Bailey
The first thing I'm aware of is the harshness of the bright lights overhead, and the stringent, acrid aroma that unmistakably belongs to a hospital. Then, as if I'm suddenly tuning into the right frequency, I start hearing sounds – a series of beeps, and other mechanical sounding noises.
As my senses all start coming back to me, I become keenly aware of the pain radiating throughout my head. I have never felt such agony before, and I almost wish they could cut it off so I don't have to experience it anymore.
I groan before sitting up and opening my eyes – and find myself staring straight at Colin, perched on the edge of the bed. He lets out a relieved sigh and a small smile curls his lips upward.
“Welcome back,” he says. “You had us all worried sick.”
I look around the room, finding it empty, and have trouble recalling who the “us” is that he's talking about.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You don't remember?”
“If I remembered, would I be asking what happened?”
He grins at me. “I see the fall didn't affect your attitude,” he says. “That's a big relief.”
“I feel like I'm pissed at you,” I say. “Something happened, and I'm pissed at you. What happened?”
He lets out a long breath. “You slipped on the steps a couple of nights ago,” he explains. “Went down awkwardly and hit your head really hard.”
I nod, but even that movement sends pain radiating through my entire body.
“Why am I pissed at you?” I ask.
“Would you believe me if I said you're not, and it's just a side-effect of your fall?” he asks, grinning.
“There's something there. Something happened,” I say. “I remember running out of your room –”
I bite off my words as images start flooding back into my mind. Then, everything starts to come back to me. Bit by bit, the picture in my mind becomes complete, and I remember. And as I do, I feel the anger bubbling up like some toxic stew in a witch's cauldron.
I cut my eyes over to Colin. A look of dismay crosses his face, and he lowers his eyes.
“The doctors said your memory would probably come back in a rush like that,” he says.
“Get out of my room,” I hiss.
“Not yet,” he says. “Not until you hear the real story.”
“The real story?” I spit. “The real story is I saw you with that bitch, half-naked, pinned to the wall, fucking her.”
“That's not the real story, Bailey,” he says.
“Like hell it's not.”
I see a dark expression cross his face as he clenches his jaw. He stands up from the bed and slips his hands into his pockets, turning his back to me, and looking out the window. As I look at him, I feel my heart breaking. How could he do that? How could he betray me like that?
It only confirms the thoughts I've secretly harbored in the back of my mind – that Colin is no different from any of the others. That he does what he wants when he wants, without care about who gets hurts along the way. He does things his way, and if you don’t like it, you can piss right off.
It kills me to realize that I let myself fall in love with a man who would throw me away like a piece of garbage.
“After you went to your room, I went to mine,” Colin starts speaking, his back still to me. “When I went in, Laurel was already there – dressed exactly like you saw her. She tried to seduce me. Tried to get me to sleep with her. She did everything she could think of to get me to sleep with her. And I said no. I said no a thousand times. In fact, right before you came in, I was telling her to get the fuck out of my house.”
“Yeah, it sure looked that way with you fucking her up against the wall like that, Colin.”
He rounds on me, his face a mask of outrage. “I never fucked her, Bailey,” he growls. “My pants never came off. She tried to take them off of me. That's when I grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. To make her stop. I told her I wanted nothing to do with her because I'm in love with you.”
Those last few words hit me with a ton of force, leaving me lightheaded and gasping for air. Words I longed to hear, I'm suddenly hearing, and I have to wonder if I'm only hearing them because he got caught fucking another woman.
I shake my head, then remember why I’m in the hospital in the first place, as explosions of pain light up my brain. “I want to believe you, Colin,” I say. “God, you have no idea how badly I want to believe you. But, I know what I saw.”
“No, you know what you think you saw,” he says, the frustration in his voice clear. “My pants were never off. There is no way I would have done what you think I did.”
“It's true, Bailey.”
I groan as I turn my head to see my new visitor. My head is throbbing, and I don't know if I need more drugs or more sleep. Katie is standing in the doorway of the room, looking at me with a concerned smile on her face. She gives me an awkward little wave.
“Hey, girl,” she says. “You've looked better.”
“Maybe I need a spa day.”
“Couldn't hurt.”
Colin remains standing at the window as Katie crosses the room and perches on the edge of the bed. She takes my hand in hers and gives it a squeeze. She looks me in the eye, daring me to look deeply and see the truth in her words.
