Chapter 18

Do you ever laugh at something that is really dark, and then wonder what the hell is wrong with you?

-Text from Travis to Reed

Krisney

“What are you doing here?”

Reed gave me a look that clearly said, without words, that he thought I was crazy.

“I’m here to watch you recover,” he said. “They’re even bringing my old bed in here. He paused, then grinned. “Here it is now.”

The orderly rolled it in and put it in the corner of the room, waved at Reed, and then left just as fast.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Henn,” I said softly. “Do you think you could give me and Reed a few minutes alone?”

Hennessy didn’t bother to argue, just got up and left.

The moment the door closed softly behind her, I turned my attention back to Reed.

“If you’re going to break my heart, just break it.”

I choked on the words, and his head snapped in my direction.

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t live like this.” I blew out a breath to keep the tears at bay. “You’re hurting my heart. I don’t know if we’re together. I don’t know, from one day to the next, if you’re going to be nice Reed or mean Reed. Or used to not, anyway. Now you’re just all smiles and shit, and it’s fucking with my head. Before…sometimes you say the nicest things, and then others you look at me like I’m the antichrist.”

“I do not.”

His words were adamant, but I couldn’t help but shake my head. “You do…did.”

He looked so confused that I almost stopped and reevaluated if this was the right time and place to do this, but I couldn’t do this. It was seriously messing with my head to have him here.

My stupid heart was starting to feel that maybe he was there to stay…so if he wasn’t, I needed to know.

“I was…I’m all in.”

“You’re all in.”

“All in,” he confirmed.

“What changed?” I asked, staring at him.

“Nearly losing you.”

I laughed. “You could’ve lost me at any time. That’s a stupid reason.”

His eyes changed as he took a seat and stared at me across his bed.

“I can’t ever make it up to you,” he murmured gruffly. “I can only go on from here. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. My mom was in pain. Hell, I was in pain. I couldn’t believe my sister had to go through that. Then, once I did it…I couldn’t make myself move past it.”

I laughed humorlessly.

"You think you're the only one in pain, Reed?" I asked in a suspiciously calm voice. "Newsflash! You weren't!"

I was blaming my irrationality on the drugs that they were pumping into my system…or maybe my freakin’ hormones were still whacked.

Whatever.

I didn’t care.

My belly tightened as a sob hitched my throat, causing a shaft of pain to pour through me. Bile rose in my throat. I wanted to puke everywhere. But I knew I couldn't. This needed to be said, and if I started throwing up everywhere, he'd get all concerned. Then I wouldn't be able to get anything out of him because he was a freakin mother hen when it came to me. He always had been.

Which hurt even worse. He loved me. I loved him. But he refused to have anything to do with me because he thought it was the right thing to do. Or at least…he had been. Now, I didn’t even know.

However, half his argument when we were younger had to do with my parents and how much he disliked them, and they disliked him.

Well, they weren't in the picture anymore, now were they?

"What are you talking about, Kris?"

He looked utterly confused. Heartbroken.

"I introduced Jay to Amy," I said so softly that nobody would hear but him. "It was at a volleyball game. I don’t even know why she was there…Jay was there to watch me because my father dragged him along.” I looked away from his piercing stare. “I wish I’d never done it.”

He didn't reply.

I was about to tell him my most secret shame.

"And then I found out what he did," I whispered. "You know when someone is trying to get you to see how it would feel, and they say, 'Well, what would you think if it was your own sister?'"

He didn't nod. Didn't so much as twitch.

"Before he found your sister?" I choked out. "Yeah, he was doing some of that to me."

His eyes closed.

"You don't think I know what Amy was going through?” He swallowed, looking like I’d just punched him in the gut. I watched his Adam's apple bob with the movement. "It was me he used to victimize. Now I’m paying for my sins. For never telling a cop what he did to me."

Reed was taken from me. My babies were almost taken from me. My life was only hours away from slipping away. What was next?

"No."

Reed’s one word sounded like it was ripped straight out of his gut.

I smiled, but it wasn't in humor. It was in self-defamation.

"I was happy."

His eyes flashed.

"When he stopped, it was because he had someone new to do that to. Your sister.”

"What did he do?"

I could tell it pained him to ask. He didn't want to know. If he knew, then he couldn't deny it anymore.

"Everything but the one thing you’re thinking of."

Reed made a sound in his throat that sounded like he'd been stabbed in the heart.

I didn't waver.

"My mom knew he came into my bedroom because I told her," I whispered. "She knew that Jay liked to t-touch me."

"Did he rape you?"

