Chapter 34
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The world slowly, but surely, came into focus. Even as my muddied brain recalled a worrisome series of events, it wasn’t fast enough to panic. Not yet.
I was in a bed. It was soft.
Beep.
The room was beige, the lighting dim.
Beep.
I was on my side, hand extended, fingers curled around air. Air that was sterile and thick with the sting of disinfectant.
Beep.
A little further away was another, larger, hand. It was set upon a knee. Which upon further inspection was connected to a man.
Beep. Beep.
A sleeping man with raven-black waves.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I snapped my hand away, then clambered to right myself, only to find I was connected to an IV. No.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
One glance at my body revealed, wires protruding from the neckline of my antiseptic blue hospital gown. No, no, no.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
No! I tore off the sheets, yanked off the wires. I needed out. I’d gotten out.
And now I was right back where I started. Connected to medical equipment and hallucinating Imaginary Todd, in the possession of the Seal.
I had to move. Get out. It was fluke enough that I’d regained consciousness at all.
Madame had promised to keep me under if I caused trouble, and in the eyes of the Seal escaping was the greatest sort of trouble I could have concocted.
She as sure as hell wouldn’t allow this slip-up to happen again.
This was my only chance, and I couldn’t afford to mess it up.
If I did, I was as good as gone. I’d never see Jack and the real Todd again. I’d never solve the vamp case. I’d never avenge Lawrence.
If I didn’t get out now, what I saw, heard, felt, didn’t matter. What I wanted didn’t matter. Because if I didn’t escape, these would be my last waking moments alive.
Grabbing a fistful of IV tubes, I was about to rip, when the raven-haired Imaginary Todd took hold of my wrists—sabotaging my last-ditch effort to escape.
“Let me go!” Not coalescing to my will, the phantom grip on my wrists tightened. “You’re not real!”
I was damaged. I knew that. I’d spent months underground in captivity imagining my best friend as he slowly became more real, for godssake, but having a figment of my imagination stymie my last chance for survival was not a twist I expected.
“You’re not real!”
He’d left at my request before, so why wasn’t it working now? My only remaining semi-rational thought was to headbutt Imaginary Todd out of existence. But before I could wind back, he released me.
Just like that.
“What did you just say?”
“I said…” Wait. Behind Imaginary Todd was a window.
The rising sun crested over a smattering of rooftops.
I wasn’t being kept underground, I had blankets, I— “Wait.” I studied the tower of a man in front of me.
The thistles at the side of his neck. The thick brows, and the new bruising under his eyes, the result of too little sleep. “Wait, wait.”
He cocked a brow. There was no blurring or phasing in and out. The person before me was remarkably solid—confirmed with a tentative poke to his chest—which could only mean one thing.
“You really did it.” Relief I didn’t know I was capable of melted away the edges I so carefully sharpened. Warm toffee seeped out of my chest, flooding my arms, my legs, my throat, as I said the only words I knew how to say after the ordeal I managed to survive, “You… really grew your hair.”
“You are very fixated on that,” the very real, and definitely not imaginary, Todd replied.
“Because it’s different.”
“A lot is different.” His eyes didn’t move, but my urge to grab ahold of Todd and never let go made me acutely aware that there was a passenger-sized elephant in the room hiding under my hospital gown.
“It looks good.”
“You sure?” He smiled. “Because before you called me pretty.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Shut up.”
“Technically, I’m not talking.”
“Shut up,” I repeated, casually taking hold of the blanket I’d thrown, pulling it to cover my mid-section. “You are too.”
“Everything alright in here?” A woman in a white lab coat, followed by another woman in cat-print scrubs, entered the room. “Looks like Ms. Baker got disconnected from the, oh you’re up. How are you feeling, Ms. Baker?”
Okay, now they couldn’t have been talking about me. Because—
“That’s you,” Todd confirmed, as he sat back down on the chair next to the window. “Signed you in under an alias.”
“Oh, I’m…” I looked to Todd for support, since I wasn’t really sure what exactly had been shared or, if I was honest, how I was feeling.
“He doesn’t have the answers for you.” The woman in the white lab coat—the doctor—shook her pen between the two of us. The fact that she could also see Todd, put any residual worries to bed. “Only you can tell me how you feel.”
“I…I’m just confused.”
