CHERISH (13 page)

I’m covered in a sheen of sweat. Naked, because that’s how Beckett prefers me to be when we are here alone, and barfing like nobody’s business when he bursts into the bathroom behind me. His hands gather my hair and he crouches down next to me.

You know you’ve crossed into something deep when your man holds your hair back and wants to be next to you while you vomit. I wish he wasn’t seeing me like this, but in the same moment, I need him here. Soothing me. In sickness and in health, right?

I huff and my head buzzes as I cough and retch. I'm reaching around for a towel, but Beckett is there handing me a cool washcloth.

“Babe.” His voice is thick with concern as he crouches beside me. “What the hell was that? You need to go to the doctor, like now.”

“No!” I only just get the word out before the lights start to dim and I grab for the closest thing, which turns out to be the toilet seat. I gag again, shaking my hand like it’s covered in fire ants.

“Babe.” Beckett puts the back of his hand over his lips and I see that look in his eyes. “
Yes
, you are going to a doctor.”

I gasp air. “It’s just stress. It’s just everything going on. I mean, one day I’m getting married, the next day my brother is missing and my mom.” I take a breath, calming my stomach, gulp hard. “And the mom that abandoned me comes back from the grave, then the next day she’s OD’d and now she’s on a ventilator in the hospital and I’m listed as her next of kin.” I let it out in one long breath before shifting onto my knees and realizing just how much I’ve had to process in the last forty-eight hours. It’s amazing I’m still conscious.

“Maybe it's just stress, that would make sense. But my number one job in this world is taking care of you, Promise. And when you bolt like the damn Roadrunner and throw up, that falls in my wheelhouse. So we are not going to argue about it. You’re going to the doctor.”

I bite my lip and crunch up my nose because I can see the look on his face and I know he’s not going to budge on this. But anxiety rears its ugly head and I need to tell him something.

“I’m deathly afraid of doctors.” I feel my head clear and I start to stand.

I take a step toward the sink, turning the water on, soaping my hands and then splashing my face.

“I’ll be with you, babe. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“I mean,” I give him an exaggerated nod before I continue, “like, I’ve not been to a doctor in
years
. The last one was when—after the—” I swallow the lump in my throat. “After the
thing
.”

“Seriously?” Beck raises his eyebrows, stretching the deep furrow of the scar from the broken glass that cuts right through over his right eye.

“Seriously. They tried to force me to have an exam—pelvic—when I finally told them what had happened.” For a second, I think about the other doctor I have seen since then, but quickly push it out of my memory. That's not the same thing. Not the same sort of doctor.

I watch Beckett’s face tense; he takes a quick look at the ceiling, pulling his lips back tight over his teeth, then looks down at me, laying his hands on my shoulders as I turn to face him.

I push forward. “I couldn’t do it. I was already so humiliated. Then Jeremy came and took me to the hospital. They started asking me all these questions; they didn’t even tell me what was going to happen. They just pulled out those metal things from the bottom of the table and told me to put my feet in them . . . and open my legs . . . and—” The memory has me clutching my chest, remembering the terror it caused to have strangers standing around impatiently waiting for me to expose myself with Jeremy looking on. I wipe away a buildup of cold sweat.

Beckett pulls me against him. “It’s okay.
Okay
.” His voice sooths over me as my heart pounds and my face flushes.

A phone rings, breaking through the comfort of just being held, a reminder of all the clouds hanging over us right now.

“Go.” I nod impatiently. “Please, go answer it.” My voice shakes.

Beck looks at me then out toward the open loft and doesn’t move.

“
Please
answer it,” I plead, my hands push on the hard muscle of his chest. “It could be Jordan.”

He breathes out. “Sit down. I’ll see who that is, then I'll bring you some water.”

Beckett guides me to the big soft chair in the bathroom, then sets another kiss on the top of my head before striding quickly out.

I watch his head cock to one side, trying to locate the ringing, then he steps toward the kitchen where his phone rests on top of a pile of unopened mail.

“Hello.” I can't make out any more words, but I can hear his voice rising until he turns and looks at me, and I hear him say, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

I barely make it back to the toilet before my stomach comes up again.

Beckett

“I want to go see my mom,” she says before I can catch my breath.

But I don’t care about anything else right now.

“That shit can wait. Northrup can wait.” I march into the loft huffing and puffing, shutting down her little fit before it gets off the ground.

I just ran six blocks down and back to the nearest drug store and my lungs are on fire as I make my way back into the loft. I throw my jacket over the weight bench, holding the small paper bag in my teeth.

The phone call earlier was from the hospital. Holly woke up. The woman apparently has the constitution of a cockroach.

She not only woke up, she pulled out her IVs, her feeding tube and all that shit. Then she left the hospital. A few hours before we came by, they'd removed the ventilator and she'd been breathing on her own. Apparently she briefly opened her eyes, but that was it.

So in about five hours, she’d turned from half vegetable into Wonder Woman. She’s gone AWOL and her slimy ‘tard partner in crime decided to show up some time during the night to help her escape. He knocked down a nurse and generally disrupted the entire ward on their way out.

“So they said my mom was screaming about going to CPS? I think we should try to talk to her. Find out anything we can about Louis. And, Northrup is waiting.” Promise gives me the death stare but I don’t give a shit this time.

She knows I always listen to her, but bottom line, today I’m deciding what’s happening and when. So she can pitch whatever little blue thunder fit she wants. I’m keeping calm. Being solid and unwavering for her is my new vocation.

“I know he’s waiting. Let him wait. He said he would wait. This is more important.” My heart bangs in my chest like the cymbals from one of those wind-up, toy monkeys. Clash, clash, clash.

