“Baby, don’t cry,” I begged. Taking her hand, I lifted it and kissed the injured thumb. “I’m here now. I’ll take care of you. You don’t have to worry about anything else ever again.”
“No!” she screamed, then pressed her lips together and shook her head adamantly. “You can’t be here. Lyric, my dad will kill you. Please, I’m begging you. Just go back to New York. Live your life and forget about me.”
“You think I would just pack up and abandon you and our baby?” I cupped the side of her face, stroking my thumb over her tears. “I have been losing my mind without you. The only thing that got me through this hellish summer was knowing I was going to be with you again soon.”
Right before my eyes, her emotions changed. The tears stopped with a flutter of her lashes, her entire beautiful face turning cold. “Or was it all the girls who were warming your bed every night that got you through?”
I pushed down my frustration, knowing she was probably just trying to get a reaction out of me. “You just said you’ve been foggy, and after seeing my sister’s hormones make her act insane, I’m going to ignore that question. How could you possibly think I would want anyone after having the perfection of you?”
“Wow,” she whispered, a humorless grin tilting her lips. “If I didn’t know any better, I would have actually believed you were sincere just now.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I saw you with the blonde, Lyric. What was her name?” She frowned, trying to remember. “Oh yeah. Vi, I heard you call her. I saw you with her just two weeks after our”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“‘amazing night together.’ I heard you tell her just how much you missed her too. How you wanted to spend as much time with her as possible, so of course she wouldn’t be in your way while you were working.”
I pulled back from her with a frown, my heart pounding against my ribs. “You saw me with Violet?” A lifted brow was her only answer. “You came to New York to see me?”
“Stupidly, yes. I missed you, and I—” She broke off, her jaw clenching. “You didn’t have messages turned on for any of your social media, and we didn’t exchange numbers. I took a risk and flew out to see you because, apparently, I’m an idiot. I got there, and you were with the blonde. Violet.”
“You were jealous. Of Violet,” I said with a laugh, shaking my head at how absurd that sounded.
Mila punched me in the shoulder. “It’s not funny!” she yelled at me, and when I heard her voice crack, I abruptly stopped laughing and wrapped my arms around her.
“If you knew my family, you would definitely know how funny that is,” I soothed, kissing her temple. “There is nothing to be jealous of when it comes to Violet. She’s like my sister. And if my dumb-ass brother hadn’t screwed up so royally, she very likely would have been one day.”
“She was practically sitting in your lap,” she muttered. “You were all over each other.”
“Were you high when you came to see me?” I teased, kissing her forehead.
“I know what I saw!”
I sighed, knowing I needed to figure this out before she hurt herself even more thinking about me with Violet. “I promise you, I have never and will never want Vi like that. And even if by some chance I ever did, I would never do something like that to my brother. She’s a hugger. Are you sure you didn’t see her hugging me?” When the glare didn’t clear from her beautiful face, I groaned in frustration. “I was missing you just as much as you were missing me, Mila. I was sad and lonely. Violet came to visit me because she could hear it in my voice. The whole time she was there, all I could talk about was you. I told her about you before I even told my brother. She was excited for me, told me not to fuck it up, and that she wants to meet you.”
“R-really?” she whispered, her brows pinched together. “You swear you didn’t hook up with her?”
“Baby, there’s been no one since you. Not even my damn hand.”
“For me either.” She touched her lower abdomen. “I promise this is your baby.”
I covered her hand. “I know, Mila. I never doubted that for a second.” I kissed her forehead and stepped back. “Now, sit tight. You’re going to get checked out.”
Chapter 14
Mila
I sat on the uncomfortable emergency room exam table, dressed in an open-backed gown with a sheet over my legs. I’d told the nurse I didn’t need any of that, but she’d taken one look at Lyric and pushed the items into my hands before promising to be back with the ER doctor within a few minutes.
