Page 116 of Haunted

“You really think she could be ours? How is that possible? You were in a coma.”

“Women can still have a baby while in a coma. It would just be by C-section.” I lift my hospital gown and show him the scar on my lower stomach. “When I asked Theo where this scarcame from, he said I got it from a shard of glass when you attacked me. I always had this feeling he was lying though.” I close my eyes for a minute and breathe deeply. Feeling Luca’s finger softly run across the scar has my eyes opening again. “I also noticed something. I didn’t realize it at the time because it never crossed my mind Aria could be ours, but she has a couple of traits my sister has. Like detached ears.” At his confused look, I explain. “It’s where the bottom of the earlobe isn’t attached to the head. It sort of hangs free. Aria also has shoulder dimples, which are rare and hereditary. Teresa has them.”

I give Luca a few minutes to process what I said. Several different emotions pass over his face as he takes in my words.

“She has a birthmark on the back of her right knee,” he mumbles. I’m not sure if he’s talking to himself or telling me. “It mirrors the one on my upper arm.”

His pulls his shirt sleeve up and reveals a cluster of freckles in the shape of the letter w.

“Motherfuckin’ hell,” he mutters, his mood darkening the more he thinks about the possibility. His eyes swing to mine. “Aria could be ours,” he says in wonder.

His body starts to vibrate. I can feel the tremors in his hand. His face fills with color and his jaw tics. When his nostrils flare with his heavy breathing, I know he’s working hard at controlling the anger filling his insides. I don’t blame him. I’m just as angry.

It takes several moments, but I watch as the fury slowly seeps from his body. His muscles relax fraction by fraction and the deadly look in his eyes lessens.

His forehead drops to the bed, and I run my fingers through his hair, hoping my touch will soothe him just as much as his calms me.

When he lifts his head a few minutes later, my heart breaks all over again when he looks at me with glassy eyes. His tearsdon’t fall, but only because he won’t allow them too. I know he’s pulling himself together for my sake.

“No matter what happens, we’re going to get through this together,” he states, and I believe him, because after all these years and through so much pain, we’ve finally found each other again.

32

LUCA

ISIT BESIDE JULES on the hospital bed as we wait for her doctor to come in and give her the okay to go home. Although her head injury, the worst of the damage done to her body, wasn’t serious, he still wanted to keep her overnight, especially considering she was just in a seven-year coma due to a head injury not too long ago.

I tighten my arm around her waist and thank God she’s okay for what has to be the thousandth time since she woke up yesterday. I told her she scared the shit out of me. That has to be the biggest understatement in the history of understatements. I was out of my fucking mind, going ballistic with worry. And when I was at the nurses’ station demanding an update, even knowing it was too early for one, and heard her screaming my name, my fear went through the roof.

It took every bit of the three security guards to hold me back, but I still struggled. I wanted at Jules. Ineededto be with her. Her heartrending cries were pure torture. It was only one of the guards threatening to toss my ass from the hospital that shutdown my battle to get to her. When her eyes, so lost and filled with agony, met mine across the distance separating us, I fucking collapsed, my strength totally gone. I was taken to the waiting room, where thankfully I only had to wait an hour before the doctor came and told me she was okay. It was still the longest hour of my life. I left my mom and dad in the waiting room and followed the doctor to Jules. She woke up after another torturous hour. Her frantic need to be as close to me as she could get, apparent in the way she practically clawed her way into my lap and almost ripped out her IV, eased some of my worry.

It’s been twenty hours since she told me her belief that Aria could be ours. When Kale dropped off the sonogram, which he took from the crime scene because he knew I would want it, I didn’t let my mind wander to what it could mean. My sole focus was Jules and how she was doing. But when she told me about Aria, it took every bit of strength left in me, and then some, to rein in the rage running through my veins. Theo fucked us over more than we thought. My mind has been consumed with the possibilities since then. And the unanswered questions. So many fucking unanswered questions.

“What happened to Theo?” Jules’s quiet question pulls me from my thoughts.

I almost snarl my answer, but barely manage to keep my tone just on this side of a growl. “His face is fucked-up. Broken and fractured bones.” I feel not one ounce of remorse. “But the doctors say he’ll be fine. He’s going to jail as soon as they release him.”

“Good. It’s where he deserves to be.”

I don’t agree, but I keep my opinion to myself. Had it been up to me, he would have been carried out of his house in a body bag.That’swhere he deserves to be. Harsh way to think of mybrother? My brother died when he first hurt Jules and tried to take her away.

The door whooshing open and the doctor calling Jules’s name has us both getting up from the bed.

“How’s your head?” Dr. Leverton asks.

“The drums have stopped. Now it’s just slightly annoying soft beats.”

His smile is easy. “That’s to be expected. Give it another day and the headache should be gone. We’ll send you home with a prescription as well. The good news is you got your memory back.”

It is good she got her memory back. It just really fucking sucks what she had to go through to make it there.

The smile straightens from Dr. Leverton’s face as he pulls a folder from his clipboard. “I’ve got your medical records here.”

Jules and I both stiffen. I look at the thick stack of papers in the cream folder and wonder if what’s in there will change our lives. My mouth drains of liquid and my throat turns to sandpaper. I’m both anxious and scared, and I know Jules feels the same way.

She’s already plastered to my side, but I still bring her closer until she’s forced to turn toward me. By the look on the doctor’s face, something tells me we’re both going to need the added support of the other.

“Would you like to sit down?”

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