The Love Series Complete Box Set (48 page)

“You’re not going anywhere, beautiful. I want to spend the entire day in bed with you.” He kisses my hair sweetly and then rests his head back on the pillow.

Planting my lips against his warm, hard chest, I kiss him sweetly. “Baby, I want to stay in bed all day long too, but I need to pee.” His playful sigh is a sound that I’ve missed.

I stand from the bed and feel a twinge of pain in my belly. I dismiss it immediately seeing as my bladder is so full.

A few minutes later, I return to Reid’s outstretched arms. We lay in a comfortable silence for a bit, but I know that we need to talk.

“Reid?” I ask with the uncertainty lacing my voice.

“Hmm.” He’s so content that he doesn’t even open his eyes as he responds.

“Can I ask you something?” Damn. Can I sound less sure of myself? The man just made love to me for hours, held me in my sleep and I’m still worried that he doesn’t want me back.

He kisses my head. “Of course you can, babe.”

I unfold myself from his side and sit up in the bed, crossing my legs and holding the sheet up across my chest. I know that modesty is pointless here, but I don’t want to take away from the seriousness of the conversations with my boobs hanging out.

He huffs an exasperated sigh that I’m interrupting his beauty sleep, not that he needs to be more beautiful. He sits up too and pulls the sheet across his lap. Now that boobs and junk are covered up, it’s time to bite the bullet and have this conversation.

His eyes bore into mine as he waits for me to start talking. I have so much to say, but right now, I just don’t know where to start. No better place than the beginning, I guess.

I reach out for his hands. “I’m sorry, Reid. I’m sorry for so much. I don’t know why I ever had the nerve to think that you were cheating on me. And I had no right to snoop around on your phone. I should have just talked to you. I was just so scared.” He doesn’t say anything as I pause to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. He just stares at me intently, letting me know that he’s expecting more of an apology than that.

“And . . .” he prompts me to continue.

“And I’m sorry about calling Katelyn and getting involved in your past. It was wrong of me to tell you what to do, to tell you to make your decisions based on what’s happened in my life.” It feels so good to finally be able to say that to him. Just a few days ago, I really and truly thought I might never see him again.

I recall Momma’s words of advice that I need to get over my own past. I have to let him know that I carry as much blame, if not more, than he does. “It’s just that we both got so angry at each other, so quickly and all of my old insecurities came right back to the surface. I know it’s not fair and I’m sorry.” I must not have realized it while I was talking, but my heart is racing and there’s a pit of anxiety brewing in my stomach.

I quickly add, “But most of all, I’m so sorry for pushing you away . . . for breaking up with you.”

He releases my hands so that he can brush my hair out of my face. “I want to move past this, Maddy. I want to get everything out in the open, so yeah, you making me face my family just because you were scared was really shitty and completely unnecessary.” He runs his hands through his hair and sighs at me before saying, “I love you. My God, do I love you and my love is not based on whether or not I can forgive my mother.” He shifts in the bed so that he’s a bit closer to me and he grasps my hands again. Pulling them up to his soft, full, sexy lips, he gazes intently into my eyes.

“Maddy, please understand me when I say this, I love you.” He squeezes my hand lightly on each of his last three words. “I wish I was smarter. I wish I had more experience in this whole relationship thing. I wish I could make you understand the weight of my words, but please, baby, please understand that the words ‘I love you’ don’t even come close to expressing how I feel about you.” His eye contact never wavers; his grip on my hands never loosens.

He shifts again so that he’s now next to me and he pulls me into a tight embrace. “The way you feel when we’re making love, when we’re together, that’s how I feel about you. There are no words to express the love I feel when I’m with you.” He kisses the top of my head, which is becoming my favorite place for him to kiss me—okay, fine, not my
favorite,
but it’s sweet nonetheless.

I place my head on his shoulder as my hand traces random patterns through the light spattering of hair on his chest. The weight that has been hanging around us since he picked me up from work seems to have lessened, but only slightly.

I swallow back my pride and make my final apology. Well, it’s not really an apology so much as an explanation. “I wasn’t going on a date, by the way.” I don’t mean for my words to sound guilt-ridden, but that’s exactly how they come out of my mouth.

I feel his hard muscles tense under my fingertips. He sits up straighter, almost involuntarily. Through his tensed jaw, he squeezes out a few words. “Okay, tell me what you were doing, then.” That mean edginess is back in his voice and it forces me to stiffen beside him. He has every right to be angry, but it’s such a stark contrast from the Reid I know. It takes me a minute to adjust to his personality changes.

I grip the sheet tighter across my chest as if it will protect me from the impending onslaught.

Timidly, I say, “Jay is my ex-boyfriend. You know the one I broke up with because I didn’t love him.” I can only hope that the last piece will soften the blow a little. “I told you all about him. I ran into him at the deli and he saw my cast and my scrubs and he wanted to catch up. I couldn’t think of any excuse while we were standing there, so I said I would grab dinner with him, right after work. I figured it would be less like a date if I was just getting off from work.” I’m nervously fidgeting with the corner of the sheet. I just want to get this over with and move past it.

Reid moves away from me and gets out of bed. He searches around the room for his boxers. They’re somewhere at the end of the bed, I think. He’s pissed and stalking about the place is the only way he can calm himself. Once his taut, round ass is covered, he runs his hands through his silky hair. His sense of frustration is palpable in the room and I hate that I’ve pissed him off.

Throwing his hands to his side in frustration, he growls, “What the fuck did you want me to think, Maddy? I mean, we don’t talk all week and then I finally hear from you and I can’t explain how that changed everything for me. It made me hope that we could salvage us. And then when I saw you leaving with him, I couldn’t fucking help it.” He shakes his head in frustration and runs his hands through his hair, pulling hard on the ends. “Fuck, don’t you realize that you’re mine?” He plops down on the end of the bed.

