by ANGEL PAYNE
“The hospital isn’t far from here, so we should be to the emergency room in no time,” Dori interjected. “I’m going to call Dr. Julie now, okay? How are you doing, Abbi?”
“Okay. I’m okay…I th-th-think.” The pain started to subside, making room for overwhelming exhaustion. “Oh…shit. I’m so…tired. I just want to…sleep.” I closed my eyes, longing to shut everything out. The trendy bright lights. The cold sterile bathroom. Having to talk. Having to think.
It wasn’t my lucky night.
Another wave of cramps took hold, and I doubled over again. “Shit! Shit! Shiiit!”
“Hi, Dr. Julie. This is Dori Sanchez, Abbigail Gibson’s assistant. We are heading into the ER at Cedars via ambulance. I think she is in premature labor, possibly. We are hoping you can meet us there. Please call me at 760-555-4833. Thank you.”
Dori looked at me with fearful eyes. “I think I hear the sirens. I’m going to go out front and meet them, okay?”
“I’ll stay with her,” Rio offered.
“Thank you. I’m going to call Mr. Shark as well. He can meet us there.”
She impaled me with a firm look. I couldn’t recall Dori ever appearing that strict. She definitely wasn’t taking no for an answer on the matter. It was written all over her face. When I looked up to my sister-in-law, I saw a similar expression on Rio’s face.
“Let her call him, honey,” Rio said softly. “You and the baby will both need him…now more than ever.”
Chapter Twelve
Sebastian
“Where is she?” I bellowed the moment I walked through the sliding glass doors of Cedars-Sinai’s emergency department.
All heads swung in my direction as I kept stomping through. My voice bounced back at me from every gleaming surface in the place.
Elijah and Grant, who literally had my back, clamped my forearms with mutterings about being calm and levelheaded. The moment I could, I planned on shedding them like a molted skin.
Still, Grant tried again. He stepped right in front of me, blocking my path to the desk, where a doe-eyed nurse awaited my incoming detonation. “Bring your shit down about twenty. Right now, motherfucker—or they will have your ass outside while your woman and your son need you.”
As much as I wanted to rip his head from his body…he was right. I stopped and grabbed my hair until the sharp pain grounded me. “I’m good,” I seethed. “I’m fine! Get the fuck out of my way, Twombley.”
He finally let go of my arms, raising his hands in surrender.
“Mr. Shark.” The greeting came from Abbi’s obstetrician, who’d just appeared through a set of wide double doors. “We’ve been expecting you. If you’ll come with me, I can take you back to Miss Gibson.”
The woman nodded as if we were in a restaurant and she was simply showing me to my reserved table. That shit wasn’t going to fly any more than my buddies’ efforts at restraint. I stopped her with an urgent hand to her elbow.
“Dr. Julie,” I pleaded. “Help me out here. Nobody’s told me anything—only that she was brought in via ambulance. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“We can talk in front of Abbigail, Mr. Shark,” the efficient brunette answered. “She’s aware of the whole situation already, and maybe it’s best that we talk as a team.”
I nodded. At least I thought I did. Beneath my breath, I repeated the doctor’s last sentence. It was oddly calming, so I did it again—
Until she pushed the door open.
I was all but knocked off my feet when I saw Abbigail. Why did these places always reduce the person in the bed to a helpless, sickly looking stranger?
I didn’t want to know that answer. I was too focused on gulping down the rising panic in my throat, the prickling fear along my neck. I clawed at myself there, but it didn’t help in restoring my control. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move air into my lungs and form words with my lips and tongue.
“Is…is she sleeping?” I whispered.
“Mmm. Maybe. We gave her a mild sedative.” The doctor placed her hand on my arm, already predicting the questions I was about to cut free. “Something that’s safe for the baby at this stage; don’t worry.”
“Hey, I’m awake,” Abbi said quietly. “Just resting.” A wan smile hitched at the edges of her lips. “Hi, Papa.”
