Ash: A Bad Boy Romance (30 page)

“Send him in,” I say, lying with my feet hanging off the edge of the table, covered only in my scrub shirt and a hospital gown draped over my lap. Zelda begins to set up the ultrasound machine, and Priya’s eyes go wide when Ash walks in. It wasn’t a
decision
to contact Ash. It was more like instinct. With the anxiety, the pain, the horror rising in my body, I reached out to the one person who made me feel truly safe.
 

“What’s wrong, Sunshine?” He comes and kneels next to me, taking my hand and holding it, his touch firm and reassuring.
 

There’s no more tucking these memories away, no more denial or separation, only him and me no matter what our history.
 

“I’m—I was—” Tears roll down from my eyes, pain dredging up from the past as Zelda brings the ultrasound machine around to the front of the bed.

“Best just to take a look,” she says, eyeing Ash. He grips my hand, and Zelda puts on gloves and nods to me. “Here we go, Dr. Colington.”
 

The touch of gel against my skin shocks me into reality, and Zelda moves the wand right to the spot where she saw the sac yesterday. There’s a click, and the sound turns on in the room. “See there?” she says. “Nothing to worry about in the slightest. You
should
have taken a few days off—but now you will, won’t you? The hematoma is shrinking, but you still need some rest.”

Ash’s jaw drops, and he looks at me, his brows knitted together, eyes questioning. The sound of the tiny, flickering heartbeat ticks on inside the room. There are only little leg buds and arm buds, and the picture looks eerily alien, a tiny life glowing on a screen, causing all this trouble inside of me. Ash grips my hand so tight it feels like it might fall off, and then he smiles.
 

“That’s our—you’re—is it?” He stumbles over his words, sounding more like me than himself. We hadn’t ever talked about this until a couple of weeks ago—it was never a part of the plan for us. But here we are, together in a cold hospital room, looking at our future child on a screen, together, our lives intertwined and finally—almost—resolved. There’s the small issue of money, and the fact that Ash’s whole business is failing. That doesn’t seem like something that should worry us, not when something far more important is right here, in front of us.

Whatever
.

“Ash—I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it could be real. I was waiting until next week. I hadn’t told anyone—”

“It’s okay, Sunshine. Don’t say you’re sorry. Just let me look.” He stares at the screen while Zelda takes pictures of the wiggling jelly bean, its heartbeat as strong as ever.
 

But with the way he’s holding my hand, I’m sure he’s not going anywhere right now. He’ll be here, by my side, even if everything goes south. There’s more than just a marriage certificate connecting us, and there always has been, ever since that night we went home together.
 

Present Day

    
Summer is still leaning on me when we come into the apartment, and she jumps when she flicks the light on. I have the passing thought I haven’t told her that my whole professional life has gone to shit, but who’s counting?
 

    
She’s what’s important right now. Her, and only her.

“Shit,” she says. “Why is
Josh
here?” Josh
is
in fact asleep on my couch, shirtless, with a pillow pulled over his head. There are papers strewn all over the floor that I keep immaculately clean, and there’s a whining sound coming from behind the sofa. Josh doesn’t stir, and Summer looks at me with wide eyes.

“Look, Sunshine, I forgot to tell you. I thought you were sad about not being able to have a kid the other night, and now it turns out that you can—with all the monitoring and stuff that they suggest.”

There’s a disconcerted yap from behind the sofa, and Summer raises an eyebrow like she can’t possibly comprehend what she’s hearing. “And you did what, exactly?”

“I got a—”

Josh sits bolt upright and looks at both of us in confusion. “Is it time to walk the puppy?”
 

“No,” she whispers. But it’s not the same kind of “no” that I heard when I told her Cullen was her father. It’s quite a bit better than that. She rushes behind the sofa, and I hear a crate opening, followed by excited yapping and girlish squeals—the kind I haven’t heard from Summer in a long time.

I throw a pillow at Josh and sigh. “Get out of here, man. You need to be in a bed, fucking recovering. Thanks for looking out.”

Josh gets his bearings and claps me on the shoulder, then looks back briefly at Summer, who stands up from behind the sofa. She’s holding a tan, white, and black Corgi puppy that weighed six pounds at his first vet visit. The puppy looks around in confusion and then licks Summer on the cheek, making little excited yelps. Summer grins, her face lighting up, happiness glowing from within.
 

“Looks like she likes it, man,” Josh says. “Don’t know what the hell is going on with you two, but I wish you the best of luck.”

“We’re... seeing each other.”

And we’re married. And she’s pregnant
.
 

But there will be plenty of time to reveal that shit after everything else gets figured out.
 

Josh walks out, and the door closes, leaving the three of us together. I’m not counting the baby quite yet since the puppy takes up a whole lot more space.
 

“You’re crazy,” she says, but she can’t stop smiling. The dog licks her again, and she comes over and sits down on the sofa, holding the Corgi like it’s a human child. The puppy struggles, wobbly legs flailing around. Summer strokes its pink belly until its movements become slower and slower and it falls into a light sleep.
 

“We can take it back.” For some reason, my heart is beating hard and fast. I’ve fucked up so many times with Summer. It doesn’t seem like a puppy would be a major fuck-up on the grand list of fuck-ups, but you never know.
 

