by Jaymin Eve
"Did you find Blake?"
A distraction question was the right way to start. Dylan, as usual, ignored that path and took his own. "What did the doctor say?"
Great, he went right into the heavy shit first. "She said that I sustained a lot of injuries and that the baby is somehow still alive right now, but there's no telling if it will remain that way. I'm lightly bleeding. There's nothing they can do to stop it. So... it's up to fate."
Dylan's face was awash with fury, and I held my breath, waiting for him to explode at me—especially about me keeping the possible pregnancy from him. Instead, he turned and marched toward the door, his boots loud on the tile floors.
When he reached the door, he wrenched it open, scaring the fuck out of a nurse, who must have been in the hallway. "Get me the head of this department, Dr Keller," he said with a snap. "Right. Fucking. Now."
The nurse nodded rapidly before she disappeared from sight.
Dylan stared after her down the hallway, brow furrowed like he was gathering himself, before he returned to my side. He sat in the same chair Riley had, pulling it even closer. I was too exhausted to keep holding onto my tense stress, so I collapsed against the pillows, waiting for him to say something.
"I'm sorry."
For a moment I wondered if I’d dozed off and was dreaming. Had Dylan just apologized to me? "Sorry for what?" I asked, genuinely curious.
"For not protecting you. For not protecting your..." His eyes dropped to my stomach, and both of us stared like a baby was about to burst free.
"Our baby, Dylan. This is our baby, not my brother’s."
Holy hell, that was equally the most terrifying and exhilarating statement I’d ever made out loud, regardless of how Dylan was going to react.
The silence extended awkwardly.
"You don't have to say that, Brooke," he finally said. "I will help you get away from Blake. I will set you up for life, and you’ll never have to worry about money or a lack of freedom ever again. There's no need to pretend it's not your fucking asshole of a brother's child. What he did to you is absolutely reprehensible, and when I get my hands on him, I will murder his ass in a way that draws out the pain for weeks."
He was saying all the right things, but the one part that was wrong was his flat-out refusal to acknowledge this child could be his. He didn't even ask me if I was sure. He just assumed I was lying to save myself from the embarrassment of admitting I'd been raped. And I knew why he was so adamant in his belief of this: He didn't want to be the father. Bottom line.
"Dylan," I said softly, reaching out to take his hand. "You have to listen to me—"
I was cut off when the man, who I assumed to be Doctor Keller, appeared in the room, looking somewhat harried and out of breath. "Mr. Grant," he said, hurrying to Dylan's side. "Sorry, it took me longer than expected to get here."
It had been all of two minutes, and I was starting to get the idea of what life was like for the filthy rich. "Talk to me about options for saving this pregnancy!" Dylan snapped, not even acknowledging the apology. Someone needed to work on this guy's people skills because they were sadly lacking.
"Uh, sir. As Dr. Mooney explained to Ms. Lawson this morning, there’s nothing we can do at this early stage in the development. The fetus—"
"Baby," Dylan interrupted. "It's her goddamn baby, and she deserves the best care that this city provides."
"The baby is barely eight weeks into gestation," the doctor continued, his hands wringing together. "There's nothing, sir. You can ask any specialist in the world, and I promise the answer will be the same. The best thing Ms. Lawson can do is rest, have minimal stress, and hydrate, and we will continue to monitor the situation. I promise this is a top priority for this hospital."
Dylan opened his mouth, but I reached out and put a hand on his arm. "It's okay," I said softly. "Let the nice doctor go back to saving lives, and I will go back to resting and trying my best to heal myself and our baby."
He flinched, the smallest of movements. I'd deliberately used that word and he knew it, but neither of us acknowledged the why of it again.
"Grace, your nurse, will return in half an hour to check your vitals again," the doctor assured me, before he shot Dylan one final look and then hurried from the room.
"Brooke—" Dylan started to say, and I could already tell by the tone of his voice he was going to try and reassure me again that my fictional incestuous rape was nothing to hide from him.
