Chapter 11 Rowan #4
The next few minutes pass in a blur of quiet questions and quick examinations. A doctor checks the bruising along my ribs, asks about dizziness, and presses a cool stethoscope against my abdomen while another nurse adjusts the small monitor beside the bed.
The room fills with nothing but the soft electronic rhythm of a heartbeat. The doctor glances at the screen and then back at me.
“The baby looks fine,” she tells me. “Strong heartbeat. No signs of distress.”
The tight band that has been wrapped around my chest since the warehouse finally loosens enough for me to breathe again.
It’s nearly twenty minutes before they let Kiren in to see me. The door closes softly behind him when he steps into the room.
He stands there looking at me, the tension he carried out of the warehouse still sitting in the line of his shoulders. One hand drags slowly down the front of his coat as if he’s reminding himself where he is.
“You should be resting,” he says quietly.
I adjust my head on the pillows, the hospital blanket rustling beneath my hands.
“I’ve done enough resting tonight.”
Something in his mouth almost turns into a smile, but it disappears before it fully forms. Instead, he moves closer to the bed, his eyes traveling slowly over me. He notes the bruising along my arm, the bandage at my wrist, and the way the blanket has been tucked too tightly around my legs.
“Are you hurt anywhere they didn’t check?” he asks.
“No.”
His hand rests against the mattress beside my hip. He doesn’t touch me yet, but the warmth of him is close enough that I feel it anyway.
“They examined you thoroughly?” he asks.
I nod, smoothing a hand over the blanket. “Yes. They ran a few tests and checked the bruising.”
“And?”
“I’m fine,” I assure him softly. “Nothing broken. Just sore.”
His shoulders loosen slightly at that. “And the baby?”
The words are spoken so calmly that for a moment I don’t understand them. Then my breath hitches.
“You… know?” I whisper.
Kiren lifts his eyes to mine. “I know.”
My fingers tighten in the blanket as my mind races through the last few hours.
“How?” I ask, my fingers trembling slightly.
“Ivan.”
The name sends a quiet chill through me.
Kiren’s eyes drop briefly to the blanket between us before he continues. “He wanted leverage. He thought telling me would make me hesitate.”
I watch him carefully. “Did it?”
“No,” he says firmly. “It made me move faster.”
My hand slides nervously along the edge of the blanket. “I didn’t know how you would feel about it,” I admit.
Kiren studies me as if the thought itself confuses him. “Rowan,” he murmurs.
He moves closer and finally reaches for my hand. His fingers slide through mine, warm and steady.
“You were taken from me,” he says quietly. His thumb brushes once across my knuckles. “The only thing I cared about was getting you back.”
He exhales slowly, his eyes lowering briefly to where our hands are joined. “And now I learn there’s a child coming into the world that belongs to both of us.”
A faint shake of his head follows, like the thought still hasn’t fully sunk in. “You think that’s something I’d be anything but grateful for?”
Tears sting the back of my eyes. “I didn’t want to hope,” I admit. “Not until I knew.”
His face softens in a way I’ve only seen a handful of times. “You don’t have to hope,” he breathes.
He lifts my hand and presses it against his chest. Beneath my palm, his heartbeat is strong and certain. “You’re carrying my child. And I will love that child as much as I love you.”
The words fill the room like something fragile and enormous all at once.
“You… love me?” I ask softly.
Kiren lets out a quiet breath and shakes his head once, almost amused with himself. “I think that’s been obvious for a while.”
Emotion rises in my chest so quickly that I have to swallow before answering. “I love you too.”
His thumb continues tracing slow circles across the back of my hand.
“There’s something else,” I say after a moment.
His eyes lift immediately.
“The baby,” I continue.
His posture straightens immediately.
“The doctor said everything looks good,” I tell him. “Strong heartbeat. No complications.”
Relief moves through him in a quiet exhale.
“But that’s not the miracle,” I add.
“What is?” he asks, searching my eyes.
I take a slow breath and look down at our hands.
“When I was younger, I was very sick,” I answer. “My mother never talked about it much, but I remember one conversation.”
His brow furrows slightly. “What conversation?”
“The doctor pulled her aside after one of my treatments. I wasn’t supposed to hear it, but I did.”
The memory surfaces slowly. “He told her…” My voice softens. “The illness has taken its toll. She’s recovered, but you should be prepared for the possibility that conception may not be viable.”
Kiren’s fingers tighten around mine. “They thought you might never have children,” he says.
“Yes.”
The quiet between us deepens.
“So, this baby is something I never believed I would have.”
Kiren’s hand slowly moves to my stomach. His palm rests there gently, almost reverently.
“Then we treat it like the miracle it is,” he vows.
His eyes lift back to mine. “And we protect it.” His fingers slide back to lace with mine again. “Together.”
For the first time since the warehouse, something inside my chest finally eases.
Kiren pulls the chair closer to the bed and sits beside me, one hand still wrapped loosely around mine. The adrenaline that drove me through the night has finally begun to fade, leaving behind a heavy exhaustion in my bones. At some point, my eyes close.
I’m not sure how long I sleep, only that when I wake, Kiren is still there, leaning back in the chair with his arms folded and his attention fixed on the door as if he’s been guarding it the entire time.
