Author: Bella Andre

Wanting so badly to give him comfort, to wrap her arms around him and convince him to stay, she forced herself up off the bed as she said, “Please don’t go. I love you.”

But instead of her words of love making everything better, his expression only darkened further.

“No,” he said in a horribly dark voice that sent shudders through her, “you don’t love me. You only love a fantasy that doesn’t exist. A fantasy that will never exist.”

He turned away from her to walk out of the room—to leave—and, somehow she found the strength to reach for him. But just before she could make contact with his retreating back, the ground swayed, and pain shattered her midsection.

Everything went black.

Chapter Twenty-three

Jake paced the hospital waiting room.

Please, God. Please take care of Sophie. Please give her back to me so that I can spend the rest of my life making everything up to her.

He’d given up on prayers as a young boy when they hadn’t stopped him from being hit, or filled his stomach when there was nothing to eat. It had been up to him to save himself. To work for the money for food. To spend as much time as he could in safe places, like the Sullivans’ house. To build a multimillion-dollar business from scratch.

But all his hard, bullheaded work, his stubborn drive to succeed, couldn’t help Sophie now.

He should have noticed how pale she was when she woke up, that she hadn’t been moving quite right, but he’d been too busy yelling at her. Too busy pretending he knew everything, just like he always had.

A frantic call to 9-1-1 had brought the paramedics to her apartment within minutes, but it hadn’t been nearly soon enough. Bile rose in his throat at the memory of the blood between her thighs.

He’d held tightly to her hand in the back of the ambulance while giving the paramedics every bit of information he could about her pregnancy, about her schedule the past week, anything that could have led up to this horrible event. He hadn’t spared himself, had confessed everything, the too-frequent sex and even yelling at her just moments before she collapsed.

He hoped a part of her knew he was there with her. That he’d never leave her side as long as she wanted him there. And that he was sorry for every single thing he’d ever done to hurt her.

She should have looked small, fragile, on the gurney, but even with dried tear tracks across her cheeks, and such pale white skin, she held him spellbound. Nothing could ever take away Sophie’s serene strength. Her beauty was more than skin deep, was more than the way her eyes and nose and mouth were shaped, was more than the curves and contours of her body.

Her beauty was in her bravery. Her intelligence. Her nonjudgmental curiosity about life.

And, most of all, the size of her heart.

He nearly lost it when the nurses wouldn’t bend the rules. He wasn’t her husband and not only would they not let him go back to her, they also wouldn’t tell him a damn thing about how she was doing. But he knew he needed to let them, let the doctors help Sophie.

It was the only reason he could have possibly let her go.

As soon as she was wheeled into the back, Jake took his cell phone out of his pocket with shaking hands and called Zach to let him know Sophie had fainted, that she might have miscarried. It wasn’t long before Zach pushed through the doors, his mother and Lori a step behind him.

“Is she okay?” Jake had never seen Zach look this off-balance before, every last ounce of cocky gone.

“I don’t know. I’m not fam—” His voice broke on the word he might have used if only he’d been able to prove to Sophie that he could be a good husband and father, rather than screwing everything up. “They won’t tell me anything.”

Zach and Mary immediately went to speak with the receptionist, but Lori remained with him.

Sophie’s twin reached out to grab his hand and before she could say a word, he was confessing everything about the morning’s argument, the way pain had crossed her twin’s face before she’d fallen into his arms. And then, the horrible bleeding...

Lori squeezed his hand, tight enough that he had to look at her. “My sister’s tough, Jake. So much tougher than anyone knows.”

Why wasn’t Lori tearing him apart?

“Go find out what’s going on,” he told her in a gruff voice, knowing he didn’t deserve to be pouring out his guts all over her.

But Lori didn’t let go of him. Just like her twin, she was one of the only people who didn’t jump at his unilateral orders.

“Sophie always believed in you. No matter what you did, what you said, none of it made any difference. My sister wasn’t ever going to change her mind about loving you.”

“She was wrong. I’m not good for her.” He’d wanted so badly to prove to her that he could be. No one had ever failed so badly. “This proves it.”

“You’re here aren’t you?”

“I was yelling at her,” he told her again as something warm moved down his cheek. At first he didn’t know what it was, because he hadn’t cried since he was a kid. Not since that last beating when he’d grabbed the knife. “She wouldn’t have fainted if I hadn’t—”

“Seriously? You think she’s in here because you were yelling at her? I yell at her all the time.”

“She deserves a guy who can give her a perfect life. No yelling. No bossing her around. No crazy hours at work. No screwy past.”

“Don’t use this not-being-good-enough-for-her crap as an excuse to leave her hanging this time.” Lori Sullivan was fierce. “If you’re going to step up to the plate, step all the way up, Jake.”

With that, she strode away to find out what her mother and brother were learning from the receptionist, leaving Jake to reel.

“It’s really sad, isn’t it?” A couple of young hospital residents were walking past him to the coffee machine against the wall. Jake was certain one of them was the nurse who had taken Sophie into the back. “Man, this job is a bummer when people lose their babies like that.”