I take this opportunity to find his T-shirt and slip it over my naked body. His elbows are resting on his knees and he’s holding his head in his hands. I kneel on the floor in front of him. I pull his hands apart and settle in between his legs. Cupping his roughly stubbled cheeks in my hands, I pull his face up so that he is looking directly at me.

“I will always be yours. Please believe me.” He looks away from me and it twists my gut. Grabbing his face in my small hands, I pull his attention back to my eyes. Brushing the pads of my thumbs across his cheek, I soften my voice and say, “I screwed up, Reid. I fucked up so bad and I know it, but when I went back to Ithaca and you weren’t there, I thought you left me. But even despite that, I was not in any way moving on from you. No matter what the future holds for us, you will be my forever. There will never be anyone else for me. You’ve ruined me for every other man. I’m yours and only yours and I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me and be mine.”

“And I will always be yours. No matter what. No matter what happens at home with my mom, no matter what has happened in my past, I will always love you the best way I know how.” I’ve never heard words said with more sincerity in my entire life.

His gorgeous lips curl up into a lopsided smile and I can see the fight leave his body. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me up onto his lap and I wince in pain. I curl into a ball on his lap and hug my belly.

“Are you okay, Maddy?” He’s rubbing circles across my back and his tone is a bit wary.

I try to straighten in his lap, but the pinch in my side that just made me wince will not go away. “Yeah, I think so. I just got a cramp in my side.” I try to stand in the hopes that stretching my body upright will relieve whatever this pain is.

Standing is not a good idea. Rather than dulling it, standing has caused the pain to radiate like a band of searing heat across my pelvis.

The baby. It’s the baby.

Reid is at my side in an instant. “What is it, Maddy? Please tell me. What should I do?” The panic rising in his voice fans the flames of my anxiety, but I know that one of us needs to stay calm.

Speaking from a hunched over position, I say, “I don’t know, Reid. It hurts.” A huge cramp races through my belly and I cry out in pain.

He helps me sit down on the bed, but as I do, I feel a gush of dampness spread between my legs. I shuffle back slightly and, because I’m only wearing his T-shirt, the bright red splotch of blood seeps right into the cream-colored comforter.

He sees it at the same time I do and we both stare at each other in shock for a split second. I want to cry, I should be crying, but in this moment of pain, all I can do is blame myself. I don’t know how, but this is obviously my fault.

Somehow, Reid remains calm and in control. The panic that was in his voice moments earlier has vanished and in its place is calm concern.

Sitting next to me on the bed, he wraps his arm around my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “It’s okay, Maddy. Don’t cry. Let’s just get you dressed and I’ll take you to the hospital. Everything will be alright. I’m right here.” His tender kiss to the top of my head does nothing to calm me down.

He helps me rise from the bed. I can’t say anything; there’s nothing to say. In my state of numbed shock, I don’t even realize that Reid has already finished getting himself dressed and that he’s helping me step into my clothes.

He pulls his T-shirt over my head and replaces it with my top. He kneels down and lifts my ankle to step into my pants. After he’s put my clothes and shoes back on, he wraps my jacket around my shoulders and he pulls his over his bulky frame. He’s got my purse gripped in his hand, fist clenched around the strap as if he’s holding on for dear life. We stand silently at the door and scan the room once more to make sure that we have everything and then we leave.

After he helps me into the truck, which hurts like a bitch, he digs his phone out of his jacket pocket and dials Mel.

His voice shakes when Mel picks up the line. Obviously, I can only hear his side of the conversation, but when he tells her that I started bleeding and that he’s taking me to the hospital, I can hear her shocked “No.”

He hands me the phone at Mel’s request to talk to me.

Mel doesn’t even give me a second to say anything before she starts talking. “Oh my God, Maddy. Are you okay? Where are you?” I can hear that her words are being forced out past a lump of emotion in her throat. She’s trying, but failing miserably, to keep her tears at bay because before I can even answer her, her sobs carry over the line.

“We’re on our way to the hospital. Yes, Good Sam. I think we’ll be there in like ten minutes. Okay, I’ll see you there. It’s okay, Mel. I’ll be okay.” I can’t disguise the pain in my words. It runs deep right now.

As I hand the phone back to Reid, we make eye contact for a second, but I have to avert my eyes. I feel ashamed for some reason, like I did something wrong. I just want everything to be okay; I just want my baby to be safe. When he reaches for my hand, I let him hold it, but I can’t look at him. Instead, I count the trees lining the road as I stare out the window.

When we arrive at the hospital, Reid takes care of everything. He fills out all of the paperwork, prompting me for information when he comes to something he doesn’t know. Luckily, Kathy was able to get me a temporary insurance card after I filled out the paperwork the other day.

When the nurse brings me into the triage room, she takes my vitals and temperature. As she reaches down for my wrist to take my pulse, she notices the blood spreading from between my legs.

With kind eyes, she looks at me and in a hushed tone, she says “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you right to the back. I’ll get the doctor right away. No need to make you wait out here.” She waves Reid over to us from his guard right outside of the triage door. He wasn’t allowed to come in there with me, but he refused to be more than a few feet from where I was.

She brings us into an exam room that’s obviously reserved for pregnant patients. It has a door instead of a flimsy curtain. Next to the exam table which is equipped with stirrups and the other necessary tools, there is a sonogram machine. She hits a few buttons on the machine to power it up. When the screen lights up, she hits a few keys to enter in my information. She works behind me in the cabinets and pulls out a gown for me to wear and a sheet to place over my lap. She leaves us in the room saying that the doctor will be with us in a few minutes.