Tainted Butterfly

  “Better?” he murmured, still lovingly stroking my back.

  I nodded.

  “Did something happen at the party to upset you? Was that why you felt sick?” His tone was concerned but commanding, and if I didn’t tell him, he would only aggravate me until I gave in.

  “Travis asked me to dinner when we got home in a few weeks,” I told him and felt him go still. “I told him no.”

  He waited for a moment, as if expecting me to say something else, but I wasn’t sure he needed to know anything beyond that. “That’s it?”

  I shrugged.

  “Kassa.”

  “He called you my boyfriend, said you would get upset, which was why I was telling him no. So, I set him straight. I said yes, you would be upset but that I just didn’t like him enough to want to go out with him, so you being upset didn’t come into it.”

  He was quiet for a few moments before his chest shook with his laughter. “I bet you broke his little heart,” he chuckled and touched his lips to my forehead. “Good. I want that little motherfucker to stay away from you.”

  “Trust me, babe, I don’t want him around me any more than you do.”

  “Good, because if he comes near you again, I’m going to make him eat his balls.” He turned onto his back, and I burrowed against his side. “Sleep, Kas. I’ll be here if you get sick.”

  “Hey,” I murmured and tilted my head up to meet his gaze.

  “What, baby?”

  “I love you.”

  His eyes darkened, need flaring deep in them, but we both knew I wasn’t in any shape to go one round, let alone the two or three we normally went for. “I love you more, baby.”

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Kassa

  Gray woke me as he got out of bed. One eye peeked open so I could watch him walk naked into my bathroom and shut the door. We had gotten home the night before, and I had never been so happy to sleep in my own bed. I was exhausted, and although it had calmed down, I was still having bouts of nausea from time to time. Still, after what I had been going through the last nine weeks, I wasn’t going to complain. It was tolerable now, and I figured that it would slowly go away as I got used to sleeping in a bed that wasn’t being rocked back and forward because the roads on most interstates were total shit.

  Upon seeing the time on the clock beside my bed, I groaned and pulled the covers back over my head. It was too early to be awake, but after only being able to fit a workout in every now and then, Gray was ready to get back to hitting the gym daily. I heard the shower turn on and closed my eyes. No way was I going to the gym with him. I only wanted sleep.

  A soft brush of lips over mine and a quiet goodbye whispered in my ear made me smile as I burrowed into Gray’s pillow.

  “Love you,” I mumbled, already falling back to sleep.

  Hours later, something woke me. At first, I wasn’t sure what had pulled me from the deep sleep. I sat straight up in bed, my heart pounding like it was going to explode. Sucking in a deep breath, I fought to calm my racing heart as I tried to figure out what had woken me.

  My heart rate began to lower, but a sharp pain to my lower stomach hit me, driving it up all over again. It was like a cramp, but the most painful cramp I had ever had in all the years since I had first gotten my period. It was so intense that I fell back onto the pillow and pulled my knees up to my chest, a sob leaving me as I fought to breathe through the pain.

  “Kas?” I thought I heard Kin call out. My bedroom door opened, and suddenly, she was standing beside my bed. “Oh shit.”

  “I hurt,” I whispered when she just stared down at me with wide, blue eyes.

  “Oh shit,” she repeated, grabbing my phone on the bed as another pain hit me so hard that I thought I was going to pass out from it. “It’s okay,” she muttered. “You’re okay.”

  I didn’t understand what she was saying or why she kept repeating the same thing. I barely noticed when she lifted my phone to her ear.

  “Something’s wrong with Kassa.” Her voice shook as she spoke. “There’s blood all over the bed and she’s in pain.”

  “…nine-one-one,” I thought I heard my brother say loudly as Kin bent over me to touch my forehead. “I’m leaving now. I’ll call Gray.”

  The pain eased up a little, but no sooner had it ended than it hit me again twice as hard. “Kin, help me,” I begged, crying because I was scared.

