Chapter Fifteen
Callum
It was a seven-hour flight into Dulles and an interminable drive through the traffic of D.C. and Baltimore to get to Hopkins. By the time everything had elapsed, it was close to midnight in local time, I’d been awake over thirty hours, and my head was pounding. I didn’t have a prayer of sleeping on my jet. Every time I closed my eyes at all, I was haunted by images of my Iris screaming in pain or dying in child birth. I saw myself at a graveyard with two fresh stones laid next to Priscilla’s. Once, the image had been of a tiny baby coffin. They shouldn’t be allowed to make them that small.
There should be no need for it.
When I half-stumbled, half-ran through the acute care ward of the hospital, I was pretty fucking out of it. I didn’t know my arse from a hole in the ground, and my head was spinning. Seth had left me a few texts. All indicated so far that she was still stable, and each wanted to know if I had any information on her health from what I’d seen back in Ireland. The worst had been turning my phone back on after the flight. My imagination had been running wild the entire way from Dublin, and I half expected an out of his bloody mind phone message where Seth explained that Iris had bled out and died.
Thank God and Mother Mary that never happened.
I wouldn’t have survived if it had.
I got to the nurses’ station and glared at them. “I need to see Iris Kilshimer.”
“And you are?” a nurse who looked about a hundred asked me in a droning, no-nonsense voice.
“I’m Callum O’Brien.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “I’m guessing by that deep Irish accent of yours that you’re not family.”
“I’m a friend of the family.”
“Sorry, but in America we have a lot of privacy laws for patients. I can’t even confirm for sure that Iris is here. It’s all about safety protocol and HIPAA.”
I shook my head and leaned closer to her. “I don’t give a toss about your rules and laws. The woman I love is in this hospital, and my child might be dying right along with her, and I need to know how she is.”
I blinked. That hadn’t been the plan. I was supposed to be here as the concerned friend for Seth and Rachel’s sakes. They’d been there for me with Priscilla. Rachel had spent three weeks in Ireland taking care of Symone when I’d been too upset to leave the bed. To get through all this illness, I’d hoped to at least keep a lid on things until Iris was on bed rest and safe at her home. But it had come tumbling out.
And it felt damn good to say it.
To own it.
The nurse stood, her entire demeanor changing. “You only had to say so, sir.”
“It’s complicated,” I said, running a hand through my disheveled hair and trying to look like the domineering CEO I was and not the panicked father I was becoming. I usually got a better response when I was cold and calculated. “But I’m the father, and I want to make sure Iris and our baby are doing okay.”
The nurse didn’t have time to respond. It was only the way that her eyes grew wide that I knew something was up. I ducked to my right just in time to miss the fist clocked for me. I spun around and held up my hands, palms up and flat, to indicate I was surrendering. Seth was standing before me, looking like a damn bull about to charge forward and kick my sorry arse. Any other time, I might have been tempted to let him. I’d been mentally doing it since I’d gotten in my limo, but a fight in the hospital wouldn’t help either of us.
He’d gone punchier than I had and softer. His grey hair and jowls indicated a man who didn’t keep in shape now into his early fifties, but he had a fire in his eyes, and I didn’t want us both to be kicked out of the hospital over some dumbass pissing match.
Both Iris and the baby deserved better.
“You did what?” Seth roared.
He took an uppercut swing at me, and I caught his arm. He wheezed in my grip, but I held his arm firmly.
“We shouldn’t fight. That’s the last thing your daughter or your grandchild need.”
“The last thing they needed was for you to come along.”
Seth tried to yank his arm from me and succeeded in landing a sharp blow to my chin. I cursed but held him firm. A few guards were rushing toward us. Normally, I’d have him on his back in a minute, but I didn’t want to hurt my friend. I just wanted to contain him and make sure he didn’t hurt himself. That was a far trickier proposition.
Rachel strode faster through the gathering crowd and held up her hands. She eyed the hospital guards and shook her head. “Officers, this is my husband and our oldest friend.”
Some idiot somewhere made a snide comment, and Seth struggled again. I had to work hard to make sure I didn’t snap his wrist.