I rushed over but halted hard when I got to the side of the bed. I didn’t want to hurt her, and there were wires and monitors and tubes everywhere. She even had an oxygen cannula under her nose.
“Red. Baby. What is all this?” I turned back to Dr. Sanford, impaling her with my stare. Answers. I needed answers. Five minutes ago.
“The oxygen is just to put less strain on Abbigail right now. She was significantly stressed when they brought her in. The cramping can be painful, and pain does some crazy things to all parts of the body.” The woman walked up to the other side of the bed while she spoke. “So right now, mostly everything you see here is just for comfort and to get our mama feeling better. When she feels better, the little one will relax and settle down. All the drama tonight was his way of letting Abbi know he wasn’t happy with the strain she was putting on her body.”
Fuck.
I managed to hold the oath in, though not my stern look at Abbigail. But her eyes were closed, so she didn’t get the benefit of my frustration.
But she would. Oh, how she would.
“We’ve already had a long talk about why Abbi won’t be doing that again and what it could mean for the baby if she does.” The doctor’s smile was gentle. Abbi also smiled but kept her eyes closed. The little sneak knew what she was doing. More accurately, she likely knew what I was doing—and how to avoid the fallout from it. “If I were you, I’d consider this the one and only warning he was probably willing to give,” Sanford went on. “Next time, he will pack his bags and move out. And we all know it’s just too early for that. We want to keep him a happy tenant for now.”
The woman was beyond tactful about her rebuke, perhaps because she sensed mine wouldn’t be.
“Are you hearing her?” I broke in at once. My voice was three times the decibel level of Sanford’s, layered with the same ratio of fury. “Abbigail? Are you seriously listening to Dr. Julie right now?”
Her gaze flew open. Her greens were gleaming with emotion, though for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t decipher the exact source of it. She wasn’t completely contrite, but she wasn’t full of sorrow either.
Or maybe she was.
To the point it had transformed into something else, as well.
“Yes, Sebastian.” Her voice was just as impossible to figure out. The tremor beneath it didn’t help. Was she mad? Sad? Scared? Frustrated? Confused? All of the above? Because I sure as hell was. “I know the drill. I’ve already talked about all of this with the doctor before you got here.”
“Gee, thanks. That’s completely reassuring.” I spat it out, and so many parts of my brain ordered me to take it back. But I was floundering for self-control here, and that path always took one path. Right through my temper. “So sorry I wasn’t here for the full debriefing. My apologies. I was in fucking parking lot traffic on the 101 for a damn hour, thinking someone had actually listened to me and was taking it easy on herself at the party she insisted on planning. I was ready to get out and run down the side of the freeway, thinking I’d arrive just in time to hear her say I’d missed all the important shit. I was losing my goddamned mind—”
“Okay.” Julie Sanford clapped a hand over my right bicep with three times the force of Twombley and Banks combined. “Mr. Shark? Yelling at Abbigail now isn’t going to change a thing, all right? We’ve talked, and she understands what she did that caused the cramping and the spotti—”
I sliced her short when snapping back toward Abbi. “You were bleeding?” I demanded. “No one said you were spotting! Why wasn’t I told?”
“Bas!” Though the last of her rebuke was a raging hiss, her eyes shined with iridescent moisture. “If you’d calm down long
enough, I could—”
“I am calm!”
“Mr. Shark!” Dr. Sanford’s scold was so brutal, I wondered if we shared some distant Shark DNA. “Lower your voice. Now look at your wife’s face. Look. At. Her. Is your yelling making her feel better or worse?”
“We’re not married.” Abbigail rasped it with even wider eyes. Her unshed tears filled every space inside those bright green orbs. Why she zeroed in on that specific fact was beyond me. Of all the things happening…
“I’m sorry, dear.” The obstetrician rubbed Abbi’s arm. “That was habit. I know the situation, and I misspoke.” The doctor looked at me, disappointment etching her frown lines into deeper grooves around her mouth and eyes. “And look at how easy that was for me to do,” she bit out, as if telling me to eat my peas or go to bed hungry.