“Colin is telling the truth,” she says. “I heard him screaming at Laurel to get out of his house. I heard him telling her it was never going to happen between them, and that they'd been done a long time. She basically confirmed it in front of everybody later on, after they'd taken you to the hospital. Colin never consented, nor did he sleep with her. If you aren't going to take his word for it, I hope you can take mine.”
I look deeply into her eyes and see nothing but truth and sincerity. Katie loves Colin, but I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she would never cover for him if he actually betrayed me like that. Katie has far too much integrity to do that. They all do. It's one thing I love about this family, and about Colin.
And now, I feel like a complete asshole for doubting him. Again.
I turn to him and find him still glowering down at me. I don't know what to say to make up for what I've done. Colin has always tried to show me kindness, respect, and compassion. He's never shown me anything but love.
Yet, I keep doubting him. As he said once, I keep thinking the worst of him – and I don't know why I do that.
“I – I'm sorry, Colin,” I say miserably. “All of my own doubts and insecurities – I mean, part of me wondered why you'd be with somebody like me, when you could be with a supermodel like her. I let it all eat away at me. I let my baggage impact my trust for you.”
He runs a hand through his hair but gives me a small smile. “One, you are more beautiful than Laurel could ever hope to be,” he says. “And two, there is so much about you that I love, it would take me days to go through it all. You are the most amazing woman I've ever met, Bailey. You astound me more every single day, and I want to spend my life with you.”
My mouth falls open, and I stare at him wide-eyed. Even Katie is caught off-guard and stares at him with a shocked expression on her face. Colin is grinning like a fool, but he takes a small black box out of his coat pocket and looks at it for a long minute.
“This isn't how I wanted to do this,” he says. “This isn't exactly my first choice, and it's definitely not my idea of romantic.”
“I'm sure there are worse venues out there,” I say. “If you want to keep looking for something truly awful.”
Katie snickers, but when Colin drops to a knee beside my bed, she covers her mouth with her hands, and I see tears welling in her eyes. At the same time, I must have gotten dust or something in mine because they start to sting and water as well. What a coincidence.
“When I was afraid I might lose you, I knew in my heart, that I couldn’t live my life without you, Bailey,” Colin says. “I knew then that I had to come clean with my brothers. I told them the truth about everything. And that you bring me more joy than anybody ever has. I feel safe with you, like I can put all of my heart and my trust into you. You make me a better person. More than that, you make me want to be a better person, and I want to be with you. Forever. If you'll have me, that is.”
Tears are streaming down my face and I look over at Katie, who's crying just as hard as I am. My hand is trembling wildly when I reach out and hold it against Colin's rugged, chiseled face. He leans into it, closes his eyes, and savors it like a man who thought he'd never feel it again.
Slowly, he opens those piercing eyes of his, and they cut a path straight into my heart. I feel the flutter of butterfly wings in my chest, and a surge of adrenaline courses through me.
“Bailey Janson,” he says, “I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine. For real this time. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I answer, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Colin's smile lights up the room as he slips the ring onto my finger. I hold it up and look at it. It's not the size that impresses me – though, it is quite impressive in its own right – it's the fact that it's Colin Anderson who put it on my finger. My former arch-nemesis is now going to be my husband.
“Life is such a strange, twisty thing,” I mutter.
“You can say that again.”
“Oh, am I interrupting?”
We all turn to look at the newcomer – a short, Asian woman in a lab coat, holding a clipboard. Obviously, my doctor. I hold up my hand to show off the ring.
“Nothing much,” I say. “Just a little impromptu engagement party.”
The doctor smiles wide, chuckling to herself. “Well, I'm glad to see you in good spirits, and sounding well,” she says. “And also, congratulations. I've seen a lot of things in this hospital before, but an engagement is a first for me.”
The door to the room opens again, and the rest of Colin’s family – our family – files in. The doctor looks around at them like she's on the verge of kicking them out. Technically, you're only allowed so many visitors at a time. At least, I think.
“Well, I guess I can't really ask any of you to leave in light of the happy news,” she says.
“Happy news?” Liam asks.
Katie giggles as I hold up my hand, the light pouring in through the window glinting off the rock. There's a moment of stunned silence, quickly followed by an explosion of cheering, shouted questions, handshakes, hugs, and slaps on the back.
