Quinn held up his hands. “Who said it’s the American dream to have kids? I don’t want no little Quinns runnin’ around here.”

“No one does, brother,” I agreed.

Quinn shot me a look, and then something in the parking lot caught his eye. “Speak of the Devil.”

Avery was making her way across the lot, smiling brightly, a paper bag in her hand. My stomach growled as the red symbol on the side came into view, but my attention quickly returned to the skintight jeans she wore with a simple white tank top. I’ve never known another woman to look so fucking good with no effort.

“She’s off today?” Quinn asked.

I kept my gaze on Avery. “Yeah.”

“Did you know she would be here? Is that why you spent so much time cleaning out the back?”

“Maybe.” I wiped the ridiculous grin off my face, crossing my arms and leaning against the fender of the ambulance, trying not to look too eager.

“I thought you could use some lunch,” Avery said, stopping a few feet from me. She held out the bag from JayWok.

I walked toward her, looping my arms around her waist, lifting her feet from the ground and planting a kiss on her lips. She let hers part, granting me deeper access. I groaned, reluctant to pull away. Needing her had become worse, not better, and I wondered if it was normal to feel so desperate for her, a deep-seated worry that we didn’t have much time left.

“Only if you join me,” I replied.

Her smile widened, and she gave a quick nod to Quinn before returning her attention to me. “Of course. Let me go say hi to Deb, and then we can find some shade. It’s too nice to eat inside, and we’ve only got a few weeks of summer left. Might as well enjoy it.”

“Tell Deb I’d like to eat out too,” Quinn interrupted. I recoiled watching him wink and then run his tongue over his lower lip. “She’ll know what it means.”

Avery made a gagging sound as she walked away.

I smacked him on the chest. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Quinn rubbed his chest, not looking the least bit apologetic. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ve lost your sense of humor. That girl has you wrapped around her little finger, man.”

I watched Avery disappear behind the emergency room’s sliding glass doors. I couldn’t argue with Quinn. Avery scared the hell out of me, but I couldn’t stay away from her, even if a part of me knew it wouldn’t end well.

Before Avery, I’d made mistakes I was too ashamed to ever admit. I knew when I did, she wouldn’t look at me the same way. Running my hand absentmindedly over my side, I pictured the large gray door that stood between my future and me only a few short years ago.

“Brooke!” I yelled, running into the lobby of the clinic.

Seeing Daniel pacing in front of a door, I knew exactly where she was.

Daniel took one look at me and shoved his shoulder against my chest, using all his strength to keep me back from the doorway. He was my closest friend, but if he didn’t get out of my way, I was going to slam my fist into his jaw.

“You have to calm down, Josh,” Daniel said. “You can’t let her see you like this. She needs you to be strong for her.”

I gripped his shirt at the collar. “What happened? I told her I would be back tomorrow. Why? I left for one fucking day!” I stared at the door, knowing I was already too late. My body shook, and I pushed against Daniel.

He put his hand against my chest and held me back. “Josh, stop. You’re going to regret this.”

I looked down and then glowered at him.

“You’re my friend, Daniel, but if you don’t take your hand off me, I’m going to break your fucking fingers.”

Daniel sighed. “I can’t. You know I can’t. If you bust in there now, she’ll hate you for it.”

“You think I don’t know what you did?” I said through my teeth. “What you’re hoping you’ll get out of this?”

I stepped back. I could have easily overpowered him, but I was so gutted I couldn’t find it in me to follow through on my threats. Maybe what was really holding me back was what it would mean if I stopped her.

My face crumbled, and I rubbed the back of my neck. Maybe I was the selfish bastard Brooke had accused me of being.

“She needs me to be there for her,” I said.

“If you had been, she wouldn’t be here,” Daniel spat out.

In one movement, I shoved him against the wall. He tried to push me off him, but I didn’t budge.

A short, squat woman with chains hooked to her glasses touched me on the arm. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you can’t calm down.” Her slicked-back bun barely moved when she moved her head. Her matching blue scrubs had been ironed and starched, but the bags under her eyes told a long story of hard work and experience. She wasn’t going to allow any nonsense, and even if she did, I couldn’t make her day even harder. She was a nurse, just trying to do her job.

“Keep it down or you’ll be sent outside,” she said, her eyes focusing on my grip on Daniel. She would keep order, but I could see she was sympathetic to the guilt in my eyes. “Don’t make me call security.”

I released Daniel’s shirt and shoved him one last time, walking several steps away, breathing hard.

“I should have left earlier,” I said, pacing. “I wouldn’t have hit traffic.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference, Josh. She made her decision.”

I thought back over the morning commute back to college after break. An accident on I-95 set me back a few hours. It was stupid, turning off my phone when she was two hours away, scared and pregnant.

“I didn’t get her voicemail until this morning,” I said.

Daniel stopped trying to pretend to comfort me. He was only there for one thing. He wanted to be the shoulder she cried on after she ended the only thing standing between them.

“We got in a fight,” I said.

“I know.”

“Of course you know,” I snapped. “You just loved it, didn’t you? Her crying to you about what a selfish jackass I am.”

He didn’t respond.

“I had to clear my head, Daniel. We don’t even know each other, and we had a baby on the way.”

Daniel barely listened, watching the door for signs of Brooke.

“I knew she was just scared. I knew she didn’t mean it, but I’m scared, too,” I said to no one. Daniel had turned his back to me. “I wasn’t sure if I could handle this. I was terrified something bad was going to happen … to her and the baby … because of me. Because of my past. I’m a fucking tragedy magnet, you know that.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Daniel said, all pretenses vanished. “You ran because you were scared of something bad happening to them. Now Brooke is behind that door, doing something she swore she couldn’t do. You look away for a second, and someone dies. Just like Kayla.”

“Fuck you,” I said, sinking down on my haunches. I hung my head in my hands as I thought about the disastrous visit with my parents. I’d gone home to take a break from Brooke and the mess I’d created. Instead, Mom and Dad yelled at me for an entire evening. They’d said they didn’t blame me for what had happened to Kayla, but I could see it in my mother’s glassy eyes and smell it on her whiskey-laced breath. I’d managed to ruin everything for everyone who got close to me. I was fucking cursed.

“I just need to see her,” I pleaded to the nurse.

She looked down at me, sad. “I’m sorry, I can’t allow that. Family only.” Her painful words were cut off by the door opening behind her.

I quickly pushed to my feet as Brooke came into view. Not so long ago, we had been strangers. The past two months had been a crash course of getting to know each other once she told me she was pregnant, and that the baby was mine.