Ash: A Bad Boy Romance (29 page)

I’m glad I didn’t tell her about that bullshit, because I’ve gone and made her feel like this—guilty, sad, and alone. My breath catches in my throat as I stand over her, and I realize it then—when I told her I wanted a child, I took her back to the nightmare place, the hospital where she lost her child. Then, like a fucking asshole cherry on top of an asshole cake, I let it slip that the head of a particularly violent faction of the Irish mafia in New York was her father.
 

Summer doesn’t respond to me.

Instead, she quietly flips through PubMed articles on her phone. To Summer, reading studies on intestinal parasites is what reading a comic book or romance novel is for someone else. I lean forward and look over her shoulder, pretending I’m just shifting. The studies she’s reading seem to involve endometriosis and miscarriage. When I see it, pain hits me, my throat growing tight.
 

“Summer—”
 
I start, but I’m not sure what I should say.
 

She drops her phone and covers it with her hand, then looks up at me. Her green eyes are dim. “Yeah?”

“There’s something wrong.” I reach out and touch her hair lightly. She looks like she wants to flinch, but she doesn’t. “If it’s about the other night... I’m just so...” I pause and swallow hard. “I’m just so fucking sorry I wasn’t there. I’ll never forgive myself. I just want to make it right. How can I make it right?”
 

She touches my hand, her caress lighter than a feather brushing against my skin. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ash.” She pulls her bottom lip in and chews on it. “I
was
really angry, but I’m not anymore. We were pawns in a sick game.” Pausing again, she squeezes my hand, but weakly. “I’m mad at Bianca. I’m mad at Cullen. But we can’t undo the past.”

“You mentioned the fellowship—is that something you want? I don’t care how much you work as long as I’m the one you come home to.”
 

She pauses, and tears come to her eyes. I stand there like an idiot, leaning over her, wondering if I said the wrong thing. But she’s still holding on to my hand.
 

“I don’t know what I want right now, Ash. But I know I’ll figure it out. I thought that’s what I wanted.” She leans back and closes her eyes, and I come around the couch and sit down next to her.
 

There’s nothing right about what’s happening to her right now, and that constricted feeling comes back to my chest. It’s unfamiliar—it’s not the same warmth I felt when I first saw her again, and it’s not the feeling of agony I had when I left her. When I look at her—sallow-skinned and deeply, deeply sad, I realize what it is. It’s fear—something I don’t usually feel, not for another person. I sigh and reach out for her hand.
 

“I’ll get the money for the gym, somehow. Josh’s fight is coming up. We’re going to be okay.”

She opens her eyes and moves closer, leaning her body into mine. “I know. You’re the one I’m coming home to. And that’s
good
, no matter what happens.”

“Are you okay, Summer? Tell me you’re okay.”
 

“I’m fine.” She sighs and moves in closer, and I hold her. I never thought I was the type of man who would need comfort from someone else, from a woman, no less. But holding Summer reassures me that we aren’t all the things we lost—we’re bigger than the pain of the past. As long as we have each other, we’re far better off than we were before. “We’ll get good news, I hope.” She opens one eye and looks at me. “Can we still afford this apartment?”
 

“Barely, Sunshine.” My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I take it out again.
 

It’s Natalie, Josh’s stepsister.
Josh is injured
, it says.
Might not be able to fight.
And I might not be able to afford a business,
ever
.

Fuck.

My chest constricts again as I slip my phone back in my pocket.
 

“In this case, ‘barely’ is the same thing as yes,” Summer says. “Sometimes ‘barely’ is bad, but in this case it’s good.”

My phone buzzes again, but I don’t look at it this time. I’m not in the mood for any more bad news. Instead, I pull Summer over on my lap and kiss her. The kiss isn’t wild or passionate, nor is it a grand gesture. It’s meant to reaffirm everything I’ve said to her, starting with the first time I said I loved her. I kiss her until she melts into me, until color returns to her cheeks and she no longer seems on the verge of meltdown. She drops her phone, puts her hands beneath my shirt and lifts it over my head, fingers tracing each one of my tattoos.
 

There’s a deep, distant sadness in her eyes still, but she’s flushed pink, and she kisses me again. Her shirt comes off, and I fall into the rhythm I adopt when I want to make her come. I realize as I’m pulling off her jeans, as I’m exploring her tight, perfect sex with my fingers and tongue, that I
know
her body now. I crave her in the same way I always have, but there’s relief and comfort when I slide my cock into her and hear her gasp, when I ride her, slow and certain, until she shakes against me and whispers my name, telling me she loves me. I hold off for a long time, making her come twice, and then a third time before I can’t stand it anymore, and I have to let go deep inside of her, shaking and shuddering.

“You’re fucking sexy as hell, even when you’re sad,” I tell her.
 

She looks at me quizzically, her legs still wrapped around me. “What makes you think I’m sad?”

Her hips move against mine, and she feels so sweet and warm that I might be able to go again. Leaning over her, I cup her breasts and roll her nipples between my fingers. “You just seem like it.”

“I’m worried,” she says. For a second, it looks like she might say something more, but instead she tightens her grip around me and lifts her lips to my ear. “Fuck me again,” she whispers softly, “so I don’t feel anything at all.”

I groan and feel myself growing harder inside of her. She gasps and kisses me, moaning when I thrust inside of her again and oblige her excellent suggestion.
 

Later, when we’re sleeping, naked bodies entwined, I have an idea.

