Prologue
Skye
Eighteen years old
Istaredattheceilingtiles, pretending the image of his terrified eyes the moment I collapsed wasn’t burned into my memory.
The nurse’s cheerful tone grated against my numbness. “Vitals look good, sweetheart.” She tapped something into the computer, unaware of the chaos raging inside me.
Everything still felt…not real. My eyelids were heavy and my throat burned. An aching pain, dulled only by the painkillers pumping through me, radiated from my abdomen. I hated this.
When I didn’t answer, the nurse turned to me and gave me a bright smile. She was younger than the first nurse I had. The one who was there when the anesthesia wore off. The one who told me what had happened.
I still wasn’t sure how to make sense of everything she said, but I grasped the important details. I’d been bleeding out internally. The baby had attached itself in the wrong place and almost killed me.
I swallowed hard, wincing at the pain in my throat.Baby.
It had only been a few weeks that I’d known. A few weeks that had completely changed the course of my life.
“Skye?”
The nurse said my name, pulling me back from my spiral of thoughts. Her brows pulled together. Had she been talking to me?
“I’m sorry,” I croaked. My mouth was so dry, but I’d been told I could only have some ice chips, no water yet. “What?”
Her smile returned, but didn’t reach her eyes. “I was asking if you were ready for some visitors? Your boyfriend has been waiting for you.”
The mention of him had my heart clenching. Of course he had been waiting. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here, but Fox wouldn’t have left me.
Hot tears pricked, but I fought the feeling. If there was anything I’d learned growing up with a father who punished more than he loved, it was that tears never helped. They only made things worse.
I pulled in a steady breath. I’d been in the recovery room for a while. The haze of pain meds and anesthesia was hard to think through, but I hadn’t wanted to dwell on what had happened. I didn’t want to think about what I’d been through. The only thing I could do was think about where I was going to go from here.
Reluctantly, I nodded. Guilt festered in my gut as the nurse said, “Great, I’ll go get him. He’s been asking about you often.”
Fox.MyFox. I couldn’t imagine what had been going through his mind as he waited. We’d been…fighting. We never fought, but we were arguing about our high school graduation and what we were going to do. I’d had my whole life planned out. I was going to go to the college of my dreams on a scholarship. I was going to get out of this tiny town, go far away from my father, and I was going to make something of myself.
But I never planned on Fox. I hadn’t planned on falling in love.
I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant.
A soft knock, and then he was there. Fox stood frozen in the doorway, his usually steady gray eyes shadowed with exhaustion and fear. His hands were fisted at his sides as he walked toward me carefully, silently, like I might shatter if he came too close too quickly.
If I didn’t know him so well, I’d have thought he was calm. But there was chaos behind his composed veneer, a storm raging beneath the surface.
Fox scanned the tubes and wires dripping from me, the slight crease between his brows deepening. His dark hair was wild and disheveled, like he’d been tearing his hands through it.
He stopped beside my bed, meeting my gaze. “They wouldn’t—” His voice sounded as ragged and hoarse as mine, as if he’d been the one to have a tube shoved down their throat. He swallowed before continuing, “They wouldn’t tell meanything.”
His voice cracked on the last word and so did my heart.
“I’m okay,” I said immediately. Not knowing whether it was the truth, but the bit of relief in his expression was worth the lie.
He curled his hands around the rails of my bed, his knuckles blanching as if he were forcing himself not to reach for me. “Skye.” He said my name with such sadness that the tears threatened to surface again. “What happened?”
I tore my gaze away from him, back to the ceiling. It was too much. I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to hurt him.
But I knew that I had to.
