Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“You would. I’m absolutely sure of that.”
I was surprised I didn’t cry. It seemed like reason enough to. But I was gutted, hollow, and absolutely empty. The idea that Breckin, whom I’d trusted with my heart, could betray me not once but twice, and most importantly, not tell me about a baby he’d fathered, made me feel like the biggest idiot on the planet.
Cord dropped the tablet he was reading from onto the rolling table beside the bed, pushed it aside, then leaned over and wrapped his arms around me. I couldn’t get enough air, and I couldn’t wrap myself close enough to him. He held me tight against him, and I started shaking. I felt like a cold wind was tearing through me, blowing me apart into a thousand pieces.
“It’s gonna be all right,” he soothed me, and his breath in my ear, down the side of my neck, was comforting, as were the slow circles he rubbed on my back. “I swear. You’re gonna be okay.”
At some point he released me. I watched him take off his gray wool overcoat, then bend and pull off his wingtips before getting in beside me. We were face-to-face, and he yanked me against him. He put one arm under my head so I was pillowed on his wide bicep and curled the other around my back. I wedged my knees between his thighs and pressed my nose into the warm hollow of his throat. Unlike Breckin, Cord smelled like stale air and coffee, but he was so warm, and I was freezing. I was shaking hard, trembling in his arms, snuggling tighter. I closed my eyes for a minute, realizing right before I did it that not once, the entire night, had I felt so safe.
I rose slowly, the light in the room telling me it was still early, and when I looked around, I noticed the pair of feet on the edge of the bed. When I lifted my head off Cord’s broad chest, I saw the crossed ankles belonged to my brother, who was asleep in a chair.
I looked down at Cord, who was yawning and stretching under me. He gave me a rare lopsided grin before finally speaking.
“You hurting?”
What did he mean? From what, my heart or my body? “A little.”
“I’ll go get the nurse and have her put something better in your IV,” he said, and there was sand in his voice, all soft and husky.
“Just push the button,” I croaked out, my own sounding gruff and nasal.
He did, then got off the bed and put on his shoes.
The nurse’s entrance woke Alex, and he was suddenly all over me. I put up my hand to hold him off, and the nurse made him wait while he—Trevor—introduced himself, unhooked my IV, and very gently removed the needle from my arm. He put cotton there first and then wrapped my arm with neon-yellow tape.
“Pretty,” I commented.
“I think so too,” he agreed, and then, when he was done smoothing it down so it wouldn’t lift, looked at my face. “Sadly, my friend, that is the end of the really good drugs. I can get you something else for the pain. Just tell me where it’s at between one and ten.”
“Right now it’s nonexistent.”
“That’s good. I’ll check in an hour and see how you’re doing. I’m warning you now that I will want you to eat something before I give you anything, though, so if you feel a twinge, call me so I can get you some food quickly.”
“Got it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and left the room.
“Tell me the rest of it,” I asked Cord after a few moments went by. It felt good to have the IV out.
He was talking to Alex in the corner of the room and didn’t hear me.
“Nolan,” I called over to him. “Please tell me the rest.”
He crossed quickly to me, and when he sat down, I immediately noticed how different he appeared, how gentle. I had never seen him early in the morning. Maybe that was what he looked like first thing, before he hardened up in the course of a day. Amazing to see his eyes so warm and unguarded, and coupled with being rumpled and sleep-tousled, you could almost mistake him for human.
“Where did I leave off last night?”
“About Breckin being the father of Celia Hughes’s baby.”
“You must have been really out of it to be able to fall asleep without hearing everything,” Alex remarked, trying, I knew, to infuse normalcy with banter. He was worried I was going to break down, and he couldn’t have that. “And you must have been way doped up to let this asshole comfort you,” he finished, tipping his head toward Cord.
I didn’t have the strength to make Alex stop giving me crap, so I kept quiet, my gaze riveted on Cord’s face.