When she would’ve reached back in for the tomatoes I stopped her. “None of those, please.”
She looked at me, looked at the tomato that she knew I loved, and nodded, placing it back on the shelf in the fridge and closing it with her backside.
“And yes, that’s what I heard when I called to check on him earlier. They’re keeping him in a medically induced coma until they’re sure the swelling is down to a manageable level. They’re contacting the paternal grandparents, too.” I knew that would be her next question.
My mom had a bit of a soft heart for those who didn’t have family.
Which was why Joslin was so loved by her.
Joslin’s parents weren’t what one would call ‘quality’ people.
They both smoked weed and neither had a job. I wasn’t even certain how they funded their extracurricular activities.
Then again, I’d never asked seeing as I was a fuckin’ cop.
She smiled at me.
“That’s good. Is he on the ped’s floor or in ICU?” She asked.
My mother worked on the pediatric floor.
That’d been where she was working when she met my father, who was a pediatrician, thirty five years ago.
My sister worked on the ICU floor, and Dean was a general surgeon.
“ICU for now. Ped’s when he gets better,” I answered, accepting the sandwich she offered me.
Her nose scrunched when she caught a closer look at my tattoos, and I barely restrained the urge to roll my eyes.
What was the big fuckin’ deal about the tattoos?
I thought they were fuckin’ great.
She, on the other hand, thought they were ugly.
Whatever.
“So, when did Joslin and Dean start dating? I hadn’t realized they were even together,” I asked, taking a bite of my sandwich.
It felt like a mouthful of sand as I chewed and swallowed.
I washed it down with a large slug of sweet tea that my mother handed me, and finished the sandwich in three bites while my mother worked the corner of her lip with her teeth.
“Well?” I asked again.
She sighed. “They’ve been seeing each other for going on a year now, Michael.”
I blinked. “No shit?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Michael, you know how I don’t like when you curse.”
Being on the ped’s floor really kept my mother from using bad language day in and day out. She rarely, if ever, used them. And hated when her family did.
“What’s the big secret?” I wondered aloud.
My mother pursed her lips. “Joslin said you’d be upset, and she’d like to keep it quiet until they were ready to share the news, and I went along with it.”
I raised my brow at her. “You do realize, right, that I’m your child and not her. She was in the family for less than a year if you want to count the amount of time we spent separated. Why keep her secret from your own son? It’s not that I’m torn up about it, I’m just disappointed in my family for keeping it from me. I’m not going to fucking break.”
“Language!” She snapped.
I threw up my arm.
“Thanks for dinner, ma. Maybe you can let me know when you’d rather put me ahead of my ex. I’ve got some awesome stories that I think you’ll find extremely interesting,” I said, walking to the back door.
“Mikey,” my mother said worriedly.
I held up my hand. “Save it.”
With that, I left and didn’t look back.
Chapter 4
I hate you. Not in an ‘I hope you die’ kind of way, but more like I hope you develop an allergy to chocolate and cheese kind of way.
-Coffee Cup
Nikki
“Hey there, Nikki!” Joanna said from her position behind her desk at the Pediatric ICU nursing station. “How have you been?”
I smiled. “I’m good. I just came up here to check up on that little boy. How’s he doing?”
She smiled sadly at me. “Lonely, I’m sure. But I’m short two nurses and we’re nearly at capacity.”
I brightened. “Do you mind if I sit with him for a while?”
“I think he’d like that,” she smiled.
Taking her words to heart, I followed the directions to his room, and walked in on a starkly white room with a crib in the middle of it.
Well, a hospital bed, crib.
It really wasn’t much of a crib.
It didn’t have that homey feeling like most cribs had.
This one was cold, metal, and bland.
And the tiny boy in the middle of it, hooked up to hundreds of tubes and wires, broke my heart.
I loved children.
I loved them with a passion and fierceness so powerful that I could barely see straight.
And I’d never have any of my own.
So I soaked it up by spending time with other people’s children.
And it looked like this little guy could use a friend.
Walking over to the crib, I took a seat at the chair, just to the side of it, and watched him.
His little head was wrapped in gaze from about the nose up, only one eye revealed.
His hands were taped to little boards so if he were to move, he wouldn’t pull out the IV lines they had in both hands.
His feet had monitors attached to them with a bright green wrap, and his body was veiled in a bright red hospital gown made for tiny humans such as him.
Picking up one of the books that was on the shelf across from my seat, I leaned back in my chair and started reading to him.
I must’ve gone through five or six books before I realized I wasn’t alone.
I looked up from my book I was reading to see Michael leaning against the doorframe, watching me.
“Hey,” I said, surveying him.
He looked better than he had before.
His white t-shirt stood out starkly against his tattooed skin.
I’d never seen his arms bare before, now that I thought about it.
