“I’m having a girl,” I giggle, unable to contain the joy welling up inside of me. “A little mini-me.”
“Lord help us all,” Jack teases, planting a kiss on the back of my hand that sends a shiver through my whole body. He looks from the screen to me, then back to the screen.
“My two pretty girls,” he mutters, so low I can barely hear it. I don’t know that I was meant to. I don’t know if he even meant to say it out loud.
But holding his hand like this, with both of us staring enraptured at my beautiful baby girl, for the briefest moment that's exactly what I feel like.
His.
Chapter 20
Jack
Twenty Weeks
“You okay?” Tyler asks, and I blink my eyes rapidly, regaining focus and looking away from the spot on the floor I’ve been staring at since we got back from the call.
It was the first car accident I’ve responded to since Aaron’s, and it was worse than I imagined. I knew it would happen eventually, and that it would be hard, but the second we stepped out of the truck, I froze. I wasn’t looking at the accident in front of us–all I could see was the accident that upended my entire life.
When I pull up to the roadmarker Tyler gave me, I know it’s going to be one of the worst I’ve ever dealt with. The scene of the accident is caged in on either side by emergency vehicles, and the flashing lights are blinding.
A pickup truck is halfway in the ditch, facing perpendicular to the two-lane road. The entire front is mangled, like the driver didn’t even hit the brakes before the collision. I rush toward an ambulance where a man is seated on the back bumper, holding a towel to a gash on his forehead while a paramedic shines a light in his eyes.
“I didn’t even see him, man,” he gasps, his breathing shallow from what I’m sure are several broken ribs. “I don’t know what happened, it’s like one second the road was empty and the next–”
The police officer taking his statement nods his head, shooting me a furtive glance when he notices I’m there. I know he thinks this guy is spewing bullshit, and I don’t blame him–I can smell the booze on him from six feet away.
I turn around, ready to assess the rest of the accident when my stomach clenches. Down the road, fifty feet or so, a sedan rests on its side from where it clearly rolled several times, and I see a second set of paramedics performing CPR. I sprint their way to help, but a hand catches me in the chest before I get too close.
“Jack,” Tyler says hoarsely. “I don’t…I don’t know if you should go over there.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“It’s…well, it’s–”
I don’t wait to hear who it is before breaking from his grip and sidestepping him to close the remaining distance. Before I can get a good look at the victim, something else stops me in my tracks–a sticker on the back windshield that says “Kiss the Chef.”
“No, no, no,” I moan, panic-stricken. I know that sticker. I’ve seen it a thousand times, pulling up behind it in the driveway before a night of shitty takeout and even shittier reality TV.
And I know the man bleeding out in the street on the other side of the car. One of my best friends, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother–Aaron Thompson.
Hurling myself around the front of the car, my vision tunnels when my fears are confirmed.
“C’mon man, stay with us,” Frank pleads, pumping a steady rhythm of chest compressions. “Don’t do this, you gotta fight.”
“Move,” I growl, shoving him out of the way and taking over for him. “Let me do it.”
“Jack,” he says calmly, with too much understanding in his voice. “You shouldn’t be here. You can’t do this, we’re not supposed to get involved when it’s someone we know.”
“Like fucking hell,” I say through gritted teeth, sweat gathering on my brow from the exertion of trying to keep his heart beating. “Like you wouldn’t do the exact same fucking thing if it was your best friend.”
He doesn’t argue, just grips my shoulder and gently, but firmly, pulls me away. “We’ve been at this for twenty minutes man, with no sign of a pulse. His skull is cracked, he’s lost too much blood. We have to call it.”
“No. We have to keep trying.”
“Jack, look at him. Really look at him.”
In spite of every cell in my body screaming not to, I force myself to look objectively at the scene–the obvious split in his skull, the pool of blood around him, the empty look in his glassy eyes.
