The officer looked down at the body of the man I’d never seen before thirty minutes ago and then back at me. “Sure. Lead the way.”

I followed the paramedic out the side door and around the building to the waiting ambulance. They lifted Bex into it and I followed, watching silently as they hooked her up to monitors. She wasn’t shot. She was okay. Except she wasn’t talking.

Her eyes were open, but she was staring at the ceiling of the ambulance, unmoving. I didn’t even think she was blinking. Shock, they said. Come back to me, Bex. Tell me why you left me in Denver, and what you were doing here today. Tell me you love me like I love you. That you can’t live without me.

I lifted her bloody hand and kissed it. “Bex,” I whispered, knowing the police were standing there waiting for me to give them attention. Well, they could fucking wait. One of the paramedics got into the ambulance and began sponging the blood off of her. “I don’t know why you left me in Denver or why you’re here today. But I love you. I swore I would never say those words to anyone ever again, but seeing you lying on the floor covered in blood made me realize I never want to live a second of my life without you. The last several weeks have been torture. I love your foul mouth, your bad attitude, the way you smile, the way you put all of yourself into your music, the way you understand me more than anyone else ever has. I love you, Bexley Bryant. Come back to me. Please.”

I waited, refusing to look anywhere but her face.

“Sir? We need to take your statement.”

“Give him a minute.” The woman paramedic winked at me. “He’s trying to get his girl. Honey, if you said that to me I’d fall at your feet in a puddle. She’s gonna admit it, too.”

I leaned over, running my hand down her silky face. “I love everything about your beautiful face,” I started. I kissed her forehead, rejoicing when she closed her eyelids and then opened them back up, her eyes fixated on my face. “Do you hear me, Bex? Squeeze my hand.”

She squeezed slightly, and I grinned. “Did you hear me? I love you, Bex. You’re okay. The guy’s dead. You’re safe.”

She parted her lips like she wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

“Is she medically okay?” I asked the paramedic.

“Yes. We’ve checked all of her vitals and she’s fine. We need her to be coherent and talking or we can’t release her.”

I kissed her soft lips, my hand still gripping hers. “Tell them you’re okay, Bex. Let me take you home and take care of you.”

Her eyes shifted so she was looking over at me. “Baby,” she whispered.

“Did she just say ‘baby?’” Alicia, the paramedic, stopped what she was doing.

I nodded. She’d heard it, too. “I think she did,” I whispered. “Bex.” Her eyes looked at me but she made no motion of understanding me. “Is that what you came to tell me today? Is that why you were here? Are you pregnant?”

Alicia was already pulling out a small machine. “What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a portable ultrasound machine. It’ll check her uterus. If she’s indeed pregnant we will definitely have to take her to the hospital to be checked out.”

I watched, frozen, as she pushed Bex’s underwear down and moved a wand over her lower stomach. My eyes followed the scar from her previous pregnancy. Was I going to be a father? Was it possible?

“If she’s pregnant, it’s too early to see on this machine,” Alicia said. “We’re going to have to transport her now.”

“Bex,” I said, turning back to her. “Are you pregnant? Blink once if you are.”

Bex closed her eyes, making my heart sink to my feet.

“You can follow the rig in a car, but we can’t let you go unless you’re married,” Alicia said regretfully. “We’re taking her to Gulf Coast. Do you know where that is?”

I didn’t, but I’d follow them. I kissed Bex one more time and climbed out of the ambulance. The police indicated they would talk to me at the hospital. Just before the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, I saw another stretcher being wheeled out to the other ambulance. This one had a body in a body bag.

I shuddered. I’d almost lost her today.

“She’s alert and talking now,” the nurse informed me. I’d had to say I was her husband in order to get any information, which meant now according to her, I was Johnny Bryant. Whoever I had to be I would be to get in there and see her. “You can go on in.”

“Thank you,” I said, rushing to the room where they were keeping Bex. As soon as I stepped in, her eyes swung to me, but as soon as she saw it was me, she immediately looked down at her hands.

“Bex,” I said, ignoring the signal she was giving me. If she thought I was going to step back and be passive, she had another thing coming. I lifted her chin so she had to look at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fucking fine,” she said, making me smile. She was just fine if she was cussing at me.

“I was so scared,” I said, perching on the end of her bed. “You shouldn’t have tried to fight him. You could’ve been killed.”

“And I would’ve been killed anyway had I not done anything.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her, so I dropped it. “Are you pregnant, Bex?”

She looked down at her lap again and worried the blanket in between her fingers. It was her tell. “It’s not yours.”

“The fuck it isn’t,” I growled. “Don’t play games with me, Bex.”

“You want to talk about playing games, Johnny?” Her voice was getting louder, but the fuck if I cared. We were getting this out in the open right fucking now. “Let’s talk about what you were in prison for, shall we?”

“Prison?” What the hell did that have to do with us having a baby? She could say all day long it wasn’t mine, but I knew that wasn’t true.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said, her voice dripping with venom. “When I was seven years old, I woke up to men in my house. They used a boom to break in and arrest my dad. Want to know why? Because he not only did drugs instead of feeding me, but he sold drugs to feed his habit. I hadn’t eaten in days. I haven’t seen him since. He’s serving a life sentence in prison for his sins. Meanwhile, his daughter went to live in not one, not two, but ten foster homes, one of which she was raped and got pregnant in. All because drugs were more important than me.”

Understanding dawned on me like the proverbial light bulb moment. That’s why she’d left Denver. We’d never discussed why I’d been in prison or what that part of my past had been like. Even though I’d told her about Jill and about my parents, I’d never shared anything from that part of my life. Then again, she’d never told me why she was taken from her dad or that drugs were a trigger for her. I knew her mom had died when she was born, and that she’d been taken from her dad, but never the reasons behind it.

This is what happened when two fucked up people tried to get to know each other.

“That’s why you left me in Denver,” I said.

“I refuse to live that life,” Bex said back. “I didn’t even know I was living that life before. I was forced into it. When you didn’t tell me what you’d been in prison for and then I found out when we were sitting there, I knew I couldn’t do this with you. I can deal with a lot of shit. Lord knows I’m the farthest from perfect. But selling drugs is non-negotiable for me.”

I took her hand and she let me. “Bex. I promise to explain it all to you. It’s not what you think. I mean, I did sell drugs. Oh, fuck.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I’m not good at this, obviously. There was some terrible shit that happened to me after my parents kicked me out. I thought I was going to live my dream of playing music, but what I was really roped into was a drug trafficking ring. It’s no excuse, I know, but I was forced to do the things I did. I’ve never in my life touched a drug. Hell, I don’t even like smoking. I was a stupid kid that was naive and believed what I was being told. By the time I realized what was happening, they started threatening Julia to keep me there. No one gets out of that life alive, Bex. I tried. I came back home to Julia once, but they wouldn’t let me quit. The things I had to do to keep her safe, to keep myself safe, well, there are some I can never talk about. I was relieved when I got busted. Not that I wanted to be in prison, but it meant an end to the life I thought I’d never escape. I’d lost my first love to drugs and I didn’t want to lose my sister, too. So instead of turning on the rest of the drug ring like the feds wanted me to, I shut up and stayed in prison.