“Don’t you dare.” The puppy’s legs move in its sleep, and she laughs. “We might not have enough money to pay for its shots, but my mom fucking loves dogs, and she can pay back some of the money she owes
you
by dog-sitting and buying food or whatever.” She snuggles the puppy closer, and it licks her lazily.

“She doesn’t owe me any money, Sunshine. We’re family.”

“We’ll need the help. Especially with—especially with the possibility of another addition.”

“I know we’ll figure it out. We’re resourceful people.”

“And I’ve heard having a puppy at the same time as having a baby is a great idea,” she says.
 

I raise my eyebrow and touch the puppy’s cold nose. Then his eyes pop open, and he leaps down from the sofa like he has some place else to be. “Really?”

She laughs and gets up to follow the puppy. “Fuck no, Ash. This is among the stupidest ideas we’ve ever had. I say ‘among’ because it seems like you and I can come up with some pretty fucking stupid ideas.” Absently, she reaches down and pats her belly, even though it’s just as flat as it was before—flatter, maybe, since she started eating two servings of buttered noodles a day, followed by absolutely nothing else. “What should we name him?”

“I’ve never been good at naming anything. I had a dog when I was a kid,” I say, stretching and yawning. “But I named it Jonny. I had a stuffed bear too, one I carried everywhere. I named that one Jonny too.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket again, and I pick it up as Summer chases off after the puppy. The damn number is from New York again. “I’m not interested in whatever life insurance bullshit you’re selling,” I say.
 

“Ash?” A voice I barely recognize speaks to me from the other end of the line. It sounds like she’s far away, or underground. Just like what it used to sound like when Cullen called me from his soundproofed apartment in Soho.

“Bianca?”
 

Summer whips around and looks at me, her mouth hanging open. “I haven’t heard from her in a year,” she whispers at me. I wave my hand, holding the phone closer so I can hear whatever Bianca has to say.
 

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you and Linda for the past two weeks,” she says. “Where the hell have you been? I don’t have Summer’s number—”

“Linda’s phone got cut off, and it seems she hasn’t gotten it turned the hell back on, Bianca. What’s going on?” I swallow hard. The last time I spoke to Bianca, she told me to stay away from Summer. I haven’t exactly disobeyed the Family’s orders, since I waited to see her until after she was done with her time abroad.
 

Summer makes wild gestures, like she wants me to give her the phone. From the look on her face, it seems like she’s damn well ready to confront her birth mother about the whole messy business. But after what she’s been through today, I’d imagine it’s not the time. I put a hand up, because I also have an inkling about what Bianca’s going to say.
 

“Cullen was...” Her voice is suddenly full of emotion. I didn’t spell it out for Summer, but I know that the two parents who abandoned her have been living together the past three years. Talk about a happy family. “He was very sick. I know Summer didn’t want to hear from me, and yours was the only number I had.”

“He
was
sick?”

Bianca gasps, like she’s trying to catch her breath. “He’s gone, Jonny.” I hear her sob, like she’d kept her emotions from bubbling up until this very moment. “A few days ago. He sent a package to Summer.”

The girl in question—a woman now, my wife—stands in front of me, looking fearful and anxious and understandably sad. “What’s happening?” she whispers.

I raise my hand again. “What package, Bianca?”

“All the details of his will. And an account he put into her name. It’s supposed to be paid on death. She needs to get the money transferred to her account before these wise guys up here figure out what Cullen has done.”
 

“Christ,” I mumble. “Really?”
 

“I told you this would happen someday, Ash. I take it you took back up with her, didn’t you? Her mother said as much a few weeks back.” I don’t answer because there’s a slight disapproving tone in her voice, and I know she has no goddamn right to say anything about what Summer does with her life. She abdicated that right twenty-eight years ago. “I trust you can tell her to open that damn package and do what she needs to do. I swear, that girl—so disorganized.”

“Yes, Bianca,” I say through clenched teeth.
 

“No need to get testy, Ash. You never divorced her. This impacts you, too.” There’s a shrug in her voice, like I should be graciously accepting her call. She doesn’t know it, but Ash offered me money the day Summer left—money that made sure I stayed away from her for good. Call it pride or love that came two decades late. Summer could have the money for all the trouble these two caused her, but I wouldn’t take money to stay away from my wife, a woman I wanted from the moment I laid eyes on her.
 

“It’s her choice what she does with it—” My heart is pounding hard. I know what this means for Summer—medical school loans paid off, maybe a down payment on a house. It all depends on how much it is. And I don’t want to ask.
 

Summer stomps her foot and runs over to me, grabbing the phone from my hand and bringing it to her ear. “B—why are you calling Ash? It’s not about—” She pauses, and I can hear the cadence of Bianca’s voice on the line. “Oh shit,” Summer says. She turns to me and sits down heavily in the overstuffed blue chair. The puppy appears, pushing a white box across the floor, nipping at it desperately and chewing on the edge of it. “Yeah, Jesus, okay B. I’m—I’m sorry, I guess. Pancreatic cancer is a bitch. I know—” She pauses, searching for the right words to say to a mother who abandoned her about a father who never knew her. “I know this is a loss for you, B.”

Summer holds the phone away from her ear, and I hear Bianca’s voice. “I hope you can forgive him,” she says. “I love you, Summer. If you look back at everything I’ve done, love was always the reason.”
 

“I love you too, B,” she says as tears form in her eyes. I gesture for her to give the phone back to me. She does, and I click the off button before Bianca can add any more emotional touches to the conversation.