Page 95 of Where We Promise

“Visiting hours are about to end,” the nurse started, and I was about to walk out and beg her to make an exception when Dr. Beckett glanced at the two riders, then back at me.

“They can stay.”

That’s all she said before walking away, but Harris and Brick slid into the cushioned seats and gave me a quick nod before prepping for the night watch.

I shut the door and returned to my little family, feeling that warm sensation in my chest.

“Help me up, Jamie, I want to shower.”

I looked around, nervously. “Uh…should I call the nurse back?”

Pen waved me off. “She said I could get up if I was feeling up to it. By some miracle I didn’t tear, and I didn’t have any anesthesia, so I’m perfectly fine to move around. I feel gross. I just want to rinse off real quick and get in my pajamas.”

“Okay, here.” I helped her all the way to the bathroom, noticing how much she was wincing in pain when not gripping one of the handrails.

She settled in the shower, while we kept the door to the bathroom open, and I watched over Connor. When she was finished, we both laughed over the ice pad she had to wear with her large, gauze underwear.

“It’s not funny, Jamie, this is so humbling. We’re not at the place in our relationship where you can see me like this.”

“I saw you high as a kite when you got your wisdom teeth pulled that summer you turned sixteen, remember?” I held her loose pajama shirt over her head, and then pulled a pair of loose cotton pajama bottoms up over her thighs and around her underwear.

“Being high is not the same.”

We walked back to the bed, very slowly, and once she was inside, I was about to explain how ridiculous she was when she was high, but she put her hand over my mouth.

“Explain why Luke thought I was meeting him.”

Shit.

“It’s a long story…”

She quirked a brow, while pulling Connor’s crib closer. He was sleeping peacefully, all bundled up in a tight swaddle.

“Does it have anything to do with Silas showing up that night at dinner and freaking out about Natty?”

“It does.” I started to explain the entire thing, and when I got to the part about using her phone to text Luke after she’d slipped into the living room, her expression shifted.

“Jameson.” She shook her head, but I leaned forward and kissed her.

Once we broke apart, I kept my face close. “I’m sorry, but there wasn’t a chance you would have ever even known. You told me you were done with him, that you didn’t want to?—”

“It was still my choice, Jamie. You do this all the time…you take the choice from me, and I hate it.”

“I’m sorry, Pen.”

She looked over toward the window, where a closed blind covered the glass.

Her silence was heavy, and I felt it cracking tiny pieces of my soul. Connor began to stir, so I pulled him from his crib and laid him in her arms.

Finally, with her eyes on her son, she responded to me.

“I imagined giving birth a million times. I pictured the room, the way the sun would look outside when it set that first night. I imagined my pajamas and the onesie I’d take for my baby. But in every single scenario I was alone. During the birth, after and every second in-between.” Her pointer finger trailed over her son’s face in a soothing way, her smile was infectious.

“But that’s not how it ended up. I had you.” Blue eyes—starlight trapped in glass—landed on me. “And you were perfect…I don’t like what you did, Jamie but I get it. I understand why you did it.”

Her focus returned to her son. “Thank you for being here, Jamie. Through it all, I can’t thank you enough for not leaving me. Not letting the Chaos Kings have me when they all wanted their pound of flesh. When my mom died, and you could have just left me with Miles. When you could have stood by your vice president, Luke. You chose me, so I’ll forgive this and simply ask that you trust me next time.”

I felt a flicker of shame as I recalled that day her mother begged me to help, and how I had responded. All the times I had left. How I’d not realized how bad things had gotten with Luke because I had abandoned her.

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