Two Blue Lines (Crossing The Line #1) (30 page)

Mel looked beyond horrible.

She was puffier than before, and hooked to more machinery, wires, and intimidating medical paraphernalia than the baby.

My stomach clenched. My palms began to sweat. My heart was pounding like a racehorse on speed.

Not because Mel was sick. I could see the steady rise and fall of her chest, the rhythm of her heart beating on the monitor above her head. I took solace in the fact that the nurses were sitting calmly at the station, clicking away on their computers.

No, I was shaking in my Vans because my future, all I hoped to be, could come down to these next few moments.

As I approached her bed, Mel cracked her eyes opened and watched me.

I didn’t say anything.

She didn’t say anything.

When I got to her side, she lifted her fingertips in a beckoning motion until my hand was within reach, then she gripped it like a drowning woman with a life preserver as her eyes filled with tears.

We simply stared at each other for several moments as her tears fell unheeded to the pristine pillowcase beneath her head.

“I’m sorry, Reed,” she finally whispered. “So, so sorry.”

I used my free thumb to try and clear some of the tears from her cheeks, but it was pointless as hundreds more replaced them. “I know.”

This just made her cry harder.

“I love you so much,” she sobbed.

I dipped my head. God, how I wanted to tell her I loved her, too. But we needed to hash this out first.

. . . Man up, son. Do the right thing. Your heart already knows what it is.

“How is the baby?” she asked.

I peeked back up at her. “She’s fine. Really good, actually.”

She smiled through her tears. “Told you it was a girl.”

I huffed a small laugh. “Yeah. You did.”

She ran her thumb along my knuckles. “I can’t wait until I’m well enough to go see her.”

I nodded once.

“Guess we need to think of a name. I know we didn’t really talk—”

“Melissa.”

Her deep, pained eyes seared me. “What?”

“I think you know what.”

Silence.

Utter, devastating silence.

“Melissa!”

She blinked away the tears that had begun to form on her lashes again and I hated myself for making her cry as she lay in an ICU bed. But I needed to know. Now.

I hooked a chair with my foot and scooted it over to sit next to her without letting her hand go. I took a breath and gentled my tone. “Mel. Please. I need to know . . . is she mine?”

Her impossibly huge eyes scanned my face. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t . . . you don’t know?” I dropped her hand and ran my palm down my face. Oh, God.

I leaned over, drew the baby’s face into focus, a myriad of emotions urging me forward. “But it’s . . .” I swallowed thickly. I could do this. “But it’s either me or Jonah . . . right? That’s it?” I forced myself to make eye contact.

Her face went totally blank. Then her brows turned down in a confused frown. “Jonah? What are you talking about?”

My stomach curled with nausea and dread formed icicles around my heart. This was worse than I’d thought. If not Jonah, then who?

Had I misheard so badly? And beat the living hell out of my best friend over nothing . . . Oh, shit.

“Reed?” She shifted in the bed and focused on my face. “I’m confused. Why would you think she was Jonah’s baby? I’d never . . .” Fresh tears filled her eyes to overflowing. “I’d never cheat on you. Oh, God. You think . . .” She slapped a hand over her mouth.

“You said—” I stopped myself. I was more than turned around with my chaotic thoughts.

She struggled to sit up with an expression of fierce determination on her face. She cringed a bit and held a hand to her stomach, reminding me that it was only last night that she’d had a baby cut from her body and very nearly died doing it. I probably needed to leave this alone for now.

I stood. “You know what? Let’s talk about this later.”

“No! We’re going to talk about this now.” She sucked in a breath and pulled herself higher on the pillows. “Sit back down.”

She eyed me until I relented, though guilt was kicking me in the balls. I’d hear her out, then I’d go.

She licked her dry lips and refocused on me. “That baby is
not
Jonah King’s. That’s impossible. And you have to know I’d never cheat on you. God, Reed, we’ve been together too long . . . I love you too much.”

“Then how can you not know whose she is?” But as I asked the question, the answer slammed into me with the force of a freight train.

No. No. No.

November 1
st

Pieces of My Heart

M
elissa continued to stare at me as the mantra of denial screamed through my brain.

NO.

“Tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me what I’m thinking is wrong. Tell me . . .” I couldn’t even speak the words. Could someone have violated my girlfriend and I not have known? No. No way. She would never have kept something like that from me.

I studied her face for a clue, but she’d closed herself off from me, her eyes clouded with regret.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Sorry for what, exactly?” I hated that my voice broke.

She glanced down at her hands as she toyed with the edge of the sheet. “For lying to you. For lying to everyone. I should’ve told you. I just couldn’t. I
couldn’t.
I was just so . . . so . . .”

“You were so what, Mel? What’s going on here?”