Blunt. To the point.

It was killing him. He needed to know, but he didn't want to know at the same time.

He wanted to remain blissfully in the dark. But hell, didn't we all? Nobody wanted to know that bad shit happened to the people they loved.

And I knew Reed loved me. It was in his eyes. The same love that was in my own.

"He never got that in depth," I whispered. “It started a while before we met. Stopped when Jay started spending so much time at your house.”

I knew why he stopped…now. Then, I hadn’t. I’d just been happy that he had.

But Reed had never known, and now I could see the self-condemnation as he tried to come to terms with not being able to save me from it. Eventually, I would've worked up the courage to tell him, but even now, I hadn’t wanted to say the words.

Saying the words made them more real.

“That’s why you freaked out when I first touched you?” He swallowed. “When I touched you…that first time.”

I looked away.

“I needed to see your face…and when you tried to turn out the lights, I might’ve had a flashback. But you calmed me down, turned on the lights, and let me see your face. From that moment on, I was never scared of you again.”

I looked back toward him and wanted to run into his arms.

He was mad, though.

I could tell.

“I’m sorry for not telling you.”

He looked up at the ceiling, not accepting my apology.

“If I’d have known…”

I laughed harshly.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said honestly. “Right when I’d worked up the courage to tell you…Jay died. Then you would’ve stayed, because you felt pity. I get it. But if you didn’t want to stay, I didn’t want you to stay. I wanted you to live your life, and be happy.”

“That’s the thing.”

My eyes flashed up to his.

“What’s the thing?”

“The thing is that I wasn’t happy. Not even close. Tobias caught Jay…and then I got it in my head that I had to tell you goodbye. Kris, I haven’t been happy since you walked out the door that day.”

I wiped away the tears that were spilling down my cheeks.

“I guess that makes two of us.” I sniffled. “But Reed…it’s not enough. I want your love. Your time. Everything. I can’t do this anymore. I need to either have all of you or none of you. This in between…I don’t freakin’ like it. It literally hurts me to be around you. So, you need to make a decision. You need to figure out whether you want me and the babies, or if we should make a visitation schedule where you can see them, but I won’t be there.”

“You think I don’t love you?”

“A man doesn’t stay away from the woman he loves.”

I wanted to take the whispered words back before they’d even left my mouth, but now that they were out, I had to own up to the fact that they were true.

He gave me a kidney. He gave me half of his liver. He’d saved my life.

But saving someone’s life didn’t mean that you loved them.

Hell, people gave away kidneys all the time to a stranger. Sure, it’s rare, but it happened.

I was tired.

I was worn out.

I felt like nothing ever got any easier.

I wanted to see my babies.

It fucking sucked that I still couldn’t.

And I needed something more from Reed than just a shoulder to cry on.

I needed him to give me him.

To open up that steel-clad door and let me in.

And if he wasn’t going to let me in, then I needed to let him go.

Because I couldn’t do it anymore.

I needed something in my life to go right for once.

I needed Reed.

“You think I don’t love you?” he laughed. “A man that doesn’t love a woman would stay away from her. I can’t stay away from you. If you get too far away, like when you went to fucking Germany, my heart palpitates. I can’t function without knowing you’re okay. So, I followed you.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he shut me up by placing a finger to my lips.

“My turn,” he growled.

I bit my lip and leaned back in my new bed they’d transferred me into once I’d been let out of the ICU.

“What else?” he bit out as he got up out of his bed and started to pace. “I have parts on hand at Travis’s shop for your car. If anything goes wrong with that piece of junk, I have the parts in stock on the shelf for Travis to fix it. I think I have a few headlight assemblies in my Amazon cart right now because I saw that one of them was acting up again.”

My mouth fell open.

“I’ve been paying the old man that you bought your place from for ten years now. I didn’t want him to sell it, but I didn’t want to buy it, because you always said that you wanted to be there to sign the papers with me.” He turned around and started walking back. “Vet visits for Pepé. I paid for those, too. It wasn’t a kindness on their part since you adopted from one of their events. I made sure that I pre-paid. They still have my name on his records. That’s why, when they called a few days ago, I didn’t tell you who was on the phone. They were reminding me that Pepé had his annual check-up, and I didn’t want to see you cry.”

Because Pepé was dead.

Oh, God.

“Reed,” I breathed.

“You want more proof that I love you?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

“I can’t sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept a full night since you left my house.” He paused. “I followed you home. I made sure you got there safely, walking behind you in the rain. I saw you drop down onto your knees on your front lawn, and I dropped down on mine in the street.”

