by Layne, Ivy
So far, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to ask. I was holding on to my current plan of ignore, ignore, ignore. Stupid and immature, I know. Ignoring it wouldn’t make the problem go away, but I didn’t want it to go away. I just wanted the whole thing to be a lot less complicated.
I’d always wanted children. A family. If I were being brutally honest, I’d always wanted both with Griffen. But not like this. I’d wanted it as his real wife. The wife he chose for himself. The wife he loved. Not someone he’d divorce in four years and eleven months.
I wanted to be a mother to my child all the time, not just when I had custody. By now, I knew Griffen wasn’t the kind of man who’d keep me from my child, but that was just a fact of divorce. It wasn’t like I’d keep living here—
Horror spread through me at that thought. I could. I could stay and raise my child and watch him move on without me. I couldn’t imagine how awful that would be. Sitting at breakfast with Griffen and his new wife, watching him dote on her while I was alone, pining for him.
I was in love with my husband and he didn’t love me back. Not like that. As an old friend, sure. Griffen had love for me, I knew that, but there were so many different kinds of love. The love he felt for me wasn’t the one I wanted.
I’d been trying to go with the flow, to enjoy him while I had him and all that. A child would change everything. I rested my hand over my lower belly, wondering if there was really someone in there.
Maybe I was worrying for nothing. Maybe I had a bug just like I’d told Griffen. I wouldn’t know until I took the test, and so far, I hadn’t figured out a way to do that without alerting the entire county.
Just call Daisy and J.T., I told myself.
I loved Daisy and adored J.T., but I didn’t want a crowd involved in this. Not yet. I didn’t want to process the results with an audience.
“Not hungry this morning?” Griffen asked, looking across the breakfast table at me.
I gave him a weak smile. “Just this cold,” I deflected. “I’ll be fine, I just need to get going.” I forced myself to take a bite of eggs, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat.
I was going to eat my breakfast and we were going to have a normal day. I was not going to get dizzy or throw up.
Griffen was watching me, concern in his eyes. Concern and something else I couldn’t read. He was studying me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be figured out. I had enough to figure out myself.
“If you’re not feeling well, we can postpone the trip to Asheville. We’ll do it another day and you can go lay down.”
“No,” I said. “Brax rearranged his schedule so he could show us the Asheville properties today. Better to get it done. I’m fine. I’m going to ask Savannah for a tea to go and I’ll be good for the ride.”
That turned out to be a lie. I’d never been prone to car sickness, but the eggs went sour in my stomach and I sipped at my herbal tea, praying everything would stay put. Mountain roads are no good with an unhappy stomach.
With every curve and dip, my stomach tried to turn inside out. I should have taken Griffen up on his offer to reschedule or just told him to go without me. I gritted my teeth and wished desperately for a ginger ale.
Brax’s office in Asheville was less than an hour from Heartstone Manor. The drive took forever. By the time we got there, I thought if I had to ride for one more mile I was going to hurl all over Griffen’s gorgeous car.
Brax met us at his office, taking a quick minute to show us the small yet elegant space before guiding us on a whirlwind tour of commercial office space, retail locations, and small apartment buildings, most of them in the downtown area.
I barely paid attention to anything Brax said, making random notes and knowing all the while that Griffen could read me like a book. He knew something was wrong. He knew it was more than my having a cold.
Or maybe he didn’t know anything and I was just paranoid. Paranoid and freaked out and scared.
What if I was pregnant? A lot of people would be happy. I just didn’t know if I was one of them. I wanted to be. Oh, how I wanted to be. Having a baby with Griffen… How could I not be happy?
I would be happy, ecstatic, except that every time I looked ahead I saw that deadline. Four years, eleven months. A lifetime of loving him, loving our child, and only having one of them. Of putting on a brave face, never letting anyone know my heart was broken when Griffen moved on without me.
It made me realize that the issue wasn’t really whether I was pregnant. Baby or no baby, I was in love with Griffen Sawyer, and I always had been.
I’d loved him when I was a girl for being handsome and kind. For always having time for me. I loved him now so much more than that girl had ever dreamed. I loved the life we had together. Working side-by-side, seeing him first thing when I woke and as I fell asleep.
It’s always the little things with me. I’d never wanted grand gestures. I loved that he brought me Daisy’s toffee-chip cookies when he went through town without me. The way he smiled at me. The way he held my hand. The way he asked what I wanted, and what I liked, and what I thought.
And—I had to be honest with myself—the sex didn’t hurt. He’d said I was innocent. I disagreed. I may have been a virgin, but I’d seen plenty of live shows by the time Edgar took me from my parents. I was very clear on the mechanics, and I’d read more than my share of romance novels.
I thought I knew all about sex, but wow, had I been wrong. No one would ever be as good as Griffen Sawyer. I already knew that.
I’d thought I could handle a temporary marriage to Griffen. Now that there was the possibility of a baby I realized I’d just been fooling myself. What had my plan been, anyway? After five years was I just going to leave town and move away?
I was always going to have to see him move on without me, was always going to have to watch him fall in love with someone else, to build a life with another woman. And now? Knowing that if we had a child together I could never move away, would never do that to our family—whatever form it took—could I live with that?
