“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 br
ow 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.”