A mewl left my mouth as I tried to hold my tears at bay.

It didn’t work.

They coursed down my cheeks.

“One of the happiest days of my life was when you came in that clinic, and I found out that you were pregnant with my babies,” he whispered gruffly. “The. Best.”

Hot tears dropped from my chin onto my arm, but I didn’t reach up to swipe them away.

There were too many at this point.

Nothing would stop them short of a freakin’ towel.

“The second-best day of my life?” He cracked his knuckles. “Waking up from my drug-induced haze, and finding out that you made it through surgery.”

I couldn’t freakin’ speak. Could hardly breathe.

“The third?” He leaned back against the wall across from me, kept his eyes on mine, and let me have it all. “The day you get to see the babies with me the first time.”

“That hasn’t happened yet.” I hiccoughed.

He smiled. “But it will…soon. And when it does, that’ll be my third best day.”

A sob caught in my throat, and I suddenly couldn’t stand for him to be so far away.

“Get in this bed with me.”

The moment he did, and I was close enough, he wrapped his arms around me and held on tight.

Both of us hurt.

Both of us were uncomfortable.

But having him so close…well, nothing else would ever compare.

It was too tight, but I didn’t mind.

What I did care about was that he was holding me. He was there. He was letting me in.

“I want to dig up his grave, and chop his bones up with a hacksaw. Burn them, and piss on them to put the fire out.” He growled.

“You saved me,” I whispered to him. “You don’t know it, but you did. I was broken. And you and your love fixed me.”

“I fucking hate him,” he said. “I didn’t think I could hate him even more, but somehow, I’ve managed it.”

“It’s okay. It’s over,” I lied.

It was never going to be okay. I was never going to forget. Not ever.

"Listen to me very carefully."

I shut up and listened, realizing that Reed wanted to speak, and wouldn't take no for an answer.

"Not a day has gone by in twelve years that I haven't thought about you. Wished that I'd made a different decision.” He repositioned himself in the bed, and a painful grimace crossed his face. Before I could tell him to go to his own bed, he continued—and completely rocked my world in the process. "I want what he stole from us. The house. The land. The kids. You. If you would’ve died, I don't know what I would have done. I want to say that I would've done the adult thing and taken care of our kids. Made a life for them. And maybe I would have. Most likely, though, they wouldn't know the same man that you left. They'd know a shell of a man who didn't want to be in a world that you weren't a part of.” His eyes were intense as he leaned forward. "I love you, Kris. Always have, and always will. There's nothing holding me back anymore. I don't care who doesn't approve. I don't care if my brothers will secretly hate it—even though they don't. I don't care if my mom never speaks to me again. Hell, I don't even have to live here if that's the case. All I care about is you and our little family. Please don't say no."

"Say no to what?"

"To me asking to marry you.” I looked at him with wide eyes.

"Is that what you're doing?"

He grinned and lifted his hand—which held a diamond ring in the palm. It was small. And everything I'd ever wanted.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I bought this six years ago during a moment of weakness. I saw it, and thought of you."

A tear dropped down my cheek, and a wave of exhaustion washed over me.

My eyes drooped.

"Maybe."

He started to laugh. "All right."

"I'll keep the ring, though. Think about it real hard."

He grunted and slid the ring on my finger. It was a perfect fit.

"Perfection."

I agreed wholeheartedly.

And when the machine beeped, indicating that he'd pressed my pain pump button, I smiled at him. "The nurse told me that only I was allowed to press that," I teased.

He winked and stood, looking somewhat pained as he did.

"I'm a doctor. I can do it. Nobody else, though."

I snorted. "Whatever."

He leaned forward so our foreheads touched.

I threaded my hands around his neck, lifted my face so my nose could rub against his, and said, “I love you, Reed Hail.”

He shivered. “I love you, too, Krisney Shaw. Always have, always will.”

***

1 week later

I was nervous as hell as they pushed me into the NICU—neonatal intensive care unit—instead of to my car as they released me from the hospital.

My belly was doing somersaults, and I prayed that they were really okay like Reed's family, as well as Hennessy, kept assuring me that they were.

"Do you think they're ugly?"

Reed looked over at me in confusion as he situated his mask into place. "They're our children. They're not ugly. At least not to us."

I started to crack up. "I guess what I meant to say is, do you think they look like they did on the ultrasound?"

"You mean alien-like?"

I nodded.

"Maybe,” he admitted. “They're two weeks old, but that only makes them thirty-four weeks adjusted. They'd still have six-eight weeks to fatten up if they were still developing inside you. Since they're not, they likely look scrawny. Like you."

