Chapter 21 ~ Alexander #3
“She’s mine! You can’t have her. She is my everything, you fucken bastard, and you will not take her away from me. She’s mine!”
I see what she’s holding so carefully, and I fall to my knees. She is pregnant with our baby. She is alone, sick and having our baby. My heart breaks in half that she hates me that much. She thinks she would need to do this on her own.
I fall to my knees in the snow. I plead with her.
“Bunny, please.”
She’s screaming and coughing but my eyes are glued to her little bump. A baby? Our baby.
Carlos moves to her, holding his hand out, but she yells at him.
“Fuck you to, Carlos! Fuck all of you!”
She hates us all, and I can’t blame her. She looks at me, and I can see the hatred in her eyes as she tries to scream. Her voice is getting weaker in the cold, and I can see her body visibly shaking now.
“You’ll never have her. I finally have someone to love me. ME!”
She coughs now, and I stand up and hold my hand out to her. Oh God, how I want to take the pain away that I caused. She’s killing me and the tears I’ve been holding back burn in my eyes. She thinks I’ll take the baby once it’s born and kill her. Oh god how did this get so fucked up.
She coughs hard now, and Carlos steps up and puts the blanket around her. I move to hold her and Isabella backs away, slipping in the snow, almost falling backwards. Carlos catches her arm and quickly scoops her up.
“Hold on Izzy. You need to get warm. Alexander, open the car door and get in.”
He jogs to the car, and I ran ahead to open the door and removing my wool jacket to cover her with.
Carlos puts her on my lap, and I cover her with my coat.
She is so goddamn cold. Everywhere she’s cold, freezing.
I hold her close and kissed her cheeks and stroke her hair.
All I can do is cradle her in my arms and tell her how sorry I am.
She stutters out a fuck you, Alex. And then she coughs hard. It doesn’t sound good. Her chest rattles and she is having a hard time getting air.
“Shhh, baby. Shh, it’s okay. Just hang on a bit longer, okay, love?” I stroke her cheek and kiss her cold lips.
She tells me how tired she is and how cold she is. I look at Carlos in their rearview mirror and the tears are slowly falling down my cheeks. I don’t care that he is watching me fall apart with Isabella in my arms. She is all that matters now.
He barks at me. “Don’t let her fall asleep till she’s warm and her body temperature is back up. She’s sick and more than likely caught a touch of hypothermia standing out in the fucken snow in her nightgown.”
I panic now because she keeps trying to shut her eyes. She keeps trying to go to sleep.
“Stay with me for a bit, love? Don’t go to sleep? Yell at me. Call me a prick again. Because I deserve everything you have to say to me and more, okay? Just don’t go to sleep yet.”
She curls up and holds her stomach, so I ask her if her tummy hurts, and she croaks out.
How much she loves our baby and that she’s cold in her little tummy.
I have never sobbed in my life, but she kills me with her words.
She loves this little baby so much that she’s more worried about it being cold than about herself.
It’s mine, she pleading with me, and my heart breaks in half all over again.
I put my hand on top of her cold one that cradles the life we created together. I can feel the little flutter move inside her and I cry. She is everything to me, they are everything to me. She closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep. I shake her and call her name, but she won’t wake up.
“Fuck!” Carlos slaps the steering wheel and I start to panic now.
“How far away are we?”
“Five minutes.” He grabs his phone, and, with one hand, he calls Janice to get the bedroom ready and grabs every warm blanket we have. He pulls up at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the plane and takes her from my arms and runs up as I follow him, and we head straight to the back bedroom.
Janice has the covers pulled back, and extra blankets piled at the end of the bed. Carlos barks at me to get undressed and get in. And I do. He hands me Isabella. And he takes the damp quilt off of her, covering her with a comforter and piling more on top.
“Take her clothes off and put one of your hands between her thighs and put her hands under your armpits, we want to get her warm. That’s the fastest way to warm the body and get her as close to your naked skin as you can. I’ll be back with a heating bottle.”
He keeps tossing blankets on top of us and I try to get her nightgown off and over her head. I strip off my shirt and pull her close, holding her tight.
Carlos tosses the last blanket on top of us. “Don’t rub her fingers or her toes. She probably has a bit of frostbite. Just let everything warm up naturally. She’s already sick, so she’ll have a fever and she’ll start to sweat. But we want to get that body temperature back up. I’ll be back.”
Carlos comes back in with water and a heating bottle and tucks it by our feet. “Don’t let it touch her toes, just keep it close.”
I have her wrapped tightly in my arms. She’s shaking, and she’s still so cold. Her fingers are bright red, and I can just imagine what her feet look like. Those slippers weren’t very thick or warm.
I look up at Carlos. “I want you to get a hold of Anna and Danny. I want them at her house before we arrive. She doesn’t trust us, Carlos, and when she wakes up, she’s going to need someone. Please contact my father and instruct him to summon Dr. Andrews. He needs to take a look at her.”
Carlos nods his head and leaves, closing the door behind him, and I just hold her. For the full two hours, she doesn’t wake up; she doesn’t say anything, but she’s breathing. She’s still breathing, and that’s all that matters.
We land, I dress, and we bundled her into the car, and hurriedly got to the house, driving around the back driveway and parking in the garage beside her car.
Carlos opens my door and I hand her to him.
He grabs her and quickly runs her through her garage, coming in through the back of the kitchen.
I followed them quickly and everyone is there.
Christopher, Sebastian, my father, Danny and Anna.
