright. “How fucking lucky I am.” He leans down and gives me a kiss, not once removing his hands from my active belly.
“Hey!” we hear Dee yelling up the stairs. “Where are y’all?”
Axel groans and helps me down from the c
ounter. He might have offered for Dee to stay with us, but I can tell she is starting to get under his skin. She has a knack of knowing right when things are heating up. I love her, but right now, she is my little happy cock blocker.
“Play nice, Daddy.” I laugh and slap him on the ass before walking around him and out of the bedroom.
I slide my feet into some flip-flops and walk down to meet Dee in the foyer. She looks stunning in a long orange maxi dress that fits tight to her body.
“You suck, you skinny bitch,” I say and smile up at her. Of course she towers over me in her four-inch heels. I’m the midget around the giants. These days, the only thing that feels good is flip-flops.
“Whatever, Iz! You look beautiful! Doesn’t she, Axel?”
He snorts but keeps walking down the stairs.
“Where’s G?” I ask them. It’s debatable who was more excited about the baby when we told everyone, Dee or Greg.
We told everyone together when we had a small ‘family only’ party at the house to welcome Greg home. He had stayed in the hospital for almost two weeks after the shooting but was one hundred perfect healed now. When we told them, Dee broke down in tears, Maddox gave me a rare smile, Coop praised Axel on his super swimmers, and Beck offered a polite congratulations. Greg, however, had hollered his excitement and pulled me into a big hug, which earned a growl from Axel. Greg just laughed and hugged me tighter.
From that day on, he’s called daily and checked on my progress. He has bought baby books and is constantly filling us in on baby info. I knew he would be happy for us, but he is over-the-moon excited to become an uncle.
“He said he was running late. Something about an appointment and would meet us at the office,” Axel calls from the kitchen.
I look over at Dee and she just shrugs her shoulders.
I follow Axel’s voice and find him in the kitchen checking his emails on his phone. He looks up and I stop when I see the hunger in his eyes.
