Page 75 of Last Call For Love

But when I straightened by back I felt a weird jolt of pain shoot up the back of my spine, and I halted, my hand pressed into the small of my back.

My stomach cramped, contracting hard to enough to make me gasp, then lessened.

I gritted my teeth, my heart racing as I waited for another wave of pain to come, but it didn’t.

I’d been having these “practice contractions” for a few days now. It was stupidly early, I knew, I was only three and a half months into my pregnancy, but it still hurt like hell.

I turned off the lights and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, but then felt… I felt and overwhelming sense that something was… something was wrong.

My stomach lurched and twisted and I bent over the sink, crying out.

“Oh, ouch,” I whispered, sweat prickling my brow as I tried to stand up a little straighter but couldn’t.

Something warm and wet settled between my thighs and the whole world came to an abrupt stop.

“Pete,” I hissed, shaking him violently. He opened his eyes and sat straight up, his shoulders rigid in a fighting stance that broke my heart.

“What’s wrong? Is someone here?”

“Pete, I’m bleeding,” I whispered, choking on the words. “I’m bleeding—the baby. Something’s wrong—”

He was out of bed in an instant, his body cloaked in darkness as he pulled pants and shirt on. He grabbed my shoulder and looked me over. I was shaking, trying not to cry.

“Have you been awake all night?”

“Yeah—”

“Sierra—”

“I haven’t been feeling well,” I sobbed. He scooped me into his arms like I weighed nothing, pressed me to his chest like an infant, and carried me out of the apartment and down the stairs.

Cold rain grazed over my cheeks as he put me in the passenger seat of his truck.

“What hurts?” he asked as we drove like hell to the hospital.

“My stomach,” I said, settling my hands over the swell of my belly. “My back.”

“Okay,” he breathed. He reached over and squeezed my thigh.

Dread filled me until I was overflowing with it. I’d known this was a possibility when I’d been told the baby had RHincompatibility. But I’d done the shots and were technically out of the danger zone in terms of how far along I was.

I didn’t want to lose this baby.

“Pete,” I cried, losing my grip on that situation as we pulled into the emergency bay at the hospital. “I don’t want to know. I want to go home.” I didn’t want to know. Right now, I was still pregnant. Right now, we still have a baby.

“You’re going to be all right,” he whispered, kissing my forehead with such tenderness I started to cry harder, gripping his arms. “Come on.”

He carried me into the emergency room and there was a flurry of activity that followed. He didn’t set me down until a nurse guided us over to an exam room.

Laid out on the exam table, I felt like my whole world was crumbling around me. But Pete took my hand and didn’t let go. He didn’t let go the whole time we waited, and waited, and waited for an ultrasound tech to come into the room.

“How long have you been bleeding?”

“Just an hour or so,” I whispered, barely able to get the words out.

The tech nodded, turning the screen away from me as if to shield me from the results as the doppler moved over my belly.

The room was silent. Too silent.

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