“Nik …”

“WHO?!” I bellowed.

“YOU!”

--

I was too stunned to move. In fact, I was sure that I lost all major mobility for a few minutes. One minute Drake was holding onto me, making sure that I didn’t hurt anyone. I knew that I wouldn’t have hurt Emmie. No matter how enraged I had been, I never would have touched her with violence. Jesse, on the other hand, would have been another story.

A mixture of disbelief and euphoria battled inside of me. No way had Emmie just said that the baby was mine. Right?

Right?!

She had just said the words. I had heard them. I wasn’t still asleep in that damned chair beside of her bed and was dreaming this whole thing. All around me the room was quiet, except for the heart wrenching sobs coming from the woman I loved.

Looking up at her from the floor where I had fallen to my knees I whispered, “What?”

“You, Nik.” Her voice broke on yet another sob. “You are the father.”

I shook my head, still not quite believing that she had just given me something I had only dreamed of. “No. I … No …”

Trembling fingers wiped away rapidly falling tears. “Yes, Nik.”

“It was a dream. I dreamed that night.” I got to my feet as quickly as my shaking legs would allow and pushed Jesse out of my way before falling to my knees beside her bed. “Right?”

Emmie’s eyes looked down at the blanket still covering her waist and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Nik. I’m sorry I took advantage of you. Please…” her voice broke again and my heart clenched painfully “…please don’t hate me.”

What the fuck was she talking about now? I was pretty sure I knew what night we had made the baby growing inside of Emmie. The next morning I had woken with the scent of sex in the air but had thought that I had just gotten myself off in the middle of the night. It wouldn’t have been the first time that I had jerked off while I dreamed of Emmie.

Fuck! A million questions filled my mind. Had I hurt her that night? Had I been gentle like she had needed and deserved? Did she enjoy it? I suddenly feared that I had ruined sex for her.

The snickering of my band brothers pulled me back from my wondering. Emmie glared at them over my head. “This is not funny. I practically raped him!”

I couldn’t help it. It would have taken a man with a lot more willpower than I would ever claim to have to not have started laughing. But when I saw the look on Emmie’s face—anger, fear, and maybe even a little humiliation—the laughter stopped dead, and I shook my head at her.

“Come on, Em. There is no way that you could have taken advantage of me. It’s not rape when it’s consensual, baby,” I assured her.

The tears started falling all over again. “You didn’t know it was me, Nik. You thought I was one of the groupies.”

“The fuck you say!” I exploded. How could she even think that? “I might have been drunk, but I knew it was you the entire time, Emmie. I’ve been dreaming about it for a lot longer than I should have. That’s why when I woke the next morning I thought nothing of it.”

Behind me the guys made sounds of anger mixed with disgust. “Too much info, dude. Too much info. We don’t need to know that shit.”

I ignored Jess as I continued to watch Emmie. She looked stunned, maybe as stunned as I had been to find out I was her baby’s father. Her eyes widened and I thought I saw something close to elation cross her beautiful face.

Could I have been wrong all this time? Had Emmie been fighting her own feelings for me while I had been doing the same with my feelings for her? I wanted to ask her about it then and there, along with about a million other questions.

“Emmie …”

The suddenness of the hospital door opening stopped me from asking her anything. We were ordered out so the nurse could help Emmie dress. When I tried to protest, to tell the old hag to fuck off because I had more important things to sort out, Emmie took hold of my hand. My entire body felt as if I had been electrocuted by that simple touch.

“It’s okay, Nik. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Jesse helped me to stand. “Let’s go, bro. There is plenty of time to talk later. She isn’t going anywhere.”

That was the only thing I was sure of at the moment. Emmie wasn’t going anywhere I wasn’t. We had plenty of time to sort out our life, our future together.

The door closed behind Jesse just as I leaned back against the opposite wall with Drake. Thankfully Shane had gone ahead to grab us a cab. I didn’t think I could have handled his pacing right then.

Jesse bumped my shoulder as he stepped back beside of me. I grimaced because now I had something else to deal with. The rage in my friend’s ever changing dark eyes told me that I had a beating coming before his words confirmed it.

“It’s coming, Nik.”

I nodded my head, knowing that I deserved anything that Jesse, Drake, and Shane threw at me. I had done the one thing that we had spent the last six years making sure no other guy could attempt to. I had not only taken Emmie’s virginity while wasted, I had gotten her pregnant too. As happy as I was about both, I was deeply ashamed of myself too.

She deserved better than this.

Minutes later the hospital door opened and the nurse pushed Emmie out in a wheelchair. Of course she had her phone at the ready, no doubt getting ready to work on something for the band. Jesse snatched the phone from her at the same time I saw the shiny piece of paper in Emmie’s other hand.

“What’s that?” I asked, nodding to what looked like a grainy black and white picture.

She handed it over before the nurse started pushing her toward the elevator. “It’s an ultrasound picture of the baby… It’s a girl.”

I couldn’t keep my fingers from trembling as I took the picture from her. It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. It wasn’t until we were nearly on the ground floor when I figured out what was what on the picture. The outline of a hand, the shape of a foot. The baby came into focus and I couldn’t help smiling even as I felt my throat choked with emotion.

This was our baby. My baby …

Emmie was the mother of my child!

Chapter 10

Stop Being A Fucking Coward

The flight from Texas to Florida was nowhere near fun. The guys and I sat and stressed over how sick Emmie seemed to be. She had always suffered from air sickness, but all the vomiting on top of just getting out of the hospital for dehydration had us on a razor’s edge of anxiety. Less than half an hour before we were due to reach our destination, I was ready to demand the captain to land at the nearest airport so we could take Emmie to see a doctor.