Page 68 of Doctor Bossy

Clearly, he had to die.

“Griffin.” I heard Becca behind me before her soft hand grasped my shoulder. “Stop. He’s out, alright? He’s out.”

It was the slight sob in her voice that had me stopping to turn and look at her. She looked stressed, and there was a trace of blood on her lip. She was hurt.

I got to my feet and held her face gingerly in my hands, her assailant forgotten.

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head as tears filled her eyes. “I’m fine. I swear I’m fine.”

“You’re lying again,” I said with a frustrated chuckle, kissing her gently on her cheek. “You don’t have to keep doing that, honey. Lying to protect me. I can take it.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Yes, you are, hon,” I said, pulling her to me and holding her. Relief that she was okay filled me, and all the words I wanted her to hear began bubbling out. “And I know you lied to me in the hospital. I know you received some bad news about your health and only have limited time left, but I promise you that I’ll be here the whole time. I love you, honey, and I’ll take care of you for the rest of the time before you die.”

“Die?” She pulled back and frowned at me. “Who said I was dying?”

I sighed.She wanted to keep playing this?“Isn’t that what the test results were?”

“No,” she insisted, looking genuinely confused. “They said I was pregnant, not dying. Wait, so this whole time you thought I was dying?”

Pregnant?

The idea bloomed in my head, and my heart fluttered. It was so far from everything I’d believed that it took me a second to digest the news, but when I did, excitement began to grow. “You’re pregnant?”

“Yeah,” she replied, eyeing me uncertainly. “Are you mad?”

“Mad?” Words couldn’t express the amount of joy coursing through me. “If I was any happier, I think I’ll explode.”

“Really?” she voiced out. She didn’t sound like she believed me, so I pulled her closer, kissing her so softly, so sweetly, until I felt tears fall down her cheeks.

“I can’t believe you thought I was dying,” she muttered, and I smiled.

“It didn’t matter,” I said. “I would love you anyway.”

She looked at me, her brown eyes shining with tears. “I love you too, Griffin. I love you.”

EPILOGUE

BECCA

A year later

“Is this the place?” I asked, frowning the closer we got.

“Yup,” Griffin said, smiling at the confusion on my face. “Odd, isn’t it?”

“Yup.” We were supposed to be heading toward a cemetery, but there was no sign of any such thing. So far, we’d passed a church and a playground full of young kids playing tic-tac-toe and other childhood games.

Avery, our five-month-old daughter, currently resting in my arms, seemed to sense the childhood joy nearby because even in sleep, her lips kicked up into a commiserative smile. But then again, she was always smiling. It seemed I had given birth to a perpetually happy kid, and nothing could make her cry for long, not even hunger.

Even as a newborn, she told me exactly when she needed to eat, and after she did, she would go right back to sleep without a fuss.

It was a good thing, too, because her birth had been a semi-traumatic experience that exhausted me for weeks after.

It still hurt to think about how much pain I’d been in from the contractions that lasted a full eight hours until I was dilated enough. And then, once I was, I was told that my canal was a little too small to be pushing out a whopping eight-pound baby, and an emergency caesarian was needed.

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