By the time I stepped off the elevator onto the correct floor, the deafening exclamations had come to an end, but the fantastical speculation was just beginning. The second I walked through the door, James swept me off my feet, crushing me in an embrace that was borderline inappropriate, considering that my boyfriend was lying just a few feet away.
“Abby, I can’t believe it!” he screamed, squeezing me so tight I feared my bones would buckle and snap.
“I-I know,” I gasped, spitting out a mouthful of his dark hair. “It’s pretty crazy.”
In the background, Nick lifted a tentative hand, trying to call attention to my purpling lips, but it was no use. James just smiled obliviously as I slowly suffocated in his arms.
“I can’t believe I had to hear about it from Nick! I should ha
ve been your first call!” he countered, swinging my legs back and forth.
Fortunately, he chose that moment to drop me where I stood. My knees gave as my shoes smashed to the floor, sending a wave of blood and feeling coursing back through me. I took a second to catch my breath, then looked up to see him staring at me expectantly. Lying on the bed behind him, Nick merely shook his head with an indulgent grin.
“Well, of course I wanted to tell you,” I said quickly, trying to figure a way back into his finicky good graces. “James, you know you’re always my first call—”
“Oh, Abby, do you know what this means?” he interrupted with a sudden revelation.
“What?”
“You’ll never hook up with me after all,” he said, feigning a pout.
Nick reached over to silently up his pain meds, but I froze in confusion.
“Uh...I’m sorry?”
James’s handsome face saddened with a wistful smile.
“If you and Nick were simply dating, we mighta had a chance. Sure, the fake engagement and eloping complicated things, but it was still somewhere on the table, right? This though... You, pregnant with Nick’s baby...” He shook his head and clicked his tongue as if I’d made some egregious oversight. “It’ll never work out, love,” he said, then flicked me gently beneath the chin, as if to console me. “Sorry you had to...settle for less.”
I literally bit my tongue. “Well, I’m sure I can learn to live with it...if you can,” I said, struggling hard to keep from laughing.
“We both have to,” he said cheerfully, already on to the next adventure in his head. “Now, Nick, according to Nurse Ratched, all you have to do to earn your freedom is to walk from your bed to the end of the hall. I say we hire a body double. Then we can...” He trailed off suddenly, and a truly terrifying expression flashed across his face.
Nick and I turned quickly around to see none other than Mitchell, looming in the doorway.
The second he saw us, he froze. It wasn’t like him to look so uncertain, but the sight of his son in a hospital bed, with wires and tubes laced across his body caused something strange to happen. In a blink, the most powerful man in the world disappeared, just vanished right there on the spot, leaving nothing but a trembling father in his wake.
I wasn’t sure anyone else saw the extraordinary transformation. James was too busy fuming, and Nick was too surprised that his father had bothered to show up at all, so neither of them noticed much of anything else. To me, though, it couldn’t have been more obvious.
“Nick?” He took a tentative step inside, followed by another, his dark eyes sweeping over every inch of his son. “Are you—”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
I had never seen James so angry, and I honestly found it more than a little scary.
In just two swift steps, he crossed the room and grabbed Mitchell by the collar, moving his face just inches from the man’s and glaring at him. “Get out!” James shouted. “Leave! No one wants you here.”
Before Mitchell could take a single step, James did it for him. He broke open the door with a swift kick and literally threw his friend’s father out into the hall. Just like that, one of the most frightening men in the world was bested in a stunning display of fierce loyalty and uncompromising rage. Before he even landed, the door slammed shut, creating a clear delineation between those who were wanted inside and those who weren’t.
With a dark fury in his eyes, James then pulled the door shut. He stood beside them for a moment, silently catching his breath before turning back to Nick and me and forcing a smile onto his face. “Now, where were we?”
Nick simply stared, as if he wasn’t sure whether what he’d seen was real or if it was just some sort of hallucination, courtesy of the hospital pharmaceuticals.
More than anyone in the world, James Cross held the unique position of having grown up with Mitchell and Nick. He saw all the damage but experienced none of the trauma himself. What resulted was a man who was fiercely protective and unforgiving, to a fault.
“James,” I said softly, “you can’t just—”
“Where were we?” he said again, keeping his eyes locked on Nick.