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He was quiet for a moment before nodding. “Okay, but don’t go too far unless you take Jenner with you. It looks nice out right now, but the forecast is calling for rain this morning.”
“Just a short one,” I promised. “I’ll probably have to go looking for Krush anyway.”
“Yeah, he’s been after that red squirrel. The damn thing loves to torment him.” He touched my chin, his thumb skimming just under my bottom lip. I wanted to beg him to kiss me, to show me just once that this meant more to him than just a promise he’d made. Instead, I kept my mouth closed, and when he dropped his hand, I swallowed the lump instantly filling my throat.
“You should get in the shower,” I told him as I stood. “Don’t want to be late for practice.”
“Yeah,” he said after a short pause. “Give me ten minutes. I want to talk to you before I leave.”
I waited for him to leave the room before opening the back door. I could still hear Krush barking in the distance, but the sound was getting farther away. Sighing, I walked to the garage and up the stairs to the apartment. I knocked, and Jenner opened the door moments later.
He was dressed in black sweats and a matching T-shirt. I knew his schedule just as well as my own. He was awake at the crack of dawn and took a run along the backside of the property. Aunt Marissa told me she’d seen him running along their property line one day when she was in her garden early one morning, which told me he ran at least ten miles when he went all the way to their house and back. Afterward, he came back to the apartment and showered before coming over to the house to ask if I needed anything or had to go anywhere that day.
“What’s wrong?” he asked before I could open my mouth.
I glanced at the house then back at him. “I’m going to search for Krush, and then once Luca is gone for the day, we’re leaving.”
“Okay. What time is your appointment?”
“No,” I gritted out. “We’re going back to Santa Monica. Pack everything that you want to take with us, because we’re not coming back.”
I felt his surprise and turned to go in search of my dog. Behind me, Jenner stepped out onto the porch. “Does Luca know about this?”
“It’s none of his business,” I snapped. “And if you tell him, you’re fired.”
“Violet, what’s going on?” His voice was so gentle, I felt tears fill my eyes.
“Nothing,” I told him honestly. “Please be ready. I don’t want to wait around after I get back with Krush.”
I walked toward the sound of Krush’s barking in the woods. A few times, I thought I was getting close, only for him to stop barking and start a few minutes later even farther away. I could imagine his tormenter, that damn red squirrel jumping from tree to tree on the lower branches to piss Krush off because it was just out of his reach. I’d seen them playing like that more than a few times in the past few weeks. It was Krush’s favorite game, and he’d been spending more and more time outside because of it.
I reached the Nialls’ property, but I was still in the woods when the sun suddenly disappeared behind a bank of dark clouds I hadn’t noticed before. Thunder rumbled, and a flash of lightning streaked through the sky just as the clouds opened up and rain started pelting down on me.
“Krush,” I called out, frustrated and fed up with my dog. “Here, boy. Let’s go home. Come on, Krushy. Come here, buddy.”
Suddenly, I heard him running toward me, but his eyes were on the trees above him and not me. “Krush!” I called just as his heavy body bumped into me at full speed.
With a startled cry, I reached out, hoping to grab on to a tree or a bush, something to stop my fall, but there was nothing, and I landed on my ass—hard—with the air knocked out of me.
Gasping, it took me a moment to realize something was wrong. At first, I thought I must have landed in a mud puddle, but when I looked down at my light purple maternity leggings, I realized my mistake just as a powerful, sharp pain pierced through my lower belly.
I wasn’t mud I was sitting in. It was a pool of my own blood as it gushed out of me.
“Help,” I whispered in fear, then quickly started shouting. I’d left my phone back in the kitchen, thinking I wouldn’t be gone long. Now, I was all alone in the woods, with the rain coming down in buckets. I was in deep, deep trouble. “Someone please help me!”
Another thunderclap was the only reply I got, so I tried again. “Please, someone, anyone!” I wasn’t sure how far I was from the Nialls’ house, but I knew it was closer than Luca’s and he was probably gone to practice by now anyway. “Help!”
I heard something heavy moving toward me, and I looked up, hoping it was Krush. But when I saw the horse and its rider, I nearly sobbed in relief. Doe Niall was the youngest of the Nialls’ four children, but only by a few minutes. Her mother had named her Dorothy because The Wizard of Oz was her favorite movie. Her father called her Dorie, but her brothers had always called her Doe, and that was the name that stuck, because everyone else had called her that since she was a little girl.
Doe looked so much like her mother, with her soft blue eyes and long dark hair, that people sometimes mistook her for Aunt Marissa from a distance, but she was taller than her mother and more slender too. With her hair pulled back in a high ponytail, dressed in jeans and a blue flannel shirt, she looked like my guardian angel.
She jumped down off her horse with ease and ran over to me. “Violet?” she cried when she took me in. “Sweet holy, what have you done to yourself?”
The rain had soaked through my shirt, and my hair was dripping from it, making me shiver even as more and more blood continued to pour out of me. But before I could tell her what happened, another sharp pain hit me, and I wrapped my arms around my belly as I cried out from the pain and fear.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not like this. I couldn’t lose the baby. Not when she was all I had left of Remington.
“Can you stand?” Doe asked, trying to distract me from the pain.
