URGENT (Book 2 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 25: Bad Girls Are Not Made Of Glass

Mac, Three Weeks Later

"I'm not riding today," Adam says with a stern finality, as he gathers my hair back into an elastic while I kneel on the bathroom floor. He hands me down a wet, cool cloth.

I rock back on my heels and rise. I stand very still, wiping my mouth, waiting to make sure. Yes, all better now. Fortunately the nausea goes away, as soon as I puke breakfast up.

I lean over the sink, spit, rinse, spit again. I can't put a toothbrush in my mouth just yet. I made that mistake a few days ago.

"Adam—" I do my best to smile at him in the mirror and avoid my rather gray reflection, "You're riding. Have some fucking pride. The guys will think you are totally whipped if you come on the bus with me instead of riding bikes with them."

"I don't give a good goddamn what they think."

I rinse the cloth, wipe my face. "Liar."

"Alright fine, I care, but I care more that you're sick. Three mornings in a row. What— I'm supposed to just kick it with the guys while you suffer alone on the bus? Fuck that."

I move into the bedroom and sit back down on the bed. Adam moves with me.

"Adam, I'm okay. We agreed, we aren't going to tell the guys I'm pregnant yet. So we don't need to call attention to my morning sickness, right? And you're fucking hovering."

He sits down on the bed beside me and rubs my thigh. "I can't help it, Shortcake. I hate that you have to go through this to grow our baby."

"Well, maybe when I tell you I can't eat, you shouldn't pitch a bitch and try to guilt me into it. Maybe then I won't throw up, and you won't have to feel bad for breaking condoms while fucking me like a convict on a conjugal visit," I grumble. "With an expired condom no less." I spew, just for good measure.

"Is that the story you're going to tell our daughter one day—that she was conceived while we were trying to out-porn prison porn?" he asks with a smile.

"No, but it's maybe the story I will tell our son so he knows to check the goddamn expiration date on the condom," I smirk.

"You're evil," he whispers, kissing my temple. 

I am.

"Evil makes me feel better."

I rest my head on his shoulder. He rubs my back. "You're doing so good, Shorty," he murmurs. "So fierce."

"You're not so bad, in the baby-daddy department." I tell him. I can't resist... "Better than being knocked up by some random, anyway..."

That one does make him laugh. Which was the whole point. Adam is kind of tense lately.

He's so worried about my PTSD, even though my symptoms are much better than normal.

He's the reason. Adam is exactly what was missing from my recovery.

When I was first diagnosed, the doctor said I needed a support network. That support network consisted of Leed, Tamara, Bodie. Sometimes, Ashlynn, too-we sort of co-supported each other. At least for those four months she was clean and living a block away with Trace. Trace knew about my PTSD, but he needed to be Ash's support network and also Adam's buddy after our break-up. 

Trace and I never talk about my PTSD, even though we spend a lot of time together songwriting and in the studio. I actually like it better, keeping my emotional stuff out of my song-writing partnership with Trace. It gives me a separate space—and a person to work with that isn't hovering. Trace and I read each other through the songs we write...we don't have to talk about our problems.