I touch my belly, and reply, “Twenty weeks.”
She smiles. “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”
My mother’s head shoots up from my father’s shoulder as she waits for my reply.
I smile and look at Josh. “We decided we wanted to be surprised.”
“Like you haven’t had enough surprises!” my mother cries, a sob bubbling up her throat. “Honestly, Lynsey…how could you have relations before marriage?”
I close my eyes and shake my head. “Mom, I’m twenty-seven. You can’t honestly be surprised.”
“I honestly can!” She looks at my dad. “Can you believe what our daughter is out there doing, Darren? This is why we should have made her move in with us while she went back to school. She had it too easy in Mom’s townhouse. No sense of responsibility. No sense of morals.”
“It’s okay,” my dad says, rubbing her arm gently.
“Well, I for one think this baby is a miracle,” Lana says, turning everyone’s attention away from my mother’s hysteria. She looks at Josh, and her eyes well with tears. “After what happened in Baltimore…I just…I never expected you to be a father.”
I frown at Josh. “Baltimore?”
Josh face pales, all humor draining from his face, sharply replaced by anger. “That’s enough, Mother.”
She turns back to me, her eyes blinking with tears. “It’s a miracle. You’re a miracle.”
“I’m not—”
“Of course, it’s a miracle. Every baby is a gift from God,” my mother blubbers, pulling a tissue from her sleeve and dabbing her nose. “But Lynsey, if you’re not in love with this man, why are you living with him?”
Lana’s eyes widen, clearly unaware that I was living here. I look over at Josh, who looks like he’s perfectly content to let me suffer through this interrogation alone. I clear my throat. “Well, as you know, the lease on Gran’s townhouse was up, and I still hadn’t found a job, and well…Josh kind of insisted I move in because it just made sense.”
“Josh insisted?” Lana repeats, getting that hopeful tone in her voice again.
“But I have a job now,” I blurt quickly. I must look like a gold digger to his parents. “And I have my master’s in psychology, so I have career goals and every intention of getting out of here and finding a place of my own very soon.”
Josh’s face hardens as he narrows his eyes and says through clenched teeth, “We’ll have to discuss that, of course.”
I frown and nod. “Yeah, sure.”
Lana gapes back and forth between us with a look of bewilderment when suddenly, the fire alarm goes off.
“My chicken!” I cry and shoot up from the table, tipping over the chair behind me as I make a mad dash for the kitchen.
“No, no, no, no!” I open the oven and horribly smelling black smoke billows out. I grab a pot holder to pull the pan out and accidentally bump the top of my hand on the top burner of the oven. “Shit!” I exclaim, dropping the chicken and yanking my burned hand back.
Suddenly, two arms are around me.
Josh turns me to face him, holding me close as he growls, “Fucking hell, Lynsey.” He holds my hand up to inspect it, a look of absolute panic all over his face. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I was trying to save dinner,” I croak, a knot forming in my throat as I wince at the red blister forming over the top of my hand.
“I need to treat this.” He grabs my good hand and yanks me down the hallway at Mach 10 speed. “Mother, take care of the mess, please.”
“Okay, Joshy,” she calls back.
He leads me through his bedroom and into his master bath before slamming the door shut behind us. His hands are on my waist as he lifts me onto the counter. He digs into his linen cupboard and retrieves a first-aid kit. Without a word, he riffles inside it until he finds what he needs, the anger billowing off him more intense than the burn on my hand.
“Josh,” I say softly as he dabs a wet cotton ball to my hand, causing me to wince.
He looks up, his face flinching.
“What?” he snaps back through clenched teeth.
My chin wobbles. “Why are you so mad?”
“Because, Jones…this is a second-degree fucking burn. This could get infected, leave a scar. This isn’t something to take lightly.”
I nod and sniff, my eyes burning with tears from the pain of the injury and the pain of this night being a complete and total failure. “Why are you really mad?”
He looks me straight in the eyes, so intensely it’s all I can do not to look away. His voice is gruff when he replies, “That was way too much in there.”
“What was too much?” I ask.
“Too much stress. Too much emotion. Too much work.” His jaw muscle ticks with anger as his legs press against mine as they dangle off the counter. “You promised me you would take care of yourself.”
I huff a breath. “I am taking care of myself, Josh.”
“By running around a kitchen all afternoon? By welcoming our parents into our home at the same time to drop a bomb on them and force us to sit through their insane reactions? That’s not taking care of yourself, Jones. That’s the opposite of taking care of yourself.”
I open my mouth and stammer, “I…I thought…”
“What?”
I shrug. “I just thought this was the only way you’d tell your parents. I don’t want to be your dirty little secret.”
His entire face flinches at my words, and he shakes his head, grabbing my chin to pin me with a serious look. “You’re nothing even remotely close to a dirty little secret, Lynsey.”
He exhales through his nose and releases my face, returning his attention to my hand to smear some ointment on the wound that instantly takes the pain away. “It’s ridiculous you’d even think that. And it’s ridiculous you didn’t tell me about this elaborate plan tonight.”
“Well, I was going to, but you were late,” I reply softly, my lower lip jutting out with my depressed state.
He places a bandage over the top of the burn. “I wouldn’t have been late had I known.”
I release a laugh, staring sadly at my hand as I reply, “Oh, I’m sure you would have gladly just left your emergency patients behind to be here for my ridiculous antics.”
“I would have.” His eyes lift to mine and pin me with such fierceness that it takes my breath away. “I would have left them for you.”
I blink back at him, shock seeping into my marrow. It’s not just overprotectiveness or anger or frustration on his face. Behind his usual fierce shield of armor is total terror.
Terror for me.
It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I pull my hand out of his grasp, desperate to erase that anxiety. I cup his face in my hands, needing him to hear me when I say, “Josh, I’m okay.”
He shakes his head as though he can’t hear the words, so I hold him tight and say them again. “Josh, I’m okay.”
He closes his eyes for a long moment, and when he opens them, I nearly gasp when their red rims glisten, and his entire body literally shakes in my hands. My heart lurches.