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“It’s all good,” Adam sniffles, checking the gun in his hand to make sure the safety is on. He turns to me, shaking his head and looking at me with shame. “I’m so sorry, Lay. You never should have gone through any of that. I tried to save you, but I couldn’t get a shot without the possibility of hurting you as well. Fucking hell, you gave us all a scare, though. You didn’t know I was there, did you?”
Shaking my head, I look down, not wanting to meet any of their eyes. “I didn’t. When he said he killed Rhys and the rest of us were next, I just kind of lost it. If he was going to kill us anyways, I didn’t want to make it easy for him. As much as I want this baby, there’s no baby without me and he was determined to kill me no matter what. We can’t replace any of us, the only option was to fight and take that bullet so you guys had time to attack him. The thought of losing any of you fucking guts me to the core. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“You can’t fucking do that, Lay! Don’t you ever put us before yourself again. Do you hear me?” Riggs yells, his anger coming from a place of fear. “We could have lost you. You think you’re the only one that doesn’t want to lose the people they love? You’re not! You stubborn, reckless woman!”
Rhys leans into me, his body sagging with the effort of holding himself up. “Riggs, cut her a break. Yelling isn’t going to do anything.”
“We need to get you to a hospital,” I say, throwing an arm around his waist. “Someone call nine one one.”
“They’ve been called, they should be here any minute,” Adam explains, coming up on my side as Riggs takes over holding up Rhys. “You also need to go to the hospital, Lay. You have a fucking knife sticking out of your arm.”
Looking at the arm beside Adam, I curse under my breath, the sight of a knife sticking out from my arm making me a touch weak in the knees. Riggs and Rhys both curse up a storm, the lot of us looking like we just walked out of a horror movie. Thankfully, flashing lights start swarming our house, the first responders finally showing up.
Kevin stirs on the ground, his groans of pain drawing all of our attention. Adam’s hand twitches towards the gun holder on his waist, his face murderously angry. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I motion to the cops flooding into our house, all of them with weapons drawn and full tactical gear. It’s that moment that the adrenaline of the fight starts to wear off, the pain from my injuries and the loss of blood catches up with me quickly. Grabbing onto Adam’s arm, I try to get out how bad I feel, but it’s no use. Blackness claims me, taking me away from the pain and all the sudden yelling around me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alayna
The only thing keeping me sane right now is counting the seconds as I lie on the uncomfortable table, my feet up in stirrups, waiting for the doctor to come in and get this ultrasound out of the way. Rhys had a follow up appointment with his doctor to make sure no permanent damage was done to his left eye after the attack a week ago. Riggs drove him in because he’s still not allowed to drive with his concussion.
Adam sits beside me, almost as nervous as I am. After they patched up my arm and the back of my head in the hospital, they sent a referral to one of the gynaecologists that works with the hospital to give me a check up. With how early I still am in my pregnancy, she wanted to do two sets of blood work first and then attempt an ultrasound afterwards.
The blood draws looked good apparently, my HCG rising the way they expect it to if the pregnancy is still viable. The violent hit to my stomach has the doctor concerned still, so today we’re doing the ultrasound.
This whole week has been a terrible mix of anxiety, panic, flashbacks, and far too much new trauma. The four of us have been barely separable lately, our trauma from that night drawing us into each other. None of us walked away from it unscathed, the memories alone enough to keep us awake at night. While it’s objectively over with Kevin in police custody, there’s so many questions still about why he did and what the fuck he did to Declan.
The last one has been haunting all of us. We came to terms with his suicide, his journals and letters left nothing for us to assume that this was anything but his trauma becoming too much for him. Yet Kevin talked about it like he had a hand in it, like he’s the reason Declan is dead. It’s not sitting right with me. The problem is, we may never know the truth about it, and it’s tearing open the Declan wound inside all of us.
“How much longer do you think she’s going to be?” Adam asks impatiently, his good leg bouncing up and down. “She’s been gone for a while.”
“Probably not much longer,” I guess, looking back at the clock and noting it’s been about five minutes. “She was going to grab my chart and the portable ultrasound machine.”
Adam nods, looking around the room awkwardly. “There’s a whole lot of vagina diagrams in here.”
Chuckling at the randomness of that statement, I notice about four or five of these charts hanging around the room. “I guess when the normal is having zero charts of vaginas on the wall, five is considered a lot. That said, she’s literally a doctor for lady parts, it would be weird if she had none.”
“Touché, babe.” Adam grins at me, leaning over to kiss me softly. “You feeling okay?”
Brushing my hand down his stubbly face, I answer him honestly. “I’ve been better. I’m scared that even though the blood work looks good and I had zero bleeding since the incident, that when she does the ultrasound, we won’t have a baby anymore. While I know we can realistically have another if something happened to this little nugget, I want this one.”
“I know, Lay. I’m scared too, but that’s why we’re here. We need to make sure you and that little nugget in your belly are okay,” Adam reassures me, holding my hand tightly with his. “No matter what happens, we’re in this together. Riggs and Rhys are probably already blowing up our phones looking for updates. We all love you, although I love you just a teeny bit more, buttlicker.”
“Shut up, twatwaffle. I love you, too.” I smile at him and breathe in deeply, pushing away that anxiety and reaching for the hope instead.
The doctor finally walks in with a nurse behind her. They drag in the ultrasound machine, the nurse setting it up as Dr. Balanger sits on the stool beside the table.
“Okay, Alayna. Deep breath in for me.” Dr. Balanger dramatically mimics deep breathing for me, smiling through it all. “This may feel a bit invasive, especially with your medical history, but it shouldn’t hurt at all. We’re going to do an internal ultrasound so that I can get the best view of your uterus. I’ll walk you through everything I see as I go. Does that sound okay to you?”
Nodding in agreement, I squeeze onto Adam’s hand hard, deep breathing and looking at the ceiling as I do. She inserts the wand, the pressure a little uncomfortable, but not painful just like she said. Adam and I sit, almost holding our breath as we wait for the doctor to say something to us. She moves the wand around a bit, squinting at the screen as she does.
“You’re doing so good, Alayna.” Dr. Balanger looks between me and the screen, before moving the wand again. “You, my dear, are definitely still pregnant.”
Turning the screen towards us, I look at the moving black and white image, unsure what I’m even looking at. Adam looks as confused as I do. There’s grey all over the screen and two black circles with smaller grey dots in them. It’s like one of those psychiatric photos they show you and ask you what you see.
“I can see you are both very confused,” the doctor teases, moving one gloved finger to point to the screen. “This black part here is the gestational sac and this wiggling grey part is the baby. You can see how it’s pulsating, that’s the heartbeat.”
“But there’s two. Is the screen split?” I ask, already nervous of her answer. “There’s no way it’s twins, right? Right?”