“Hey,” he said carefully. “I was just bringing him some of his things…you know, so he wouldn’t be alone.”
“That was nice of you,” I whispered softly. “Come in.”
He did, albeit a little reluctantly.
When I noticed, I stood, offering him the chair.
“It’s about time I went anyway. I just wanted to come check on him, see how he was doing,” I whispered softly.
Michael, who’d been surveying the boy, looked up.
His beautiful eyes pierced me straight through every time he gave me the full force of them.
“You don’t have to go,” he said softly. “I’m not staying long. I have to go.”
Wasn’t he being nice?
You see, Michael and I had a long history.
Well, it was more like four months total of history, but that history was enough to last a lifetime.
I patted him on the forearm, a little bit of smartass filling my tone. “Well, then I guess you can walk me out.”
After placing a kiss to the tips of my fingertips, I pressed it against the boy’s hand, and looked at him longingly.
How could someone ever shoot their own child?
What kind of monster was capable of that?
Saying a silent prayer, I walked out of the room, very aware of Michael watching me the entire way.
I’d convinced myself he wasn’t going to follow me, but the moment I walked into the elevator, the doors closed, and he was there.
Ninja much?
“You like kids,” he muttered, settling himself in the corner of the elevator by the numbers.
A statement, not a question.
One he knew the answer to already, seeing as that’d been the thing that’d drawn our relationship to a sudden rocking halt.
***
18 months ago
Nervously, I looked into the mirror and inspected my attire.
Today would be my eighteenth date with Michael, and I felt that it was the one.
The one that would change everything.
Today would be the day that I gave myself to him.
Lock, stock, and barrel.
We’d only been dating for a little over four months, but it was enough.
I would be breaking my rule of twenty dates before I slept with him, but that was only because I knew.
I knew I was about to sleep with the man I intended to marry.
A knock sounded at the door, and I hurried through my room to my front entranceway, and threw open the door.
Michael was standing there, long sleeved button down shirt, as always, and a smile on his face.
“You look beautiful,” he breathed.
I smiled at him and opened my door.
“I made your favorite,” I told him as he walked through.
I’d found over the last four months that Michael had a love for Mexican food. A great love for it.
And he really liked home cooked Mexican food.
I’d gone through my mother’s entire cookbook making him food and, over time, we’d discovered that his favorite was one of the most simple.
Fajita’s, rice, and beans.
“Score!” Michael said as he made his way through the living room and headed straight towards the kitchen.
“The rice and beans are done. The only thing I’m waiting on is for you to grill the meat,” I informed him.
He turned around and grinned, pinning me to the spot with those baby blues of his.
“So we have time,” he murmured, “for me to do this?”
Then his body crowded mine against the counter, and I forgot how to breathe.
“Do what?” I asked breathlessly.
He chuckled, then his mouth was on mine.
He tasted like heaven, mint with a hint of the Dr. Pepper he’d just finished drinking.
My hands went underneath his shirt as I said, “I’m ready.”
He blinked, then abruptly circled his arms around my lower legs, and lifted me off my feet.
“Jesus,” he breathed, turning around and walking quickly to my bedroom.
He didn’t bother with the lights, only laid me down on the bed before following me down.
“Are you sure? Because I’m about to lose control here, and I don’t want you to regret anything. Regret me,” he whispered.
In answer, I started stripping his shirt from his body, and then started working on his pants.
He lifted up and resumed his own disrobing, allowing me to shimmy my dress up and over my head.
All my careful planning for the night that included my outfit, down to the straightness of my hair, was out the window once his naked body pressed against mine.
“I’m so sure I can’t even stand it,” I told him, widening my legs to allow his hips to slip between them.
He growled against my mouth, hand moving up to cup my breast.
“Good,” he rasped, moving up to his knees.
When I heard the sound of a package ripping open, I stopped him.
“I’m on the pill,” I breathed, arching up to him. “And I’m clean.”
He continued rolling on the condom. “I’m clean, too. But I always wear a condom. No matter what. Less chance of having kids that way.”
I nodded, slightly upset that I’d wasted all that money going on birth control when he wasn’t even going to utilize the benefits of it.
Then I was filled completely with him, and I forgot to be disappointed.
Because he was anything but disappointing.
***
That next day, in my brother’s kitchen, had been the showdown that had ended our relationship.
I wanted kids. He didn’t.
Well, that wasn’t exactly what he’d said. More like he wanted kids…just not with me.
That simple.
“You…would…would you be willing to adopt?” He asked softly.
I blinked.
“What?” I asked in surprise.
He looked down at his hands, inspecting his fingers as he said, “Would you be willing to adopt? Or have kids that weren’t mine? Maybe by a sperm bank or something.”
