“The more you talk like that, the more I think I have to brace myself,” she warned. Half lightly, as if she could force him into agreeing.
“You didn’t tell me you were pregnant,” he said abruptly. “And you particularly didn’t tell me you and Eric were pregnant.”
“This was a year ago, though. Last June? I had to have been pregnant. The baby was born in January.”
“He wasn’t due until February.”
An SUV roared past and she saw the flash of a face in the window looking their way.
“Is that why he got sick? Because he was early?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“When we get to Houston, Dr. Patel will give you the same answers he’s already given me. It’s not likely.”
“How do you know when I was due, anyway?” She pressed her finger to the pain that had appeared in the center of her forehead.
“Because I know exactly when he was conceived.”
Another SUV zoomed past them. If there were any faces staring their way, Laurel didn’t notice. “I told you that?”
“You didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then Eric—”
“He didn’t tell me anything, either.” He hooked his hand behind his neck as if it were paining him. “I know when Linus was conceived, because I was there. Linus is my son, Laurel. Mine and yours.”
She felt the ground tilt. She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged. Her head was roaring.
From somewhere far off, she heard Adam swear.
And after that she heard nothing at all.
Adam cursed himself to hell and back all over again when Laurel’s eyes rolled. He barely managed to catch her before she hit the ground.
Her head lolled against his shoulder when he picked her up and carried her to the car, carefully lowering her onto the rear seat.
He crouched alongside the vehicle, leaning inside. “Come on, baby.” His hand shook as he gingerly touched her cheek. “Wake up, sweetheart. We’ll figure all of this out, I promise.”
She didn’t stir. Her face was unearthly pale but she was breathing.
He pressed his forehead against her cool cheek and forced himself to stay calm. His mom had fainted once when he’d been a kid. She’d been pregnant with Arabella. Out cold for several minutes. The longest minutes of his life, until he’d been an adult and had offered a ring and his heart to Laurel Hudson.
He reached across her for the water bottle sitting in the cup holder. It was practically empty but he poured out what was left on a crumpled napkin and pressed it to her forehead. He undid the button at her throat and loosened her collar. The gold L on her necklace glinted in the light.
After everything that had happened, why did she still wear the necklace?
“Come on, sweetheart. Come back to me.” He wedged himself onto an edge of the seat and lifted her feet. Above the heart, if he remembered his first aid correctly. Considering the panic piercing through him, it was hard to think at all. “I shouldn’t have told you.” He propped her heels on his shoulder and moved the wet napkin from her forehead over her cheeks. “Not on top of you remembering your mother. I should have waited. I should—”
She stirred and her foot slipped from his grasp, landing hard on his hip. He barely noticed. He cupped her cheek, breathing only slightly easier when he saw the sliver of aquamarine between her long eyelashes.
“What—”
“Shh. You’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Her expression crumpled. “How can anything ever be fine?”
“I told you. You’re here.”
“Everyone would be better off without me.”
“Don’t even go there,” he warned flatly. “That’s the kind of thing your mother used to tell you and you hated it.”
Her fine eyebrows tugged together. Color was coming back into her cheeks. “I did hate it,” she whispered. She pulled the wet napkin away from her face and grimaced at it before tossing it aside. “I fainted.”
“I know.”
“I’ve never fainted in my life.”
“Sure about that?”
Her lips twisted and she pulled her legs off his. She pushed herself up until she was sitting. “I can’t be sure of anything, can I?”
You can be sure of me.
He didn’t say the words, though. Last year at the art museum when he’d seen the diamond, seen the wedding magazines, seen the truth in her eyes, he’d finally faced the truth. Despite everything, despite that night together in New York after the muddy festival, she still hadn’t chosen him. Chosen them.
He’d told her he was done. Never again. He wasn’t ever again going to be the safety net she’d kept dangling from her fingertips. When she was upset about her mother, when she was struggling against her father’s controlling expectations, when she was frustrated with the dullness of the jobs she’d taken in one museum or art gallery after another because what she really wanted to do was create her own art. She could dump it all on the fiancé she hadn’t even had the guts to tell Adam about before the two of them had been climbing inside each other’s skin barely a month earlier.
Then he’d turned on his heel and walked away.
Now she pushed at him until he got out of the car. She followed. “Let’s just get to Houston, please. You can explain everything else you’re not saying along the way.” She lowered herself into the passenger seat and began adjusting it.
He pushed her door closed. Houston. Where the man whose diamond she had been wearing last year was still waiting.
He rounded the car and got in, shoved the seat back as far as it would go, and started driving. Again.
Only this time, he told her the rest.
He told her everything.
Except for the fact that he had never stopped loving her. And that if he were a better man, she’d have never felt so alone and so desperate that she’d believed leaving their child was the only option left.
The wing of the Houston hospital where the transplant unit was located was smaller than Laurel had pictured
