“That’s what everyone has said. But I can’t keep holding onto that hope. It hurts too much when—” I suck in a breath, biting my lip. “My baby is okay. That’s all that matters. Niall said that was what I needed to focus on, and he was right.”
Max lets out a sigh. “Of course. If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
---
It’s later that day when the door to my room opens again and Niall is standing there, with a lush bouquet of flowers in his hand. “It took me a really long time to pick these out,” he says with a lopsided smile, crossing the room to put them in a vase next to my bed. “I didn’t know what kind you liked best. And then that made me realize that there’s a lot I don’t know about you, and I started having a miniature existential crisis in the florist’s and then—”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s not something I’ve ever imagined, this handsome, dangerous man standing there with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, talking about the near-panic attack he’d had while trying to pick them out.
“I wanted to make sure you’d like them—”
“I don’t think there are any flowers you could bring me that Iwouldn’tlike,” I tell him firmly, and I see Niall’s face relax a fraction.
He sits on the edge of my bed once the flowers are in water, and I feel a small shiver run through me at his nearness. Max doing something similar had been comforting, and Niall’s presence is comforting too to be sure, but the way I feel when he’s close is entirely different. I’m aching for him to touch me, and when he takes my hand in his, I let out a small breath of relief that we’re finally connected in some way. I feel as if I’ve been away from him for far too long.
“I was so scared,” Niall confesses, not quite meeting my eyes. “I thought—Christ, I thought what happened to you was my fault.”
“How could it possibly have been—oh.” I blush. “I didn’t even think of that. But then again, I didn’t have much timetothink.”
What happened after I saw the blood is largely a blur, but I remember Niall rushing to me as the room spun, closing that last bit of distance between him and the bed as I felt nauseous fear rise up to claim me. I remember pitching forward with more white-hot pain, feeling his arms around me, holding me—and then nothing.
“All I wanted was to make sure you were safe,” Niall says quietly. “I thought that I’d made a horrible mistake coming over—not because what we did was a mistake, but because I thought you were going to lose the baby,ourbaby, even your life…and that it would be my fault.”
“Oh no—Niall!” I reach up, touching his face. “You’ve thought that all this time, while I was here—”
“Well, the doctor told me as soon as you were stable that wasn’t the cause,” he says ruefully. “But the several hours between you passing out and then were—difficult.”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you, no matter what,” I tell him gently. “There’s no way you could have known, even if it had been that. And it wasn’t. So—”
“So here we are.” He squeezes my hand lightly. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Isabella. I will, now and always, do everything in my power to keep you safe. I—” Niall takes a deep breath, pausing. “When you’re out of here, we’ll talk more. But for now, I want you to rest, and get better.”
I want to argue, to press him for what he wants to talk about. For the first time since he’d helped me put together the new furniture in the apartment, he isn’t trying to pull away from me or leave. It feels like—
It feels like he wants to stay.
But I am exhausted. Even after days of rest, I can feel the need to sleep again tugging at me. I want to fight it, but as Niall gently urges me to lay back, kissing me lightly on the forehead, I realize something that makes me feel better than I have in weeks.
I have no idea what the future has in store for us. But for the first time, I’m not afraid that he might not come back.
18
ISABELLA
The week and a half that I spend in the hospital feels like the longest of my life. I have an appointment with my OB/GYN before I’m allowed to be released, and I feel like I’m on pins and needles as I sit there with Niall, waiting to be told if I’m good to go. The apartment still doesn’t quite feel like home, but it feels more like it than this hospital bed.
“Like the attending doctor said before,” Dr. Sanders says as she stands up from checking me over, “Sex definitely didn’t cause this. It wasn’t either of your faults. Things like this just happen sometimes. You weren’t at your healthiest when you got pregnant, Isabella, and itisimportant that you try to stay healthy and reduce stress, for you and for the baby. But sex definitely isn’t off the table for the rest of your pregnancy, as long as it’s maybe nottoostrenuous.” She winks at Niall, and I flush red, although the momentary embarrassment can’t overcome the deep sadness that feels like it settles over me, eclipsing any happiness I might feel about being cleared to leave the hospital.
Niall glances at me as we leave, once I’ve had a chance to dress in the clothes he brought for me and head down to the waiting car. “You look sad,” he says, once we’re in the car and headed away from the hospital, after a few minutes have passed. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy to leave.”
“I am.” I swallow hard, finding it hard to meet his eyes. “It’s just—what the doctor said about us sleeping together. She gave us the all clear, but of course she doesn’t know that’s not going to happen—because you said it can’t happen again. Whether that was the problem or not, it shouldn’t have happened that night. I know that’s what you were going to say before I started bleeding. So it just—it makes me sad.”
“Isabella—”
“I meant it when I said I love you.” The words burst out of me, a torrent of them, my gaze fixed on my hands clenched in my lap. I don’t know if I even want to be saying all of this, but I have the same feeling that I’d had that morning—as if I might not get another chance if I don’t say it all now. “I want you. I always have, from the minute I saw you in that damned bar. I never meant for things to happen like this. It was only ever meant to be a fling, I know that—and I’m so sorry. I know I’ve said that far too much already, and I’m sure I’ll say it again and again but—I am. I’m sorry, and…if I could take it back, I would.
“Isabella.” Niall’s voice cuts through my heartache, the ringing in my ears as I wait for him to tell me that he would take it back, too, if we could go back and do this all over again. There’s several moments of silence, and then I hear the sound of the car door opening, and Niall’s voice again. “Isabella, please.”