He grasped the door and held on until he was sure he could put one foot in front of the other. He saw Bree and Lyric standing inside. Both looked as though they wanted to kill him. He understood how they felt—he wanted to kill himself more than both of them put together.
He watched as Bree walked over to the desk. She pointed at him.
“You’re sure?” the nurse asked as he approached.
“Yes. I’m sure,” Bree answered.
“Come with me.” The nurse led him through the double doors.
Tucker closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened the door to Blythe’s room when the nurse told him it was okay to go in.
The look on Paige and Mark’s faces mirrored that of Bree and Lyric a few minutes before. Neither spoke to him. Paige walked out of the room.
“What’s happening?” he asked Mark, praying Blythe’s father would grant him the grace of telling him.
“We almost lost both of them tonight. But for now, they’re both stable.”
“Both?”
“Blythe and your baby, you sonuvabitch.”
Tucker could feel the rage coming off of Mark as he walked past him and out the door.
He sat in a chair next to the bed and held Blythe’s hand. It was cold. He looked her up and down, and laid his hand on the swell of her stomach. She looked at him, put her hand on top of his, and then closed her eyes again. He thought maybe she hadn’t woken up completely. But no, he knew she had seen him when tears streaked her cheeks.
He didn’t move for three hours. Periodically, someone would come in to check on her, but they didn’t speak to him. They’d check her pulse and blood pressure, and then leave.
An hour later, Blythe woke up for the second time. “Why are you here?”
“Jace called me.”
Jace called him? That meant Jace had known how to get in touch with him all along? Blythe felt as though her heart was being ripped out of her chest. Jace, the one she trusted, the one she believed in, had been lying to her.
“Get the hell out,” she spat.
“Blythe, I’m so sorry—”
“Get. Out.”
Monitors started beeping, and a nurse rushed in.
“Her blood pressure is spiking. You need to leave.” Her voice was low and soft, but the way she said the words, she might as well have been screaming at him.
“What’s going on?” Jace asked when Tucker came back out the double doors.
“Blood pressure. They wanted me to leave for a minute.” Not exactly the truth, but he had every intention of going back in as soon as they’d let him.
“Have you talked?”
“Not very much.”
Jace pulled his brother by the arm, away from Blythe’s family.
“Talk. Now.”
“She asked me why I was here, that’s about it.”
“And what did you say?”