“Stop,” Rachel said, her voice firm and like ice. She put her hand on Seth’s cheek. “Don’t.”
“You’re okay with this?”
“No, but our daughter is sick, and she needs all the support she can get. I can’t pretend to understand what she’s been thinking or what she’s been doing all this time.”
“I can figure out some of it,” Seth said, pulling back his arm.
“I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” I said. “She didn’t tell me. Do you think I’d have let her come back sick if I’d known?”
Seth gritted his teeth as he spoke. “I honestly don’t know. I know the family man you were with Priscilla, but even I can Google up your reputation lately. Maybe you did hear about her and sent her here. Maybe a sick mistress wasn’t what you wanted.”
“No,” I said, turning my focus to Rachel. If I had any odds of making one of them understand, then it was going to be her. “I love her. I’m one hundred percent, earth-shatteringly serious. I love your daughter, and I didn’t mean to fall for her, but I did. I will tear the world apart looking for the best doctors to take care of her. I will do anything to make sure she and the baby stay safe. Do you understand?”
Rachel nodded although her lips were set for a minute in a firm line. “I’m angry that you betrayed our trust, but I can see you now. I can see your eyes, and you can’t fake that kind of worry or care. I get that. So, please, come and see Iris and give her some strength and hope. She’ll need every ounce she can get to last the next five months.” Rachel threaded her arm through mine and led me down the hallway.
The guards and entire crowd disbursed, and I didn’t look back to see what Seth had done. Maybe he’d gone for a snack or to find where their son David had snuck off to. Maybe he was going to sneak outside for a smoke, since he still did that when he was upset, no matter what he told Rachel.
Oh Rachel.
I’d known her almost thirty years, and I felt like a right pillock and bastard for violating her trust this way.
“I’m sorry.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, you’re not. But I honestly don’t care right now. Iris is stable, but she’s in pain, and she’s very scared. If you being by her side every day is the difference between her being dead or alive, between losing my grandchild and saving it, then that’s what matters.”
“I really fucked things up, didn’t I?”
She stopped at the edge of the hospital room and patted my shoulders. “You did, but now you have a chance to fix it. Please, start doing that, Callum. Reward what faith I have left in you.” Rachel didn’t leave me time to answer before hurrying down the hall and back to the rest of her family I assumed.
Slowly, I walked into the room. Iris lay on the bed under several thin hospital blankets. They were stacked on top of each other to try and keep her warm in this ice-cold place with too much A.C., and she looked small and vulnerable underneath them. I wanted to let her rest, to give her time to be at peace after all the pain, but maybe she could sense me. Maybe my shoes made too much noise on the linoleum. Either way, she stirred and gaped when she saw me.
“Am I dreaming again?”
Despite everything, I had to smirk at that. “So, you’ve had dreams about me before, luv. Wish you’d admitted it back then.”
She shook her head. “You can’t be here. How did you even know? Did Allison tell you? I…what’s going on?”
I circled the bed and came to stand at its foot. As much as I wanted to scoop her into my arms and hold both her and the baby close, I needed to get everything off my chest. She’d hurt me, lied to me, and disappeared. I wanted to understand what the fuck was going on and where we were going from here.
No, fucking scratch that.
She was my vixen, my girl, and as long as she was alive, I’d fight for her. Even if Iris couldn’t see that, I’d keep reminding her. Our family was owed that much.
“I’d like to know that too.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I stared down at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“About the baby?” she asked sheepishly, her brown eyes darting around the room in some desperate effort to look anywhere but at me.
“Yes. Your dad called. Seth was asking around for some unlucky millennial in the office who’d sullied you and left you sick. Imagine my shock when I found out that the woman I loved was half a planet away bleeding out and possibly losing our child.”
She blinked. “Say that again.”
“I was scared for both of you. I love you both, the baby since the moment I bloody well heard, and I have to hear about all of this in a panicked hospital phone call.”
“You love me?” she asked, her lower lip trembling as if she were a scared little rabbit twitching her nose before me.
