He’d used her Pinterest home board to decorate and pick everything she had. She was her own designer.
“This is not…you can’t just do this.” Poppy looked around, her face an amalgamation of emotions. AJ couldn’t tell if she was mad, but he could tell she wasn’t happy. “This is too much. I can’t accept this. I have to pay you back for this.”
“Poppy.”
“No, AJ. It’s not…I know that you were doing this to help, and I appreciate it, but…I have to pay you back.”
With that declaration, Poppy turned and headed out the door. AJ wasn’t sure if that had gone better or worse than he expected. It had certainly gone differently. And maybe she was right, maybe it was too much. He didn’t know the answer to that. But what he did know was that it was too much for her to take on, and he could, so he did. And he would do it again in a heartbeat because now he knew it was done right and she was safe. If that was wrong, then AJ really didn’t understand anything, anything at all.
27
“Have you ever seen an ultrasound before?”
They were alone in the exam room, and Poppy’s voice vibrated with a strange combination of anticipation and nerves. She had been speaking non-stop the entire drive to the hospital. She hadn’t stopped during the ride up the elevator or since they’d entered the room twenty minutes earlier.
“I have.” His eyes fixed on the black monitor and the coiled cable that would soon reveal the shape of their future. “Once.”
AJ stood beside Poppy, holding her hand, doing everything he could to exude calm energy that matched, or even better, exceeded her manic vibe. He knew nerves played a huge part in her state, but also contributing was the fact that she needed to have a full bladder for the ultrasound so that they could get a clearer picture.
In his opinion, she’d overdone it on the assignment. She’d woken up and not used the restroom, then had a ginger tea for nausea and eight ounces of carrot juice, and she was halfway through her second forty-ounce Stanley mug filled with lemon water. AJ had to pee just through osmosis, and he’d only had one cup of coffee.
“You have?” The paper on the exam table crinkled beneath her as she shifted, legs dangling above the linoleum. Instead of her heels tapping together like Dorothy, she was tapping the balls of her feet, and it wasn’t three times, AJ had counted 485 times. “When?”
“Four years ago.”
Poppy twisted her head to look at him and dropped his hand. “For what?”
“Kidney stones.”
“You had kidney stones?” Her voice went up an octave, a mixture of horror and fascination. “I’ve heard it’s like medieval torture.”
That wasn’t a bad way to describe it.
“Did it hurt?” she asked.
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, sparing her the details of the way the pain had started as a dull ache while he was driving home from work. How he went to bed and woke up with a fever and could barely make it to the bathroom. How he had blood in his urine. How he had to call an ambulance because he was not able to drive himself to the hospital. How the morphine they gave him had made his thoughts melt into hot syrup.
“Did Niko know?”
“I assume my mom or sister told him.” AJ hadn’t shared the information with his twin, but in his family, everyone knew everything.
“No, I mean, did hefeelit? Do you guys have that thing, that psychic telepathy twin thing, like he’s a living voodoo doll and if he stubs his toe, you feel it?”
AJ smiled, which for him meant the left corner of his mouth ticked up. “No.”
Poppy’s lips were pursed together as she scrunched her nose in the most adorable way, and AJ had to fight the urge to leandown and kiss her. That impulse had been occurring more and more frequently lately. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure Niko didn’t feel the searing pain of my kidney stones when he was in the Bahamas with aSport’s Illustratedmodel? Yes. I’m sure.”
“Do you have any psychic-twin abilities?”
AJ had never told anyone that they could hear each other at a low volume, frankly because it was ridiculous. But he didn’t want to lie to her, and he figured it would distract her, so... “One.”
Poppy’s eyes lit up like she’d just won the lottery. “You do? What?”
“I’ve never told anyone.”
That piece of information proved to incite the reaction he’d hoped for and compounded her excitement tenfold. “Seriously?”