A soft knock breaks the quiet. The nurse who examined me earlier steps inside, offering a small, reassuring smile.
“You can see your friend now,” she tells me gently. “She’s awake.”
Kiren stands immediately. He helps me sit up, one hand at my elbow as I slide my legs carefully off the side of the bed. The floor feels cold beneath my feet after the warmth of the blankets.
“I’m fine,” I assure him quietly when his grip tightens.
His expression suggests he doesn’t entirely believe that. But he lets me walk.
The room they’ve put Lila in is small, clean, and painfully calm compared to the place we came from.
A monitor beeps beside the bed. The lights are dimmed low enough that the color has returned to her face somewhat, though she still looks exhausted and far too young for all of this.
There’s an IV in her arm and a proper hospital dressing covering the wound at her side.
When she sees me in the doorway, her mouth trembles before she gets it under control. “Hey.”
I move to the chair beside the bed and sit. Kiren steps out into the hallway, giving us privacy.
Lila looks down at the blanket over her legs, then back at me, and the effort it takes her to hold my gaze makes my chest ache in a place I don’t want to examine too closely.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “For everything. For Jonathan. For trusting Ivan. For you getting taken because of me. For all of it.”
The words come unevenly, but each one is sincere.
I lean back in the chair and release a heavy breath. “I’m not ready to tell you it doesn’t matter,” I confess.
She nods once, like she expected that.
“But I’m here,” I continue. “And I don’t want to lose you. So, whatever this is after tonight, whatever our friendship looks like when we get there, we figure it out from here.”
Her eyes fill instantly. “You mean that?”
“Yes,” I say honestly.
The relief in her face almost undoes me.
A knock sounds lightly at the door before it opens again. Leo steps in first, then steps aside to let someone else enter. It’s Lila’s brother, Jonathan.
He looks terrible. Pale, hollow-eyed, shoulders rounded from guilt that has finally become heavier than denial. He freezes when he sees Lila in the bed and then me in the chair beside her.
Lila closes her eyes and turns her face toward the wall.
Leo clears his throat quietly. “I brought him because he needed to see you.”
I rise from the chair. “Yes,” I reply. “He did.”
I leave them with Leo after that.
The hallway outside feels colder than it should, and the lingering exhaustion I’ve been outrunning all night finally begins to catch up with me in strange, uneven waves.
I lean lightly against the wall, letting the quiet of the corridor settle around me. Nurses move past at the far end of the hall, their voices low, their footsteps soft against the polished floor.
I reach into the pocket of my coat. My phone is there, returned to me along with the rest of the things recovered from the SUV. There are several missed calls waiting. Most of them are from Ethan.
A knot tightens briefly in my chest as I press his name and lift the phone to my ear. Ethan answers on the first ring.
“Rowan?”
His voice breaks around my name with so much relief it momentarily steals my breath.
“I’m okay,” I tell him immediately, one hand braced against the corridor wall while I speak. “I’m safe.”
He exhales hard enough that I hear it through the phone. “Jesus Christ. Mom’s been losing her mind.”
“I know.”
“Where are you?” he demands.
“At a hospital. Lila got hurt, but she’s alive.”
He starts asking questions too quickly after that, each one crowding the next, and I close my eyes before answering what I can without trying to explain the entire night over a phone line at nearly two in the morning.
“Tell Mom I’m okay,” I murmur. “Tell her I’m safe and I’ll call her myself as soon as I can.”
There’s a brief pause. “Is there anything else?”
My hand tightens against the phone. “Yes.” I lower my voice even though no one is close enough to hear. “I’m pregnant.”
Ethan doesn’t hesitate. “I know.”
The words stop me cold. “You… know?”
“I know,” he repeats.
A dozen questions push to the front of my mind, but none of them matter as much as the one thing I need right now.
“Don’t tell Mom yet,” I request. “Please.”
Ethan exhales slowly. “Rowan…”
“I need to be the one who tells her.”
There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Okay,” he says finally. I won’t say anything.”
“Thank you.” I exhale in a sigh of relief.
When I lower the phone, Kiren is standing at the far end of the hallway waiting for me. Not speaking, just watching.
He has shrugged out of his coat now, and without it, he looks even more dangerous somehow, the violence of the night still clinging to him in posture, expression, and the stripped-down intensity of the way he looks at me.
“We’re leaving,” he informs me quietly.
I glance once toward Lila’s room.
“She’s stable,” he replies before I can ask. “Leo is staying. Security is in place.”
I nod once.
The drive to the apartment is quieter than the drive to the hospital. The city outside the window has gone nearly still, winter-dark and half asleep beneath streetlights and patches of snow pushed into dirty ridges along the sidewalks. I watch it pass without really seeing it.
By the time we reach the building, the adrenaline is gone. Only exhaustion remains.
The apartment is warm when we step inside, the air scented faintly with cedar, clean linen, and the residual trace of a place prepared before we ever got there. No hospital. No warehouse. No blood. Just warmth, quiet, and the soft click of the door closing behind us.
I stand just inside the entryway and release a breath I feel like I’ve been holding for hours.
A few feet away, Kiren watches me like he’s still convincing himself I’m really here.