I considered that for a moment, letting what he was saying sink in.
“Are you asking me if I’d be willing to adopt a child and still be with you?” I confirmed.
He finally looked up at me, and my breath caught.
His pupils were dilated and I was fairly positive it wasn’t because he was on drugs.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I miss you.”
Three simple words that had the power to defeat me.
“Michael, us breaking up…it wasn’t over something minor. It was huge. Pivotal. But it wasn’t even just the fact that you said you didn’t want kids with me. It was the fact that you were so final about it. You wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t share your feelings with me. Hell, but you fucked me with your t-shirt on, and wouldn’t let me in! Then you just shut down and didn’t even explain,” I said fiercely.
He let all that he was feeling seep into two words. “I’m sorry.”
I just shook my head. “It’s going to take a lot more than just ‘sorry’ to make everything alright.”
“Will you…will you come with me. Somewhere? I want to show you something,” he said softly.
“I have to go to a meeting tomorrow at eight. I can’t stay out late,” I tried.
He shook his head. “I’ll keep you there as long as you want to be there. The minute you want to go home, I’ll take you.”
“My car’s here,” I countered.
“I’ll drive you back up here in the morning,” he said pleadingly.
I looked at him for a long while before I came to my decision.
“Fine. Just…don’t hurt me again, Michael. It hurt enough the first time to last me a thousand lifetimes. I don’t think I could survive it a second time,” I whispered hoarsely. “Promise me.”
He made a sound in his throat that hurt my heart, but I didn’t relent.
I watched him and waited for him to promise me, and promise me he did.
“I swear on my life that I will never intentionally hurt you again. I promise.”
Chapter 5
Life’s a bitch. Oh, no. Wait, that’s you. My mistake.
-Secret thoughts of Nikki Pena.
Michael
“This is my favorite place in the world,” I admitted softly as I pulled my truck up into the front row parking spot of Peek’s Tattoo Parlor.
“It’s a tattoo parlor,” she said in surprise.
I tossed her a grin as I opened the door to my truck and dropped out.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking.
All I know was that this day had been complete shit, and I’d had to do a lot of thinking. Something I’d been avoiding doing for quite a long time now.
Nearly a year and a half to be exact.
From the moment that I let Nikki misunderstand why I didn’t want kids, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. But, at the time, I thought I’d been doing a good thing.
She would have a terrible life if she stayed with me, and there was no one on earth that I’d want to have to deal with my shit.
But then I’d held that boy, while he’d drained his lifeblood on my chest, and I knew that I couldn’t deny it anymore.
I loved her. And I’d do anything to have her. Even have a child with her if that was what it took.
I was tired of being lonely.
And when I walked in on her reading to the baby, I knew I’d make her mine again.
No matter what it took.
It all started with letting her into my world. Letting her see me. And that started here.
“So, I guess I need to start by telling you why I do the tattoos,” I started, swallowing convulsively before I flayed myself open.
“When I was twelve, I started cutting myself.”
She gasped in surprise and whipped around to stare at me.
I put the tailgate of my truck down, and hopped up, holding out my hand to her.
She took it, no reluctance whatsoever, and that bolstered me to say what I had to say next.
She came in between my legs and leaned into me, looking up at me with her heart in her eyes.
I leaned my head against hers for a long moment before pulling back and looking up at the stars.
“That was the first time my parents realized something was wrong with me. I didn’t try to kill myself, per se, I just knew that something was wrong, and pain made it feel better,” I explained, not looking down into her eyes. “That was when I was diagnosed with depression. Three weeks after that, I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Bi polar two, to be exact. By the time I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with ADD. Right now I’m on medication for my bi-polar disorder and ADD since they believe that those are the two causing most of my problems.”
When I finally got the courage to look down at her, it wasn’t horror that I saw, but understanding.
So I felt like I should continue.
“Surprisingly, none of that affected my schooling. The manic side of my bi-polar disorder kept me from falling behind with the other things affecting me. I always strove to be the best. The depression kicked in when I wasn’t the best,” I explained.
“My youngest sister is bi-polar,” she said, surprising the fuck out of me enough to look down at her again.
And the understanding in her eyes about killed me once again.
“When I turned eighteen, I got a job in a tattoo shop to help fund my schooling. My parents paid for nearly all of it, I only had to cover the books,” I explained. “That’s when I found that the pain of the needle fed that need for pain in less destructive ways, and I haven’t looked back since.”
“Schooling? I thought you were in the Navy,” she said.
I curled a sliver of her hair that’d fallen free of her bun behind her ear, cupping her neck once I did.
“I went to school for my medical degree when I was seventeen. Graduated with that when I was twenty five. Joined the Navy when I was twenty three, while finishing that up. Then realized that I hated being a doctor, so I just…quit.”
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