It’s stupid and foolish and full of grand gestures, and it’s probably a
terrible
idea, especially for two people who are broke and depending on Linda Colington to get her shit together and run a successful business.

Present Day
 

I saw the baby a week ago. The ultrasound technician said she usually couldn’t see a heartbeat at five weeks, six days. But there it was, next to the yolk sac. A tiny flicker, 156 beats a minute. Strong, healthy, promising.
 

For an hour, I allowed myself a tiny speck of hope.
 

There was an amniotic sac, exactly where it should be, nestled in for a long journey.
 

There’s no reason it won’t survive. No reason.

I lean against the wall of the locker room. My stomach is beyond fucked up, and exhaustion settles over me. Then I hear a familiar voice fill the room, and a hand settles on my shoulder. I nearly jump to the ceiling, and I turn around to see my friend, Natalie. Another girl with a thing for fighters. She pulls me into a hug, and I relax into her. Even though she’s a few years younger, she’s been my best friend since what feels like the beginning of time.
 

“Natalie! Congratulations on your first shift!” I put on my peppiest voice, and thankfully—for once—a blush rises in my cheeks. When I looked in the mirror this morning, my skin was positively gray. The excitement takes me over, and I jump up and down with her and squeal. She makes me feel like we’re ten again, pretending that we’re nurses. But we’re doctors now, and as I hug Natalie, a feeling takes me over that’s stronger than nausea, more persistent than exhaustion. It’s a feeling of hope.

She brushes a silky blond lock behind her ear and looks down, almost embarrassed. “It’s so weird to be back in town,” she says.

I laugh and hug her again. For a second, it feels like there’s a stitch in my side, a throbbing pain, deep and low in my pelvis. But I ignore it. “You’re telling me, Nat. It’s weird as anything. It’s been—how long has it been?”

“Two years.” She smiles. I visited her at school on one brief trip home. I’d seen my mother and my aunt. And I had never run into Ash. The father of my child. My children. I gulp hard and almost start crying again. The idea of telling Natalie rests on the tip of my brain, but I know she has things to deal with that have nothing to do with me or that tall, redheaded man who’s wormed his way back into my life.
 

“You seen Josh yet?” I ask her. “He had a fight last night, right?”

“Yeah—he—I—I’ve actually got to get going.” She blushes, almost as bright pink as I do when I’m embarrassed. “End of my shift and all. There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve got to do today.” Natalie grins and squeezes me tight again before she picks up her purse and leaves, hair bouncing behind her, a spring in her step that I’m not even sure she’s aware of.
 

“Bye Nat!” I don’t think she catches the weird desperation that I hear in my own voice.
 

She turns and smiles at me, and a big part of me feels like I’m home again for good. As soon as she walks out of the door, my stomach clenches again. Or is it something lower, something in my pelvis? The pain hits hard, and I almost fall to my knees. It feels like the top half of my body is trying to separate from my bottom half, and I wish Natalie were still here. With her encyclopedic knowledge of all things medical, she’d know what to do, what to say. I walk over to the door, my lower back throbbing, and peek my head around the corner. Natalie is nowhere to be seen, so I take a deep breath and put on my scrubs.

There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong.
I keep repeating it in my head.

The cramping and pulsing continues as I walk down the hall, then a hard cramp zaps through my center, followed by a hot rush of fluid. Even before I look, I know that it’s blood, hot, sticky, coppery, full of iron and terror.
 

“For one day. For one day, I was okay. Goddammit—” I mutter to myself, walking toward the lab. In the seconds it takes to get to there, it feels like the only thing I want in the world is this child, this life, the untenable hope that things might be okay. It’s a hope that I can’t navigate, one I can’t really have. A bright plume of blood hits my scrubs, and I start sobbing at the door of the lab.

“Can someone—I need someone to get me an ultrasound—”

At the same moment, both Priya and Zelda walk into the lab. Zelda drops the files she’s carrying and Priya grabs me by the arm firmly and takes me down to one of the private rooms. She looks at me, and I think she’s going to say something like, “What is this now?” But instead, she just nods to Zelda and places a hospital gown on my lap. The pain eases enough for me to strip out of my bloody pants as Priya draws the curtain and Zelda runs through the door. Before she pulls the curtain back, I text Ash.

Get to the hospital, now. I need you.
 

I stare at the screen while Zelda takes my vitals and Priya looks through my chart. To her credit, she maintains complete professionalism and doesn’t even look up as she takes down my information. “Female, twenty-eight, six and a half weeks pregnant, presenting with abdominal pain,” she mutters to herself, just like she’s in a room full of residents.
 

“HCG was 2000 last Monday, and 4500 on the nose Wednesday,” Zelda says as she wraps my arm in a blood pressure cuff. “Patient’s ultrasound showed a healthy pregnancy last week,” Zelda says, patting my hand. “And there’s no reason to believe it’s any different today.”

“Certainly not.” Priya looks up, and to my surprise, she smiles. “We’re just making sure,” she says softly. There are voices outside the door, and I might be hallucinating, but one of them sounds like Ash.
 

“My wife—” I hear him say, and there’s a tall shadow moving outside of the translucent window.
 

The door opens, and I see Debbie peaking her head around the corner. “Your friend is here. Says he’s your
husband
.” Debbie raises her eyebrow and looks at me meaningfully. Tears sting my eyes. This isn’t exactly what I had planned when I thought about revealing the secrets that I thought weighed me down. Life often doesn’t give you what you expect, however.