"Dylan, shut the fuck up and listen to me," I barked, forcing a million times more steel into my voice than I was really feeling. It was enough to shock him, though, and his mouth snapped shut.
I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly.
"Now. Sit the hell down and quit being an overbearing prick." He did as he was told, and I kinda loved it. "You made an assumption about this pregnancy, and you were wrong. Is that perfectly clear? Yes, Blake abused me. Yes, he used to beat the crap out of me on a regular basis. Yes, he treated me like his property and has done despicable, horrific things to me in the years since our parents died." I needed to pause then and swallow the lump in my throat. I’d blocked so many of those memories out and had no desire to dredge them up any time soon.
Dylan wet his lips, taking the opportunity to speak as I sorted myself out. "Little bird, you—"
"I told you to shut up and listen," I scolded, glaring him into silence. If he gave me that pitying, sympathetic look one more time...
I had to rip the Band-Aid off. "Blake never raped me, Dylan. I was a virgin when you met me, and I've never been with anyone else. Unless this is the product of divine intervention, then it can only be your baby."
His eyes widened in shock, and my heart sank. Dylan Grant did not want to be tied down to his pregnant, eighteen-year-old booty call. Not in a million freaking years. But fuck him. I didn't need him to raise this baby with me, especially if Blake was dead, at which point I’d be the sole inheritor of our parents’ estate.
"How is that even possible?" Dylan croaked, still clearly trying to process the whole thing.
I rolled my eyes. "Pretty fucking easy, when you think about how crappy you are at pulling out."
He shook his head, his brow furrowed. "No, I know how that happens. I want to know how it's possible that I was your first and didn't fucking know! What the hell, Brooke?"
Maybe I was misreading things out of stress and exhaustion, but I could swear he was actually mad about this fact. Like it was any of his business whether I was a virgin or not.
So, I did the only sensible thing I could do in such an awkward situation. I changed the subject.
"Did you find Blake?" I asked again, redirecting his steadily building fury onto something not me. "That guy last night said Blake had planted the stolen files on me, but why wouldn't he just tell them where he hid them?"
Dylan was pacing my hospital room now, running his hand over his shaved head like he could scrub the shocking revelations straight out of his brain. How cool would that be if it worked?
"What the fuck, Brooke?" he asked again, sounding less pissed off and more pleading. "What the fuck?"
I blinked several times at the distraught look on his face. "What?"
"You're pregnant," he told me, like this was news.
"You're just now processing this information?" I snarked back, my irritation at his whole attitude getting the better of me. "Trust me, Dylan, it wasn't intentional. If that's what you’re worried about, you can just forget it. I don't need your money, nor do I want it. This isn't some trap to snag myself a piece of the Delta Five. I will be just fine on my own, so don't go feeling like you owe me anything."
His brows hitched. "That thought never even crossed my mind, Brooke."
I scoffed. Such bullshit.
"I'm pissed off right now because you're pregnant and you didn't fucking tell me! You ran away from me in the middle of a goddamn snowstorm. Do you have any concept of what could have happened? Jesus fucking Christ, Brooke, were you ever plannin
g on telling me?" He was shouting now, and the door opened to admit a worried-looking nurse.
"Not fucking now!" Dylan roared at the woman, and she disappeared as fast as she'd arrived, probably to call security.
I shook my head, my throat thick with emotions and my stomach a mess of guilt and anger and fear. But he was accusing me of deliberately keeping this pregnancy a secret when I hadn't even known. Not for sure, anyway. So... no. Fuck him. He didn't get to act like the victim in this situation. He didn't get to rant and yell at me when I was the one who was growing a human inside me. When I was the one who’d nearly died last night, and I was the one who'd raise this child and love it.
No. Fuck that.
"Get out," I told him in a cold voice.
He blinked at me in surprise. "Excuse me?"
My anger spiked. "You heard me, Dylan. Get. Out. You don't get to do this. Not here and definitely not now. Get out of my room and don't come back until you can act like a grown-ass adult."