That broke me then, that she could have any doubt in her mind.
Rushing forward, I made my way around her bed and kissed her. She was cold to my touch, and I hated that. As soon as the doctors gave us permission, I was taking her to the best hotel suite in the city, and she’d be stuck there on bed rest with me watching her every minute. Anything she needed and was allowed to have would be at her beck and call within a moment. But all of that pampering, all of that cautious care had to start with getting her to understand that she meant the world to me.
Without her and our child, things would be so dark. I couldn’t go through a loss so big ever again.
It would crush me.
“I love you,” I said again, forcing every ounce of truth and energy into my words. “I think I loved you since the moment in the French place. You opened up about who you were and what you really wanted, and I couldn’t resist you after that.”
“Really?”
I reached out and ran a finger down the side of her too-pale cheek. “I’d never lie about that. I think you opened up and revealed your soul, luv, and I’ve been hooked then on out.” I moved my arm so I could place my palm flat against her stomach.
Damn me. I should have noticed she was looking a little rounder, her cheeks more flushed. If I’d been thinking at all, I might have realized she was showing that new glow of coming motherhood. After all, I knew the look. It just…we’d been so careful, except that first time, and she was on the pill. This being a possibility had never occurred to me at all.
“I love both of you. If you’d told me…why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of Seth?”
“Well, yes, but I was scared of a ton of things,” she said. “I thought you’d reject me. This was just about fun.”
“It was, but it’s more now.” I caressed her stomach. It was just barely gaining weight. I couldn’t wait to see her belly swollen and round, growing large with my child. “You should have come to me.”
“You already have a life with your daughter. And I can’t even pretend to replace Priscilla. I mean, not to sound awful, but every year you raise millions of dollars for cancer because you lost her. I can’t be her.”
“I don’t need you to be her, and Symone adores you. I’m sure she’d love to be a big sister to our child.”
“Maybe, but I was scared I was still just a fling. If you’d said that to my face, I couldn’t have survived.”
I nodded and then moved my hand back to cup her chin. “That’s funny.”
“What?”
“The only things that could truly crush us; they’re inversed. You couldn’t have lived with me rejecting you, which I’d never, ever do, luv. If Seth had called me and said you’d died…I’d have gone mad. Cracked into a million pieces.”
She sniffled. “I didn’t mean to make you so upset. I just…”
“Then,” I said, leaning closer so that my breath hit her cheeks. “We have to be better. Not just for us anymore, but for our child. We have to trust each other.”
“Like by not running to another country?”
“Another continent,” I said, winking at her to let her know I wasn’t mad. God, as long as she and the baby survived, finding out about both of them today would be about the third or fourth happiest moment of my life. “We definitely need to be better together. I’ll say more what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. It’s been fifteen years since I had to let a woman really into my thoughts and into my heart.”
“I’m in your heart.”
I kissed her again, tasting every bit of her unique flavor on my tongue. “Luv, you’re so deep in there that I’d never be able to get you out again, and I’d never want to.” I squeezed her hand. “So, you and me and the baby.”
“Possibly my father’s shotgun?”
I laughed. “He might have tried to deck me already. I worry about Seth taking on too much. Desk life has made him softer than I.”
She shook her head. “Nothing about you is anything but hard, Cal. I just think that whatever comes, it’s going to be so difficult. My family’s really pissed, and I do understand it. Believe me, I do. I can’t say I’d be different if David did something probably this dumb?”
“Get pregnant, luv?”
“No, but get sick or get himself hurt.”
I squeezed her hand more deeply. “But we’ll get through it together. We’ll be honest, and in five months, we’ll have the second-best baby on the planet.”
“Second?”
“Or tied. I’m not going to get yanked into sibling rivalry and be forced to choose between Symone and the new one. I am now Switzerland and am completely neutral.”
She laughed, and it was the best damn sound I’d ever heard. “You’re about to be the father of two kids, at least soon enough. I think there’s no neutral place to hide in that!”
“But you’ll always have my back?”
“And you’ll have mine, Cal. I get that now.”
“And forever.”
“Yes, forever.”