12. Jo
— ? —
Jo
The hospital is a blur of fluorescent lights and antiseptic smell.
I run through the ER on autopilot, Nick’s footsteps echoing right behind mine, nurses and patients and gurneys all blending into a single smear of color until someone in scrubs points toward a curtained area in the back.
The curtain rips aside.
Rory is sitting up in bed, looking pale but alert. His arm is in a splint, there’s a bandage on his forehead, and he’s chattering at a nurse about something involving dinosaurs and gravity. He’s alive. He’s okay. The relief that floods through me is so intense my knees nearly buckle.
“Mom!” He reaches for me with his good arm, face lighting up. “I fell off the monkey bars!”
“I know, baby.” The tears are already streaming as my arms wrap around him, careful of the splint, pressing kisses to his hair, his forehead, his cheeks. “I know, I’m here.”
“It was really high. Like a billion feet high.”
“That’s very high.”
“And I flew! Like a superhero!” His eyes go wide with the drama of it all. “Except I forgot to land good.”
A laugh slips out through the tears. “Landing is an important part of flying.”
“I’ll practice more next time.”
“Let’s maybe not have a next time.”
A doctor appears, clipboard in hand, explaining in that calm, measured way medical professionals have that Rory has a hairline fracture in his wrist and a mild concussion.
Overnight observation is recommended. Forms get signed without really reading them.
Insurance cards get handed over. Questions get answered on autopilot while my hand stays firmly wrapped around Rory’s, needing the physical proof that he’s still here, still whole, still mine.
Nick hovers in the background through all of it, a steady presence at the edge of my vision.
At some point, Grace’s number gets called from my phone, his doing.
Coffee appears in my hand, also his doing.
A coloring book materializes from the hospital gift shop, dinosaurs on the cover, because of course he noticed, of course he remembered.
When the nurse comes to check Rory’s vitals, Nick steps back to give them space, but his hand finds my shoulder. The squeeze is gentle, grounding.
“You okay?” The question is quiet, just for me.
“No.” I lean into his touch without deciding to. “But I will be.”
“He’s tough. Like his mom.”
“He’s going to milk this for weeks. Special breakfasts until he’s thirty.”
“I’ll help. I make excellent waffles.”
“You make excellent everything.”
Our eyes meet and hold over Rory’s hospital bed. Gratitude, relief, and under it the thing neither of us is ready to name yet, the shape of a family starting to form.
“Mom.” Rory tugs on my sleeve, breaking the moment. “Can Nick read me the dinosaur book? He does the voices better than you.”
“Excuse me? My voices are excellent.”
“Nick’s are excellenter.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“It is now. I made it up. It means more excellent than excellent.” Rory’s logic is, as always, bulletproof. “Please, Mom?”
Nick is already settling into the chair beside the bed, coloring book in hand, flipping to a page featuring a particularly ferocious T-Rex.
He leans close to Rory, clears his throat dramatically, and starts reading in a ridiculous growly voice that makes Rory giggle despite the splint and the bandage and the fear that’s still lingering in his eyes.
My heart cracks open a little more.
Then the curtain rips aside again.
Matthias storms through the ER with the entitlement of a man who owns it, which, given his family’s donations to this hospital, he might actually. His eyes sweep the room, land on Rory in the bed, and his face crumbles into something that might be genuine emotion if it weren’t so performative.
“My son.” His voice carries through the entire ER. “That’s my son injured.”
“Get out.” The words are out before conscious thought kicks in, my body moving to position itself between Matthias and the bed. “You don’t have any right...”
“I have every right! He’s my child!”
“You’ve known about him for three days! You don’t get to...”
“I want to see him!” Matthias pushes past me, and my hand shoots out to grab his arm.
“Don’t you dare...”
“Mom?”
Rory’s voice cuts through everything. Small. Scared. The voice of a six-year-old who doesn’t understand why the adults are screaming.
“Why is everyone yelling?”
I freeze. I turn and find Rory watching with wide, frightened eyes, his good hand clutching Nick’s sleeve, and the realization arrives, cold and total: this is exactly what I never wanted to be. A screaming adult who scares children. The kind of chaos I’ve spent seven years protecting him from.
“I’m sorry, baby.” Moving to his side, taking his hand. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
Matthias approaches the bed slowly, like Rory is a wild animal who might bolt. He crouches down until he’s eye level with his son, a son he’s never met, never changed, never held through nightmares or fevers or first days of school.
“Hey, buddy.” His voice is soft now, careful. “I’m... I’m your dad.”
Rory looks at him. Studies his face the way he studies everything, with that sharp, assessing intelligence that misses nothing. Then his gaze shifts to me. Then to Nick, still standing in the corner, watching.
“You’re bad.” The words come out matter-of-fact, the simple truth of a child who hasn’t learned to soften his opinions yet. “You hurt Mom. Why did you?”
Matthias flinches, slapped by a six-year-old’s honesty.
“It’s... complicated,” he manages.
“That’s what grown-ups say when they don’t want to tell the truth.” Rory’s chin lifts, defiant. “I don’t want my mom to hurt. You’re bad. I don’t like you.”
“Rory...”
“I don’t want you here.” His voice is firm, even though his lip is trembling, even though the fear is still bright in his eyes. “I want my mom. And I want Nick. You can go away.”
The silence is devastating.
Matthias stands slowly, his face pale, his hands hanging useless at his sides. For a moment, something almost like pain crosses his features, the realization, maybe, of what he lost. Of what he threw away.
“This isn’t over,” he says to me, the softness gone from his voice. “I have rights.”
