“Don’t do it, Bex,” I warned. “You’ll never be the same.”
She turned to look at me. “And you know this how, Johnny?”
I caught movement from Asshole a second too late. He grabbed the gun and pointed it back at her.
“NO!” I shouted, jumping on him. I closed my hand over his, trying to turn the barrel away from her chest. Between her fighting to get control of it and him, it was harder than it should be. “Let go, Bex!”
We struggled for what seemed like forever before I heard the sound I dreaded ever since she’d walked in here with him. A gunshot echoed through the empty space, and Bex fell backwards, Asshole on top of her.
Police infiltrated the area. “One of them was shot!” I screamed, lifting Asshole off of her. Her eyes were closed and blood covered her chest and abdomen.
“NO!” I screamed again. “Call a paramedic!” I lifted her to me. There was so much blood. Her head lolled and her eyes blinked open as I moved her. “Bex, can you hear me? Are you shot?”
Her mouth moved but nothing came out. I laid her on the bar and was just about to lift her shirt when a paramedic appeared. “Let me check her out, sir.”
“You have to help her,” I said, my bloodstained hands holding onto hers.
He nodded. “I’ll do everything I can.”
I watched helplessly as he cut her clothes off, searching for the source of the blood. “You said the gun went off?”
“Yes.” For the first time in years, I wanted to break down and sob. But I couldn’t. She needed me to be the strong one. If she died in my arms they might as well take me, too.
“She’s not shot,” he announced. He looked down at the ground, where his partner was working on Asshole. “Must be blood from him.” It was then that I saw the puddle of blood under his body.
“He’s DOA,” the other paramedic announced. “Shot clean through the heart.”
Fucking hell. Bex was okay. “Why isn’t she talking then?”
“Shock,” he said. “It happens a lot to victims. We’re going to take her to the rig and check her vitals and clean her up. If she’s able to talk by then, we won’t transport her. If she isn’t, we’ll take her over to the hospital for a psych eval. Do you have some clothes we could put on her?”
“I’ll get some from the gift shop,” Cal said.
“We’re going to need your statement,” one of the police officers said.
I nodded, watching as they moved Bex onto a stretcher to take her out to the ambulance. “Can we walk outside first? I need to be with her.”
The officer looked down at the body of the man I’d never seen before thirty minutes ago and then back at me. “Sure. Lead the way.”
I followed the paramedic out the side door and around the building to the waiting ambulance. They lifted Bex into it and I followed, watching silently as they hooked her up to monitors. She wasn’t shot. She was okay. Except she wasn’t talking.
Her eyes were open, but she was staring at the ceiling of the ambulance, unmoving. I didn’t even think she was blinking. Shock, they said. Come back to me, Bex. Tell me why you left me in Denver, and what you were doing here today. Tell me you love me like I love you. That you can’t live without me.
I lifted her bloody hand and kissed it. “Bex,” I whispered, knowing the police were standing there waiting for me to give them attention. Well, they could fucking wait. One of the paramedics got into the ambulance and began sponging the blood off of her. “I don’t know why you left me in Denver or why you’re here today. But I love you. I swore I would never say those words to anyone ever again, but seeing you lying on the floor covered in blood made me realize I never want to live a second of my life without you. The last several weeks have been torture. I love your foul mouth, your bad attitude, the way you smile, the way you put all of yourself into your music, the way you understand me more than anyone else ever has. I love you, Bexley Bryant. Come back to me. Please.”
I waited, refusing to look anywhere but her face.
“Sir? We need to take your statement.”
“Give him a minute.” The woman paramedic winked at me. “He’s trying to get his girl. Honey, if you said that to me I’d fall at your feet in a puddle. She’s gonna admit it, too.”
I leaned over, running my hand down her silky face. “I love everything about your beautiful face,” I started. I kissed her forehead, rejoicing when she closed her eyelids and then opened them back up, her eyes fixated on my face. “Do you hear me, Bex? Squeeze my hand.”
She squeezed slightly, and I grinned. “Did you hear me? I love you, Bex. You’re okay. The guy’s dead. You’re safe.”
She parted her lips like she wanted to say something, but nothing came out.
“Is she medically okay?” I asked the paramedic.
“Yes. We’ve checked all of her vitals and she’s fine. We need her to be coherent and talking or we can’t release her.”
I kissed her soft lips, my hand still gripping hers. “Tell them you’re okay, Bex. Let me take you home and take care of you.”
Her eyes shifted so she was looking over at me. “Baby,” she whispered.
“Did she just say ‘baby?’” Alicia, the paramedic, stopped what she was doing.
I nodded. She’d heard it, too. “I think she did,” I whispered. “Bex.” Her eyes looked at me but she made no motion of understanding me. “Is that what you came to tell me today? Is that why you were here? Are you pregnant?”
Alicia was already pulling out a small machine. “What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a portable ultrasound machine. It’ll check her uterus. If she’s indeed pregnant we will definitely have to take her to the hospital to be checked out.”
I watched, frozen, as she pushed Bex’s underwear down and moved a wand over her lower stomach. My eyes followed the scar from her previous pregnancy. Was I going to be a father? Was it possible?
“If she’s pregnant, it’s too early to see on this machine,” Alicia said. “We’re going to have to transport her now.”
“Bex,” I said, turning back to her. “Are you pregnant? Blink once if you are.”
Bex closed her eyes, making my heart sink to my feet.
“You can follow the rig in a car, but we can’t let you go unless you’re married,” Alicia said regretfully. “We’re taking her to Gulf Coast. Do you know where that is?”
I didn’t, but I’d follow them. I kissed Bex one more time and climbed out of the ambulance. The police indicated they would talk to me at the hospital. Just before the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, I saw another stretcher being wheeled out to the other ambulance. This one had a body in a body bag.
I shuddered. I’d almost lost her today.
“She’s alert and talking now,” the nurse informed me. I’d had to say I was her husband in order to get any information, which meant now according to her, I was Johnny Bryant. Whoever I had to be I would be to get in there and see her. “You can go on in.”
“Thank you,” I said, rushing to the room where they were keeping Bex. As soon as I stepped in, her eyes swung to me, but as soon as she saw it was me, she immediately looked down at her hands.
“Bex,” I said, ignoring the signal she was giving me. If she thought I was going to step back and be passive, she had another thing coming. I lifted her chin so she had to look at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fucking fine,” she said, making me smile. She was just fine if she was cussing at me.
“I was so scared,” I said, perching on the end of her bed. “You shouldn’t have tried to fight him. You could’ve been killed.”
“And I would’ve been killed anyway had I not done anything.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her, so I dropped it. “Are you pregnant, Bex?”
She looked down at her lap again and worried the blanket in between her fingers. It was her tell. “It’s not yours.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” I growled. “Don’t play games with me, Bex.”