I snapped my fingers at the bartender.

“What part of fucking keep them coming do you not understand?” I roared, slamming my fist against the bar. “I’m fucking empty!”

“You’ve had enough,” Marcus sighed, clapping me on the back and waving his arms at the bartender, cancelling my order.

“The fuck I have!” I slurred. “I’m celebrating! I -I am toasting Anya and Viktor and…”

I trailed off trying to remember what the fuck else I had to be happy about.

“Your impending fatherhood?” Marcus offered sarcastically, pulling me off the stool. The floor seemed to come up really fast. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

“Home?” I spat. “What’s there?”

It had been three weeks since Maggie and I had spoken in the loft and I had been so sure she would change her mind about having me move back in.

But she had remained steadfast about keeping me at a distance and while I was allowed to go to doctor’s appointments, that was as far as I got.

She didn’t even let me into the apartment, as if she liked seeing me beg.

That’s not fair, I reminded myself, reluctantly following Marcus out of the bar and into the street. I knew Maggie was no sadist.

“You know,” my friend sighed. “You’re proving her point by acting like this.”

My back tensed and I whirled to face him, the action spinning me off balance somewhat.

“What did you fucking say?” I demanded, my eyes seeing double.

He was right – I’d had more than enough to drink.

“She’s worried that you’re not cut out for fatherhood, right?” Marcus sighed, unlocking the door of his car parked directly in front of the neighborhood pub.

“What? Just because I’m out f-for drinks with my buddy?” I demanded but my defensiveness was short lived.

“Who were you with?”

I blinked, my eyelids feeling heavy. “My friends Jack, Jim, and Jose.”

Marcus snorted. This downward spiral was something else I had been warned about in therapy. Even as I stood, staring hatefully at my closest friend—other than Maggie—the desire to find the nearest blackjack table was overwhelming me.

I bet if I made a million dollars tonight, Maggie would have nothing bad to say. It’s not a gambling addiction if you win, is it?

“You’re thinking about gambling right now, aren’t you?” Marcus sighed, shoving me into the passenger side of the car.

I fell forward, a wave of dizziness sweeping through me.

“I am fucking not!” I denied but the motivational speaker only laughed.

“No wonder you always lost, Silas. You’re a shitty liar.”

He got into the driver’s seat and cast me a look that I think was disdain but, in my state, it was hard to tell exactly.

“You haven’t been gambling, have you?” he asked.

“NO!” I snarled. “Of course not!”

Whatever he saw in my face seemed to convince him, as he turned to look out the windshield. “If you want to prove to Maggie that you can be a good father, you can’t be getting shit-faced on Monday nights and screaming at bartenders who have already overserved you. You have to prove it to her. How’s the job search going?”

I cocked my head and lurched forward to look at him.

“You got something for me?” I asked hopefully and he sighed, pulling away from the curb.

“That bad, huh?”

I groaned and sat back against the seat, pursing my lips together.

“It’s going to haunt me forever,” I moaned. “I’m always going to be the same person to her and my own kid is going to see me as a fuck-up.”

“Not if you don’t act like a fuck-up,” Marcus retorted. “The first thing to do would be to prove you’re not the same person. You can talk out of your ass all day long but that doesn’t mean shit to anyone.”

“Ha ha, talk out of my ass… shit to anyone!” I chortled drunkenly.

I didn’t have to look at Marcus to feel his disgust radiating toward me.

“Whatever.” He sighed heavily. “That’s just my advice.”

I finally shut my mouth and let his words seep into me.

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know, but the challenges I was facing seemed insurmountable. They were only made worse by the fact that Maggie wasn’t giving me what I wanted.

She doesn’t owe you a fucking thing, that asshole voice in my head reminded me. It’s you who owes her.

We completed the ride in silence but as we pulled up in front of my brownstone, my cell began to ring.

My brow furrowed in confusion as I tried to reconcile the time.

“Am I fucked or is it like two o’clock in morning?” I mumbled, winking one eye to read the name on the screen.

“You’re fucked and it is two fifteen in the morning,” Marcus confirmed.

As if a switch had been flicked, my intoxication disappeared and I bolted up, my vision clearing entirely.

“What happened?” I demanded into the mouthpiece. “Where are you?”

“New York Pres,” Maggie sighed. “Something’s wrong with the baby.”

* * *

Marcus could barely keep up with me as I bolted through the emergency room doors like a madman, my eyes wide with apprehension.

“Maggie Warner.” Damn, she was using her maiden name again. “O’Dowd – Margaret O’Dowd,” I gasped at the night nurse. “Where is she?”

“Are you a family member, sir?” she asked in a clipped, almost bored tone.

It took every fiber of my being and Marcus’s hands to keep me from grabbing her by her pink scrub top and screaming into her face.

“My wife is pregnant and bleeding!” I cried, my face hot with anger. “What room is she in?”

The nurse studied my face and for a moment, I thought she was going to refuse to give me information but Marcus spoke up.

“Please?” he offered.

The nurse’s face seemed to soften and I stifled the urge to scream as she typed Maggie’s information into the computer with unusually slow fingers.

“Room 221,” she sighed. “Down the hall that way.”

She gestured and as I turned to run, Marcus stopped me again.

“Here,” he offered, shoving two pieces of gum into my hand.

