wincing in pain. If my lungs burned this much, I couldn’t imagine how hers felt.
“Where’s the goddamned ambulance?” I barked. “She needs oxygen!”
“Should be here any minute.”
“Nico?” Lexi rasped, her tiny, delicate hand sliding over mine that cupped her cheek. “You’re really here? I wasn’t dreaming?”
Shock. She was clearly in shock.
Did she think she’d been hallucinating? Fuck, she was breaking my heart.
“I’m here, legs,” I croaked. “You stay here, too, okay? Stay right here with me.”
Her gaze weakly met mine. “Can’t believe…you risked…your life…for me.”
When she started coughing again, I thought she would never stop. She was in there too damn long.
“How could I not when you are my life? Christ, I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry.”
Her mouth twitched in the makings of a smile, but it never took hold. “Hurts to…breathe.”
My chest tightened so painfully it felt like it was in a vice. “I know it does. But help is almost here. Just hold on a little longer for me.”
Her shaking hand struggled to reach my face, so I lowered it until our foreheads were pressed together. Her cold fingers—why is she cold when she was just inside a burning building?—brushed against my beard.
“You…saved me.”
“And you saved me back. In all ways, Lexi.”
More coughing, more gasping for air. God, why couldn’t I breathe for her?
“My…hero. Told you…that you were. ‘s why I…love…you.”
I rocked her back and forth, needing to hear those words and not wanting to hear them at the same time. Because if she thought those were going to be the last ones she ever spoke to me, she was so fucking wrong.
“Lexi…I love you, too. So goddamn much.” Tears stung the backs of my eyes. “That’s why you can’t leave me, okay? You have to keep talking.”
Wheeze. “I’m…pre…” Wheeze. “Preg…nant…Nico.”
“I know, legs.” My hand drifted down to her belly without me telling it to. “And you have no idea how happy that makes me.”
She frowned, whether in pain or surprise I couldn’t tell. “Real…ly?”
“Yes. I already love it as much as I love its mother. I want to keep both of you forever. Please let me.”
A smile spread across her mouth as her eyes slowly closed. “O…kay.”
Her hand fell from my face.
I stopped breathing.
“Lexi?” I lightly shook her, trying to rouse her. “You have to stay strong for me. You hear me? Stay strong for our baby.”
“Don’t you leave me! Please, please, don’t leave me.”
Then there were no more wheezes.
On that sidewalk, as I held my pregnant wife, I cried for the first time in ten years.
One month later
I didn’t leave him.
As long as I lived, I’d never forget Nico’s voice begging me to stay with him and to be strong for our baby as he choked on his own tears. It had kept me there on that sidewalk, anchoring me in the moment instead of allowing me to drift off like my body had so badly wanted to.
Luckily, though, I’d merely suffered from a concussion and severe smoke inhalation, which I’d recovered from after a few days in the hospital. The doctor had been ready to release me after the second night, but Nico had insisted that my vitals, as well as our baby’s, needed to be monitored for one more.
A baby that he wanted.
A baby he was happy about. Thrilled about.
A baby that—thank God—was healthy and progressing normally.
Nico had some third degree burns on his back, somewhat resembling mine, that had been healing well. As much as I hated that he’d suffered because of me, he didn’t mind his new burn scars.
“If I hadn’t known you were my match before I’d gotten those burns,” he’d said once the bandages were off, “I’d have absolutely no doubt now. Fate’s trying to tell us something, legs. We were made for each other.”
I stared across the small rowboat at my husband, sighing with more pleasure and contentment than any person had a right to feel. In his boardshorts and lightweight, linen button-up that he’d never bothered to button, he was a marvel of male perfection. Hair pulled back in his signature man bun and bronze tan on display, I’d never seen him look so carefree, so hopeful.
So happy.
It was such a stark contrast from the day I met him, I almost laughed. In his ridiculously expensive three-piece Italian suit and perpetual scowl on his rugged face, he hadn’t looked anything but miserable back then. Honestly, Nico had shaved a good ten years off his life over the past