He wanted to argue; it was written all over his face. But the nurse returned, like I'd known she would, with two hospital security guards accompanying her. No one shouted at the staff of this hospital and got away with it, not even Dylan Moneybags Grant.
"This patient is under strict orders to rest," the nurse informed the tall, scary motherfucker standing at the foot of my bed. "You've become detrimental to that treatment plan, so you need to leave. Right now."
She folded her arms across her chest, and there was pure steel in her glare. Not even Dylan could fail to see that.
He scowled at the nurse for a long moment, then flicked his gaze over me and let out a defeated sigh. His shoulders sagged, and it was like someone had just stuck a pin in his whole alpha-male-personality bubble.
With a tired nod, he moved in the direction of the door, then paused.
"He didn't tell them," he told me in a bitter tone, "because he planned to get free and recover it himself. Blake is still out there somewhere, Brooke, and I'd bet my entire fortune he's coming to find you."
He left my room then, but his words remained hanging in the air like a goddamn prophecy. My stomach clenched painfully, and I let out a moan.
"You okay, hon?" the nurse asked in a gentle voice as the security closed the door after themselves, leaving us alone.
I shook my head. "No. I think I'm going to be sick."
The nurse, Grace, just calmly handed me a vomit bag and smoothed my hair out of the way while I emptied my guts.
"Morning sickness," she told me with a wry smile. "Stupid name for it, really. Mine had me vomiting at six in the evening, every evening for the first sixteen weeks."
I wiped my mouth with a wet cloth she handed me and sagged against my pillows. "Then what?"
She smiled. "Then nothing. One day I was sick as a dog and the next I felt incredible. Pregnancy does crazy things, and everyone reacts differently." She disposed of my vomit bag and quickly cycled through all my vitals.
"I'll get a light snack sent up for you," Grace told me as she put the blood pressure machine away and wrote down all my numbers on her chart. "Refill your stomach so you've got something to throw up again later." She shot me a wink, then left my room.
Alone for the first time since Riley had shown up in the morning, I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself. As much as I wanted to blame my nausea on the pregnancy, it wasn't. It was pure, unfiltered fear.
24
I dozed for a while but gave up after the shift change and another round of observations. The hospital, thankfully, had cable TV, so I was able to watch a couple episodes of Gossip Girl—which had all new meaning now that I'd met the Delta Heirs—before my door opened again.
It wasn't Dylan, though. Of course not. He wouldn't come crawling back with his tail between his legs to apologize for being an overbearing prick. Nope, I suspected that I'd be the one apologizing to him because that was just the sort of person I was.
Weak.
"Just me again," Riley said with a small smile. "Sorry, you must be so sick of me already."
I kind of was, but not because I didn't like her. I just needed some time to process inside my own head.
"No, not at all," I lied. "But... don't you have better things to be doing?"
She pulled up the same chair she'd used earlier and sat down beside my bed with her oversized designer handbag in her lap.
"No way," she replied with a grin. "I mean, yeah, there's stuff. But D-man doesn't trust anyone but us to keep an eye on you right now, and I'd rather hang out in here than lurk in the hallway like a mega-creep. Is that okay?" She reached into her huge purse and pulled out a greasy paper bag of takeout. "I brought burgers to bribe you. Hospital food fucking sucks, no matter who is donating to the board."
It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse and ask for some time to myself. But then the smell of cheeseburger reached my nose, and I groaned. That was exactly what I wanted to eat. No. No, no, no, I needed to eat that burger.
Riley took my nonverbal cue and handed over one of the paper-wrapped, glorious beasts, then propped a box of french fries on the edge of my bed.
I needed to amend my thoughts from earlier. She was definitely friend material.
That was cemented just a little further when she didn't say a word as we both inhaled our junk food. There's something to be said for a person who can exist in silence with a virtual stranger and not make it feel uncomfortable. Riley had a gift, or maybe, I was just past giving a fuck at this stage.
