Eli (Mallick Brothers 4)

"I get my own apartment and a puppy? Dude, you're moving in with him. It's not even a choice. Buh-bye. I will pack your shit while you finish your little snit."

"It's not a snit!" Autumn called after her as she disappeared into Autumn's room.

"It's totally a snit," I objected, moving to sit beside her on the couch. "You're pissed at me. You can admit it."

"You can't just go behind my back and do things, Eli," she said, exhaling hard.

"I did try to talk about it with you."

"And you didn't get your way, so you pretended to let it go, and plotted behind my back."

Alright.

Put that way, it did sound shitty.

"No more buying buildings that I live in - or work in," she was quick to clarify, "without speaking to me first."

"That's fair," I agreed, resting my arm across the back of the couch.

She barely even hesitated before she curled in.

"I like that you want to look out for Peyton when we move out."

"When?"

"Yes, when."Eli - 1.5 yearsSometimes you did it backward.

Sometimes it wasn't the rock, the ring, the wedding, the baby.

I had given Autumn a rock six months after we started dating.

But before we could get to the ring part, there was a missed period, a trip to the drug store, and a stick that went blue.

And it didn't matter what order the world expected us to do it in, we were fucking thrilled.

I had been away for so long, had resigned myself to a future that had no softness in it. So I hadn't planned on kids.

But after spending so much time with my nieces and nephews, I realized the pull was still there.

So learning that was what we were working toward, yeah, I was a happy man.

We painted a nursery. We went to doctor visits. We bought clothes and diapers and blankets.

Then it happened.

Autumn got sick.

Not the kind of sick that meant she had to maybe take it easy, be on bedrest.

No.

It was the kind of sick that had us calling the doctor at night because she was way beyond morning sickness and suddenly couldn't stop vomiting and was too dizzy to walk on her own. It was the kind of sick that had him telling us to get to the emergency room immediately, that he would meet us there.

When a doctor tells you that he would meet you at the emergency room in twenty minutes when it was three o'clock in the morning, you knew it wasn't good.

Her blood pressure was one-ninety over one-fifteen.

A hypertensive emergency.

They had hours to get it down before she risked organ failure, seizures, stroke, or the death of her and the baby.

I'd had a somewhat crazy life. I had seen things and done things that would scare most people half to death.

But I could say with one-hundred percent certainty that nothing was anywhere near as terrifying as that night beside that hospital bed with her.

Until, of course, the night of the delivery.

C-section, because it was the only option.

They had to get him out.

For both their sakes.

Even though it was four weeks early still.

We can't wait anymore, the doctor had told us when her blood pressure refused to get and stay low, no matter the medication they tried. We are taking an unnecessary risk. We have the best neonatal unit in the state here. The baby will be fine.

So, with little choice, Autumn was wheeled down and prepped.

I was scrubbed and dressed.

I stayed up by her head, holding her hand, every inch of me more tense than I had ever been before.

"I love you," I told her as her eyes went a little glassy."

"I love you too," she said back with a smile as we heard a faint, then louder cry.

The smile on her face was something that was burned in my memory.

Especially because three minutes later, she started seizing.

And I was sure.

I was so fucking sure.

This was it.

This was the ultimate 'fuck you' from the universe to me.

I knew I had never deserved her, had never done anything to earn the right to call her mine.

So I got her for too short a time.

And she was going to be taken from me.

"What do you mean they won't let you in?" Peyton shrieked, slamming her fists into my chest until my arms went around her, squeezing too tight for her to keep pounding.

Then it happened.

Peyton broke.

Fucking shattered.

And I was right goddamn there with her.

"What's the update?" my mother asked, barreling down the hall in her four-inch boots, looking like hell on heels, ready to take on the world.

"We haven't gotten one," Peyton said, scrubbing her cheeks.

"Oh, fuck that," Ma said, turning on her heel, and stomping back to the nurse's station, looking every bit the mama bear she was.

It was barely two minutes until her doctor came out, looking tired, looking strained.

I was sure it was the talk.