I snorted.

We literally knew nothing about our children.

Not their sizes when they were born. Not what color hair they had, or whether they were boys or girls. They were identical, that we knew. So, they were either both girls or both boys. But other than that, we knew nothing.

"Let's do this."

Reed pushed into the room backwards like he was heading into surgery, his gloved hands extended in front of him. Mask in place securely over his nose and mouth. His eyes, though.

They showed his fear.

He was just as nervous as me, but he was trying not to show it.

I stood up, and walked through, coming to a stop just inches inside the room.

It was overwhelming.

The overhead lights were dark. Machines were everywhere. Lights were blinking almost everywhere in a strobe-like effect. It was hot. And the crying. All of the babies sounded like they were crying.

The room itself was square, and huge infant incubators were taking up the majority of the room.

Ten in total.

Since this was a smaller county hospital, they didn’t have individual rooms for the babies. No, they were all crammed into this one too-small space. There was a counter high station right inside the door, and one nurse was typing away on the computer, not even looking up.

My eyes went for the nurse that I’d seen come to my room twice over the last week that I’d been in the hospital.

She was standing in between two of the huge glass-domed beds, a chart in her hand.

I made my way to her, knowing with certainty that she was next to my children.

She had other babies, of course, but I just knew that they were mine.

Like a homing beacon was inside of me, guiding my way straight to my babies.

Every step I took caused a twinge. One in my belly. One in my side. One in my back.

It didn’t matter, though.

Nothing did but meeting the babies that were mine.

Mine and Reed’s.

My steps were slow, and Reed stayed at my side, keeping the same pace.

When we arrived at the woman, my eyes automatically skittered every which way.

There was too much to look at. Machines. Lights. Monitors. Papers hanging off the incubators.

My eyes focused on the nurse.

She was writing something down, and when I got closer, I realized that it said, ‘Feeding Schedule’ on the top in bold black letters.

“They eat a lot,” I breathed, looking at all the times she’d written down.

The nurse smiled, and then gestured to the baby to her right. “This one just ate. I’m feeding baby B next!”

I looked over at baby A, and fell in love.

Tiny…so freakin’ tiny.

The baby looked like a doll. Honest to God, if I didn’t see the baby’s chest rising and falling, I would’ve said it was one.

One of those tiny ones that look small, even in a toddler’s arms.

“Oh, God,” I breathed.

Reed’s hand tightened at my hip.

I wanted to pick the baby up and cuddle it.

“You can’t hold them yet,” she murmured softly, reading my thoughts. “Their skin is like paper, and tears easily. You can touch them, though. Just be super careful.”

I swallowed.

I didn’t want that—their skin to tear.

Not at all.

“My mother happen to be here today?”

I blinked, surprised that I hadn’t remembered that Reed’s mother freakin’ worked in the NICU.

“Not today, no. She works opposite shifts of me. So, when I’m here, she’s not, and vice versa,” the nurse, her name was Temperance, explained. “But she’s gotten a lot of lovins in on these boys.”

Boys.

Holy, holy shit.

“Boys?” I squeaked.

The nurse grinned. “Boys.”

“Holy crap,” I breathed. “You gave me two boys, Reed.”

Reed was grinning ear to ear, and I could tell he was just as happy as I was.

Not that I didn’t want a girl—eventually—I just had always seen us having boys first.

I moved to the incubator and peered in the side, my eyes taking everything in at once.

The lines running every which way. One attached to his foot with what looked like a Band-Aid. Another one attached to the left side of his chest, followed by another on the right. There was an IV line in the baby’s head.

Oh, God.

His head.

I moaned.

Reed squeezed my hip again.

“You can do this if you’d like.”

I looked at her over my shoulder, wondering what she wanted me to do.

“What?”

I’d do anything.

“Hold this right here.” She gestured with her head to the tube cylinder she was holding. “It’s the milk that he’s eating for this hour.”

Reed took the tube from her and gestured me forward.

I didn’t want to leave the baby I was staring at, but I couldn’t not do it.

I wanted to do it.

I moved to the other incubator.

The tube was nothing more than a syringe with the plunger part taken off. It was bigger than I’d seen, but not by much. It was also filled to the brim with milk.

“Do I just hold it?”

She nodded, as did Reed.

The moment my hand touched down on the plastic, I started to cry.

Reed’s hand wrapped around me. After placing a kiss to my forehead, he gestured with his head to the other incubator. “I’m gonna go check out Bruiser over there.”

I giggled, but was unable to take my eyes off of the baby boy on the white bed in front of me.