Fearing everything is about to go off the rails, the doctor asserts control again. “I'm willing to overlook the number of people in here,” she calls out over everybody, “so long as you keep it down to a dull roar. I do still have a job to do, people.”
Everybody lowers their voices to a whisper all at once. It's so perfectly choreographed, that it's hilarious. The doctor flips through my charts, asks me a few questions, and jots down a couple of notes. She closes the chart and slips her pen back into her pocket.
Thankfully, the pain that had racked my body upon waking seems to be dulling with each passing second. I'm starting to feel better. More like myself.
“Well, we've done all of the bloodwork, and we've analyzed your MRIs, X-rays, and a thousand other things we're going to charge you a lot of money for,” she says with a laugh. “Everything came back clean, and you shouldn't have any lingering effects of your fall. We'll prescribe you some painkillers to keep the worst of it at bay until your symptoms disappear completely.”
Everybody in the room lets out a relieved sigh. Colin steps closer and takes my hand, giving it a soft squeeze. I look up and he's smiling at me, and I know in that moment – or rather, it's reconfirmed in my mind – that Colin's face is the one I want to see every morning I wake up, and the last I see before I go to sleep at night.
“Also,” the doctor says. “The fall didn't harm the baby. There doesn't seem to be any damage, and you should be just fine carrying to term.”
As if we'd suddenly been sucked out into the cold vacuum of space, the room falls silent around us, and a strange tension fills the air. I see everybody looking around at each other, I'm sure, with the same question on our minds – did we just hear her correctly?
“Come again?” Colin finally breaks the silence in the room.
The doctor looks up at him, a curious expression on her face. “The baby should be fine,” she explains. “Your fiancée’s head absorbed most of the blow, and it doesn’t seem to have impacted the baby at all.”
“Baby?” Colin and I ask in unison.
As if suddenly realizing that we have no clue what she's talking about, a light of understanding dawns in the doctor's eyes. She looks down at her chart and sucks in a breath.
“Well, this is awkward,” she says.
We are all still standing – or, in my case laying – in a stunned silence. Nobody's moving. Nobody's speaking.
“As part of our blood panels, we run tests for certain hormones and –” she bites off her words, as if searching for an easier way to explain it to a bunch of laypeople. “Basically, we tested your blood for everything, Bailey. And when we did, we found that you're pregnant. A little more than a month along, but pregnant nonetheless.”
Colin's grip on my hand tightens and when I look up at him, I see an expression of fear on his face – an expression I'm sure matches my own. A baby? How in the hell did I get pregnant? We're always so careful. We’ve always taken the necessary precautions. How in the hell could this have happened?
“I'm going to be a father,” Colin mutters under his breath. “Holy shit.”
“You're probably going to want to watch that mouth around your child,” the doctor admonishes him.
As if somebody pulled the pin out of the dam, the explosion of emotion in the room is overwhelming. Colin's brothers are suddenly hugging him, slapping him on the back, and giving him a lot of ribbing about being the last one again. The girls are all taking turns hugging me, offering words of encouragement and support, and seem genuinely thrilled for me.
Colin and I look at each other, neither of us quite knowing what to make of the news yet. It's shocking, to say the least. And yet, in some strange, perverse way, it fits the rest of our relationship – completely unexpected.
Colin might be scared, but I know he's going to make a great father. He has so much love and compassion to give, and I know that our child’s going to feel like the most loved kid on the planet. If anything, I'm going to have to rein Colin in from spoiling the kid too much.
As the news sinks in, for reasons I don't understand, I start to feel better about it. Like our relationship, it kind of just feels – right. It's nothing we planned for, but that seems to be our way, and it's only fitting.
And when I look up at Colin, and see that warm twinkle in his eye, I know for a fact, he's thinking the same thing I am. We simultaneously squeeze each other's hands, both of us looking forward to our future together – as a family of three.
From rock bottom to the top, as long as I have Colin by my side, I know there is no challenge we can’t overcome – not even parenthood.
“I told you so,” Holly whispers, leaning in close to me. “It's that damn Anderson sperm at work.”
I laugh long and hard, embracing her tightly. My friend. My sister. My new family. Nothing in the world has ever felt as good, and as right as this.