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Sammy smirked. “I like this kid more and more by the minute. We’re keeping him, right? Little sis is going to marry this one someday?”
“Fucking right,” Sixx grumbled, turning his head to kiss Ali. “As soon as she’s ready, I’m going to give her my name and my babies.”
Ali hummed in pleased agreement.
“Yay!” Sammy cheered.
“Don’t encourage them. She’s too young to be thinking about marriage and babies and only one guy’s dick for the rest of her life,” Hayat scolded as she came back into the living room, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Not to mention, he’s probably not going to survive past telling Uncle Jace that he’s in love with her. So yeah, take your time patching him up. No one but Ali is going to miss him if he dies from gangrene.”
Ali flipped her off.
“I’d miss him,” I argued. “A little. For a day or two.”
“Funny. You’re all full of laughs,” Ali snarked. “Go get your face looked at so we can hurry this along. We are all exhausted here.”
“Fine. But if either the doctor or Sammy starts speaking in Russian, I’m done. You’re not going to be talking about me or anything else that I can’t understand. How do I know you aren’t going to try to harvest my organs?”
Sammy laughed, but I didn’t miss how the doctor shifted restlessly beside her. Not suspicious at all. “Is he a black-market organ dealer?”
Sammy’s laughter abruptly cut off. “No! You think I’d let one of those leeches touch you? I promise you’re not going to have anything harvested. But to make you feel better, we will only speak in English from now on.”
Hayat held out her hand to me. Reluctantly, I took it and let her pull me to my feet. Sammy stepped back, letting me lead the way upstairs to my bedroom. When the door shut behind the doctor, it was just him, Sammy, and me in the room.
“Are you pregnant or not?” she demanded in a low voice. “He needs to know so he can treat you.”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. “I don’t know. I’m late. And I’ve been queasy. But I haven’t taken a test.”
“That’s okay, Mrs. V…Vaughn,” the doctor said as he placed his bag on my desk and opened it, twirling my world upside down all over again by using the name I had only found out was mine less than twenty-four hours ago. “I always carry a few tests with me. If you would give me a small urine sample, we can determine if you are with child or not.”
I stared down at the little cup he offered to me. Panic gripped my throat. Tears blinding me, I looked at the woman I’d once loved as much as Hayat. “What if I am pregnant?”
“Then we pray for a boy,” she deadpanned, a muscle ticking in her jaw.
“I’m serious. This is scary as fuck. Vaughn is gone. Having a baby is hard enough, let alone being a single parent.” I took the cup from the doctor, who quickly ducked his head to fumble around in his medical bag. I snorted out a laugh at how ridiculous he was being. He, a grown man with a medical degree, was scared to make eye contact with me. But to my horror, a sob got trapped in my throat. “And now I have to face finding out if I am pregnant or not with the person who took my potential child’s father from me.”
With a curse, she enveloped me in a tight hug. “I’m so, so sorry. I know you’re hurting and you’re confused. But I’m going to fix it, I swear.”
I buried my face in her neck, hugging her back even though a part of me wanted to grab her by the hair and fling her out the window. While it was still closed. I anticipated the splat she would make as her body exploded when she landed. A few tears dropped off my lashes, my anger at her burning, but I still hugged her just as tightly as she held me. I felt alone and helpless and scared out of my mind. Hope tried to mix into my emotional overload. A baby meant Vaughn had been real at some point, even if he was dead now.
“H-he’s gone, Sammy. You can’t fix this. Y-you can’t bring people back from the dead. We’re not living in a fairy tale. Even if this does feel like a nightmare more often than not lately.”
Sammy pressed a kiss to my temple before stepping back. “I’ll make it all up to you. Just trust me for a little longer.”
* * *
The test the doctor put a few drops of my pee in had a plus sign in the little window. While he pushed and prodded my aching face, assuring a hovering Sammy that nothing was broken, I couldn’t look away from where the test sat.
Everything narrowed to that itty-bitty plus on that teeny-tiny plastic test.
It had appeared in less than a minute, even though the doctor said it could take three to five. Sammy had turned ghostly pale as she watched it from beside me, the panic she couldn’t hide glowing in her eyes.
I’d only seen her scared once, and that had been for her dad’s safety. But that didn’t compare to her reaction to my pregnancy. Her hands visibly shook as she typed out a message on her phone and hit send, all while muttering something under her breath that made me question what she meant.
“It’s going to be okay. Mom won’t get her hands on her like she did Nova. I won’t let her. We won’t let her.” She sucked in a ragged breath.
Before I could ask her what she was talking about, the doctor started shining a light in my eyes and asked me to follow his finger with my gaze. That made Sammy snap out of whatever was going on in her chaotic mind. She watched every move the doctor made, asking questions that I didn’t have the brainpower to think of because I was enthralled by that small plastic pregnancy test that clearly said I was going to be a mommy.
Vaughn was—had been—real. His baby was growing inside me right that moment. Even though I’d lost him, I had a piece of him that, in a matter of months, I could hold and cuddle and tell them how much I loved them.