“Do you have to burp him?” I suddenly asked.

She shook her head, but it was Reed who answered me. “No. Since he’s on a feeding tube, he’s not sucking back air like a healthy baby would when they were eating. This one has your eyes. All slanted and angry.”

I snorted and licked my lips.

I practically itched to press my lips to the little boy’s tiny little nose.

This one…he looked like his daddy.

He had a head full of black hair, wide open grayish/blue eyes, and a nose that he’d have to one day grow into like his father had.

His hands were tiny…much smaller than anything I’d ever seen in my life. The entire little fist was about the size of a quarter.

His foot was about the size of a piece of Hershey’s chocolate—the fun sized.

“Hey, baby,” I whispered, my hand going to the glass just like I’d done with his brother.

“Do you have names for them yet?”

My eyes flicked up to Temperance.

“Uhh,” I hesitated. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?” she asked teasingly.

I nodded and looked over my shoulder at Reed.

“You tell her.”

Reed chuckled.

This name thing had been hard as hell.

It’d taken us almost a month to name Pepé, and he was a puppy.

Naming a child was a huge commitment.

It’d taken us nearly two weeks of going back and forth over names before we found two that we adored.

“Do you want the D, or the B?”

I looked down at the baby that I was feeding.

“B.”

“Baby A is Dash. Baby B is Bax.”

Baxter and Dashiell. Both completely random names that we’d found in a baby book but had both liked.

“Love it,” the nurse said. “I’ll write that down in their charts. I’m only assuming this, but the last name is Hail, correct?”

She knew a little about us, I saw.

Momma Hail didn’t completely hate me if she talked about me…right?

“Yes,” I confirmed before Reed could. “We’re getting married once the babies are out of here.”

My absent-minded comment caused the man, who’d been talking quietly to his son, to stop speaking almost instantly.

I looked over my shoulder at him and saw he was watching me with excitement.

“You’re saying yes?”

I laughed. “We’ll see.”

He growled. “I’ll ask you right now.”

I laughed. “I’m wearing your ring already, Reed. Asking me is only a formality at this point. I wanted to make you sweat.”

“Well, you accomplished that,” he muttered. “You done?”

I looked down at the syringe and saw that it was almost empty.

“Maybe?”

He left the baby he was standing near, and came to me, deftly removing the syringe and doing doctor things as I stared at our baby’s face.

“You like this,” I murmured.

He nodded. “The babies are my favorite part of my job.” He paused. “I don’t often interact with ones this small. I did do a few rotations in the NICU during my residency, though. If I ever had to pick a new specialty, this would be the place I’d go.”

As I studied my baby, I suddenly blinked when I saw that he didn’t have any eyebrows.

“He doesn’t have any eyebrows!” I murmured.

“Or nails or eyelashes,” Reed agreed. “Completely normal.”

I looked, and indeed, he didn’t have any fingernails or eyelashes, either.

“Holy shit,” I murmured. “You’re right.”

He snorted. “I know.”

A pitiful whine from behind me had me moving to the other bed, and I smiled when I saw Dash’s head moving side to side.

“God, I want to hold you so bad,” I murmured.

“You can touch him,” the nurse, who I hadn’t been aware was still there, said. “Just don’t hold onto him.”

I looked at my fingers, suddenly seeing weapons in my fingernails where before I would’ve seen just nails.

Carefully, I lifted one finger and ran it over the top of Dash’s head.

“So soft,” I murmured. “Like a little peach.”

The nurse giggled. “Exactly like one,” she agreed.

And so, it went.

Reed and I bounced between both kids until I was too exhausted to stand. When that happened, they found me a chair and I sat at Dash’s bedside. Then moved ten minutes later to Baxter’s.

Over and over until visiting hours ended.

When the new nurse, the night one, came in, everything literally stopped.

The parents that had been quietly looking at their own babies started to leave, and I realized that I was expected to go, also.

I wanted to cry.

Reed touched the tips of his fingers to my face, and then smiled knowingly.

“Let’s go,” he murmured. “We’ll be back early.”

We would.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

***

I hated leaving, but the NICU had strict policies that they adhered to when it came to visitors.

Not that I could complain. Those strict policies were protecting my two boys, and I wouldn’t fault them for that.

“What now?” Reed asked.

Confused, I looked up to find him standing directly beside me, but his eyes were on the tall man that was leaning against the wall opposite of where we were exiting.

His eyes were hard, and surprisingly soft at the same time. As if he felt for what he was about to do.

“Do y’all have a minute?”