Proving Paul's Promise(25)

“One day, do you think you could tell me?” he asks. He turns me in his arms and leans down by my ear.

I don’t want to answer him, so I step onto my tiptoes and press my lips against his instead. He freezes, and I immediately think that I have made a huge mistake. But then a growl vibrates against my lips, and he kisses me back. He licks across the seam of my lips, and feeling like I have never been kissed before today, I tentative reach out my tongue to touch his. His hands bracket my face, and he makes little noises as he kisses me. I can feel him all the way to my toes. I grab his T-shirt in my fists and lift myself up higher, pressing against him as I try to crawl inside his heart.

A loud cough jerks us apart. I startle, and he looks into my face. His eyes search mine, and I’m worried that he’ll find my fears there, all my anxiety about my past, and then I worry even more that he’ll find my feelings for him shining back at him. Then he’ll know too much. And he could use it against me. I don’t ever want him to be able to go that deep.

“Damn,” he grunts.

A grin tugs at the corners of my lips. “Something wrong?” I ask.

“I like it when you kiss me, but I don’t like it when you use your kisses to evade my questions,” he says quietly. He squeezes me in a gentle hug.

“I wasn’t evading,” I choke out. But I swallow hard trying to get past the lump in my throat.

“Yes, you were. And I don’t hate it.” He chuckles softly. “I might even understand it, if you’d let me in. But don’t use my feelings for you as a smoke screen for what’s really going on between us, okay?” He squeezes me again.

“What’s going on between us?” I ask, my voice cracking only slightly.

“I’m getting to know you,” he says, very matter-of-factly. He tips my face up with the gentlest of touches. “I want to know you,” he says directly. “Everything.”

I shake my head. “You wouldn’t like what you find out.” He would hate me. Family is everything to him and I gave mine away.

“Try me,” he says.

I hold on to his waist—he still has his arm around me—as the subway comes to a stop. He looks down at me for a second too long, long enough for me to see his brow furrow and the little vee form between his eyebrows.

“What are you hiding?” he asks.

“Everything,” I whisper. But I say it more to remind myself than to tell him anything he doesn’t know. I’m hiding everything.

I pull him out the door and into the station, and we race to the top of the steps. “Friday,” he calls when I’m a few steps in front of him. “You have to at least give me a chance.”

I pretend like his voice gets caught on the wind, but it doesn’t. It sinks deep inside my heart, and hope blooms. Hope blooms in a place where no light has lived in a really long time.

I thought it was difficult being on the subway and having Paul ask me so many questions, but that was nothing compared to the memories that swamp me when walk into the maternity ward.





Paul

I let Friday walk ahead of me into the hospital because I feel like she needs to take a break from my probing. Don’t get me wrong. I want to know everything about her. But I don’t think she likes my prying.

I feel as though I’m opening the plastic top on a brand-new can of coffee grounds. I open it and the sweet essence of what’s inside seeps out and makes everything smell nice, but then someone comes along and slams it shut again. The bad thing is that Friday is the one who keeps slamming her own f*cking coffee can lid closed. I get one second of the essence of her, and then she slams it shut again. Then the wonderful smell of her is gone, and all I can see is this really pretty can. The can is full—I know that much. But opening the can and having it stay open… That’s going to be a lot harder.

We meet Pete, Sam, and Reagan on the way into the hospital. “Did you just get here?” Pete asks. He has a bag filled with what I assume are Emily’s things over his shoulder.

“Just walked in the door,” I tell him, and I clap him on the shoulder. “We need to find out where they are.”

But Friday nibbles her thumbnail and motions us toward an elevator. We follow her and go up to the floor she punched. We get out, and there are pictures of babies on the walls and nurses walking around in scrubs with pacifiers and rattles on them. And dogs. And cats. Lots of cats. But I’m pretty sure we’re in the right place because pregnant women are walking by us pushing IV poles.

We stop at the desk and she asks, “Emily Reed?”

The nurse smiles and motions us forward. We follow her to a small room, where Em is sitting on the edge of the bed wearing a hospital gown. She jerks the rear of it closed, and Logan walks around behind her to tie it. He smiles, but she doesn’t really look that happy to see us. I hand Friday the bag and motion for Pete and Sam to follow me. Reagan and Friday walk into the room, and the door closes behind them.

“Why can’t we go in?” Sam asks, looking like a kicked puppy.

“Because she’s going to have a f*cking baby, numbnuts,” I tell him. I shove him into the waiting room. A minute later, Logan comes out, wringing his hands.

“She kicked me out,” he says.

I swipe a hand across my smile. “Why?”

He glances toward her room. “Reagan and Friday are getting her dressed.” He paces from one side of the room to the other. “And they’re washing the basketball off her belly.”