  “You’ll be okay,” she promised, giving me a trembling smile as she called 911. “I need an ambulance. My friend is bleeding vaginally.”

  “What?” I breathed and somehow found the energy to look down at myself.

  The sheet had fallen off me, but I had thought the wetness I was feeling on my body was sweat from the pain. But, when I saw the bright red pool under me, the sheets already coated in it, I freaked out.

  “Oh, God!” I screamed. “This isn’t happening. Oh, God. Where’s Gray? I want Gray!”

  “Sweetie, you need to calm down,” Kin tried to soothe me. “Jace is calling Gray. He can meet us at the hospital.”

  I was still freaking out when the next pain hit so badly that I saw stars. I pulled myself into a tighter ball, fighting to breathe. “I want Gray,” I sobbed.

  “Please hurry,” Kin told whoever was on the other end of my phone. “She’s bleeding so badly and she’s hurting.”

  “Kin?” a new voice called out.

  “Lucy! In here,” Kin called back.

  In the next moment, Lucy Thornton was standing beside her, her face draining of color. “Holy shit! Jace called me and said something was wrong. I ran out of my apartment without even telling Harris what was going on,” she explained, her voice sounding choked. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.”

  “Do you think she had like a cyst or something?”

  “I don’t think you want to know what I’m thinking right now,” the smaller chick muttered, but I still heard her.

  “Lu, what?” Kin choked out.

  “I think she’s having a miscarriage.”

  “No!” I cried. “I got my period. I’m not pregnant.” I couldn’t have been. I had gotten my period twice since that first time without protection, and Gray had been careful ever since. They had been lighter periods than normal, but that was only because I had been so stressed out from being constantly sick and the exhaustion of the tour.

  I cupped over my lower stomach, where the pain was still twisting my insides. There couldn’t have been a little baby in there, because if there was, then I knew I was losing her. There was no way I could have been in that much pain, lose that much blood, and my precious little nugget could have been okay.

  Tears poured down my face even faster. “I want Gray,” I sobbed into his pillow, pulling it against my chest. “I want Gray.”

  Gray

  I was doing a deadlift when my phone went off. It didn’t have the usual weight I normally would have used, but I hadn’t been in a real gym in nine weeks and needed to ease myself back into it.

  “Want me to get that?” Sin asked from where he was sitting beside my gym bag.

  I shook my head and finished the deadlift. Kale tossed me a towel as I dropped the weights and grabbed my bottle of water. As I wiped the sweat from my neck, my phone went off for the second time.

  Sin picked it up. “It’s Jace. It was him before, too.”

  Grunting, I took the phone when my friend handed it over and lifted it to my ear. “What?”

  “Something is wrong with Kas,” he said in a rush, his voice shaking. “Kin called and said she’s bleeding.”

  Everything inside me went still, my heart stopping dead in my chest. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t fucking know. I told Kin to call nine-one-one. Meet me at the hospital.”

  “Where?” I roared, making several people close to me jump. Kale and Sin both lifted their eyebrows at me, but I ignored them. “What fucking hospital, Jace?”

  “I don’t know! The one closest to our apartment would be my guess. Just get there.”

 
He hung up before I could get more out of him, and I grabbed my gym bag, not caring that I was only in a pair of basketball shorts, no shirt and covered in sweat. Kale and Sin did the same thing.

  “What’s going on?” Kale asked first.

  “Something’s wrong with Kassa,” I told them as I opened my car door and tossed my shit onto the seat. Sin and Kale were already getting into Kale’s car. “Jace said she’s bleeding.”

  “We’ll follow you,” Kale called as I started my car.

  My hands shook as I shifted into reverse. Kassa was okay; she had to be. Fuck, I had just left her sleeping peacefully in her bed a few hours ago. She was fine. She had to be fucking fine, damn it. I couldn’t lose her—not yet, not fucking ever.

