He reaches for the cup of water first, helping me sip slowly through the straw. Then he hands me a small juice box, the kind with a little straw already poked in. "You need some sugar."
I drink it gratefully. The sweetness helps clear some more of the haze. When I'm done, Gabe settles in beside me on the narrow bed, carefully scooping me into his arms so my head rests on his chest. His heartbeat is steady under my ear, the most comforting sound in the world right now.
He exhales slowly, his fingers stroking through my hair as he begins.
"The Collector… he's been playing a game with us for a while now. It started small, cut product, dead addicts, messages meant to make us look weak. Then it got personal. He sent me a video of Catarina… screaming. Begging for answers while they tortured her. He knows things he shouldn't. Has reach he shouldn't."
Gabe's voice stays low, controlled, but I can feel the tension in his body, the way his arm tightens around me. I'm still confused about what he's telling me about Catarina andthe kid. But I wait him out, deciding to let him tell me the story in his own time before I ask any more questions.
"He wants everything we built. And he's willing to burn it all down to get it. He's been watching us—watching me—for a long time. "
He keeps it vague, protective, shielding me from the worst of it even now. I listen quietly, my fingers tracing slow circles on his chest. The man who did all of this—the one who turned Louie, who orchestrated the ambush, who almost took Gabe from me—is still out there. Still pulling strings. And we'll get him. I know we will.
But right now, wrapped in Gabe's arms, listening to his heartbeat and feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest, none of it feels as terrifying as it should. Because he's here. Alive.
Holding me like I'm the only thing that matters.
"Thank you for coming for me," I whisper.
Gabe's eyes soften. He leans down and presses a gentle kiss to my forehead, then my lips, careful of the split one.
"Always," he murmurs against my mouth. "Every. Single. Fucking. Time."
I snuggle deeper into his side, letting the steady rhythm of his heart lull me. For the first time since the nightmare began, I feel safe. Not because the danger is gone. But because the man holding me would walk through hell itself to keep me in his arms. And I would do the same for him.
The door opens quietly, and a doctor who introduces himself as Doc Altera steps in, tablet in hand, looking as calm and professional as any physician I've ever met. And I've met a few. Thanks to Mom. A nurse, Betty, according to her name tag, follows right behind him, checking the monitors with quick efficiency.
"All looks good," the doctor announces without preamble. "Stable vitals, and the worst of the bleeding is under control. You can go home in a few hours if you want, as soon as the last bag of blood finishes running through that IV."
I notice the IV line still dripping steadily into my arm. The cool fluid feels strange, almost comforting in its steadiness.
Then the doctor adds, almost casually, "I would like to do an ultrasound to make sure the baby is okay."
The room goes completely still.
Baby?
Gabe and I stare at him in perfect, bewildered silence.
Doc Altera glances between us, eyebrows raised. "Yes. We did a routine pregnancy test when you came in. You're pregnant. Just a few weeks, far enough along to be detected, but still very new."
Pregnant.
The word hits me like a freight train. My heart feels like it's going to explode out of my chest. After all these years. After years and years of trying—or so I thought at the time—with Pete, of crying every month when my period came, of wondering what was wrong with me, of Pete's quiet reassurances that it didn't matter.
And then… one night with Gabe.
It must have happened that first time. The night before I ran. The nausea I've been blaming on stress suddenly makes perfect sense. The way certain smells turned my stomach. The exhaustion. The dizziness. All of it.
Even though we've already talked about it, for a fraction of a moment, I worry. What if Gabe reacts the same way Pete did? Pete was so determined not to share me. So terrified of the idea of a baby that he went behind my back and got a vasectomy in secret. He lied to me for years. What if Gabe… what if this news makes him pull away? What if he doesn't want to share me either? What if… I dare a glance at him, heart in my throat.
I shouldn't have worried. Shouldn't have doubted. He beams. Literally beams. Where his skin was all gray and exhausted before, it's flushed now with color. The grim, haunted expression has transformed into the purest, most radiant joy I've ever seen on his face.
"A baby?" His lips form the words without sound, eyes wide and shining, the swollen one still half-shut but sparkling anyway. Just like that, the worry evaporates. Gabe is not Pete.
Not on any level.
Not in the way he looks at me like I'm his entire universe. Not in the way he came for me, knowing it might cost him his life. Not in the way he holds me now, protective, reverent, like this news is the greatest gift he's ever been given instead of something to fear or hide.
