I looked up to see Cade walking into the room.
“Trying to get the fuck out of bed! What the hell does it look like I’m doing?”
One thing about breaking your ankle in two places, it was hell getting out of bed. Especially if that bed was a hospital bed so high up off the ground you were practically sitting in the ozone layer.
Everything hurt. It had since the day of the accident. But that wasn’t going to stop me. After one operation and four days spent lying in the hospital, I was done. I knew what I needed to do, and no hellfire or brimstone was going to get in my way.
Or two broken bones.
“I have to get out of here,” I said to Cade who continued to watch me struggle. I glared at him. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?”
“Are the doctors releasing you?”
“Fuck the doctors,” I said, trying to get my goddamn ankle off the bed since my asshole brother refused to help. A ball-searing pain shot up my leg as my booted foot hit the floor. “Fuuuuck!”
“Why the fuck are you trying to leave?” Cade asked, taking pity on me and handing me my crutches.
“Because I have a girl out there who thinks I don’t love her.”
Sweat poured down my temples and I struggled to talk, because goddamn it, I was in so much fucking pain it was torture.
“You’re putting yourself through this to go tell Honey you love her? Have you not heard of a phone?”
“You’re so fucking funny, asshole.” Frustrated, I held up my cell phone. “It’s dead.”
I tried to stand up, but the pain was almost unbearable.
“Why the fuck are you in so much pain? I thought they put you on kick-ass medication.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t take them earlier.”
Cade looked at me like I was crazy. And maybe I was. But I’d spent the last four days high on pain medication, hell, I was still a little high, and I didn’t want anything more in case it knocked me out. I had to find Honey and somehow get to her. And I didn’t want to be as high as a junkie when I asked her to marry me.
“You’re fucking crazy, brother.” Cade helped me get stable with my crutches. My brother was a mountain of a human being, which was good, because I appeared to have no control over my legs.
“I love her, man. I don’t care that the baby isn’t mine. I will be a good father to her.”
“You know for sure it’s not yours?”
“She got the results back the other day. Told me it wasn’t mine.”
A familiar ache punched its way through my medicated haze.
“And you’re okay with that?”
My jaw clenched. At first I hadn’t been. I was gutted. My biological daughter was gone. Replaced by a child fathered by another man.
But when my psychopathic ex-girlfriend drove us into a tree and almost killed us, it kind of put things into perspective.
Well, that, and four days lying on my goddamn back with nothing to do but think while high on drugs and in excruciating pain.
I was in love with Honey.
And I wanted to be with her.
“I will love that kid with everything I’ve got,” I said. “It doesn’t matter that it’s not mine.”
“It’s a big commitment, brother.”
“I don’t care. I want to marry her and be a family.”
“Marry her?” Cade’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you still fucking high?”
Despite the pain, I smiled.
Hell, I grinned like a motherfucker.
Because I had never been so sure of anything in my entire life.
“I’m going to find her, and I’m going to make her my queen.”
HONEY
I sat out on the veranda watching the boats come in off the bay. It was only lunchtime, but it was getting dark because of the approaching storm. Across the water, dark clouds rumbled with thunder. The weather channel said it was going to be a short but ferocious storm, with winds up to forty miles per hour and a lot of rain.
I sat curled up on one of the outdoor deck chairs, a blanket over my lap and a cup of ginger tea in my hands.
I’d already checked to make sure there were enough candles to ride out the stormy night if we lost power, and my cell phone was fully charged.
Wind blew in off the water and tangled in my hair. I sucked in a deep breath to still my chaotic mind and was rewarded with the simple calmness I was looking for. I was happy here. It was the perfect place to process the letter from Dr. Perry’s office.
I leaned forward and rubbed my lower back. As I got closer to my due date I was getting more and more uncomfortable. Parts of me were grumpy. This morning I’d woken up with a persistent lower back pain, which finally went away after I’d been walking around for a while. Last week, the soles of my feet started to complain every time I went barefooted. A few days earlier it was my fingers.