Colton

I feel a scream bubble up inside me and feel the skin on my hand split open when I punch the wall, the pain inside my chest so great it feels like I’m being ripped apart from the inside out.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. James. I saw her just yesterday and she was so excited. She even had me put the results in an envelope because she wanted to surprise you with it.”

The doctor’s words drive the spike deeper into my heart and I feel everything inside me clamor into one overriding thought. Someone attacked my Emma and almost killed our baby.

Hearing that she is pregnant almost floored me and for a second I was too stunned to think anything but that she would be devastated if she knew.

I still don’t know how it’s possible, I saw her bleeding myself but the doctor who was on call at the hospital is apparently the one who saw Emma when I ordered her to see a doctor because she was sick for a few days.

I’d have gone with her but she has boundaries about what I can and can’t do and apparently those include knowing her medical history. Strange woman, my Emma.

Now this.

I was on the way to her when I heard security yelling about someone being attacked in the stairwell and that’s where I went, not once thinking that I would hear my baby scream and find her lying across the stairs.

I almost went nuts but managed to center myself when they started yelling and called the ambulance. Harley showed up while I was cradling her, yelling at her to wake up. There was blood on her face.

It scared me shitless, all that blood, and I can tell you I almost passed out seeing her like that, unconscious and losing blood.

“Sir? I know this is hard but you need to get some rest. You’re about to fall over.”

I ignore the doctor completely, not caring if I’m being rude and stalk over to Sue who’s been crying for the last hour, especially after the doctor delivered his news so openly.

“Oh my poor, poor baby!” she sobs when I pull her into my chest, breathing raggedly because it hurts so much I don’t know how I am still functioning.

Shit, I almost lost my girl and the baby she has inside her. Emma may have put a ban on babies but the woman goes ape-shit when she sees a stroller. Just one hint of the little darlings and all her shyness disappears.

I’ve had to stand by at least twice when she saw a stroller and practically attacked the mother to see her baby. It’s strange and frankly scary to see her coo over babies and talk to moms as if she hasn’t been shy a day in her life.

She hasn’t woken yet. They sedated her sometime last night because she kept screaming whenever she woke up.

“We have a name on the piece of shit who attacked her on the stairs,” Harley says after getting off the phone, his aggression and anger matched only by mine and the pure rage that I see in Buck when he jumps to his feet.

“Who?”

“Duncan Fletcher.”

“That piece of shit!” Buck snarls, making Sue jump and take a shuddering breath, her gasping sobs overridden by Buck’s snarls.

I am completely calm when he says this, the anger and pain iced over by pure murderous rage.

“Who is he?”

“The one! The guy she was convinced raped her when she was seventeen.” He sneers, giving me the one answer I need.

I don’t say anything, just open my phone and make a call, any conscience I had left dying a quick death as I let a certain somebody know what I want done. I’m not heartless but Harley brought over security footage and I saw that animal kick my baby. He needs to suffer.

Monsters. They’re all going to die now, maybe not physically but one day I’ll visit this animal in the cell he’ll be in for the rest of his life and I will laugh in his face.

He’s taken something from my Emma, from me, but what I take will be so much worse than him scaring her and rocking the safe world I’ve built for her.

 

Emma

The beeping sound that pierces my consciousness is a steady hum that increases when I gasp awake and grab my stomach, the tenderness there telling a story that doesn’t need words.

I cry, my heart breaking when I feel something thick between my legs. Wet. Warm. Familiar.

“Ssssh, shh, Emma. It’s okay.”

But it’s not, I think as Colt comes to me, pulling me into his arms while I sob so hard I gag and lose mobility, my body going slack with the weakness of grief.

“Baby!”

Colt holds me tighter, pressing my face into his chest and I feel him shake as I cry, his own tears sliding against my cheek, making me sob more.

Pain. It’s inside me so bad and fierce I can’t feel anything else.

“It’s okay, Em, ssh, it’s going to be okay, baby,” he whispers, kissing my face all over and drinking in my tears.

I know it’s so…the baby wasn’t even a baby yet if those doctors are to be believed but for just a short time I held that weird, scary hope and joy that can only come when you find out something truly special.

And that was my baby. I wanted it, so badly, for me, for Colt who’d have been over the moon and for a future that seems bright. On the back of the pain comes an anger that almost consumes me.

Duncan. He took so much from me. My baby.

“Oh God, Colt. He kicked me. He killed the baby.” I wail, feeling my heart break open.

“No, Em! No, no, baby, it’s okay. The doctors said the baby is okay, sweetheart.” He practically yells at me to make himself heard through my crying.

