The Redo (Winslow Brothers #4) (26)

The music switches to another Van Morrison song, most likely because the CD is a greatest hits, and the opening beats of “Someone Like You” start to fill the inside of Remy’s car.

Someone like you? More like, someone like Remy. That’s the kind of guy I’d like to call my boyfriend.

“Maria? You okay? You still with me?” he questions, and I realize I never answered him the first time he asked.

But I don’t really care about that question. I’m too busy wondering about a different one.

“Is the someother-time offer still on the table?” I blurt out, and he furrows his brow, his eyes shifting back and forth between me and the road.

“What?”

Blush heats my cheeks, but it doesn’t stop me like it normally would. Call it pain, hysteria, or adrenaline, but I am, in fact, trying to ask Remington Winslow out. “A few weeks ago, when you asked me to get ice cream with you and I couldn’t.” I remind him of the first and last time we had a conversation. “I’m just wondering if that someother-time offer is still on the table.”

“Are you asking me out, Maria?” His smile is almost too big for the inside of his car. “Right now? While I’m driving you to the ER?”

Instantly, mortification starts to set in, and I feel like the world’s biggest moron. I mean, how could I confuse him helping me get medical attention with him being interested in me?

Idiot. You’re such an idiot.

“Uh—” I start to find a way backtrack, but he cuts me off.

“Because if that’s the case, the answer is yes. A hell yes.” He winks and reaches out to gently pat the skin of my knee. “Though, I only have one stipulation.”

“And what’s that?”

“Let’s get that arm of yours seen by a doctor first.”

“Good idea.” I laugh. I can’t help it. But the movement jostles my left arm in a way that makes me whimper.

“We’re almost there.” Remy squeezes my knee once more and then focuses his full attention back on the road.

Me, though? I float off into a place of euphoric disbelief, far too giddy for a girl who is on the way to the hospital with a broken arm.

Remington Winslow just said yes to going out with me.





Late night, Friday, August 23rd

Remy

Night has consumed the sky, and the blistering heat that caused another damn blackout today has dissipated to a tolerable seventy-five degrees.

I can’t believe that, just five hours ago, I arrived at this very hospital, in the back of an ambulance, with Maria and her baby. Hell, her baby whom I delivered. Inside a fucking elevator.

I have Maria’s car seat and hospital bag clutched in my hands, and the hospital doors open automatically as I enter. The night shift security guard flashes a wide smile in my direction.

“Congratulations, Dad,” he greets, the items I’m carrying putting off what he assumes is an obvious signal.

In fact, in his tenure here, I’m sure he’s encountered lots of new dads arriving at the hospital in a bluster of panic and excitement and stupidity. No matter how prepared, how ready they are to be fathers, the transition is both sudden and rude. There’s no going back from being responsible for another human being. No redos, no second chances, no pushing the pause button.

I don’t bother discrediting his assumption, as an explanation would be a lot more labor than I’m prepared to take on, instead grinning in his direction and bowing my head in a nod of acknowledgment as I head toward the bank of elevators in the lobby.

Truthfully, I imagine many a spectator would think I am the father. I mean, I am the guy who arrived alongside Maria in the ambulance with an obviously flustered appearance—and with a shirt that has seen some shit—and waited nervously for news of the doctors verifying that both mom and baby were okay. And then, I even talked my way into her hospital room as her support person.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I couldn’t find it in me to do anything else but stay by her side. Didn’t want to do anything else but that.

An empty elevator is ready and waiting, and I scoot inside with all of Maria’s baby loot in tow. The maternity ward is only a short ride to the fourth floor, but it’s long enough to have a brief moment of realization—I’m not really connected to this woman and her child, other than being a part of the birth.

Sure, Maria and I have a past. History. But it’s been years since we were together. Two decades worth, in fact. Other than someone she used to love a million years ago, I’m simply a man who knows as much about her life now as she knows about mine—very little.

God, I hope I’m not making her uncomfortable by hanging around and semi-forcing her to let me run the errand to her apartment for all the planned items she didn’t have with her. But without any family showing up to replace me, it doesn’t feel right leaving her alone. She really is a one-woman show, and wholly welcome or not, I won’t leave her to that. Can’t leave her to it.

She’s doing a lot of things alone right now, and the thought of adding to that pile makes my stomach churn.

When the doors open on the fourth floor, I step off and make my way down the hall, the nurses offering friendly waves as I pass their station. They recognize me by now, our story of birth in an elevator becoming hospital lore in a flash of a second upon our arrival.