“You have nothing.” Nick steps forward, positioning himself between Matthias and the bed with the casual confidence of a man who knows exactly how much power he holds. “Leave. Now. Or I’ll have security remove you.”
Matthias looks at his brother. At me. At the small boy in the hospital bed who just rejected him completely, utterly, with the devastating honesty only children possess.
“You’ll hear from my lawyers,” he says.
He walks out.
The curtain swishes closed behind him, and the tension bleeds out of the room in slow increments.
Climbing into the hospital bed beside Rory takes careful maneuvering around the splint, but he curls into me immediately, already half-asleep from the exhaustion of pain and fear and too much drama for one small body.
“Mom?” His voice is muffled against my shoulder. “Is Nick going to stay?”
Looking up, Nick is settling back into the chair beside the bed, his eyes meeting mine. The question in them is clear: Is this okay? Am I overstepping?
“Yeah, baby.” The words come out soft but certain. “He’s going to stay.”
Nick reaches over, takes my hand where it rests on Rory’s back. “Always,” he says quietly. “Always.”
***
Grace arrives at 9 p.m., armed with snacks and a portable phone charger and the fierce determination of a woman who would fight God himself for her godson.
“Go.” The command comes before she’s even fully through the curtain. “I’ve got him. You look like death warmed over.”
“I can’t leave him...”
“He’s asleep. He’s stable. The nurses have my number, my backup number, and my backup backup number.” Grace points with the authority of someone who’s earned the right. “And you need to eat something that isn’t vending machine garbage and get at least four hours of sleep before tomorrow.”
Nick stands, keys already in hand. “She’s right. I’ll take you home.”
“But...”
“Jo.” Grace’s voice softens, the fierce mama-bear energy giving way to something gentler. “You can’t take care of him if you collapse. Go. I promise I’ll call if anything changes.”
Looking at Rory, peaceful in the hospital bed, his chest rising and falling steadily, his face finally relaxed in sleep, the fight drains away. A kiss pressed to his forehead doesn’t wake him.
“Okay.” The whisper feels like surrender. “Okay.”
The parking garage is cold and dark, the kind of empty that amplifies every footstep, every breath.
Walking beside Nick in silence, exhaustion and adrenaline wage war in my bloodstream, leaving my limbs heavy and my mind racing at the same time.
The shaking hasn’t stopped since the phone call, maybe it never will.
His car appears out of the shadows. Leaning against it feels necessary because standing upright has become too difficult.
“Hey.” Nick’s hands cup my face, warm against skin that’s gone cold. “He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”
“I know. I just...” The voice breaks. “When I got that call, I thought...”
“I know.”
“And then Matthias showing up, and Rory’s face when he...”
“I know.”
The tears come without warning, spilling down my cheeks in hot tracks. Nick wipes them away with his thumbs, his forehead pressing to mine, his breath warm against my lips.
“You’re not alone anymore,” he says. “Whatever happens. You’re not alone.”
I kiss him before I decide to.
It isn’t soft. Seven hours of terror pour out of me into his mouth all at once, and he meets it, one hand fisting in my hair and the other splayed wide across my back, dragging me up onto my toes.
The cold metal of the car bites into my spine.
I don’t care. His mouth is the only warm thing in this concrete tomb and I climb into it.
“Jo.” He pulls back half an inch, breathing hard. “You’re exhausted, we should...”
“Don’t.” I fist both hands in his shirt and pull him back. “I need to feel something that isn’t fear. Please.”
He stops arguing. His mouth comes back rougher, his hands drop to my hips and pin them to the car, and when his thigh pushes between my legs the friction punches a sound out of me that bounces off the concrete.
He pulls back just far enough to read my face. Whatever he finds there stops the argument cold.
I don’t have words for what I need. I don’t think I have to.
His hand slides down, under my waistband, past the elastic, and two fingers find me already slick and ready.
He swears, soft and reverent and filthy.
His thumb settles against the spot that takes my knees out from under me, his thigh holds me up, and he works me right there in the dark while strangers’ voices drift somewhere behind the parked cars.
It isn’t the danger that does it. It’s the relief, the proof in my own body that the worst didn’t happen, that we’re both still here. The pleasure coils fast, no slow build to it, urgent in a way that has nothing to do with being watched.
He keeps his mouth at my temple the whole time, telling me Rory is okay, that I’m okay, that he has me.
There’s no glass wall here, no audience, no almost. Just his hand and his voice and the slow permission to fall apart where it’s safe.
I break with my face pressed into his neck and his name leaving me on a long breath, my whole body clenching around his hand, and for once I don’t swallow the sound. He holds me through every aftershock, palm gentling, until my legs remember their job.
When I can breathe again I reach for his belt. “Your turn.”
He catches my wrist. “Not here, not like this.”
“Nick...”
“I want to do this right.” His kiss is soft, tender. “I want to take my time with you. Not in a parking garage where anyone could...”
We straighten our clothes in the quiet, neither of us in any real hurry, the garage empty around us except for a cooling engine ticking somewhere down the row.
Then the laughter bubbles up.
“I cannot believe I just did that,” I manage. “In a hospital parking garage.”
“You needed to feel something that wasn’t fear.” His mouth curves. “I am not even a little sorry.”
“Oh my god.”
“For the record...” He opens the car door for me, that almost-smile playing at his lips. “Jo, that was the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“This is going to wreck us both.”
“Probably.” The smile breaks through fully, years falling off him. “Your place or mine?”
“Mine. It’s closer.”
He drives fast.
We don’t make it past the front door.