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I think about all the ways I could screw up—all the ways I did screw up with Matias.
But how will I survive if this baby, someone I will grow to love as much as you and his brother, leaves me, too?
I can’t.
I don’t want to experience that ever again.
But…I want you more.
I want you, and I’m willing to fight to have you.
If that makes me have to face my fears when it comes to this child, then I’ll gladly do it.
I’ll do anything to have you.
Even face my biggest fears.
I love you,
Rome.Chapter 25Some days I don’t give a fuck. Then there are the days that I don’t give a motherfucking fuck.
-Coffee Cup
Izzy
Wade had been shot in the leg, up high near his femoral artery.
The details were still sketchy as to how.
Nobody knew what had happened, other than it had been in front of his squad car, and nobody had been around at the time of the shooting other than Wade and the shooter.
Which meant that Wade would have to wake up to shine light on the details, because otherwise there was absolutely nothing to go on.
Everybody was in that small hospital waiting room as we waited for news on Wade. Hell, even Wade’s ex-wife was there.
She looked distraught, and it was honestly eerie how worried she looked. As if she cared what happened to Wade.
Which was in total contradiction to what I’d been told about her since finding my way into Rome’s arms in the very beginning of our journey.
From what I’d been told, Landry was a selfish person who’d chosen her old life before Wade over her new life with Wade. That included returning to the man who she’d been with before Wade, leaving him and ensuring that they would be together again.
Looking at Landry, there was no doubt in my mind that she loved Wade. None.
She looked gutted.
Then there was Linc, who’d been sitting off by himself for the last two hours, on the phone.
He looked like he was about to jump right out of his skin.
The moment he dropped the phone from his ear and tossed it on the plastic waiting room seat beside him, I stood up…or tried to.
The moment my thighs tensed as if to move, Rome’s arm tightened around my waist to hold me in place.
His big hand splayed over my belly and pressed down, and that’s when I felt it.
Our baby. Moving around inside me and kicking. So hard that I could feel that little foot or elbow.
Everything froze in that second.
I’d been waiting for this second for a very long time, and to experience it while I was in Rome’s arms was better than anything I could ever imagine.
Rome felt it, too.
Another tap-tap against his right ring finger had me holding my breath, hoping for more.
And it came. One after the other. Tap-tap. Nudge-tap.
Rome and I stayed that way for so long that I began to have a cramp in my left leg.
When the taps slowly subsided, likely indicating that our baby had found sleep after all that energetic exercise, only then did either of us move.
“Shit,” he breathed against my shoulder blades.
His breathing was choppy, and I felt tears prickle my eyes.
I’d been dry-eyed for barely an hour, but the waterworks were about to start up again—this time because of the beauty we’d just shared, and not because of the ugliness that had brought us to the hospital.
I turned in Rome’s arms, but Rome didn’t move his head, so when I turned slightly, his forehead rested on the side of my now ample breasts.
“Rome?” I whispered.
He rocked his forehead back and forth, silently saying something that I assumed was ‘please don’t talk.’
I bit my lip, torn between wanting to talk to him, and letting him process whatever it was he was trying to process on his own.
In the end, I pressed my hand to his head and let him do it on his own, which turned out better than I ever expected.
When he finally looked up and made eye contact with me, I felt every bit of need, pain, love, desire, and contentedness that was shining in his.
“I love you, Isadora.” He paused. “Will you marry me? Will you be mine forever?”
I blinked.
“You…what?” I asked on a gasp.
“Mine. Will you be mine,” he repeated. “Will you marry me.”
I swallowed hard, and then replied the only way in the world I possibly could have.
“God, yes.”
Then my whole world was changed.
But not for the reason I would’ve thought.
Because the next second the entire waiting room exploded in activity.
***
Rome
One second, I was sharing something monumental with Izzy, and the next the waiting room was in a panic. There were bullets flying everywhere.
Gunfire. In the hospital.
I moved before I could blink, shoving Izzy down onto the ground and covering her with my body.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe.