In my panic, I had forgotten where we had been and what I probably smelled like.

Gratefully, I shoved them in my mouth and continued toward the room, pushing my way inside where the doctor was blocking my view of Maggie.

“…bedrest, Ms. O’Dowd. Of course, we will continue to monitor the progress and – “

He stopped speaking as he realized that we had joined him, his brow knitting.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said crisply. “This is a patient’s room.”

“It’s all right, Dr. Manders. He’s the father.”

“Oh, I see,” the OB-GYN said, nodding and stepping aside for me to rush to Maggie’s side.

“What the hell happened?” I demanded, looking from her to him. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Maggie jumped in before the physician could speak. “The baby is fine.”

I didn’t believe her and I cast Marcus a quick look.

“I’ll leave you to explain what happened,” Dr. Manders said, turning to leave. “But I’m going to have to keep you here overnight at least, Maggie, just to make sure. I’ll get the nurse to come in and give you the first betamethasone shot, and then we’ll do the other one tomorrow before we discharge you. We’ll move you upstairs, though, so we can free up this bed.”

Shot? Upstairs? I felt like I was two steps behind, as well as almost two sheets to the wind.

Maggie nodded and turned to me, her blue eyes wide and scared. Suddenly, her expression shifted, her face puckering in disgust.

“You’ve been drinking,” she grimaced, wrinkling her nose.

“No!” I started to say but Marcus piped up.

“That’s my fault, Maggie. I – Serena and I are having problems and…well…” he trailed off sheepishly, darting his eyes to the floor.

My chest swelled with gratitude.

“What the hell happened?” I asked again. “Who brought you here?”

“I’ll be outside,” Marcus said, ducking back through the doorway, “if you need me.”

“I brought myself,” Maggie said. “I started to bleed and cramp and I—a” She broke off, before swallowing hard. “I thought I was miscarrying.” Her voice was tight, and I could hear the fear in it.

Miscarrying. The word caused a wave of nausea to sweep through me.

“But you weren’t? Are you sure?”

“They’re sure,” she sighed, spreading her fingers over her slowly expanding belly and I lay my hand over hers, quickly, fighting the lump in my throat.

“Christ, you scared the shit out of me!” I groaned, burying my head against her shoulder. “Shit…”

I don’t know if it was the after-affects of the alcohol or the overwhelming emotion but I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I blinked them away as Maggie gently shoved me away.

“It’s fine,” she said again. “We’re both fine.”

“What happened?” I insisted. “There must have been a reason for it.”

Her lips pressed together into a line and for a second, I thought she wasn’t going to tell me. I stared at her plaintively, silently pleading with her to let me in.

She exhaled, as if hearing my silent call to her. “My blood pressure is through the roof,” she confessed. “I’m at risk for preeclampsia.”

I wracked my brain for any medical knowledge I may have stored in the depth of my mind but I was drawing a blank. Ask me about Japanese knives or fruit gastriques and I was golden; doctor stuff I left to the doctors.

“What is that?” I finally asked, admitting my ignorance.

“I – I have high blood pressure,” she stuttered. “It puts the baby at risk for all kinds of stuff.”

I reached out to touch her face but she moved her head. Even in this time of vulnerability, she didn’t want to admit weakness, especially not to me.

“What do we have to do?” I asked her. “How do we make this better?”

I wanted her to hear the emphasis on the word “we”; to have her know she was not in this alone.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “We do nothing. Everything is – “

“Fine, yeah, I heard that,” I interjected, my jaw locking. “I also heard what the doctor said about bedrest, Maggie. Were you going to mention anything about that?”

She paused, her eyes flashing with an emotion I couldn’t immediately identify.

“You’re going to need someone with you,” I told her quietly.

“I will hire a nurse if worse comes to worse,” she replied firmly but I shook my head.

“This is my baby too, Mags, and even if you don’t want to be with me I have every right to be involved in his development. I want to be there for you – for both of you.”

She shifted her gaze away and I saw a muscle in her cheek twitch.

It was one of her only tells, one which spoke volumes to me in that moment.

She wants me there, too. She just doesn’t want to let me back in because she’s afraid I’ll hurt her again.

“Maggie, you can’t run the restaurant if you’re on bedrest,” I added slowly, the repercussions of what had happened slowly dawning on me. “Jesus, if it weren’t for Evelyn you’d probably be hauling bus trays around and taking deliveries.”

“I’ll figure something out – “

“No!” I snapped. “You won’t! You’ve been figuring shit out our whole lives for both of us. It’s time to let me take over and do my part for once.”

She lifted her cerulean blue eyes and for the first time I saw how red they were.

She’s been crying!

The realization hit me like a thousand bricks to the gut.

She was more scared than I had thought, just hiding it like she always did.

Because someone has to keep shit together, I thought grimly.

“I’m not taking no for an answer on this,” I said. And I meant it. If I had to camp out in the hallway every single day until she got the all-clear from the OB-GYN, so be it.

“I’ll get a sleeping bag and thermos and set up shop right in front of your door,” I told her.

Something in my voice must have convinced her I was serious.

“If I agree,” she said slowly. “Do you promise to go and leave me alone tonight?”

I smiled and rose from the edge of her bed.

“Not a goddamned chance in hell,” I replied, plopping onto a nearby chair. “I’m not leaving your side again until the doctor says I can.”