"Wanna watch TV?" I jerked my head toward her to see the remote in her hand. "I'm sure they're not offering the best channels, but we'll find something."
I nodded. "Yeah, the doctor sort of gave me the all clear for some light television watching, and it actually sounds… kind of great.”
And it was. We just spent mindless hours watching rom-coms, and not once did I wish to be alone. If anything, she saved me from anxiety stressing over everything that had happened in the last few days.
The last few years even.
Our conversations were light and fun, Riley regaling me with tales about her fucked up best friends and fiancé. "Honestly, I don't know how you're alive," I said with a smile, laying my head on the pillow as I turned toward her.
Her laughter this time was soft and filled with the sort of happiness I wasn't sure I'd ever felt, except maybe in a few stolen minutes in a hotel room.
"I'm only alive because of them," she murmured. "I'm the luckiest bitch in the world to have them—not that I'll ever admit to them. And if you tell them I said that, I will vehemently deny it and withhold your cheeseburgers for at least a week."
I chuckled, and fuck if it wasn't genuine. "Your secret is safe with me. Friends before men."
Riley flashed me her perfect, white smile. "Yep. Hoes before bros. We have to stick together and stay strong, or those possessive bastards will have us locked in a room naked for the rest of our lives."
We both paused for a beat, each, no-doubt, thinking non-PG thoughts. "Yeah, still not the best idea," she said with a wide grin.
"But fun."
We laughed briefly before sobering. At this point there was nothing I could do to distract myself any longer, and as dark thoughts washed over me, I tried to stop a small sob from escaping.
“It’s going to be okay,” Riley said, placing her hand on my shoulder.
I shook my head. “Whether that’s true or not, it’s already so fucked up that I have no idea how to move forward from it.”
“Is this the Dylan-and-baby thing?” she asked, relaxing back.
My first instinct was to shake my head, but that wasn’t completely true. “It is partly that. Our last conversation didn’t go very well.”
“He’s not the best communicator,” Riley admitted, and it was such an understatement a snort choked out through my sobs.
“It’s not just Dylan,” I admitted. “When I ran from the camp, this really wonderful human helped me. Ruth.” I didn’t even know her last name, for f
uck’s sake. “She was killed by those guys who attacked us. It was my fault, and as much as I’m trying not to dwell on it, because I need to stay calm for my baby,” my voice dropped to a whisper, “I’m drowning in guilt.”
Guilt and pain. Ruth had fought her whole life, and she was tough, amazing, and the strongest person I’d met in a long time. She didn’t deserve her fate. “How the fuck do I live with being the reason a woman died?”
Riley took my hand, but no reassuring words emerged from her. She just held on, and I started to cry because I got why. Nothing she could say would make this better, and I would just have to work through it myself.
“My adoptive parents died because of me,” Riley said, startling me. Her voice was low, tinged with the sort of anger and pain I felt deep inside. “It took me many years and a fuckload of therapy, but I have reached the point where I no longer blame myself. I didn’t kill them. I didn’t do anything wrong. And I reassure myself with the reminder that at least they can no longer be hurt by the evil in the world.”
At this point tears were silently trailing along my cheeks and my body was exhausted.
“You can just mourn her for the wonderful person she was, Brooke,” Riley said. “She wouldn’t blame you for something that wasn’t your fault.”
I swallowed hard. “I think it’s going to take me a lot of years to come to terms with my guilt, but I sure as fuck have no issue with laying the blame directly where it deserves to be. Fucking Blake.”
Riley was about to answer, when a figure appeared in the doorway. Her gun was in her hand in a flash, the softness she’d displayed not a minute ago vanishing. Now she was a hardcore killer who would shoot dead any motherfucker about to threaten us.
Thankfully it was only Ben, hands in the air. "Sorry, ladies. I should have knocked and announced myself."
Riley growled at him, her gun disappearing just as quickly as it’d appeared. "Damn right, Ben. You're just lucky it's not Beck in here."
He paled, and it was clear that Beck had a rep. A well-deserved rep.
