Page 159 of Diego

“I’m okay. Just give me a second.”

I breathe slowly and tell myself this is another cramp, another strange pregnancy symptom, another thing I will probably laugh about later when I discover there was never anything to worry about.

But the worried looks of the two women with me, the two women who have been pregnant, don't help.

Then the cramp sharpens.

My breath catches, and my knees weaken enough that I tighten my grip on the sofa.

Julia is already moving toward me. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

I shift my feet, and something warm seeping between my legs makes me look down.

“Oh God, no.”

For a second, my brain refuses to understand what I am seeing.

Blood is soaking through my leggings between my legs.

My vision seems to tunnel, and it's the only thing I can see. Every sound is suddenly distant beneath the rush of my pulse.

Another strong cramp grips low in my abdomen, enough to buckle my knees. Donna says my name sharply, Julia reaches me just as my hand slips from the sofa, and the last thing I register is the blood before my legs give out beneath me.

Chapter Twenty Seven

Diego

I hit the hospital doors hard enough that one of them rebounds behind me, but I barely hear it. The entire drive here has been one long blur of traffic lights, horns, and Julia’s voice replaying through my head from the moment I answered the phone.

Blair collapsed at the boutique. There was blood. An ambulance took her in.

Julia did not know what was happening yet, only that Blair was conscious when they loaded her into the ambulance and that Dr. Mehta had been called. She gave me a room number before we hung up, and I have held onto those numbers like a lifeline.

There is one word trying to force its way into my head, and I refuse to let it. I will not think it. I will not give it the luxury of scaring me before anyone tells me there is a reason to. Blair is here. The baby is here. Until a doctor tells me otherwise, that is what I know.

I bypass the front desk without slowing down and head for the elevators, already pressing the button before the doors have fully opened. The ride takes seconds and feels endless. By the time I reach the correct floor, I am moving fast enough that two nurses glance up as I pass, but nobody stops me. I find the room number at the end of the hall and push through the partially closed door without knocking.

Blair is in the bed.

Everything inside me seems to stop at once.

She is wearing a hospital gown beneath a blanket pulled to her waist, and the bed makes her look smaller than I have ever seen her. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, her face pale against the pillow, and her eyes are swollen and red-rimmed. She has been crying. She looks toward the door when I enter, and whatever fragile hold she has on herself breaks the second she sees me.

“Diego,” she sobs.

I am across the room before she finishes saying my name. “Cara mia. Sono qui.” I reach her and sit on the side of the bed to gather her against me as carefully as I can, one arm around her shoulders and the other cradling the back of her head. She clutches the front of my shirt with both hands and starts crying harder, her face pressed against my chest while I hold her as tightly as I dare. “Sono qui, Blair. I’m here.”

“I don’t know what’s happening.” Her words break against me. “There was so much blood.”

“I know.” My own voice sounds wrong to me, too rough, but I keep one hand moving over her back while I lower my face into her hair. “Julia called me. You don’t have to tell me anything right now.”

“I thought…” She cannot finish.

Neither can I.

I close my eyes and hold her tighter because the unfinished sentence is worse than anything she could say aloud. My hand finds hers between us, and I thread our fingers together because I need to feel something solid. “We don’t know yet,” I tell her. “We wait until we know.”