  I broke records getting to the hospital closest to our apartment. When I pulled up to the ER, I didn’t even waste time turning the car off before I was running inside as Kale and Sin pulled up behind me. My friends could deal with it for me, or someone could tow it, I didn’t give a fuck which. I saw Kin standing by the nurses’ station as soon as the sliding doors opened. She was pale, tears stains on her cheeks.

  “Where is she?” I demanded, fighting panic and the fear that something bad had happened.

  “The doctors took her straight up to surgery,” Kin said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. She took my arm, glanced around, then pulled me away from the desk. “Gray, I need to ask you something, but you can’t lose your shit. Okay?”

  “Just ask it, Kin,” I commanded. “What’s wrong with Kassa?”

  She blew out a frustrated breath and shook her head, making her long, red hair fall into her face. “Have you and Kassa been sleeping together?”

  “What the fuck does that have to do with what’s wrong with her?” I raged.

  “Because she’s having a miscarriage!” she whispered fiercely, glancing around to make sure no one else was listening. “The doctors are doing an emergency D and C to stop the bleeding.”

  The world seemed to shift, and I fell back against the wall for support. “She got her period. She can’t be pregnant,” I muttered half to myself.

  “Look, I don’t know about any of that shit. All I know is that the EMT was pretty sure that was what was going on, and when we got here, there was an entire team waiting to take her upstairs. That was maybe ten minutes ago. They wanted me to sign some kind of consent form, but I couldn’t because I wasn’t next of kin. Jace was right behind me, and they pulled him into the elevator with them.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I need to know if you’re the father, Gray. Because, if you are, Jace is going to lose his shit.”

  None of it made sense to me. Kassa couldn’t have been pregnant … right?

  Fuck, if she was, then that meant she was losing the baby.

  Our baby.

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Kassa was upstairs, losing our baby, probably in pain and scared, and I wasn’t up there with her. I needed to be with her, damn it. Needed to hold her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

  That I loved her.

  “What floor?” I choked out.

  “Third, I think,” Kin told me, but she grabbed my arm when I headed for the elevator. “Gray, are you the father?”

  “She’s mine, Kin. She always has been. Yes, I’m the father. Do you think I could let another man live if he ever touched her?” I shrugged her hand off and headed for the elevators. I was still in nothing but my basketball shorts and running shoes, but I didn’t feel the coolness of the hospital or notice the eyes as they watched me.

  The elevator had just arrived when Sin and Kale came through the sliding front door. They hurried over and got on with me, with Kin right behind them. The ride took less than ten seconds, but it felt like an eternity. When the doors opened again, it was to a man in scrubs standing in front of the operating ward doors, talking to Jace, who was signing something.

  I pushed between him and the doctor. “Can I see her?”

  The man shook his head. “She’s already being prepped for surgery. The sooner I can get in there and stop the bleeding, the better.” With a nod at Jace, he took the signed paper and, after punching in a code that unlocked the doors, left us standing there.

  I scrubbed my hands over my face as the doors shut again. My little butterfly was back there, possibly fighting for her life, losing something precious we had created together. A lump filled my throat, making it hard to breathe yet again.

  “Jace, not here,” Kin murmured in a quiet voice behind me, and I knew what was coming.

  I turned to face Jace, ready to take him and the rest of the fucking world on if I had to. The look on Jace’s face was one I was expecting. We had never gotten along, had only tolerated each other for the sake of the band and Kassa. And, now, one of the two things that had kept us on at least on civil terms was having emergency surgery because I had been reckless.

  The punch to the face caught me off guard, but I stood my ground, not backing down. “I love her,” I confessed to him.

  “No,” he snarled, trying to get in my face, but Kin grabbed his arm, holding him back.

  Kale and Sin just stood there, watching us, not even trying to help her. Either they were too shocked at what was happening or they wanted to kick my ass just as much as Jace did. I didn’t know, didn’t care. If they wanted to take me on too, then they could have at me, because I would gladly take the world on if it meant I could be with Kassa.

  “You don’t get to love her like that,” Jace said. “I’ll kill you before I let you be with my sister. She’s too good for someone like you.”