I stop, pulling away to stare at him through tear filled eyes, my vision blurry while I hold my breath to hear the words again. He must know it because he smiles and leans down, kissing me reverently and touching my stomach.

“He’s okay, Em. You didn’t tell me?” he asks, leaning in to smile into my eyes.

He looks so happy. Tired, ragged but so happy that I cry as I laugh and drop back, my relief draining whatever strength I had left.

“I wanted to tell you, make it a surprise.” I hiccup, holding my stomach with wonder because it just doesn’t feel real.

I was so sure I was losing the baby and now, now my world is whole again. I have Colt, my family, the little one that will come later, and I feel as if for once, no twice, God has given me a gift that makes all the previous pain non-existent. First Colt and now this.

Life, I think as I touch his face, willing all the love I feel to reflect in my eyes. I have life, for once and it is good. One day, when I am old and I have my lover beside me, watching our children and grandchildren grow, I will look back and know that it started here with him.

“Do you know how much I love you, Colton?” I whisper, my voice cracking when he closes his eyes and shudders. “You’ve given me life, saved my life, made me want everything. You’re my everything.”

I tell him because I can’t not tell him.

“I love you too, Emma.”

The words are raw, as if he’s so unused to saying them it’s like speaking a new language but I hear them and it makes me hold my breath, a new ache settling in my chest.

“Colt-”

“I think I loved you when you looked at me in that elevator and told me my intern exam was stupid. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, the girl with the almost purple eyes and the shy blushes that made me hard. I told myself it was just sex, that I could have you and not feel but I knew it wasn’t true. You scared the shit out of me. I tried to ignore it, you, but I’d watch you leave every day and get on the bus and I’d go a little crazy. I’d follow you or have you followed and wait outside your building just to make sure you got inside okay.” He laughs, breathing deep while I look at him in wonder.

“I was so screwed I couldn’t handle the thought of not having you. That dinner date? I was going to seduce you, fuck you and then call it but then…I couldn’t make myself do it. You were mine, the purest thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted all that devotion I saw when you looked at me. My parents didn’t love me and I didn’t want love after I’d hardened myself. That’s what I believed until you showed me that I was a fool.”

“Colt-”

“When you left me the morning after we made love? I tore the apartment to shreds. I was so angry, at you for lying to me, or so I thought, at me for being pissed that you were just like the others. At first I didn’t understand but now I know, I wanted you to be the one. Not because we fit or I wanted a family or even just because of you Em. It was me, the part I didn’t want to know that kept wanting to love you. I stopped fighting it the night you confronted your mom. You were so brave and fierce as you spat in her face and called her on her bullshit that I asked myself why I couldn’t be like that. I didn’t want to be a coward anymore.”

“Colt-” I try again, because I can’t stand hearing him in pain and I don’t need him to tear himself apart like this, not for me.

All I needed was the words. I believe him; he’s already proved it before he said it.

“I’m done being scared, Em. I’m stronger for loving you, I know that now and I won’t ever regret feeling this way. I want it all with you. Marriage, family, fighting, make up sex, old age. Mostly I just want you, Emma, so whatever you decide is okay by me. If you don’t-”

“Colt!” I yell, taking his face in my hands to shut him up because dammit, I know!

He blinks, opens his mouth and groans when I stop his words with an open mouthed kissed that involves tongue and tears and everything I feel.

*note to self, he definitely loves me because he’s kissing me back and I definitely need to brush my teeth.*

“I’ll marry you and have a dozen babies if that’s what you want,” I mutter against his lips, smiling when he groans and kisses me again.

“I really love you, Emma Harper. Can we negotiate about the security I want to put on you?”

I laugh, slapping his chest playfully because the man is ever the CEO and is never going to change. He smells an opening, like chum in the water, and he’s there, pushing for his deal.

“One. I’ll accept one,” I mumble, pulling back to stroke his cheek and smile. “That’s the end though.”

He grins, cocking his head to the side and I grimace because that’s not the end. Hell, I think this is just the beginning of my life negotiating with my bad ass boss and even bad-er boyfriend.

“I’ll give you head every night for the rest of our lives if you settle for two.”

Now I do laugh because that’s not even up for negotiation.

“You’ll do it anyway, even if I stay on one.”

He grins sheepishly, lets off a breath of a chuckle and shrugs because he knows it’s true. Head is more for him than it is for me and trust me, it’s for me. Big time.

“We’ll revisit this issue once preliminaries have been discussed.”

I kiss him to shut him up and keep kissing him even when Buck finally barges in, his patience more than tested. We ignore his whining. Colt growls when Sue walks in and gasps and I laugh the whole time Harley flirts with August.

I can’t wait to see what comes next. I have a feeling that with Colton, it’ll be more than worth it.