Chapter 24
I stared at the larks on the wallpaper in the bathroom as Tyson guided my breathing.
Ashley had run upstairs to get me a change of clothes and provided some maxi pads to catch the blood slowly trickling out of me, but I still sat on a folded towel just in case.
My head felt lighter as the seconds ticked on.
The wallpaper blurred just before I could blink, so I listened to Tyson’s deep voice as he tried to help me through whatever was happening to my body.
In, out, in, out—those were Tyson’s instructions, but I couldn’t focus on my breathing when Ashley was on the phone with Beau just outside the open bathroom door.
“No! Are you insane?” Ashley shouted into her phone. “She needs to go to the emergency room now.”
Beau’s voice, stressed and hurried, echoed through Ashley’s speaker, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Still, a wave of calm washed over me the instant I had heard him.
Beau would know what to do, he always did.
“No—no! I am not taking her to the manor!” Ashley argued. “I’m driving her to Parkland hospital whether you like it or—”
“I WILL NOT LOSE HER TOO!” Beau shouted, loud and clear.
Something cracked within me at the panic in his voice.
I had watched Beau take brutal hits on the football field and still spring up, unshaken and eager for the next play.
He had stoically dissected a frog, took a kickball to the face without flinching, and didn’t even blink when going against the nastiest opponents during debate competitions, but the idea of me suffering the same fate as his grandfather made his voice break.
And I refused to let him break.
Tyson looked over his shoulder at Ashley and she glanced back at him. Then, Tyson’s brown eyes and Ashley’s green ones simultaneously found me.
“Take me to the manor,” I said calmly.
Tyson placed a firm yet gentle hand on my shoulder. “Liv, you need to go to the hospital. Beau is a nice guy and all, but he might not be in his right mind.”
Ashley hit the mute button on her phone. “Might not be? He threw a tantrum at your baby shower and just proposed with a ‘check yes if you like me’ note. You shouldn’t let a man who is acting like a third grader make emergency medical decisions!”
My hands stretched around my belly, feeling the tiniest movements from both Annie and Brady. My babies were OK, but they needed to stay that way.
I had to get them to their dad.
“If Beau wants me at the manor, he has a good reason,” I said softly. “I trust him to take care of us.”
Ashley’s mouth tightened as she looked down at me.
“Ashley? ASHLEY!” Beau shouted through the phone. “Answer me in the next three seconds, or I’m getting back in the truck and taking her myself!”
Ashley unmuted her phone with a scowl. “Keep your overpriced pants on! We’re coming!”
Tyson helped me off the floor and I leaned on his strong arm as I shuffled through their house.
“My mom,” I gasped through a contraction as I walked out the front door. “I can’t…leave Mom behind.”
“I got her!” Ashley called from the living room. “She’s in your purse!”
Tyson gently guided me off the porch and to the driveway while I counted the seconds between breaths so I wouldn’t fixate on how much pain I was in. The wheels of my suitcase thumped on the porch steps before Ashley threw it into her SUV.
“Hospital bag is loaded,” Ashley said, her keys jingling from her hand as she jogged to the driver’s side of the car. “And Mama Brady is coming in.”
Ashley gently set my purse on the floorboard at the passenger’s side of the SUV. Shakily, I lifted myself into the passenger seat and sat on a folded towel. Tyson buckled me in as Ashley started the engine.
“Be careful,” Tyson warned. “It’s dark and those country roads are dangerous.”
“Please,” Ashley said with a smile, “I used to top out at 100 miles per hour well after midnight when I would race the Murphy boys. I never wrecked once.”
Tyson’s eyes went wide and he gripped the handle of the passenger door. “You what?”
She hummed. “Forgot you didn’t race with me back in high school. That’s what you get for having parents who cared.”
Reluctantly, Tyson closed the passenger door and took a step back.
“For Olivia’s sake,” he said, his voice muffled through the glass window, “don’t make it a bumpy ride!”
“Kay.” Ashley blew her husband a kiss. “Love you, babe!”
I gripped my belly with a wince as Ashley peeled out of her driveway and sped down the street. Even though I kept my eyes closed, focusing on my babies’ every movement, I was pretty sure Ashley was running a few red lights and blowing through stop signs.
The ride smoothed as Ashley turned onto the familiar country road. She mumbled to herself about Beau asking her to drive out to the back pasture instead of the house and wondering if he had lost his mind.
My arms tightened around my bump when the pavement turned into grass and dirt.
