Then again, last I checked, so was I.
Though, not in the same way that Tara, a buxom beauty, and Rome were.
Nope, I was that girl that Rhys Rivera, Longview Lumberjacks’ star third baseman, was married to. I was that girl that had taken the star player off the market.
Though, everyone expected Rhys to make a reappearance imminently.
Apparently, he’d been a bad boy before me, and they didn’t expect me to be able to hold him down for long.
“Yeah,” Tyler rumbled, startling me out of my thoughts. “He called twice, so I thought something was wrong. I answered, and he said he saw you at the ER after he had his wrist looked at after a scrimmage last week. Said you looked really bad, and there was a scary dude sitting next to you that kept scaring off every nurse and doctor alike.”
I smiled. “That’s my man.”
Tyler made a gagging sound.
I flipped him off, then closed my eyes.
It wasn’t until I felt a touch on my cheek that I opened them again to find Rhys standing over me, a glass of water in one hand, and a palm full of pills in the other.
I saw the familiar pink ones I’d just taken and nudged them. “I can’t take those. Just took them an hour ago. The rest I can take, though.”
He handed the bottle of water to me then took the two pink pills out of his hand before handing the rest to me.
Once I had them in my mouth, I took a big swallow, and immediately regretted it.
I moaned in pain as the razor sharpness started to throb in my throat.
My eyes had inadvertently closed, and it wasn’t until I had a hand on my cheek again that I realized that I was crying.
“You need anything else?”
I shook my head.
The next time I woke, my brother and Rhys were gone, and I was kind of sad.
I’d wanted to talk to Tyler some more. I hadn’t gotten to talk to him like that—or see him for that matter due to his time constrictions at work—since he’d moved. I missed my big brother.
I slowly got up from the bed, and by the time I was standing, I was already out of breath.
I decided to go ahead and use the bathroom and brush my teeth since I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d done that. By the time I was finished, I was ready to get back to bed.
But, if my brother was still here, I wanted to see him.
Which was what kept me walking instead of crawling back into the bed and committing myself to sleeping another four hours.
I arrived in the kitchen to see Tyler’s back to me, but Rhys facing me.
He saw me immediately and started my way.
I smiled at him when he stopped halfway and grabbed a blanket for me—one he’d obviously washed by the looks of the half-folded mess that was on the table—and wrapped it around me once he came to my side.
“You want to sit on the couch? Or the bar stool?” he asked, making sure that I was facing him when he asked.
I pointed at the bar stool. “I want to sit there. My brother’s still here.”
He nodded and led me to the seat that Tyler was standing next to.
Tyler looked over at me, and his face softened once he took a good look at me.
“So…your husband told me y’all have babies on the way…not by you,” he teased.
I felt my heart start to beat a little faster.
We did, in fact, have babies on the way.
Four of them.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I remembered now, wanting to talk to Rhys about it.
That’d been the first thing I’d meant to say to him when he’d come home. I’d told him on the phone earlier and then had felt a familiar sort of panic set in that had nothing to do with excitement.
How the hell was I supposed to do four kids?
The doctor told me that it was a possibility that they all wouldn’t make it, and that had sent me even more into a panic. I didn’t want one of my children to die.
I wanted them all.
I laughed then. “I told you one day I would do it…”
He snorted. “That you did.”
Rhys caught my eye, and the confusion written there was obvious.
“When my sister had her daughter, I witnessed the birth. So did Tyler. We both made a vow right then and there that we wouldn’t have any kids of our own…that we’d have someone else have them for us so that we didn’t have to experience that.”
Rhys’ lips twitched.
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.
“My sister pooped on the table,” I started. “And she ripped from ass to vagina. They had to put stitches in her asshole, and she told me she would never have kids again. Let’s just say that it traumatized me, and I think it’s kind of funny that we’re now doing this the way that I always wanted to do it.” I paused, remembering the rest of it. “My niece had some problems and was rushed out of the room, and my sister passed out from blood loss because they couldn’t get her uterus to contract. Let’s just say it was a scary time.”