That was ten minutes ago. I’d been sitting there with no panties on, while Lyric stood leaning against the wall beside the door, typing nonstop on his phone the entire time. The clicking sound as he typed was starting to wear on my nerves, and his lack of attention was making me even grumpier.
He’d been so concerned earlier that he’d made me come to the emergency room to get checked out, and now he wasn’t even talking to me.
“Is there somewhere else you need to be, Lyric?” I asked, my tone deceptively sweet as he barely glanced at me while continuing to type. I was seriously contemplating grabbing his phone and shoving it somewhere only the doctors could retrieve.
“There is nowhere I need to be except right here, babe.” But his gaze quickly dropped back to his phone.
“Who are you talking to?” I demanded unhappily, trying and failing to hide my pout.
I was not that girl. The one who needed constant attention. I detested girls like that. But it seemed, with Lyric, I was anything but myself ninety percent of the time. Or maybe it was just the pregnancy hormones making me act like a needy, whiny bitch.
“Mom and Aunt Emmie,” he said, distracted. “Mom says she remembers having blood pressure issues when she first got pregnant with Luca and me. It cleared up around twenty-plus weeks, though.” His face tightened, and he looked up from his phone, his face gray. “But she did go into preterm labor with us. We were premature. Fuck. What if it’s twins? Aren’t identicals more likely to have twins? We are both identical, Mila. You could be pregnant with twins.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at him, but he looked so worried, I couldn’t. It was actually kind of cute, and my heart melted a little more for him, making me want to wrap my arms around him and tell him it was going to be okay.
Apparently he’d been telling his family about his impending fatherhood, so I could understand why his attention was otherwise engaged while I was sitting there bored to tears. That couldn’t have been easy.
Fuck, I knew it wasn’t because I’d chickened out repeatedly about telling my own parents.
“The thought had occurred to me, yes. My mom had really bad issues with low blood pressure when she was pregnant. She was put on bed rest fairly early into her pregnancy to avoid preterm labor. She was lucky to get as far into the third trimester as she did, especially with Maverick’s big head taking up so much room and crowding Monroe and me.”
His lips started to twitch with amusement, but then he lost what little color was still in his handsome face. “My mom almost died. That’s why they never had more kids. I can’t lose you, Mila. I fucking can’t.”
The desperation and fear in his voice put an abrupt end to any lingering hurt I was feeling. Lifting my arms, I begged him with my eyes to come to me. Without hesitation, he was across the room and wrapping his thick arms around me.
A shudder went through his big body, and he buried his face in my neck. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you stay healthy throughout this pregnancy,” he choked out. “I want those babies, but I can’t live without you, Mila. I’ve had to for months, and it wasn’t living at all. It was hell. Pure agony. I missed you so damn much, I ached, baby.”
I swallowed around the sudden knot of emotion blocking my throat. If I was being honest, I’d missed him too. When I wasn’t plotting cutting off his dick and mailing it to his pretty blonde. But now that I knew the truth, I could see I’d jumped to conclusions and only hurt myself in the long run. My only excuse was that I was jealous, and I had no experience with that emotion.
Maybe if I’d confronted him when I’d gone to see him and found him with Violet, we wouldn’t have spent the entire summer miserable without each other.
“I missed you too,” I was able to confess once the knot eased somewhat. “It’s crazy. We only knew each other for a few hours, but it felt like you were suddenly my entire world and…”
And that world had been perfect while we were together. But apart, it disappeared like we had only been a dream.
“You are my world,” he rasped, his arms tightening around me. “Time makes no difference. You were meant to be mine, and I knew it as soon as I laid eyes on you.”
Tears burned my eyes, and I clung to him. It seemed we were both a little insane, but oddly enough, it made me happier than I could ever remember being.
A knock on the door alerted us to newcomers. Keeping one arm around me, Lyric turned to see the doctor walking into the room with the nurse from earlier. I released a relieved breath that it wasn’t Doc Robertson, the doctor who took care of everyone in the MC.