This is a precursor. Every year his vision would continue to decline and how would he keep those he loved safe if he couldn’t rely on his eyesight? He’d watched out for Liv since she wore braces and a boy band backpack. How did a guy stop feeling responsible after so many years? The answer was he didn’t. It hurt like hell to know that one day his eyes would fail him—and those he kept close.
It killed him to think about getting attached to a child and not being the man he or she came to for safekeeping. A father was supposed to be invincible.
A text from Bryce pinged on his cell, freeing him from his thoughts. His friend was in a meeting and would get here soon. Why had Danny texted him? Oh yeah, because he needed someone to stop him from punching a hole in the wall.
That he even thought about punching something told him this went beyond Liv’s accident. She was under his skin. Had been for weeks if he were honest. He didn’t want these feelings of devotion and attachment, like she belonged to him and no other man would get to touch her ever again.
Falling for his best friend, heart and soul, hadn’t been part of their deal.
He rubbed his chest like that would wipe away the sensations and keep his heart from breaking. Liv deserved more than a guy losing his sight had to give, and the last thing Danny wanted was to feel like an obligation.
Should he try and get in touch with Will? Danny had no idea what had happened yesterday, but Liv hadn’t mentioned his name on the way here so he’d leave it alone.
Otherwise, he might accidentally punch him if he showed up.
For the past fifteen years Danny’s feelings for Liv had always been strong. Bonding. But now that they’d crossed the line of friendship, feeling things meant feeling everything. Affection. Attachment. Jealousy. Desire. Uncertainty.
He glanced around the sterile waiting room. A dad sat with his young daughter in his lap, her head on his shoulder, thumb in her mouth. Outwardly, she looked okay, which meant something had to be bothering her on the inside.
Unbidden memories coasted through Danny’s mind. Summer time. He’d been eight or nine and his mom had been sick with the stomach flu. His dad had taken care of him and his sister, and kept close tabs on his wife, too. Russ Ellis never stopped doting on Mary Ellis. He always put her before himself and lavished her with affection and compliments, even when she drove him crazy.
On the second or third day she was sick, his dad had taken one look at his mom and known her illness was more than the flu. “I know her face better than my own,” he’d said before loading her into the car and driving her to the hospital. She came home without a gall bladder.
Jump ahead to the day before Danny’s sixteenth birthday and his stomach was in shreds over his upcoming driver’s test. His dad drove him to the steepest hill in the neighborhood, parked in the middle of the road, and exchanged seats with him. “You want to drive on your own?” his dad had asked. “Prove to me you can.”
Danny stalled the first time he let up on the clutch, but not on the second try. Or the third. He had this, and the grin on his dad’s face told him his dad knew it, too.
The ER door opened, drawing Danny’s attention, and he shook off the past. He could—would—never be like his dad.
A nurse gave him a small smile. “Olivia is doing well,” she said, “but we’re running some tests so it may be a while. If you want to grab a coffee or some food, you’ve got time to do that.”
“Thanks, but I’ll wait here,” he said.
Two hours later Dr. Silver told him Liv had suffered a minor concussion. Because she was complaining of dizziness, Dr. Silver wanted her monitored for the next twenty-four hours. She assured Danny—three times since he kept asking—that Liv and the baby were going to be fine, and he could head up to the maternity floor to be with Liv.
He didn’t head upstairs.
Instead, he walked to the gift shop and bought a blank card with daisies on the outside. Twenty minutes later he handed the card off to the front desk with Liv’s name and room number on the envelope and left the hospital, each step harder than the last. But he loved Liv enough to walk away.
He texted Bryce and Zane, swung by his shop to lock things up, and headed home for a quick shower and change of clothes. Traffic sucked, but he got to the Los Angeles restaurant to meet Jennifer for dinner only a few minutes late. She’d been cool with changing their appointment from lunch when he’d texted her that an emergency had come up. Before walking into the restaurant he called the hospital and was connected to the nurses station on the maternity floor for an update on Liv.
“Hello gorgeous,” Jennifer said when he sat across from her at the square table covered in white linen. “Everything okay back home?”