Anna immediately breaks from the group in the living room and follows Carlos into the bedroom. She pulls the covers back, letting Carlos settle Isabella in the bed, and she stops and glares at me, her eyes red from crying.
She looks at Isabella’s pale shaking form and then turns on me. “What the fuck did you do to her? What did you do now, you fucken asshole?”
I can see she wants to slap me or punch me or whatever she wants to do to me, and that’s fine.
My only answer. “I didn’t do anything; I just wanted to talk, that’s all. But she ran, and she got cold in the snow.”
Carlos settles Isabella into the bed, still bundled up in all the blankets that we covered her in. I remove my suit jacket, toss it to the floor, and crawl to the other side of the bed. Anna sits beside her and strokes her face.
Isabella slowly comes around, and she starts talking in German again, trying to kick off the covers. Anna holds her hand over her mouth when she sees Isabella is pregnant. She bursts into tears and puts her hand on her tummy.
Isabella has a fever, and her face is covered in sweat.
Her hair sticking to her forehead. And Anna wipes it away with a cool cloth Danny brought from the bathroom.
For some reason, she recognizes Anna’s voice, and Isabella starts to speak to her in German again and starts crying, hugging her friend so tightly.
She missed her. She missed her so much. Another thing I can’t forgive myself for.
I separated her from the one person who loves her.
Doctor Andrews comes and checks Isabella over.
She has pneumonia. I asked about the baby, and he said the baby is fine.
We just have to be careful of the fever and not let it get too high.
It should break in a couple of days, but they can’t really give her much with the baby.
Just make her drink and keep her full of liquids.
If she gets dehydrated, he’ll come back and put in an IV.
Anna stays with Isabella, trying to keep her calm.
She fought, trying to break away, and it killed me when she was trying to explain to Anna why she had kept the baby from me.
She thinks I’m going to take the baby away, but I won’t.
I’ll never take anything away from her again.
I can’t listen to her confession to Anna. It’s ripping me apart.
I go out to the living room and tell everybody what’s happening.
My father hugs me, saying he’s glad that we finally found her.
Sebastian asks if he can see her, and I tell him to sit with her.
Like me, he needs to see she is okay. Carlos is just as exhausted as I am and is sitting on the couch, staring into the fire.
Her words to us both replaying over in our heads.
I can see it on his face, and there is nothing we can say to fix the mistrust she has in us.
Christopher brings us all a cup of coffee from the kitchen, but he has to return to the club. Three months ago, I signed it over to him. I’m like a silent partner, but I don’t want it anymore. I don’t need it anymore.
Danny comes out with Anna wrapped up in his arms. She’s been crying again. “She’s exhausted. I’m going to sit with her on the couch and let her get some sleep. Go be with her. I’ll watch out here. Yell, if anything changes and you need Dr. Andrews.”
Carlos heads out to the main house, everyone leaving now that we have her home and she’s safe.
I turn and head back into her bedroom. My heart pounds so fast when I stop at the entrance and look at her.
She is here, where I can see her and touch her.
Crossing the room and slowly sliding in beside her on top of the covers, I hold her close.
My little bunny is so pale, sweat covers her forehead, her breathing is heavy and ragged, but she’s settled now.
Every emotion comes flooding in and my throat closes up, my eyes burn.
I can’t lose her now that I’ve got her back.
She stirs in my arms, and she tries to roll over, almost falling out of the bed.
I roll her back and she blinks, looking up at me.
“What is it? What do you need, baby?”
She closes her eyes and slowly opens them, trying to look at me, her pupils are blown, and I know she can’t see clearly and then she licks her lips.
It clicks, “Water? You need some water?” She nods slightly, still staring at me, not with hatred as I would expect, but with something akin to awe.
I put the straw in her mouth, and she sucks up a little bit before swallowing. She is so thirsty and takes too much on the next sip, choking on it. I set the glass down and rub her back, bringing her to my chest.
We are lying side by side now, just looking at each other.
She is so calm and quiet. Her eyebrows crease, and she takes a shaky finger and runs it along my forehead, and I close my eyes.
I miss her touch, how she can calm that storm that’s been raging inside me for months with one tiny stroke of her finger.
“You’re beautiful.” She whispers, and I pop my eyes open.
“You’re an angel, right?” I just shake my head no. It’s the fever talking, but it breaks my heart that she doesn’t recognize me. She would never call me an angel if she did. She slowly traces my lips, and then she catches herself, removing her hand like she’s done something wrong.
I bring her cold red hand back to my lips and kiss each fingertip, and her brows crease in question as she watches me.
Her voice is cracked and low, but I hear her. “Can you take me to my Nonno now? I miss him.” (Grandpa)
The dam finally breaks, and my heart cracks wide open. I can’t stop the tears now. She thinks I’m an angel here to take her to heaven. I swallow past the lump in my throat a few times and finally manage to say. “No sweet girl, I can’t. You have to stay with me, okay? “
She smiles and nods at me and then snuggles into my chest.
It’s barely above a whisper, “You really are beautiful, you know?” She breathes deeply and coughs hard. “I don’t feel well angel. Are you sure you can’t take me to see Nonno? I miss him. He loves me.” Hot tears run down her cheek to soak my shirt. “I just want to be loved for a little bit.”
I gather her close, and let my own tears mingle in her sweat soaked hair. I want so badly to tell her I do love her, that I always did. But not when she doesn’t know me. I’ll tell her everything when she’s better.
She will get better, she has to. She can’t leave me, not yet.