Page 58 of Power Play with My Brother's Irish Friends

32

MIRANDA

My head ached, and my eyes felt like someone had sewn them shut with rusty sutures. I tried to crack one open, but when the bright light pierced my retina and sent spikes of pain through my already throbbing head, I slammed it shut.

Low voices muttered around me. “I’m telling you, I saw her foot move.” Patrick.

“Her eye opened.” Duncan.

“Give her a minute, guys. She took a hard hit.” Charlie.

My heart swelled. They were all here. “What happened?” My voice croaked out, my throat dry as cotton and my tongue three times too big for my mouth. I smacked my lips a few times, and something hard poked me in the lip.

“Here. Take a sip.” Charlie’s voice again. It came from nearby, close to my head.

I opened one eye and found him right in front of me, the ever present concern melting across his face when I blinked the grit away. My lips closed around the straw automatically and I took a deep drink. The icy water burst through the fog and righted my memory of us skating. I released the straw and touched the back of my head. “I fell.”

“You did.” Charlie took my hand before I probed any deeper. “We brought you to the hospital.”

“That explains the smell.” My nose wrinkled. “And the horrible curtains.”

Charlie laughed, but I caught the fear threading through the sound. I’d heard it a few times through the years. It was an awful sound, one I never expected to hear him associate with me. “You wouldn’t wake up. I was about to call Austin.”

“No.” I burst into a sitting position so fast the room spun around me. I gripped my head and leaned forward, closing my eyes until the nausea subsided. “Don’t tell Austin.”

“Did you press the button?” Duncan spoke from the foot of my bed, and a hand settled on my calf.

“Yeah,” Patrick answered. “The nurse could walk in any second.”

“Nurse?” I worked both eyes open this time. “I don’t need a nurse.”

“They want to do a concussion test before they let you go.” Duncan shifted into my line of sight. “And you’re going to do it, because none of us are letting you leave until we know one hundred percent that you and the babies are okay.” He said it slowly, carefully, like he expected me to deny it and wanted to make sure I understood that they knew and were not backing down.

I picked at the blankets covering me and peeled off the first few layers.

“Duncan claimed to be the father so they’d let us back here.” Patrick stood to my left, his hands gripping the hospital bed’s railing in tight fists. “What’s going on?”

“Kind of obvious, isn’t it?” I couldn’t say why tears threatened to fall, but I sucked them back with a silent sniff. I refused to cry out of fear they’d think I was ashamed or trying to manipulate them. “I’m pregnant.”

“Who’s the father?” Was that hope I heard in Duncan’s voice? He sank onto the foot of the bed, both his hands light as feathers on my knees. “Please talk to us, Miranda.”

“I don’t know.” The tears I’d worked so hard to hold back burst out, causing the headache to intensify. “I’ve been terrified to tell you.”

“What? Why?” Charlie collapsed into the only chair in the room. It sat close enough to the bed that he managed to stroke my hair back from my face without leaving his seat.

“Because.” I hiccuped and attempted to corral the tears before they sent me into another nauseous whirl. “Because one of you is the father, but I don’t know who. It could even be two of you. They’re fraternal twins. Two eggs. Two sperm.”

I waited for the explosion with breath held tight in my lungs.

Duncan lowered his head toward me. “Then we will all take responsibility.”

Patrick and Charlie jumped in with nods and smiles that eased the bands of aching pain around my heart. I took a shallow breath, taking precautions not to upset my stomach or my head, and dried my face on the blankets.

Charlie tore a tissue from the box beside the bed and blotted beneath my eyes. “You should know better by now.” His chiding tone held more warmth than I deserved. “We’re not going to abandon you. Not ever.”

He’d admitted he loved me. Patrick and Duncan had made similar statements that I’d kind of brushed aside as heat of the moment exclamations but now I realized were more real than I’d given them credit for.

“I love you.” Patrick bumped into Duncan when he sat on the other side of my bed. “I want to build a family with you. Each of us does.”

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