She lifted her eyes to mine and they were surprisingly dry. Strong. Defiant, even. “I was scared, okay? Ashamed. I hated that I was so weak and I didn’t want you to know, so I didn’t say anything, and it was stupid and wrong and I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She dropped her head, her fingers clawing and gripping the bedding into a desperate handful.

I scooted closer and grabbed her hand, forcing her to release the sheet and interlaced our fingers. “What happened, Mel? You can tell me now.”

She blinked without looking up and tears cascaded down on the sheets like a rain shower. “I got mad at you for ignoring me at the King’s party, so I was pouting alone in one of the back bedrooms. He was drunk and he found me there . . .” She swallowed.

I squeezed her fingers for support. And though I had some idea what she was about to tell me, my mind rebelled, hoping against hope she was going to say something—anything—else. I schooled my breathing and waited for her to go on.

“I tried to get away from him, but he was bigger than me.” She wiped the tears streaking down her face as she told me about the locked door, the smell of sweat on her attacker’s body, the way he cranked up music and covered her mouth to muffle her cries. “It was over so quick, I barely had time to register what had happened. Then he started saying how I’d been teasing him, flirting, that I wanted it . . . and I’d better not say anything or I’d be sorry. He’d hurt me, my brother, you. Then he’d tell you what a whore I was. That I’d come on to him. I felt so dirty and cheap. And weak.”

Now she met my eyes and I saw the true depth of the agony she’d been hiding away all this time. “I wondered if I’d really done something to bring it on. Were my shorts too short? My top too tight? Had I said something—?”

No!

Anger surged through me that someone would hurt her. Threaten her. And use me against her to do it. I jumped to my feet and collected her in my arms. “Oh, baby. Who? Who did that to you?”

She wrapped her arms around my neck, her hot tears soaking my T-shirt. I barely heard her reply, but when it registered, every single cell in my body froze.

“Noah.”

I dipped my head to rest on hers, not trusting my own reaction. How did you kill a dead man?

“I’m so sorry,” she said yet again.

I drew back, angry this time. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Mel. He did that to you. He’s to blame. Not you.”

Her gaze dipped, then she met mine again. “I know that now.”

“When did that happen, anyway?” My gut clenched when I thought about not being able to protect her.

“I told you. At Jonah’s. The night of Noah’s going-away party.” She looked at me expectantly like I should remember. Well, at least that explained the ‘Jonah’ part. And why she’d been acting so weird around him. Damn. Guess I owed him a big fat apology.

“So when you were being wheeled away to have the baby and you were begging me not to hate you . . . ?”

She bit her lip. “I couldn’t stand the idea that if something happened to me and you somehow found out through DNA or whatever that the baby was Noah’s, that you’d never forgive me.”

“Of course I can forgive you. Like I said—”

“I know what you said, but I should’ve told you right then and not listened to his threats. I should have trusted that you wouldn’t have believed him. But I was shaken up, embarrassed . . . stupid. Then I found out I was pregnant and I didn’t know what to do.”

A blond nurse came in and interrupted us while she checked on Mel’s IV drips and vital signs. She smiled sweetly before sailing out again.

“So what now?” Mel asked once we were alone.

“Whadya mean?”

She sucked in a breath like her words were painful. “I mean, are we broken up now? Are you gonna stick around and see if the baby is yours? What’re you thinking? I know that this situation is totally screwed up and I’d give anything to go back to what we were before and I’m sorry we can’t.”

I tilted my head, surveying the pieces of my heart.

Yes, we were young.

Yes, this situation was jacked the hell up. The road ahead treacherous.

Sure, things would be tons simpler if we could go back to our lives a few months ago. Before Noah attacked her. Before the baby.

But I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I studied this girl before me, with her luminous black-brown eyes, nose dotted with freckles; the one who grew from loving anime and horror movies when we were thirteen into Twilight and boy bands (gag) as we got older . . . the girl who’d always, always held my heart. Always known my heart. My secrets. My fears and nightmares. Because I’d shared them with her and felt safe doing it.

And I was so very sorry she felt she couldn’t do the same. At least not this time.

And we’d made a baby together.

I could care less what DNA said. I’d decided just that morning that that little girl was mine.

But did Melissa still want me?

I blinked, squeezed her fingers, asking her something I’d asked her before. But, somehow, today’s answer was so much more important. “What do
you
want, Mel?”

“I don’t want you to leave me. But I don’t want to be selfish. I’d understand if you needed to wait and see with the baby.”

. . . Man up, son. Do the right thing. Your heart already knows what it is.

My dad was a genius.

“What about her? She’s mine.” I smiled.

“I . . .” She smiled back tentatively, confused. Then her smile spread into a relieved grin. “Oh.”

I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips. “It doesn’t matter who made her,” I whispered. “I’m her father, okay?”

She nodded, staring at me.

I kissed her again. “I love you, Mel. And I love that little girl. I’m not going anywhere.”

November 1
st