“Rocky would never say something that wasn’t true,” Melissa defends.
“What all did he say?Start from the beginning,” Raegan’s clipped voice has Stone’s back straightening.
Stone tells the women what was said, and they hang on to every word.
“He said that she kept screaming for him to get help,” he tells them the last of it.“It sounded like he dreamt it and was telling us.”
“I can’t imagine what he was looking at,” Ivy whispers, wiping her eyes.Raegan pulls her friend into a hug.
“He kept repeatingbutterflyand to get help,” I divulge.
Both women pop their heads up from each other’s shoulders.
“What did you just say?”Ivy questions, the shock in her voice has the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
“He kept repeating butterfly.”
They look at each other then back at Sutton in bed.
“Oh.My.God.There’s no way,” Raegan mumbles as they both rush over and take a side of her bed.
Stone, Melissa, and I stand there and watch as the girls start to check over Sutton.
“What’s going on?”Ian, who I didn’t realize was ushered out of the room, comes back in with Dr.Kemp.“Be careful not to touch the open wounds.”
“Take a look at this,” Melissa shoves the papers from her folder into the doctors’ faces.
“What the fuck’s going on?”Stone asks, looking back and forth between the doctors and the women.
“This can’t be correct,” Dr.Kemp says as he drags his glasses over his eyes.“Sutton’s bloodwork showed no signs of this when she first came in,” he states and goes over to the computer and types in a few things.Ian and Melissa go over to him.
“I took this an hour before she was in that explosion.When we talked about the baby later that day, you said there was no way that she could be pregnant from the blood you’d drawn.”She points out something on the screen.“The blood types don’t even match.And with how high her HCG levels were at the time of this draw, I’d say she was probably around four to five months along.Which would make her around six to seven months along now.”
My body breaks out in a cold sweat.Seven months ago was when we first met at Frankie’s bar.
“Oh.My.God!”Ivy exclaims.She shoves the thin sheet off Sutton’s legs.“It’s not her!”
“What?”all of us guys respond with the same question.
“What are you talking about?Of course this is Sutton.They pulled her out of the burning house…” I point over at Raegan.“That you said you watched her walk into.”
“I did!”Raegan raises her voice at me.
“Unless our sweet, innocent, church-going, rule-following girl suddenly got this recently, it’s not her.”Ivy points to something at the bottom of my girl’s left leg.Everyone rushes over, and I feel like I’m having a stroke.My vision is starting to blur, and my mind can’t seem to form the right words or sentences.My chest pulls tight, and I find my hand comes up and starts rubbing at the skin where my heart sits.
At the outer ankle on her left leg is the markings of half a tattoo.The other half is burned off.I should feel relief, but my heart sinks, even though I know it shouldn’t.
“If this isn’t Sutton, then who the fuck is this?And where the hell is she?”Riot asks.
I barely make it to the window seat before collapsing.The last two months we’ve thought the woman in this bed was my angel.And this entire time she’s been out there being held by someone that we never knew existed.My stomach roils and wants to empty at the thought.
I look over at the woman lying in the bed.The one who isn’t going to make it.
I now know who that woman is.
I know that tattoo.
Known it for years.This is going to crush the most important person in my life.