Her head finally lifts, and my heart breaks at the sight.
She opens her eyes, but they don’t shift my way.
She reaches out, but not in my direction.
And then she whispers, but it’s not my name she cries.
She calls for him and every orifice in my body tightens, twists, and tears.
She calls to him, and my world goes up in flames. Lava, pure, hot, obliterating lava boils within me, bringing beads of sweat to my skin. I force my eyes to his.
Chase stays rooted in place, not daring to move an inch, the entire room now a cell of silence.
“Chase,” she cries for him. “We were going to have a baby?”
I choke on air, my pulse flatlining.
“Oh shit,” someone rushes out, and then a body is in front of me, arms caging me in and then there’s another.
I don’t realize I’m fighting my way to the wide-eyed asshole across the room until there’s one arm around my neck from behind, and another around my back from the front.
“Noah, don’t,” Mason hisses in my ear. “Please, not now. Let’s… fuck, just hold on.”
Cameron rushes to Ari’s side, wrapping her arms around her.
“Noah, man… ” Chase shakes his head. “No. Something’s wrong.” He looks to Mason. “Mason, I swear. I… she—” He shakes his head again, peeking at Ari from the corner of his eye.
“Fuck me,” Brady croaks under his breath.
And then it hits, like a ten-ton truck down a straight slope.
“Hm-mm.” My head shakes frantically as I tear myself free of Mason’s hold. “No.”
I rush to her bedside, falling to my knees beside it.
“No,” I repeat on a whisper, unwilling to believe what’s happening.
“Look at me.” My words are a soft demand.
The room falls quiet, and when her shoulders draw up in hesitation, my blood pressure spikes, my heart beating against my rib cage like an animal trying to escape.
“Ari?” Cameron whispers, but she makes no move.
Gently placing my knuckle beneath her chin, I life it from Cameron’s shoulder.
I bring her gaze to mine, searching, praying I find what I’m looking for.
“Juliet…” I whisper, so only she can hear.
She looks deep into my eyes, tears in her own, and her body shudders as that one word from me travels through her entire being, the way it always does. The way it has since the moment we met, even when she didn’t realize it.
But I see beyond the response she can’t control.
I see the unsure, curious flicker behind her big brown eyes, the one she had all those months ago, before she let her first love go.
Before she opened up to us.
Before she became mine.
My hand goes limp, dropping to my thigh with a loud smack. Cameron weeps beside her, having just realized what I’ve already figured out.
I stagger backward, falling onto my ass, quickly crawling back to my feet. Stumbling over nothing before I reach the door and trip again on my way through it.
I hustle from the room before I lose it completely.
I hear them as they shout my name, but I don’t stop. I keep moving.
Away from the hospital.
Away from the place my unborn child died.
Away from the man who hid it from me.
Away from the bastard in love with my girl.
And away from the girl I love… who has no idea she loves me back.
Chapter 39
Arianna
* * *
The repetitive beep grows longer and louder, piercingly so.
It gets faster and faster, creating a sharp echo in the back of my mind, and then someone is shouting.
My body is burning up, the heat making me nauseous, and when I try to fill my lungs, I’m denied.
There’s a scream, and my cheeks are covered with clammy palms, but I don’t know whose.
It’s so blurry.
The face, my mind… my life.
It’s all blurry… but then I close my eyes, and suddenly everything it’s clear.
The haze is gone.
I can see.
My stomach is swollen.
My smile is wide.
A hand slides into my hair, large and strong, yet gentle. And then his eyes open, and a calm settles over me.
His eyes, they’re the most gorgeous shade of—
Voices creep in and steal the dream away.
“What did you give her?”
“It’s a sedative. We need to get her heart rate down.”
The beeping is back, and then everything goes black.
Noah
* * *
It’s been a couple hours since I left the hospital, and not five minutes after my ass hit the seat of my truck, Mason called. And then he called again and again, but I didn’t pick up.
While he was calling, Brady set up a new message thread in GroupMe, the app the football team uses for group chats and sharing information. He created it with a handful of guys he must assume I talk to the most, Trey being one of them, asking if anyone has seen me and if not, where they think they can find me. A couple guys name the obvious places like the gym, field, and my house, but the people I’ve been living at the hospital with know better than that, and minutes after that, my phone starts ringing again. Both Mason and Brady try call after call, text after text.