“How…easy…what?” I finally uttered. Couldn’t the woman just spit this shit out? What was I missing here?
“Can I speak to you out in the hall, please?”
I blinked some more but not in any more bafflement. Now the real panic was setting in. Holy shit. What was really going on here? I loathed the thought of leaving Abbi’s side, but the insistent look on Julie’s face made it clear we were going to have a little chat. In the corridor. Right now, dammit.
“Baby, we’ll be right outside the door.” I fumbled around her bed, looking for the nurse call button, and then jammed it into her delicate hand like a maniac. “If you need anything, just press that and someone will come. Okay? Abbi? Okay?”
“Sebastian!” Abbigail’s plaintive tone pulled me up short. “Stop! Go with Dr. Julie.”
“Mr. Shark?” The doctor stood at the door, nodding toward the hall beyond the heavy panel she had propped open. Once I followed her out, she led the way through an unmarked door not far away. The small room on the other side had just a round table with four upholstered chairs arranged around it, as well as a water cooler with a stack of paper cups perched on top.
“Let’s sit down, shall we? My feet are killing me. Breaking in some new tennis shoes, and it hasn’t been going well.” She smiled halfheartedly, but at least she didn’t launch right into the lecture.
And I knew I was in for one. Likely deserved it, too.
No. Fuck that!
I had every right to be pissed right now. And to make myself heard about why. “You know,” I said, “I told her not to overdo it. Did Abbigail tell you that part of the story? That I had every right to be scared out of my mind about her health, after what happened during her first trimester? That I warned her that she was taking on too much with that damn party? Not just any party either. Those were the most demanding clients on the planet, and she was so insistent on being involved up to the last detail.”
“I know,” the doctor said, folding her hands atop the table. “And I’m sure that you did.” She reached under the table and rubbed one of her ankles. “Damn. That feels good.”
“A month ago, when they were planning and planning, I could tell this event was going to be too much for her to be dealing with. I asked her to get more help for the night of the party.”
“Ughhh.” Sanford looked down at her feet again. “Honestly, I think I’m going to have blisters.”
Is she even listening to me?
“I told Abbigail not to push herself, not to endanger the baby or herself—”
“Maybe I should’ve gotten the next bigger size…”
“Dr. Sanford. Are you hearing a word I’m saying?”
She narrowed her eyes.
And I knew, in the blink of mine, that she had heard me. “You make it impossible not to, Mr. Shark.”
I shuttled my head back between my shoulders. Pressed my fingertips into the tabletop. “What the hell are you—”
“You talk endlessly. About the same thing. Over and over. To be honest with you, Mr. Shark, my feet don’t even hurt. I’ve been doing this for years. I know better than to break in new sneakers while I’m on rotation.” Julie got up, strode to the water cooler, and filled a cup for herself as well me. As she shoved the Styrofoam at me, she went on. “But I pulled this ridiculous mental game to prove a point to you. Except you’re so obsessed with proving yours, which of course, is how right you are and continue to be, that you couldn’t even realize how obnoxious I was being until it got so far out of hand.”
I let the cup of water sit there. I wasn’t sure if she was actually being nice about the drink or was about to pull a Yoda and order me to stand on one foot with the thing balanced atop my head. “All right. I’m a little lost here.”
“Of course you are.” The doctor sat back down again and looked at me for a long moment. “This is Abbigail’s first pregnancy, and you nagging her endlessly about what she should be doing and not doing—none of which is actually going to make her do it, by the way—isn’t helping. How do you not see that?”
A new expression took over her face. Remarkably, I was able to identify it. I knew disapproval when I saw it. My father had always made damn sure of that—with his belt, his bottle, or the back of his hand.