This whole thing was a mess. How many times had he said he didn’t want to bring a baby into this situation? Someone was trying to kill him. What if getting pregnant turned that gun on our child?
And I couldn’t forget that every time someone told him my getting pregnant would make things simpler, Griffen insisted he didn’t want a child with me. He’d been very clear about that.
Then he should have stayed out of my bed.
A wan smile curved my lips. What did they say in health class? All it takes is once. I tried to force myself to take a deep breath. I didn’t even know if I was pregnant. It was probably just a virus, and I was late because I was stressed.
I kept my eyes open all day for the chance to run into a drugstore on the excuse of grabbing cough drops, but when we finally stopped, Griffen said easily, “I’ll come in, too. I need a water and I ran out of toothpaste.”
“I’ll grab you some,” I offered, but he turned me down with a smile. Foiled again.
The drive home from Asheville was longer than the drive there thanks to five o’clock traffic, but it felt faster. We sped towards Sawyers Bend, all my worries looming over us, Griffen sneaking questioning glances at me through the silence.
I rolled my window down to get some air and break up the quiet in the car. It was cold outside but not freezing. Spring was finally on its way.
I never heard the gunshot.
We were zipping down a straightaway and out of nowhere the front end of the hood dipped on Griffen’s side, the car lurching down and to the left, speeding into the opposing lane of traffic. A car swerved out of our way as Griffen swore, wrestling the steering wheel until he could pull the vehicle back into our lane.
He hit the brakes. The car heaved and jerked, the wheel yanking itself out of Griffen’s hands. W
e careened off the road, tilting to the side, every cell in my body straining to be upright as the car leaned and leaned, and I knew in my gut we were going over the edge of the embankment.
The fall started so slowly. I was on my side, then my feet were over my head and we flipped again, gaining momentum as gravity took over.
The mountain flew up to the window—or we were flying down—I didn’t know anymore. Fire erupted in my arm, we rolled again, and everything went black.
Chapter Forty-One
Hope
Light sliced into my eyes. I blinked, squinting as a shadow eclipsed the sun and everything went dark again. Voices. Griffen and someone else. A stranger.
The strange voice was a man, distant and tinny in my ringing ears. “I couldn’t believe it! I swerved to get out of your way and when I looked in the rearview, you flipped! Man, you went over like five times,” he said, breathless with shock.
Griffen’s face came into focus above mine, his eyes stark with fear.
“Hope. Oh, my God, Hope. Look at me.”
“So much blood,” the stranger said.
“The ambulance is on the way, baby. Please say something.”
“I’m okay,” I gasped out, lying because I couldn’t stand seeing Griffen so scared. “Are you bleeding?”
Griffen’s face went blank. Softly he said, “No, baby. You are. You had your window open and a branch got you in the arm. I don’t know how deep it is, but I’m going to leave it until the paramedics get here.”
“Just my arm?” I asked, suddenly feeling the deep burn in my upper arm, the sticky heat of blood growing chill and clammy the further it flowed from the source.
Griffen had an expert poker face. He didn’t answer my question. “We’ll know more when the paramedics get here. Just stay still, okay?”
“Don’t I have to get out of the car? In case it explodes or something?”
The tiniest smile quirked the side of his mouth. “The fuel tank isn’t leaking, Buttercup, and I don’t want to move you unless I have to.”
The stranger kept babbling. “I can’t believe it, I thought for sure you’d both be dead.”
Griffen looked over his shoulder at that. “Shut up. I’m fine. She’s fine. Don’t freak her out.”
“Sorry, sorry, I’ve just never seen anything like this. Sorry.” The briefest pause. “Oh, my God, is that a Maserati? Did you just total your Maserati? Oh, man, what a waste.”
Griffen ignored him to brush my hair back off my face. “Just hang in there for me, okay? Try to stay awake and hang in there.”
Hang in there? How much was I bleeding? Griffen looked over his shoulder again, his features relaxing from their expressionless mask.
A second later, everything was noise and motion. Griffen was pulled away, and a man and a woman in dark uniforms were poking and prodding me, asking questions, making me move my fingers and my toes, probing the branch stuck in my arm until I gasped in pain.
Finally, they unbuckled my seatbelt and eased me out onto a stretcher. They moved fast, the blue sky flashing above me, the air cold on my cheeks, and I was being lifted and shoved into the back of the ambulance. They moved around me, attaching monitors, shoving oxygen in my nose, and talking over me in words I didn’t understand.
Griffen joined me in the back of the ambulance, taking my hand but staying silent to let the medics work. They decided to leave the branch where it was until we got to the hospital. That decision made, one of the paramedics went to the front and we started to move.
“ETA less than 11 minutes,” the paramedic beside me told us. “If you had to flip your car, you picked a good place to do it.”
“I didn’t flip the car,” he corrected the paramedic and pulled his phone from his pocket. After a few taps on the screen, he said, “West, Griffen.” A pause. “Not great. I’m in an ambulance with Hope headed to the E.R. We were coming back from Asheville on Boylston Highway and somebody shot out my left front tire.” Another pause. “I’m okay. The car flipped a few times and Hope has a branch stuck in her arm. We’ll know more once we get to the hospital.” He waited, listening, and then said, “You can’t miss it. When you’re done, you know where to find me. Yeah, I know.”
