I can hear his heart beating under my ear, and I’ve never heard it pump so furiously before. Poom poom poom.
He carries me into a room, sets me down on the bed, and holds my hand a little too tightly while two nurses and one doctor check me and Pete waits outside the room. Thank god because my legs are spread and I’m terribly uncomfortable having Remy see me like this. But he’s looking at our hands, intertwined, as if he’s very uncomfortable by this too, until the doctor eases back and slips off his gloves, and tells him, “Your wife is in the early stages of a miscarriage.”
While my brain tries to make sense of what I’m hearing, I roll to my side, curl my hand around my stomach in the fetal position, and shake my head, saying nothing, just shaking my head because . . . no.
Just . . . no.
I’m a healthy young woman. Healthy young women don’t just lose babies.
The doctor ushers Remington aside and speaks to him in low tones, and I lift my head to look at his face. It is the face of my dreams, and I swear I will never forget his fierce expression as he tells the doctor, in a hushed voice, “It’s impossible.”
The doctor continues speaking, and Remington shakes his head, his jaw tight. He looks suddenly younger and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him. God, he looks as disheartened as I imagine he looked the day they told him he’d been kicked out of pro boxing and he would never box professionally again.
He drags a hand down his face and drops it to his side, and the train of panic running inside my head is gaining such speed, I stretch my arm out of the bed and hear myself speak in a voice choking with fear. “What’s he saying? What is he saying?”
Remington leaves the doctor in midsentence and comes over to my side, instantly taking both my hands in his big, callused ones. I can’t even put into words how I feel at the contact, but a rush of calming chemicals run through me and my eyes drift shut as I desperately savor the feel of my small hand inside his bigger one. There’s no cramping. Nothing. Not even fear. Just Remington’s dry hands on mine, and his steady strength, seeping into me. He bends down and starts kissing my knuckles, and I sigh softly, angling my head to his with a drunken smile.
I don’t find out why he doesn’t smile back at me. Or why he looks so completely run-down. Until he takes me back to the hotel and calls two more doctors.
EIGHT
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
There’s no song for this. Or maybe there is, but we just don’t feel like music.
All that is audible between us comes from the soft hum of the plane engines out the windows. Remy refused Pete or Riley to come along on this flight, and the guys were concerned he might go speedy when they’re not around. But nothing could move him this morning. He wanted me alone with him. He carried me downstairs to the car. Then to the plane. God, I want him to carry me as an accessory as long as he doesn’t take me back home. But he is taking me home. To Seattle. Where I will stay, and he will go.
All three doctors say I can’t travel. All three of them say I’ll miscarry for sure if I don’t get rest.
Bed rest.
And a progesterone cream.
That’s what they tell us I need.
They don’t know that what I need is my blue-eyed devil, and the thought of being separated for two months, until I’m past the first trimester and out of the danger zone, makes me want to weep.
Now Remy is sprawled in his usual seat, his head flung back as he stares at the ceiling of the plane, absently stroking my hair.
He looks about as miserable as I feel. I can still hear him, sternly telling both the doctors he summoned to the hotel room—when they prescribed “no travel” and “bed rest” for me—“That’s impossible. I need her with me. She goes where I go.”
And when the third doctor said that he was sorry and left, I remember begging pathetically, “You can’t seriously be thinking of sending me back? Right? Remington, I’ll lie down. I won’t f**king move. This is your son. He’s going to hang in there! He will. I don’t see how being sent away will stress me any less. I don’t want to go home. I’ll stay in bed all day, just don’t take me back!”
He looked so frustrated, ready to tear something in half with his bare hands as he told Pete, “Get the plane ready.” And then he turned to me, and looked at me with blue eyes that lost all their sparkle. He didn’t even have time to explain because I started crying.
And here we are now.
Sucking balls.
Forty thousand feet above the ground, flying to Seattle.
I lie across the bench with my head on his lap, my face tipped up as he strokes his fingers through the length of my ponytail, and then into my scalp. He’s been staring at the ceiling for an hour, his chest expanding, slowly, as though each breath is meant to calm him but doesn’t quite succeed.