“He can’t be serious,” Ashley said as the car slowed to a stop. “He’s high, or crazy, or both.”
I didn’t bother to open my eyes to see what she meant, nor did I even take a breath to ask.
When the passenger door opened and two strong arms wrapped around me, I simply leaned toward the warm body that lifted me out of the car.
I buried my face into his neck, breathing in the scent of his evergreen soap that made him smell like Christmas, and felt his heartbeat against the side of my ribs.
For one quiet moment, everything was all right.
Beau carried me a few steps before I heard Ashley’s car door slam.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ashley called as she stomped through the grass after us.
Beau’s voice reverberated in his chest. “I’m taking her to the hospital in the city—Dr. Ornelas was on call this weekend and she’s going to be waiting for us.”
“In that?” Ashley shouted.
I lifted my face off Beau’s shoulder and opened my eyes. Blinking red and white lights instantly flooded my vision, but I was able to make out the dark outline of a helicopter in the pasture.
I tensed and gripped his shoulders. “Beau! Are you crazy?”
“This is the fastest and safest way we can get there,” Beau said calmly as he approached the helicopter’s open door. “I promise, it won’t feel any different than the truck once we’re in the air.”
Ashley huffed out a breath as she struggled to keep up with Beau. “OK, asshole, enough with the fucking theatrics. Turn your ass around and put my best friend back in my car so I can take her to Parkland—”
A contraction ripped through me and I screamed. The growing pain clawed my cry back into my throat as I lost all air.
“Get me to the city,” I gasped once the pain relented. “I don’t care if you have to strap me to a rocket, just get me to Dr. Ornelas!”
Beau quickly ascended the step into the helicopter and took me through the open door. A second pair of hands reached out and took mine, guiding me to lie on the leather bench seat inside.
I blinked in the bright light from the helicopter’s interior and an eerily familiar face came into focus.
Though he had red hair and blue eyes, and it would have been impossible because he would have been too young, the man who secured me to the seat and propped a small pillow under my head looked exactly like…
“Dad?” I asked wearily.
“Nope,” the man said with a smile and a quick shake of his head. “The name is Johnny Charles Fitzpatrick, but everyone just calls me—”
“Chuck?” A small smile tugged on the corners of my mouth. “You’re Chuck!”
Another pair of footsteps entered the helicopter and Chuck looked over his shoulder.
“You told your girl about me?” Chuck said as he moved toward the open door. “I’m flattered!”
Beau rolled my suitcase into the helicopter before kneeling in front of me.
“Don’t let your head get so big that you can’t squeeze into the cockpit,” Beau said to the wide open doorway. “We need to get in the air.”
My body tensed with another contraction before I could think to be afraid. After the pain crested, I opened my eyes to find Ashley setting my purse near my feet.
Her face was pale, but she gave me a reassuring look and patted my calf. “You can do this. Remember what your mom always said.”
“I can do hard things,” I mentally recited.
Both babies moved inside me and I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my belly. The twins were all right. Beau was going to take care of us. We were going to be fine.
The helicopter door slid shut with a loud click and my eyes popped open. Beau had ignored the wide, comfortable-looking seats behind him and stayed kneeling in front of me.
My hand spread across my belly as I looked at him. “It’s today, isn’t it?”
His mouth formed a tight line. “Dr. Ornelas told me she’s just going to check you out, but statistically half of all twins are born before thirty-six weeks. Odds are in favor of you being right.”
Statistics. Odds. The proposal note.
My blood ran cold and my lip trembled. “Beau, the ring—”
“Don’t.” He took my hand. “Don’t worry about that right now.”
My chest shook as my breathing became more and more labored. “Damnit, Beau, you can’t expect me to look at you and not address—”
He brought the back of my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “Olivia, I waited ten years for you to come back into my life. I can wait a little longer for you to marry me.”
A hollow laugh, light as a luna moth, escaped from my lips.
“You are so presumptuous,” I whispered with a smile, “and egotistical…and…”
I blinked and Beau’s face disappeared. I stared at the upper edge of the wide window on the helicopter door, watching the tiny lights of city buildings approach us in the night.
Wait…lights of city buildings?
A tiny gasp shot through my throat and I looked down, finding Beau still kneeling at my side.
“How did…how did we get in the air?” I asked breathlessly. “What happened?”
His brows furrowed. “We’ve been flying for a while. You were just saying that you wondered if the twins were going to be born under a scorpion moon or something. Do you not remember?”