“Disoriented, are we?” She gestured to the equipment I’d detached, but neither her, nor the woman in cat scrubs, made any move to reattach it.
“Well,” the doctor pulled up a rolling chair next to the foot of the bed, “you came in covered in swamp matter, presenting with a bacterial infection, and quite the fever. Do you know what happens when a fever gets too high?”
“You sei—”
“You hallucinate, or you seize.” It was a rhetorical question then. “And you, Ms. Baker, seem to have managed both. But it wasn’t just you we had to worry about, was it?”
My attention darted to Todd. He hadn’t said anything about Three, but maybe they had her in another room, maybe… they weren’t talking about Three. Oh no, oh dear god, my passenger was about to be outed by a condescending doctor.
“We treated the infection, fever, dehydration, all open wounds, a series of rashes, and were able to stabilize your vitals.” She reviewed my chart like it was a laundry list. “Nothing here is too worrisome, but we’ll be keeping you under observation for a couple more days to ensure your levels stay in check. ”
Maybe she wasn’t going to say it, maybe she would leave well enough alone, and I could do what needed to be done.
The doctor stood, tapping my feet in a half-baked attempt at bedside manner. “Both mother and baby are expected to make a full recovery. If you need anything—”
Never mind.
I knew it was coming, I did, and still I hadn’t been ready. Ice water sluiced through my veins, coated my lips. A prickle of sweat dripped down my spine.
The doctor was saying something, I’m not quite sure what, I picked up on her condescending tone, the words “swamp” and “care”, then she and the woman in cat scrubs were gone, leaving me alone. With Todd.
The doctor had just dropped a bomb, and left me to deal with the fall out.
Conscious for less than five minutes, I was in a position where I had to confront weeks of lies.
I could do this. I needed to. It was better for me to face it head-on. To rip it off like a band-aid.
But how could I make it make sense? How could I tell one of the only people I respected, and trusted with my life, something that would forever change the way that they saw me? Perhaps I could hide under the blanket and—
Todd had taken a hold of my hand. Our fingers interlaced.
Steeling myself, I sucked in a great lungful of air, then rushed the words out, “I’m pregnant.”
He squeezed my hand, accompanied by a wistful smile. “I know.”
“I—” Wait. “You know?”
He let his eyes wander to the monitor behind me. As expected—since I’d rather recklessly pulled the monitoring equipment off my chest—it was all flatlines and zeros.
But there was a secondary monitor beneath, and it held a very prominent, very rapid, heartbeat. In my haste to escape, I hadn’t removed everything, because the monitor was wired to a thick band wrapped around my abdomen.
“Shit.” A tremor started in my legs. There was no hiding it now. “You must’ve been surprised, huh?”
Todd squeezed my hand, again, then, “Not… exactly.”
“Not exactly?” The tremors moved up towards my spine. “What, you’re saying, you knew?”
He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles.
“When?” There was one obvious option. “When you came for me?”
He swirled his calloused thumb over the back of my palm.
“When I was throwing up in the car?” And told him and Jack that I was motion sick.
Back to my knuckles.
“When you followed me to my parents’ house?”
Over the small of my wrist.
“The orange juice?”
Swirled it over the inside of my palm.
“That night at the gathering?”
Around again.
“When I ate licorice for breakfast? Because I’ll have you know, that is a perfectly acceptable and balanced meal.”
Again.
“Todd.” I tightened my hold on his palm. “How. Long. Have. You. Known?”
Sucking in a breath, he released my hand so he could sign better. “I had suspicions…”
“Todd.”
“Roses.”
“What?”
“The roses.”
The roses I’d been ‘awarded’ by the FBI for my work with the Almeidas over four months ago. “I didn’t even know then. You knew before me!”
“Suspected.”
“Suspected? Knew? Does it matter? The whole time I’ve been trying to hide it, I’ve lied to your face, until I could figure out—Oh my god, is that why I was tested?”
Todd’s brows knit together.
“The ‘drug’ test. Is that why I was tested?”
“The random drug test?”
“The one that ensured Rochan knew I was… this?” I gestured at my body.
“What?”
“You had no part in that?”
“Rochan knows?”
“What, like she didn’t tell you?”
“You’re sure she knows?”
“Showed me the report herself. Saw it with my own two eyes. Then I was fucking kidnapped!”
He lowered his head.