  “Don’t you think I fucking know that?” I exploded. “I know she’s too good. I know I’m a worthless piece of shit. But I love her. She is the only thing that has ever been good in my world, and she’s mine. You can beat the shit out of me if that’s what it takes, but I’m not going to fight you. Because I know it would only hurt her.”

  Kin pushed herself between me and her boyfriend. “Jace, calm down. This isn’t the time or the place. Your sister is in there bleeding uncontrollably right now.”

  I flinched at her words, my gaze straying to the closed doors. I wished I could kiss her one more time. Tell her that I loved her, that it was all going to be okay.

  “Because of him!” he roared, pulling my attention back to him and his seething anger.

  He was right. It was because of me. I had put that baby in her belly; my child was now putting her at risk. And we were losing it. Our little baby hadn’t had a chance.

  “Because she’s a consenting adult and they had sex, dumbass!” she snapped at him, pushing on his chest to back him up. “Kassa is nineteen. She can have sex with whomever she wants to. And having sex means you chance getting pregnant, because no matter how safe anyone tries to be, nothing is ever a hundred percent.”

  “He shouldn’t have touched her in the first place. He’s been with hundreds of women, and she’s just a baby.”

  “She’s the same age as me,” she reminded him. “And we’ve been having sex since I was seventeen.”

  “It’s not the same,” he growled.

  “How?” she demanded. “Your sister had sex with a guy she loves, and don’t you fucking say she doesn’t love him. A blind man could see how much she cares about Gray, though God only knows why.”

  Fuck, I asked myself that question all the time and thanked God that she did no matter what her reasons for loving me were.

  “Stop saying that, Kin.”

  “What? That your sister had sex?”

  He blanched and backed up a step.

  “She did, Jace. Face it, she’s grown now. You can’t do shit about that. She’s with Gray, she loves him, and he loves her.”

  “Why does it have to be him?” he muttered, and I clenched my hands into fists but kept quiet.

  “Uh, my question is: Why not him?” She shot me a glance over her shoulder, her lips twitching. “I mean, he’s always watched over her. Hell, he’s more overprotective than
you are. He’s already proven that he can and will take care of her.”

  Jace muttered something under his breath, his face clenched so hard that I figured he was causing some real damage to his teeth. “You’re supposed to be on my side, babe.”

  Kin rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not taking sides, idiot. I’m just trying to make you see the reality of this. Gray being with Kassa is a good thing. He will take care of her and love her, just like he’s always done.”

  “I will,” I vowed to him. “I will spend my life making sure she’s happy.”

  He blew out a harsh breath and glared up at me but shook his head. “I don’t like it, but Kin is right. You’re probably the only fucker I would ever trust with Kassa’s heart.”

  “I’m going to marry her.”

  Four sets of shocked eyes turned on me.

  “You’ve already asked her?” Kin asked, the lesser shocked of the four.

  “Not yet, but I have the ring.” I glanced at the doors the surgeon had disappeared through again, my heart in my throat as I thought of Kassa back there without me. “Fuck, I just hope she’s okay.”

  Kin touched my arm. “She’s a strong chick. She’s going to be fine.”

  “She’s losing our baby.” I closed my eyes, the full impact of those words hitting me dead center in the chest. “We didn’t even know she was pregnant, and now, our baby is being taken from us.”

  A strong hand fell on my shoulder. Sin gave it a tight squeeze, a rare sign of comfort from a man who was normally an emotionless robot to the outside world. Tears stung my eyes and my nose, but I didn’t care who saw them. Kassa, my world, my life, my everything, was fighting for her own life even as we were losing the life we had created together.

  TWENTY NINE

  Kassa

  The lightest brush of lips over mine had me stirring into wakefulness. I moaned from the discomfort low in my stomach even as I tried to kiss Gray back. I felt his fingers trace over my brow and slowly lifted my lashes. Opening my eyes, I saw him leaning over me, tears flowing freely down his cheeks as he touched his lips to my forehead.