“Besides put a hole in the wall and send the woman you love crying hysterically out of the room?” Jason asked in an annoyingly calm tone. “You fucked up, but don’t worry, you’ll do that a lot.”
“Gee, thanks,” Trevor said dryly.
“Not a problem,” Jason said cheerfully as he started searching through the empty bags and containers. “Damn, it’s all empty,” Jason grumbled. “Could you go up there and grovel now so that we can get our asses back to my mother’s house? I’m starving.”
“Yeah, cause it’s all about you,” Trevor said wryly, turning to head up the stairs.
“It really is, though,” Jason readily agreed.
“I really don’t know how Haley puts up with you.”
Jason sighed heavily as he patted his own chest, “Adores. Me.”
“Uh-huh,” Trevor agreed absently as he tried to figure out the best way to grovel to a woman. He’d never done it before. Usually within the first thirty seconds of a fight with a woman, he simply walked away, but there was no walking away from Zoe.
She was everything to him.
“I’d bring one of the puppies with you to butter her up if I were you,” Jason said, standing with Max in his arms. “Here, take this one.”
Trevor took the puppy and started up the stairs only to pause. “Where are you going?”
“To give you some privacy,” Jason said, heading towards the hallway door. “And to rummage through your kitchen to find something to eat before I pass out. You people aren’t taking very good care of me,” he bitched as he left with Toby hot on his heels. By now, the dog knew the signs of a Bradford on the prowl for food and was making damn sure that he was there to take care of any crumbs left behind.
Petting Max, Trevor slowly climbed the stairs, wondering what the best way to go about groveling was. Begging? On his knees? Promises to buy her the world? Because he’d do all that and more. He loved her and wanted to take care of her and show her how good it could be between them.
He paused at her closed door, wondering if he should knock or state his case behind the protection of the closed door where his balls would remain safe. After a slight pause and a silent apology to his balls in advance, Trevor opened the door, more than ready to take his punishment like a man and frowned when he didn’t encounter any flying books or yelling.
“Go find mommy,” Trevor said, putting the puppy down.
As he followed the puppy as it ran full speed towards the bathroom, Trevor wondered if maybe he should hit the pound and get another dog for her since she really loved dogs and he loved the look on her face when she was getting puppy kisses. Maybe he should...
All thoughts of what he should do evaporated when he spotted Zoe crumpled on the floor, lying near a small pool of blood. His heart dropped in his chest as he raced to her side, somehow remembering to be gentle with Max as he picked the dog up and moved him aside. With a shaky hand, Trevor reached out and checked her pulse, praying and promising everything that he had for her to be okay.
She had to be okay.
He sighed with relief when he felt her pulse. “Baby?” Trevor said, resisting the urge to shake her, but just barely. From what he could see, she’d fallen and he didn’t want to hurt her any further.
“It’s okay, Zoe,” Trevor said, wishing that he’d been a fucking man and come after her and begged her to give him a chance when she ran out of the room instead of acting like an asshole. This was his fault, Trevor realized as he went to grab his phone out of his pocket only to remember that he’d taken it out of his pocket and placed it on his aunt’s kitchen table so that he wouldn’t get it wet while he was doing the dishes.
He needed to get help, but he didn’t want to leave her, he couldn’t. For the second time since Zoe became a part of his life, he was happy that he hadn’t had the walls insulated.
“Jason!”
“Sir, you need to calm down,” the triage nurse said, probably for the hundredth time that hour.
“I’ll calm down when you let me see her,” Trevor said, trying to pull out of his uncle and Jason’s grasp as they attempted to drag him away from the front desk.
“If you’d just have a seat, I’m sure someone will be with you in a moment,” she said in that annoyingly calm tone that made him want to tear the place apart with his bare hands.
“That’s what you said an hour ago!” Trevor shouted. “I want to see my girlfriend, or at the very least, have someone tell me how she is!” he snapped, fighting to get out of the restraint so that he could storm through the gray double doors and find Zoe.
For three of the longest hours of his life, he’d been forced to stay in the emergency room’s waiting area while doctors did God only knows what to Zoe. When his family wasn’t reassuring him that she’d be okay or offering to get him something to eat, they were taking turns trying to restrain him.
Never in his life had he appreciated his family more than today. When word got out that Zoe was hurt, every single one of them came running, except for Haley, who’d been forced to stay away because no one wanted to take the chance of the babies catching something in the waiting room. He hadn’t been pacing the waiting room ten minutes when the first flood of Bradfords came storming through the doors, demanding to know how Zoe was. They didn’t all know her, most of them hadn’t even met her yet, but she was important to him so that made her important to them. Plus, it probably didn’t hurt that she’d tipped them all off about the buffet last weekend.
“Let’s go have a seat before she calls the nice security officers on you again,” Uncle Jared said as he half-dragged/half-shoved Trevor back towards the waiting room where a fresh group of Bradford males looked ready to take him to the ground if he moved or so much as looked at the triage desk.
For a moment, he actually considered going for the doors again just so they’d beat the shit out of him and be forced to give him a bed inside so that he could check on Zoe. Then, he realized that he wouldn’t be much help to Zoe if they knocked him out or the nurse had him restrained to a bed because he was acting insane at the moment.