The tremors in my body had been replaced by the familiar undercurrent of anger. I really shouldn’t have been yelling at Todd. He’d come when I called. Did what I asked. He wasn’t judging me, and here I was making him out to be the bad guy. “Why are you letting me yell at you?”
He took his time before responding. “The truth?”
For that, Todd received an eyeroll. He was taking my ire like a champ. Still, I promised myself I’d try harder to not be so hotheaded.
“I like it.”
“What?”
“I like it.”
“Is this some trick to get me to cool down?” Because it was working.
Todd scraped his chair across the floor so it was practically touching my bed side.
“Delilah, the FBI has been looking for you for over three months. Rochan assigned a secondary team to help in the search, and we found nothing. Nothing. Three days ago, I get a call from you, because you somehow—at a time I was questioning whether you were still alive—escaped your captors and decided I was the person you trusted enough to call. Whatever hell you’ve been through, you got yourself out, and I did nothing to help.
All this time it hurt that I hadn’t done more. Gotten to you sooner—"
“I don’t blame you.”
“No. I blame me. The whole drive I planned on how I’d make it up to you, the time you lost, that you hadn’t been able to count on us when you needed us most, only to find you out of your mind with fever, with whatever the fuck this is,” he gestured to my neck, “and I... All I could think about was how I could make you safe again.”
The warm toffee feeling was back. “Todd.”
“For the last three days, you’ve been in and out of consciousness, and all I could do was sit here and hold your hand, knowing there was a chance you might not wake up. That if they couldn’t get the infection or fever in check—"
“But they did, and I’m here now.”
“They did. But that doesn’t make up for what you lived through. What’s been done to you—” he cut himself off, squeezing his hands tight as he took a shuddering inhale, “even if you woke up, I wasn’t sure if you would be you.”
Well, shit. If it had been anyone else in my shoes, he’d have been right. I would have expected that anyone who went through what I did to come out changed, and not for the better. But I was me, I survived, and that was that.
My tough-as-nails attitude still didn’t prepare me for what Todd said next, “So, I’ll take all that you can give me, so long as you continue to give it.”
Any witty rejoinder caught in my throat.
Swimming in softness, I concentrated on my belly and said, “You sure? Because you’re getting far more of me than you bargained for.
” My words lacked fire. Instead, despite my intent, they felt vulnerable, like an exposed wire.
I hoped Todd would fill the gap, bridge the silence that followed, so I wouldn’t say the words I knew would come next.
But he sat patiently, giving me the room to voice the fears that had been gnawing at my insides since I’d first acknowledged my passenger. “I… I don’t know how to feel about it.”
I shut my eyes knowing this was the part where I would be judged. I’d said the traitorous words aloud and now would come the ridicule. But at least, I’d said my truth. It wasn’t mine alone to harbor any longer.
A gentle touch graced my shoulder. I knew I should open my eyes. That Todd had something to say, and all I was doing was shutting him out.
Slowly, when I was ready, I lifted my lids. “That’s okay.”
Again, not the reaction I was expecting. “Is it?”
“There isn’t a right and a wrong way to feel.”
“It feels like there is.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Todd settled further down into the seat next to me. “And I will support you with whatever you need to do. But know that whatever you decide will be the right decision.”
Sure, when he said it like that, he made it all sound so simple. “How can you know that?”
“Because it will be a decision that you choose.”
My stomach fluttered. And I felt so very ooey-gooey in the middle.
Couldn’t say I didn’t like the sensation.
The feeling of being accepted, supported, and safe.
That I didn’t have such a big secret to hide.
Sure, Jack being the father was another issue I didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole, but for now it was just Todd and me.
I could deal with Jack and all the other problems, all the what ifs, later. For now, I let myself feel peace.
I’d survived. I was out. And the Todd before me, even if pretty, was the real deal.
As I laid myself back on the hospital bed, my stomach continuing to flutter, Todd offered another reassurance, “I don’t know everything that has happened, Delilah. But I do know whatever it is you went through wasn’t easy. And I’ll be here when you are ready to talk about it.”
My guard was lowering. I could feel it. Sarcasm, with a hint of violence, was required to keep me from going completely soft.
“The only talk I’m ready to have is with that doctor,” I grumbled, as I hiked the blanket up toward my throat.
“If she makes any more swamp-related comments, I’m kicking her in the teeth. ”
The corner of Todd’s mouth lifted. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”