Crashed (Driven, #3)(92)

Humpty f*cking Dumpty.

I’m so upset I can’t even speak. And if I could, I don’t even know if I could put words to my thoughts. And he knows me so f*cking well he doesn’t even say a word. He just holds me against him as I expel everything I can’t express otherwise.

We sit in silence for some time. Even when my f*cking tears are gone, he keeps his arms wrapped around my shoulders as I lean forward with my head hanging in my hands.

His only words are, “I’ve got you, son. I’ve got you.” He repeats them over and over, the only thing he can say.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to rid my mind of everything but it’s not working. All I can think of is that my demons have finally won. They’ve taken the purest thing I’ve ever had in my life and are stealing her f*cking light.

Her spark.

What have I done?

I hear shoes squeak on the floor and stop in front of me, and I am so scared of what the person has to say that I just keep my head down and my eyes closed. I stay in my dark world, hoping I have the control to keep it from claiming her too.

“Are you the father?” I hear the soft, southern accent ask the question, and I feel my dad shift and assume he’s nodding to her, ready to listen to the news for me, bear the brunt of the burden for his son.

“Are you the father?” The voice asks again, and I move my hands off of my face and look over at my dad, needing him to do this for me, needing him to be in charge right now so I can close my eyes and be the helpless little kid I feel like. When I look over, my dad is looking straight at me—meets my eyes and holds them—and for the first time in my life I can’t read what the hell they’re saying to me.

And they don’t waver. They just look at me like when I was in little league and afraid to go up to the f*cking plate because Tommy-I always-hit-the-batter-Williams was on the mound, and I was scared to get beaned with the ball. He looks at me like he did way the f*ck back then—gray eyes full of encouragement telling me that I can do this—I can face my fear.

My entire body breaks out in a cold sweat as I realize what that look is trying to tell me, what she’s trying to ask me. I swallow loudly as the buzzing in my f*cking head assaults me, then leaves me shaken to the core, as I angle my head up to look at the patient brown eyes of the woman in front of me.

“Are you the father?” she asks again with a somber pull to her lips as if she’s smiling to abate the words that she’s about to tell me.

I just stare at her, unable to speak as every emotion I thought I’d just emptied out of myself while my dad held me comes flooding back into me with a f*cking vengeance. I sit stunned, speechless, scared. My dad’s hand squeezes my shoulder, urging me on.

“Rylee?” I ask her, because I have to be mistaken. She has to be mistaken.

“Are you the baby’s father?” she asks softly as she sits down next to me and places her hand on my knee and squeezes. And all I can focus on right now is my hands, my f*cking fingers, the cuticles still caked with dried blood. My hands start to tremble as my eyes can’t move away from the sight of Rylee’s blood still staining me.

My baby’s blood staining me.

I raise my head, tear my eyes away from the symbol of life cracked and dead on my hands, and hope and fear for things I’m now not sure of all at the same f*cking time.

“Yeah,” I say barely above a whisper. I swallow over the gravel scraping my throat. “Yes.” My dad squeezes my shoulder again as I look over at her brown eyes as mine beg for a yes and no at the same time.

She starts out slowly, like I’m a f*cking two year old. “Rylee is still being tended to,” she says, and I want to shake her and ask what the f*ck does tended to mean. My knee starts jogging up and down again as I wait for her to finish, jaw grinding, hands squeezing together. “She suffered from either a placental abruption or a complete previa and—”

“Stop!” I say, not understanding a f*cking word she’s saying, and I just look at her like a goddamn deer in the headlights.

“The vessels attaching her to the baby severed somehow—they’re trying to determine everything right now—but she lost a lot of blood. She’s getting transfusions now to help with—”

“Is she awake?” My mind can’t process what she just said. I hear baby, blood, transfusion. “I didn’t hear you say she’s going to be okay, because I need to hear you say she’s going to be f*cking okay!” I shout at her as everything in my life comes crashing down around me, like I’m back in the f*cking race car, but this time I’m not sure what parts I’m going to be able to piece back together … and that more than anything scares the f*ck out of me.

“Yes,” she says softly, that soothing voice of hers makes me want to shake her like an Etch A Sketch until I get a little more assurance. Until I erase what’s there and create the perfect f*cking picture that I want. “We’ve given her some meds to help with the pain of the D & C, and once she gets some more blood transfused, she should be in a lot better state, physically.”

I have no f*cking clue what she just said, but I cling onto the words I understand: she’s going to be okay. I hang my head back into my hands and push my heels into my eyes so I don’t cry, because any relief I feel isn’t real until I can see her, touch her, feel her.

She squeezes my knee again and speaks. “I’m so sorry. The baby didn’t make it.”