Page 44 of Wish For Me

Levi is in my face the second I hang up the phone. “What’s going on?”

“Alex slipped earlier and her ankle still hurts. I want to get her to urgent care.”

His face relaxes a little. “You’ve been drinking,” he says. It’s not a question but I don’t bother asking how he knows that.

“Yeah. You up for a drive?”

He nods once. “I’ll pull the car around.”

NINE

WYATT

I feel like the lowest shit when I find Alex in the kitchen of the farmhouse, her eyes red. The rest of the house is dark and quiet now, and she’s all alone.

“You’ve been crying.”

“I’m being silly. It doesn’t even hurt that bad.” I’m already kneeling in front of her, gently taking her foot into my hand. “I’m just worrying about the wedding.”

“You’re not going to miss the wedding.” I suck in a breath when I pull her fuzzy sock down and see her red and swollen ankle. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

“I didn’t want to ruin Everly’s night. Besides, it didn’t feel so bad when we were all awake and having fun. It wasn’t until we turned the lights off and everyone started falling asleep that I couldn’t ignore it.”

“We’ll get it looked at, okay? I’m sure it’s going to be fine.”

Alex can’t remember where she left her coat and since I don’t want to go tripping over the girls sleeping in the living room, I grab a quilt from one of the empty downstairs bedrooms instead and wrap it around her. Then I lift her in my arms bridal style and walk to the door.

“This is silly,” she says. “I can walk.”

“Fuck that.”

She tenses in my arms when she sees her dad’s Jeep idling in front of the farmhouse. “I had a few drinks tonight,” I explain. “He’s going to drive us.”

“Great,” she mutters under her breath, and I’m pretty sure she’s wondering if he’s going to be an ass to me. It isn’t very often that the three of us are together without Karen as a buffer.

But Levi doesn’t say a single negative word the entire drive down the mountain. I sit in the back with Alex, her leg elevated in my lap. A few times I catch his eye in the rearview, but he mostly remains quiet, the soft radio the only sound in the Jeep.

I’m relieved to find the urgent care clinic almost completely empty. A nurse brings Alex back right away, offering her a wheelchair, which I decline in favor of carrying her.

“You’re being ridiculous, you know that?” she asks.

“Too bad.”

The truth is, I feel like shit. I know that if given the choice Alex would have wanted me to spend that time with her brother instead of fussing over her. But I can’t shake the fact that I shouldn’t have left her when I knew her ankle hurt.

The doctor that comes to examine her looks way too young to have a medical license. I hate the way she grimaces when he pokes and prods at the swollen skin. “I don’t think it’s broken, but we’ll do an X-Ray to be sure,” he says. He asks her a few questions, jotting things down on her chart. His last question hits me like a train. “Before I bring you down for the test I need to ask if there’s a chance you might be pregnant?”

We both freeze, staring at each other. “I don’t think so,” she finally whispers, looking at her lap. And fuck does the expression on her face make my chest hurt.

The doctor looks between us. “It’s standard procedure to do a test just to be sure,” he says. He snaps the top on his pen and gives Alex a bracing smile. “In the meantime, we’ll get you a prescription for a pain killer, okay?”

“Thank you,” she says, her voice just soft enough for me to know she’s upset. Why the fuck didn’t I realize they were going to ask her about pregnancy? I don’t know what I could have done but, shit, I would have done something. Said something. Prepared her in some way.

“You’re making me nervous,” she says after a moment, and I realize that I’m pacing.

I start to apologize, but Levi steps in front of me. “Why don’t we go get a coffee? I saw a vending machine in the lobby.”

I gape at him. “I’m not leaving Alex.”