Promise threw up. Threw up again.

She’s been hornier than I’ve been and I didn’t think that was possible. I should have spotted that.

I count backwards.

I know when her last period started and ended because I care about every part of her. I keep track of even
that
part of her. She’s eight days late. Could be stress I remind myself, but add that up with the other clues and I think we’re about to hit the jackpot.

I’m tearing open the small rectangular box and holding out the plastic, lavender-and-white dip stick as I crouch down in front of my precious girl.

“Come on, babe. Let’s go see.” I nod toward the bathroom. I can’t help but smile. I want to see two lines on that little window more than I want my next breath.

A punch of guilt hits me. She looks tired. Worn. I see Jordan in her and the guilt hits me even harder.

Promise looks like she’s been hit with a freeze ray. Her eyes are ice blue and as wide as soup spoons.

We are caught inside a hurricane. There are so many things swirling around us right now, it takes superhuman strength to concentrate. But if this moment is what I sure as shit hope it is, I want us both all in. Focused. So we remember it for the next hundred years.

She sits cross-legged on the bed, wearing a white silk robe that hits her mid-thigh. The sash hangs loose and she is completely unaware at how otherworldly she looks. The fabric splits open down the front, just enough for the curves of her tits to make my dick sound the siren. Her bare pussy is in the shadows, but I see a wink of pink down there and can't help licking my lips.

“Stop staring.” She wags the little dip stick in my face with a half-hearted grin.

I laugh. “No can do, babe. It’s got me hypnotized. Your pussy cast a spell on me.” I hold out my hand as she shakes her head. Long waves of hair toss back and forth over her shoulders then down the front of the shining fabric.

Her eyes look like they are back-lit. Like two pools of tropical sea with the white afternoon sun behind them. We may not have made it to Fiji, but I have paradise right here. She completely owns me and she still has no idea.

“I don’t want to know.” She pulls her lips to the side as she lays her hand in mine and I gently pull her up next to me.

“Why not? It’s
us
, babe. It’s so fucking beautiful thinking I put a baby inside you. It will be by far the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

She looks down. “What if I turn out like my mom?” There's such sadness in her voice, my heart breaks into a thousand pieces.

“Impossible. That’s impossible.” I tuck her into me and keep us moving forward. “Do you remember that first day at Windfield when I came into my dad’s room? Do you remember what you were doing?” We make it to the bathroom and I turn her to face me, my fingers lightly gripping her upper arms.

She shakes her head, eyes down, so I take one hand and clasp her chin, pushing it up with my thumb until I’ve got her eyes locked on mine.

“You were taking my dad’s blood sugar. But you know what else you did?” Another shake of her head. “You held his hand. For a good thirty seconds longer than you needed to. You just held it and you took my heart right then and there. I’ll never forget it.”

“That doesn’t mean I’ll be a good mom. I’m not great with people. I don’t have any frame of reference for being a mom. No role model. I don’t know how to change a diaper. I don’t know any lullabies. I don’t even know how to hold a baby! What if I don’t hold it right and it gets hurt? What if I drop it?”

“Just pee.” I spin her around to face the commode. “You do know how to pee, don’t you?”

I lift the robe which is barely covering her ass and lay a loud smack down at about fifty percent power.

“Oww!” She swishes her hand back behind her, knocking away the next swat I was loadin’ up. “
Out
. I’m not peeing in front of you.”

I roll my eyes because honestly, I would watch her open a pickle jar naked and it would make me hard. But she draws the line at some things and I can let her have her bathroom privacy.

“Fine, but I’m standing right here.
Listening.
So I’m keeping the door open
.
I
can
listen to you pee, right? That’s allowed?”

“Shut up, Fitzgerald. I’ll get stage fright and we’ll be here all day.” She giggles for the first time since Northrup knocked on the door and canceled our honeymoon.

It’s a beautiful sound.

The giggle, not the pee.

It’s the longest sixty seconds of my life.

Until Promise–until the first time she took me inside her–I’ve never once thought about being a father. But since that first time with her, I hate to admit it, but there’s been this near constant urge to put a baby in that belly of hers. It’s the fucking crazy animal she’s turned me into.

She comes out of the bathroom gripping the pregnancy test tight in one hand, so I take the other and lead her over to the long tables. I pull two of the chairs out so they’re facing each other.

“Sit.”

She has this intense, frightened look on her face, watching the pregnancy test like it might jump up and bite her. But even like this she's still an angel. She is the most seductive mixture of sexy and sweet. One second you can see the hardened, hurt little girl in her eyes; the one that says things she doesn’t mean and builds walls around her to keep the living shut out. The next second she is warm, and open and fragile. Vulnerable. And I want to protect her with everything that I am and everything that I have.

She raises her eyes to mine. “We should have been careful. I’m not the mom kind. I’m just not.” I see that scared little girl that lives just under the surface.

“You are exactly the mom kind. I mean, look at me? What the fuck do I know about being a dad? Babe, we got this. Whatever happens, we’re in it together. With our combined super powers, trust me, we can figure out a small human.”

I lean in and graze her lips with mine, remembering the first time she let me do that in the restaurant, how the blood ran from every part of my body. First to my heart, then to my cock until it fucking hurt. It still does.

“Well.” She turns her lips up at the corners. “I guess we sure know what not to do to be a good parent.”

Every cell in my body fires on high alert as I watch her face. She’s holding the stick in both hands, cradling it in her lap. I sit across from her, my knees straddling hers and my hands on her thighs. I inhale, basking in the moment.

This moment. This moment I hope will be the beginning of something I’ve never wanted until her.

A family.