I tried to catch his eyes from my prone position, but he was avoiding me, staring across my body at the paramedic holding a bandage on my arm, her eyes on my vitals.
Giving up on catching Griffen’s eye, I looked at the paramedic. “Did someone check him over? Make sure he didn’t hit his head or something?”
She gave me a well-practiced smile of reassurance. “We gave him a quick look. We can check in again at the hospital, but I think you got the worst of it.”
Griffen turned to look at us, his smile of reassurance forced and stiff. “I’m fine, Hope. She’s right. You got the worst of it.”
Their reassurance wasn’t the least bit reassuring.
I stared at the ceiling of the ambulance and tried to think. Someone had shot out Griffen’s tire? We’d considered canceling the trip after the shot taken into the office the day before, but everyone had agreed it was unlikely the shooter knew our plans, and so far, the attacks had centered on Heartstone.
Guess everyone had been wrong. Somehow, the guy with the gun had known exactly where we’d be, and when. Someone must have talked, but who?
It occurred to me that it could have been anyone, and not necessarily out of malice. We had no idea who the shooter was, which meant the person who mentioned our plans for the day probably hadn’t attached any significance to the conversation. We’d been shot at twice and still had no idea who was behind it.
I snuck a glance at Griffen. He stared at the other side of the ambulance, his jaw tight, fists clenched on his knees. The ambulance rocked up and rolled to a stop. Everyone sprang to life, the back door swinging open, people talking over my head and around me. I was lifted and rolled through the doors, down a glaringly-white hall, and straight into a room.
Someone in a white coat carrying a tablet corralled Griffen, asking him all sorts of questions about my medical history and insurance and then, to my surprise, taking his credit card and swiping it through a reader plugged into the tablet. Efficient. I was mostly being ignored as the paramedics filled in the doctor and the doctor took a closer look at the branch still sticking out of my arm. It wasn’t much of a branch, really, no more than seven or 8 inches long and skinnier than my pinky finger. Still hurt like hell.
“Okay, Hope?”
I nodded up at the doctor, wondering if it was time for somebody to tell me something.
“We’re going to take this stick out of your arm. It’s probably going to bleed more and I don’t want you to panic. I’m going to clean it out and then stitch it up for you. I’ll give you a local anesthetic so you shouldn’t feel anything. If it hurts, I’d like you to let me know, okay?”
It took a few seconds to process what she was saying. Once I did, dread filled my heart. This was it. I was officially out of time. I glanced over at Griffen and then up into the doctor’s friendly but impatient eyes.
“I… uh… will the local anesthetic be bad if… um… if I’m pregnant?” When I said the p-word, I shot a panicked look at Griffen. He froze. A heartbeat later he was at my side, taking my hand and looking down at me. I couldn’t read his eyes. Maybe I was afraid to look too closely, afraid of what I’d see.
“You think you might be pregnant?” he asked in a carefully neutral voice.
“I… uh… I’m late. And I—”
“You fainted twice,” Griffen reminded me as if I didn’t know.
“Only once,” I corrected, looking at the doctor. “The other time I just got dizzy. I’ve been dizzy and my stomach’s off, but—”
“The local anesthetic should be fine if you’re pregnant, but just in case, we’ll do a test. How about that?”
I nodded in agreement.
“How late are you?” she asked, making a note on her own tablet.
“I’m not perfectly regular so it could be a week or it could just be a couple days.”
“All right. I don’t want to try to get you in the bathroom with this tree sticking out of your arm,” she winked at me, “but we can do a blood test instead of a urine test.”
I barely noticed as she drew blood for the test. Griffen was staring down at me, his eyes fixed on the injury to my arm, his face pale.
The next thing I knew there was another needle, and then another, the doctor injecting a local anesthetic. “We’ll find out soon if you’re pregnant, and if you are, I can give you a quick exam, but this won’t do any harm to the baby. The risk of infection outweighs any potential risk from the treatment. It’s easier if you don’t look.”
Griffen caught her meaning and pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed, taking my hand in his. He reached out to run a finger down my cheek, turning my face away from my right arm.
His eyes locked on mine. “Just look at me, Buttercup. She’s going to get that splinter out of your arm, clean you up, and you’ll be good as new. Okay? Just keep your eyes on mine and don’t worry about what she’s doing over there.”
“Got it,” I said, my gaze melting into his clear, green eyes, no longer remote and closed off. I still couldn’t read them.
Was he freaking out? Angry? Happy? Shouldn’t he be something?
I was all of the above.
Well, not angry. But freaking out and happy and confused and scared and also freaking out. Did I mention freaking out? I was a jumble of emotions, but I read none of them in Griffen’s calm gaze.
“Just keep your eyes on me,” he repeated. My arm moved. Something was pulling on it and I realized the doctor was taking out the piece of wood. I had to look, was already turning my head when Griffen’s palm cupped the side of my face and turned it back to his.
“Don’t look.”
