Page 36 of Floodgates

I stared at him.

“Did you hear me that time?”

“What?” I was confused.

“Did you hear what I said?”

I just knew I had misheard him. “One more time.”

So he did.

“Tracy.”

“Yeah?” I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“Baby.” His voice was like crushed leaves, so hoarse.

“What, what are you… who?” I couldn’t think. I could barely breathe. “What now? What?”

“Tracy,” he began softly, his tone gentle, as I’d never heard it. “Listen to me. Breckin—”

“What?” I snapped at him, my voice high and unhinged. “What the hell are you saying?”

“She had pictures of the two of them together at some convention,” he growled, suddenly aggravated. “She’s a doctor too. A cardiovascular surgeon, and it’s his baby.”

“But I—he…,” I started and then stopped, realizing I was beginning to hyperventilate. “We talked about having kids someday. I mean, I want kids. I think I would make a good dad.”

“You would,” he agreed. “I’m absolutely sure of that.”

“We talked about—but that was down the road. He… and I, I wouldn’t ever—he… he… oh no… oh no….”

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, who I had trusted with my heart, could betray me not once, but twice, made me the biggest idiot on the planet.

Cord dropped the pad he was reading from on the rolling table beside the bed, stood up, 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 of pieces.

“It’s gonna be all right,” he soothed me, and his breath in my ear, down the side of 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 walking around the bed and getting in beside me. We were face-to-face, and he yanked me up 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 WOKE up 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 turned from my brother and 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 get you something,” he said, and there was sand in his voice, all soft and husky.

“Just push the call button,” I croaked out, my own voice gruff and nasally.

He did as I told him, getting off the bed at the same time.

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 she unhooked my IV. That was the end of the good drugs. It would be all ibuprofen and Tylenol from there on out.

“Tell me the rest of it,” I asked Cord after she left.

He was talking to Alex in the corner of the room and so didn’t hear me.