“I know. I never know what to say.”

The young woman shook her head. “I don’t think there was anything we could have said to make this better for her. Not when it all happened so suddenly, and especially now that she can never have kids.”

* * *

Sophie felt a warm caress on her cheek and would have smiled if she could. Jake was here. Everything would be better now.

“I love you so much. And I’m so sorry. So damn sorry.”

She finally managed to open her heavy eyelids and saw that Jake's cheeks were wet, droplets clinging to his eyelashes. His sorrow, the fear in his eyes, held her speechless. Along with the way he was looking at her.

With pure love.

“I wanted those kids, you know how bad I wanted them. But you’re everything. Everything. It doesn’t matter if we can never have kids. All I need is you. If you’ll have me. If you’ll trust me and let me trust you from here on out.”

Finally, her tongue came unstuck. “Jake?”

She tried to sit up to put her arms around him, but the sharp bite of pain had her gasping instead. Jake’s arms came around her, holding her so gently, as if she were broken. The pain medication they’d given her made her feel heavy, fuzzy. But she needed to tell him.

“I heard the nurses talking outside.” Every word he spoke was wracked with deep pain. And loss. But still he stroked her hair as if he were afraid she’d break apart any second. “I should have been here with you when they told you about the miscarriage.”

No, God no, he couldn’t think that—

Her tongue felt thick as she said, “It wasn’t a miscarriage. They weren’t talking about me.”

The hand that was stroking her hair stilled. “Sophie?” He pulled back to stare into her eyes. She watched relief war with disbelief on his face, as if he didn’t want to give in to hope again, only to come crashing back down harder.

“But the blood, I saw the blood.”

She pushed down the sheet and took his hands in hers, placing them over her stomach. Her eyelids felt like they had lead weights hanging from them, but she had to explain. “I had a fibroid in my uterus.” She hoped she was making sense. “A really fast growing one. That’s why Marnie didn’t catch it earlier when she was concentrating on finding heartbeats. They’re going to take me in for surgery to get it out.”

He looked down at their hands, linked over her. “So you’re—they’re—”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me, sir, you can’t be in here. I need to finish prepping Ms. Sullivan for surgery right away.”

She knew that fierce look Jake gave the nurse oh-so-well, and loved that Jake was willing to fight any battles he needed to for her. For their children. He was going to be the most wonderful father. The most loving husband.

As he argued with the nurse, telling her she could take it up with Sophie’s mother in the waiting room if they needed proof that he belonged with her, that she needed him, she held on to his hands...and knew that everything was going to be okay, after all.

Chapter Twenty-four

In the twenty-four hours after Sophie came out of surgery, the entire Sullivan clan invaded the hospital. She’d never been so suffocated by their concern as they hovered over her...or felt so loved. Through it all Jake stayed beside her, his hand holding hers, his strength bolstering hers as they fielded her brothers’ reactions to seeing their baby sister with a man they had thought would never be able to love.

How, she wondered for the thousandth time, could they not have known Jake loved with his entire heart, with every last piece of his soul?

Desperately wishing she had a moment alone with Jake to finally tell him everything that was in her heart, as soon as the door finally closed behind Gabe, Megan, and Summer, she said, “Jake, there’s so much we need to tal—”

Smith pushed through the door before she could finish her sentence. She knew he had walked off his set in Australia the moment her mother called. His arms immediately came around her and he held her longer than anyone.

So many times Smith had been like a father to her, and after working to stay strong with the rest of her siblings, she couldn’t keep the sobs from coming when her favorite brother’s arms were around her. She’d spent so many years hoping and dreaming of a life with Jake. It was still hard to believe that everything she’d ever wanted was finally hers.

Her brother held her until her tears stopped. “We’ll all take care of you and the babies. You don’t have to marry him, Sophie.”

Smith spoke as if Jake wasn’t in the room, as if she wasn’t still holding his hand. She brushed her tears away before reaching for Smith’s hand with her free one, wanting him to understand how she truly felt.

“I love Jake.”

Smith finally acknowledged his onetime friend with a scowl that would have had anyone else scurrying from the room to find a hiding place. “You were just crying like your heart was breaking in half. You don’t have to pretend with me, Soph.”

She could feel Jake vibrating with the need to leap to her defense, with the instinctive urge to claim her. But she also now knew that he loved her enough to let her deal with it on her own while he backed her up every step of the way.

“I’m not pretending. I’m happy, so incredibly happy that my brother has come all this way to see me. And to give me his blessing.” She squeezed her brother’s hand. “Be happy for me, Smith.” She looked at Jake, then back at her brother. “Be happy for both of us.”

He stared long and hard at Jake, neither man backing down. Finally, Smith turned back to her. “If this is what you really want, I’ll try to be happy for you.”

Jake’s voice came as a warning to her brother. “She’s mine, Smith. And no one hurts what's mine.”