For one, she didn’t tell me she was pregnant. Leading me to believe this baby may not be mine. Which means I am either wasting my time or about to uncover yet another one of her lies.
Two, she and her brother were more involved with Tristan than she was willing to admit, an omission that is unforgivable.
I was tempted to stay home. Handle it all from my desk. Have Maverick drag her back home. But I can’t exactly stuff the woman in the trunk of a car anymore, not in her condition. And forcing her on a plane would no doubt be dangerous, and the last thing I need is my child being born premature seven miles high in the sky.
So the only viable option was coming myself. And here I am, sitting in a rental car in the parking lot of a dentist’s office, waiting for her to get off work.
I would have gone to the house, but her siblings might be there. I can just imagine Gianni whipping out a gun and it turning into a whole thing where I either have to knock it out of his hand or skim him with a bullet of my own. Yeah, I’ll pass.
My eye catches movement in the side mirror as the door to the dentist’s office opens.
A moment later, Amara walks out.
My stomach bottoms out at the sight of her. She’s dressed in scrubs with the office logo on the front. I hate to say that scrubs look sexy on her. I also hate to say that pregnancy looks sexy on her, specifically if that child is mine.
I don’t, however, know if it is. Which is why I have to keep the blood running to the right head and do what I need to do.
Just as she is about to put the key in her beater, I get out of my car.
Amara’s eyes flash up to me in shock. Then disbelief.
Then they roll back in her head as her body sways.
I catch her just before she hits the pavement.
9
AMARA
Ransome is here.
He’s standing over me as I fumble with the keys to my two-thousands Jetta, because key fobs didn’t exist during Y2K. Could I have gotten myself a better ride? Yes, but I wanted something I could buy outright in cash, so I’d be even less traceable. Per his demands.
And now he’s here, watching me struggle with my life.
I blink once, maybe twice, catching the sun as it frames his head in the window. Almost like a halo. His jaw is still strong as ever, and his lips—lips I couldn’t forget if I tried—are slack as usual. His eyes are covered in shades that I know he won’t take off because I can read his eyes like no one can.
And then my vision goes blurry. Because this has to be a dream. I am sleeping. There is no way he is here, the same as there was no way Maverick was actually here either.
It’s all a dream.
My brain making things up as a way of coping with the ghosts of my past.
As my eyes flutter open, I knew I was right. I was asleep.
Except…
I am not in my bed. I am not even in my home. My eyes flash open the rest of the way as the room materializes around me. It makes me dizzy enough that I feel sick to my stomach.
Machines whir and beep next to me. The cool feeling of an IV tube clings to my arm, dripping fluid into my veins. The bed is cold and clinical, stiff and hard.
“Where am I?” I manage to ask once my mouth remembers how to speak again.
“Bozeman Hospital,” a woman in scrubs—a nurse?—answers me.
“What… What happened?” I stutter, looking around. No matter how many times I blink, the room doesn’t change.
I am awake. And I am in fact in a hospital room.
