Page 64 of After the Snap

“Oh God. I’m gonna come.” He moves his lips down the column of my throat, until he gets to that spot near my shoulder that makes me shiver. Goose bumps break out across my arms, my orgasm breaking on a scream. My whole body shakes as he picks up speed, thrusting harder with each pump of his hips until they stutter against me and he holds himself, buried to the hilt. His arms shake as his own orgasm washes over him before he collapses on top of me, kissing me with such reverence it makes my heart soar.

This. This is everything I’ve ever wanted.

I’m in the bathroom finishing up getting ready for work when my phone rings on my nightstand. I rush over to grab it but don’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Is this Alayna Pritchard?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“This is Dr. Lakes from Cedars-Sinai. We have your mother here—”

“What?”

“Can you come to the hospital as soon as possible?”

I sit down like a sack of rocks on the edge of the bed. “What’s going on?”

“She was dropped off at the ER with low blood pressure, high heart rate, confusion, chills, and difficulty breathing. After running some preliminary tests and observations, we determined she has sepsis and have admitted her.”

“She has sepsis? How?”

“It was a result of her recent breast augmentation. It seems she developed an infection that she left too long before seeking treatment.”

Leave it to my mom to have a bad boob job that lands her in the hospital with sepsis.

“Wait, you said my mother was dropped off. Does that mean she’s there by herself?”

“Yes. We tried to reach out to her boyfriend, who I presume was the man who dropped her off, but he was…uninterested in supporting her at this time. You were the only other emergency contact listed in her phone.”

I feel my shoulders sag, and I close my eyes. “I’m on my way,” I finally say. The doctor prattles on about the details of where my mom is in the hospital, and I open my eyes to find Dom leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, watching me carefully with concern in his eyes.

My heart pangs in my chest. God, I love him so much.

“What’s going on?”

“My mom’s in the hospital.”

When I look back over at him, he’s frowning. “Why doesn’t she get one of her boyfriends to get her?”

“I don’t know. It sounds like Frederic ditched her there. I don’t know what’s going on, but the hospital made it sound serious.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I love him even more for offering, but I need to handle this myself. She’s my problem, even if I wiped my hands of her. I’ll help her get a plan in place for when she gets discharged and then we’ll go back to our nonexistent relationship.

“No, that’s okay.” I give him a quick kiss. “I’ll text you with updates, but hopefully this won’t take too long.”

When I finally get to the hospital, I learn that things with my mom are not nearly as simple as the doctor made it sound on the phone.

“She’s developed a secondary infection. We’re treating it, but she’s not responding well to the meds,” the doctor says as I stare at my mom sleeping in her bed. There are dark circles under her eyes, but for the first time in a long time, she looks like the mother I grew up with before my dad died and our lives changed drastically.

“What does that mean?” I ask, forcing my gaze away from my mom and to the doctor standing patiently on the other side of her bed.

The doctor looks at me with sympathy. “It means things are up in the air right now unless she responds to the meds the way we need her to.”

“So, um,” I flounder, unsure what to say, and rub my forehead. “I don’t know what to do,” I confess.

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