The Boy Toy - Nicola Marsh Page 0,102
her room at the hospital and the short walk from the maternity ward to the neonatal intensive care unit. She’d always hated acronyms, but NICU became her focus day in, day out. She spent every waking hour beside her son’s incubator, watching him, willing him to grow and be strong and survive.
She ignored the tubes helping him breathe and the ones feeding him. She ignored his tiny size. She ignored the bone-deep dread that took hold when she allowed the doubts to flood in, doubts that centered on whether he would live or die.
She didn’t care about the doctor’s dire warnings revolving around long-term damage, vision and hearing problems, learning difficulties, chronic health issues, recurrent infections, and all kinds of bad stuff.
All she cared about was survival.
And through it all, Rory was by her side.
He held her hand, he cradled her in his arms, he wiped away her tears. She’d never known anyone so stoic, so strong.
Pia and her mom were as bad as Samira, their expressions equal parts frightened and sad when they peered through the glass into the NICU. Not that they weren’t supportive—they’d been great—but she had enough to deal with, with her fear, to manage theirs too.
Through it all, Rory had protected her. He hadn’t spoken much, and that was one of the things she liked the most. He didn’t offer trite platitudes. He didn’t fill fraught silences with false humor. He didn’t expect anything from her. He was just there, and she loved him for it.
A fine time to discover she loved him, when they clung to each other beside their son’s crib, willing him to start breathing on his own.
There would be time enough to tell him. For now, they had more important things to discuss.
“We should name him,” she whispered, hating to disrupt the peace of the NICU. Despite the infernal beeping of various machines keeping premature babies alive, the place exuded a calmness she needed. “Do you have any ideas?”
Rory flashed the lopsided grin she loved so much. “Rocky, because he’s a fighter.”
“Uh, no.” She cleared her throat, surprised how emotional she was by her choice and hoping he’d go for it. “I was thinking Ronald Garth. After his grandfathers.”
His eyebrows rose. “Wow, you are a traditionalist.”
“Not really.” She managed a soft laugh. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to buck tradition. Hell, I fled to another country to escape it.”
She reached out to touch his hand. “But I’ve quit running, and I think it’s nice that our son embodies the best of both our families.”
“I-I don’t know what to say.” He blinked and turned his hand over to capture hers. “Ronnie sounds close enough to Rocky, so let’s do it.”
She smiled as he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss on the back.
“We can leave the discussion of his surname until another day,” he said, with a meaningful stare.
Samira wasn’t a fool. She may be spending most days in a fog of restless sleep and silent praying, but she knew what Rory meant. He may not have actually said the words “I love you,” but she’d heard him say he’d be with her forever just before she’d been wheeled into surgery. And by his actions the past week, nothing had changed. Now that she loved him, what would she say if he wanted to make their relationship official? He’d once proposed out of obligation. What would she do if he did it for real?
But she didn’t want to preempt anything or pressure him into making a declaration he didn’t want, so she said, “Ron Radcliffe sounds good to me.”
He blinked again, several times, and the tenderness in his eyes almost undid her. “Thank you.”
“No, Rory, thank you. For being here the last week. For everything.”
He wanted to ask questions, she saw it in his gaze, so she buried her face in his chest and let him hold her tight. They would talk. Eventually.
But for now, they needed their beautiful baby boy to live.
Forty-Nine
Rory hadn’t asked Samira the hard questions yet.
Are you engaged to Dr. Dickhead?
Do you only want me around because of Ronnie?
Is our closeness an illusion born of mutual fear of losing the one thing that binds us?
He couldn’t ask her any of that, not when only fourteen days had passed and their son still lay in that crib hooked up to machines helping him live.
The pediatricians were cautiously optimistic. Ronnie had gained over one pound, and while his suck-swallow reflex still wasn’t well coordinated, the weight gain