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“But I wish I had, Jenna.”

I gasped in spite of myself, my eyes almost closing but not quite. I watched him through my lashes as his handsome face contorted with regret.

“I wish I had recognized you, Jenna. Believe me when I say that.”

My phone rang, and I wanted to ignore it. It was the standard ring tone and I had assigned a specific tone to all of my contacts, which numbered into three figures. This was the ‘spam’ or unknown number tone.

But when you’re a mother, you don’t get the luxury of ignoring a call like that. Because you just never knew. I just know that as soon as I heard the ring I knew there was trouble.

I answered it, my voice shaking.

“Hello?”

“Hello?” it was an older female voice. “Is this Jenna Malone?”

“That’s me,” I said.

“This is St. Andrew’s Hospital. I’m afraid your mother and son are here.”

Chapter Twelve

Jenna

“We’re thirty seconds out.”

Funny how time seems to lose all meaning in moments of crisis. I mean, sure, time has always seemed mutable and prone to change from the human perspective. The old adage ‘time flies when you’re having fun.’ If that concept exists, then there must be an equal and opposite force to balance it out.

Hence Einstein’s quote ‘when you’re courting a pretty girl an hour seems like a second, and if you’re sitting on a hot coal a second seems like an hour.’ I’m not sure what courting is but I’m pretty sure it’s something you get a restraining order for nowadays.

I do know that the second bit is quite true. Even thirty seconds of travel to the hospital seemed an interminably long time. My mind flashed back to the last five minutes. The moment of sheer panic when I realized that I was gettingthatcall. The call that keeps parents up at night, the call that says what could have gone wrong did go wrong.

You never realize it’s the worst moment of your life until it’s too late. I thought I knew what the worst moment was. That moment in the boardroom when Michael told me it was over. Both us, and my employment.

Now I felt as if that was just a sucker punch to set me up for the knockout blow. Surprise, the worst moment of your life wasn’t getting dumped and fired by a man who’d gotten you pregnant. No, the worst moment is this, when you find out that your family, the entire foundation of your existence, is in danger.

The thought that I could lose everything paralyzed me for a moment. Michael pried the phone out of my hands and helped me to the express elevator. Michael had his Italian supercar, a candy red space ship looking vehicle that he assured me was fast and nimble enough to get us to the hospital quickly.

I didn’t mind that he was speeding. If anything, I felt like I wanted him to go faster. The lights of the city flashed by, illuminating our features for a moment before the next shadow plunged us into darkness.

Michael’s expression was both of concentration and grim sympathy. The lights from his fancy dashboard cast an unearthly pallor to his handsome face. He seemed less human in that moment and more like some sort of action hero.

The supercar hugged the road, zig-zagging through traffic and getting us to the hospital in about thirty seconds. The GPS said five minutes, so I don’t know if it was the car, his driving, or sheer luck that got us there so quickly.

He screeched to a halt in a spot with red lines boldly declaring it to be ‘ambulance only’ but that didn’t stop Michael.

“I don’t think we can park here,” I said.

“It’ll be fine,” Michael said, getting out of the car.

“Michael, they’re going to tow you if you leave it here.”

A man in a blue and gray security guard uniform sauntered over to us. The look on his face seemed to suggest both envy and eagerness. He envied Michael for the supercar, and he was eager to take out his frustrations on us by exerting the tiny bit of authority society afforded to him.

“You can’t park here, sir,” the guard said in a nasal voice. “Ambulance only.”

“Here,” Michael said, handing the security guard his keys. “Park her for me, will you?”

The guard looked at the keys in his hand, and then back at Michael.