“That doesn’t make it okay,” he insisted. It didn’t. The truth was, Dani Hart had looked him straight in the eye and told him she was carrying his baby, and his first instinct had been self-preservation instead of protecting her. That realization sat ugly in his gut.
“She’s what—twenty-four?” Jonnas asked quietly.
“Twenty-five,” Elias breathed.
Jonnas laughed bitterly. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?” Elias asked.
“She’s young enough that I probably should’ve been asking her what she wanted to drink instead of taking her home.”
Elias snorted. “You’re being dramatic.”
“No, I’m being honest.” He leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “I’m forty-two, Elias. Forty-fucking-two. I shouldn’t be knocking up nurses young enough to still have student loan debt.”
“That’s oddly specific,” his friend drawled.
“She mentioned her student loans,” Jonnas said. That had stuck with him for some reason. Dani didn’t come from money. She worked doubles and picked up extra shifts. She drove a beat-up car that sounded like it might die in the parking lot at any moment. Meanwhile, he wore thousand-dollar suits and signed off on million-dollar hospital budgets. They lived in completely different worlds, and now they might be tied together forever.
“You know what the weirdest part is?” Jonnas muttered.
“What?” Elias asked.
“When she was in my office—” He hesitated. “She looked at me like she expected me to hurt her, and that’s exactly what I did by telling her that I didn’t believe her.”
Elias’s expression hardened slightly. “That bothered you?”
“Yeah.” His voice roughened. “More than it should’ve.” Because he’d spent most of his life making sure women felt safe with him. He tried to make them feel wanted and took care of them. Even in his worst moments, he’d never wanted a woman to fear him, but Dani seemed to. Not physically, but emotionally, and he hated that.
His phone buzzed against the desk, and both men looked down at it instantly. Dani Hart’s name flashed across the screen. Jonnas’s pulse slammed hard against his ribs. “Well, are you going to answer that?” Elias asked.
Jonnas picked up the phone, suddenly feeling like he couldn’t fucking breathe. There was only one message.
Dani: The results are in.
His stomach dropped. Elias stood slowly. “You want me to stay?”
Jonnas stared at the text for a long second before shaking his head. “No.”
“You sure?” his friend asked.
“No,” he breathed.
Elias laughed softly. “Fair enough.” He clapped him on the shoulder as he walked past him. “For what it’s worth, I think this kid is gonna wreck your entire life.” Jonnas flipped him off without looking away from the phone. The office door clicked shut behind Elias, and Jonnas read the text again before finally typing back.
Jonnas: Where are you?
The reply came almost immediately.
Dani: Outside your office.
His head jerked toward the door. Fuck. When he opened the door, Dani was standing there clutching a large envelope against her chest. She looked pale—nervous, and so damn beautiful. Suddenly, he couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of his own heart.
Her eyes lifted to his. “We need to talk.”
Jonnas had delivered bad news to families before. Terminal diagnoses, budget cuts, lawsuits, even deaths. But none of it had ever made his hands shake the way they did when he looked at the envelope clutched against Dani’s chest.
“We need to talk.” Three simple words, but they hit him harder than they should have.