“You’ve been so worried about being right about everything that you didn’t see what was important to her. And whether you understood why that party’s success was important to her or not, you missed what she needed from you. Even though it was right in front of your face, man.” She took a sip of water while her words sank in. “You need to plug into your woman and her needs. Right now. Stop being so damn focused on yourself.”
I huffed. Screw that. I went ahead and growled. “I have no idea what—”
“Of course you don’t,” she quipped and took a brisk sip of her water. “But I have news for you. A baby is coming. Your baby. And that little human is going to change your life in ways you can’t even imagine.”
She touched my arm. It wasn’t her death grip of before, but it burned in with the same force—so deeply that I could only stare at where she’d made contact. “You, Mr. Shark, are about to not be the center of the universe anymore. For anyone in your household.”
She retracted her touch. Sat back. Gave me a simple shrug, her expression full of gentle challenge. She almost seemed smug, as if she were waiting for me to hoist my jaw off the ground and say something.
“That’s not—”
She tilted her head to one side, already silently calling my bullshit.
“I don’t—”
She let her head flop to the other side, still calling me on my crap.
“You don’t—”
She put her hand up. “Cut the crap, man. For now, please go spend time with your woman. If everything looks good after twenty-four hours, you can take her home. I’ll see you in my office in three days.”
Dr. Julie patted my shoulder as she walked by on her way out the door. When I looked down, I noticed, for the first time, the woman didn’t even have tennis shoes on. She was wearing black leather pumps.
Fuck me.
I really did have my head up my ass.
For the next five minutes, all I did was sit there and cradle that stupid head in my hands. That five minutes stretched to ten. Then to fifteen.
Sanford’s words sank in long. And deep.
To the point that they started to ache. Then hurt.
“What the hell?” I muttered. Then several more times. The laminate table wasn’t much help for advice anymore. I was on my own for this deduction, and it was a lonely goddamned valley in which to be.
But an abyss only I could traverse.
How had I fucked all this up so badly? Normally, I was the man on top of the heap. The king of the hill. Top of the list. The guy everyone else wanted to be. It had always been my nature to control whatever situation I found myself in. From childhood on, controlling everything from start to finish was the surest way to manage the outcome.
Then the universe had given me Abbigail.
And better than that…the promise of our baby.
But that new life had changed everything. Had sent me running toward the securit
y of my old ways to avoid the terror I was feeling. The utter uncertainty. My control had been slipping, and I went into default mode. Buckled down and took back the reins. Despite everything Abbi had made clear, from early on, I went back to trying to control her through indirect ways.
And now, my behavior was putting her and our son’s health at risk. I was driving her to defiance, to act out just to prove she could.
But now what?
I’d figured out only part of the tough stuff. Answered only one of the questions here.
I needed to give her what she needed…not what I thought she did or what my version of “best for her” was. But what was that?
I was giving all I could—but there were factors in our world that I couldn’t control. A hidden maniac—no; maniacs—were still out there, ready to threaten us again. Shark Enterprises needed my leadership. The Edge was still an architectural infant.
I didn’t believe Abbigail was trying to get in the way of any of that. Just the opposite. She supported my dreams. Believed in them. Wanted to be a vital part of them.
But was I doing the same for her?
How did we find the perfect balance? Other people managed this shit all the time; I was sure of it—but I had no examples to draw from in my personal life. Despite my joke about Doc Sanford and her Yoda spiel, I possessed no mentors.
Maybe I had to figure this out on my own. Come up with a new plan on my own.
That didn’t involve trying to control everyone and everything.
I pulled in a long, labored breath. Surged to my feet. Sat again. Stood once more.
And battled like fuck not to drop to my ass once more.
“A new plan,” I finally mumbled. “A new plan. A new plan.”
And just like the mantra into which I’d made them, the words brought yet another epiphany.
A new plan meant I needed a new me.
But maybe…that was what I already had. What the woman in that bed across the hall had already given me.
A new version of Sebastian Shark. A guy I kind of…
Liked.
