Now, as I sit in a hospital gown, staring at the man I love after screaming that he’s the father of my child, I can’t help the shame that consumes me. I had taken advantage of someone I love, the only man who could ever own me so completely. Tears pour down my face, and I can’t help the small sob that escapes me.
All of the rage seems to evaporate from Nik. He goes slack in Drake’s arms, causing the big man to almost drop him. “What?” he whispers.
“You, Nik,” I sob. “You are the father.”
“No… I…” He shakes his head. “No…”
My heart breaks a little more because I know that he never would have been my lover if he hadn’t been drunk, if he hadn’t thought I was someone else. Gods, I’m a despicable person. No better than some rapist taking advantage of a drugged girl. I had taken away his will to say “no.”
I know Nik would have screamed “No!” had he known I was the one he was having sex with that night.
I scrub at my face, hating my tears. “Yes, Nik.”
“It was a dream. I dreamed that.” He jerks away from Drake, pushes Jesse out of his way, and falls on his knees beside my bed. “Right?”
Refusing to meet his eyes, I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Nik. I’m sorry I took advantage of you. Please…please don’t hate me.” The last part comes out as a broken whisper.
The room is so quiet I think maybe the others have left us and I just hadn’t noticed. But when Jesse starts snickering and the brothers soon join in, I know I’m not that lucky. I turn my coldest glare on them. “This is not funny! I practically raped him.”
Now, it’s Nik’s turn to snicker, and I gape at him, unable to understand how this is the least bit humorous. When he sees how upset I truly am, he stops laughing at me and shakes his head.
“Come on, Em. There is no way you took advantage of me. And it isn’t rape when it’s consensual, baby.”
“You didn’t know it was me. You thought I was one of those slut groupies.” More tears start to pour down my face.
He narrows his eyes on me. “The fuck you say! I might have been drunk, but I knew who you were, Emmie. I’ve been dreaming about it for a lot longer than I should. That’s why, when I woke up the next morning, I thought it was just a dream. A wet dream, sure, but still just a dream.”
The other guys make a noise, and Jesse gives Nik a pointed glare. “Too much info, dude. Too much info. We don’t need to know that shit.”
His words leave me in shock. Deep in my heart, I feel the walls I have built around it crumble a little. Nik had known it was me. That night, that beautiful night that has been haunting me for months was him making love to me, not one of the countless sluts. I can’t form words; my mouth and brain don’t know how to cooperate. I just sit there in that hospital bed and stare wide-eyed at the father of my child.
“Emmie—”
The door opens, cutting off whatever he was about to say. A nurse comes in, pushing a wheelchair in front of her. She doesn’t look happy. From the permanent frown lines around her lips and eyes, I figure this woman has rarely laughed in her fifty-odd years of life.
“Well, since all the shouting has stopped, I thought it was safe to come in without fear of loss of limb. Do you need help dressing, Miss Jameson?”
I shake my head, and she turns her hard eyes on my guys. “I suggest pulling your car around to the main entrance so we can get this young lady home.”
Shane grimaces. “I’ll go hail a cab.”
I give him a watery smile. “Thanks.”
The nurse—I’ve dubbed her Grumpy because she reminds me of the dwarf from Snow White with her gray hair and short stature—shoos the others out of the room. “She needs to get dressed. I don’t care what you are to her, she is not changing clothes with the lot of you in here.”
Nik glares at the little old woman, and I know he’s about to snarl at her, so I take his hand and give it a small squeeze. “It’s okay. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Jesse puts his hand on Nik’s shoulder. “Let’s go, man. There is plenty of time to talk later. She isn’t going anywhere.”
Shoulders tense, Nik follows Drake out the door with Jesse right behind him. Jesse pauses and glances back at me. “We’ll be right out here. Okay?”
I nod and wait until the door is closed behind them before reaching for the clothes I wore the night before. They’re folded neatly on the small dresser that also doubles as a bedside table. The nurse helps me because I’m still a little shaky on my legs.
“You need lots of rest, dear.” The harshness in Grumpy’s voice is gone now.
“I’m leaving for vacation today. I plan on doing nothing more than lying on the beach in the warm sun.”
The nurse nods. “Just not too much sun. That’s not good for the baby.”
I stumble, realizing I have no clue what’s good and what isn’t for my baby. Fresh tears prick my eyes. I don’t want to hurt my baby girl in any way, ever. After the childhood I had—where my mother was a monster to me—I vow to make sure that my child only knows love and devotion. I pull the picture the tech gave me the night before out of my jeans’ pocket, where I’d hidden it so the guys wouldn’t see, and smooth out the edges.
“There are countless websites that you can visit to find out the dos and don’ts of pregnancy at every stage,” the nurse suggests as she helps me into the wheelchair. Somehow, she manages to hold the door open and wheel me through without any mishap.
I pull out my cell and open up the browser, already typing keywords in the search engine so I’ll have them to look at later.
The guys are leaning against the wall when we appear. Jesse frowns at me when he sees my phone is out. “Fuck no. You are going to rest, not work.” He snatches the phone from my hands before I can say anything and turns it off.
“But I wasn’t—”
“What’s that?” Nik nods to the picture I have clutched in my hand.
I offer it to Nik as the guys fall into step on either side of me while the nurse pushes me toward the elevator. “It’s an ultrasound picture of the baby.” I bite my lip as he reaches for the glossy picture with a slightly trembling hand.
As he looks down at the first picture of our child, I watch him closely. He’s pale, those ice-blue eyes of his glassy, but I see the tiniest of smiles tilt his lips as he gazes down at the picture in his big hands. “Beautiful,” he whispers.
Everyone is quiet as we ride down on the elevator. Jesse stands to my left, his fingers rubbing soothingly at my neck, while Drake leans his head back against the wall of the elevator and closes his eyes. Nik seems engrossed with the picture of his child as he continues to gaze down at it. When the nurse pushes me outside, Shane already has two cabs waiting for us. He holds the door of the first one open for me.
As if I am an invalid, Nik steps forward as I start to stand and lifts me, placing me gently in the cab before sliding in beside me. Drake opens the door and gets in on my other side, leaving Shane and Jesse to take the second cab.
The drive to the hotel seems like it takes forever because it hadn’t taken Axton that long to get me to the emergency room the night before. I wonder just how fast he had been driving. I shake my head at the thought.
“What?” Drake asks.
“Nothing.” I know better than to voice my thoughts. My guys are overbearingly protective, and they would twist Axton like a pretzel if they found out he’d been driving like he was in the Indianapolis 500 while I was in the same vehicle. It probably won’t even matter to them that I’d been half unconscious at the time either.
But thinking of the rocker’s driving skills makes me wonder what happened to him. I haven’t seen him since before the guys arrived the night before. “Where is Axton anyway?”
Nik shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Drake sighs. “He got a call from Gabriella and said he was heading back to California. Said to tell you he hopes you feel better soon and to call him when you’re up to it.”
“Oh.” I wonder if Gabriella had called because something was wrong with Alexis. I want to text him to ask, but I can’t because Jesse still has my cell. The look on Nik’s face tells me that asking him if I could use his would only get me into trouble, so I clench my hands together and sigh.