Page 139 of The Billionaire Boss and the Barista

He would fix his family.

Hands fisted, rage filled his chest when he realized how close he’d come to losing them both.

“She could have miscarried when the car hit her.”

Mariana swallowed audibly, rocking back a touch. “When the doctor first told me she was pregnant, I thought that might be better.”

His feeling about that must have been all over his face because Mariana pushed her chair back a few inches, her features hardening. “You don’t get it. I thought my baby was going to die, her baby with her.”

Garrett tried to unclench.She’s right.

He couldn’t judge her. If anything, she should be coming down on him. He hadn’t been there. Mariana had. She lived through a terrible thing, believing she was about to lose her daughter and granddaughter.

In a very real way, shehadlost Emma.

He took a deep breath and leaned forward. “I understand that, I guess. What I don’t get is why Emma thinks Stella is her sister.”

Mariana threw a panicked look over her shoulder at the stairs, but there was no thunder. The girls were occupied upstairs.

She collapsed back into her chair. “It was touch and go the first few days. I didn’t leave the hospital that entire first week. I was afraid to shut my eyes because I was convinced Emma would die while I was asleep.”

Garrett had experienced more than one nightmare about Emma’s accident. This was worse. The retroactive terror at everything he’d almost lost was going to stress-age his organs by a decade.

“But she didn’t die.”

It was as much a reminder to himself as it was to Mariana.

“No, but she didn’t wake up either.”

“I know. She was in a coma.”

“For almost six months.”

“What?” he hissed, flattening his hand on the table. “Six what?”

Mariana nodded. “Months.”

Fuck, the hits just kept coming. “I thought the coma lasted a few days—a week at the most.”

“No. It was… endless,” Mariana said, her youthful face gray.

“The doctors had given up on her. They told me to get ready for her to die. Not in those words, of course, but it was all over their faces. They would hedge, couching every conversation in doctor doublespeak.”

She put her hands on the table, as if bracing herself on it. “But one didn’t do that. His name was Stanley. He gave me hope when he told me this story he’d heard of a pregnant woman waking up from a coma when she went into labor.”

Garrett’s mouth dropped open. “Is that what happened?”

Mariana nodded, the memory lightening the tension in her features.

“Well, sort of. Her vitals began to change when she began false labor pains. She gave birth in this weird sort of half-conscious state. It wasn’t until a few days later that she opened her eyes. But it wasn’t an instant thing like in the movies. She was in and out for weeks.”

Holy shit.That was unbelievable.And so fucked up.

Garrett really should have grabbed a bottle at the liquor store. “She has no memory of giving birth?”

The look on Mariana’s face was a mix of too many emotions to dissect. “I did tell her.”

He held up a hand. “Hold up.What?”

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