TENACITY

CHAPTER FORTY

Thursday, August 25, 2016
Royals Private Hospital

Roberta—when she got back—had moved Lexi to a private recovery room. Trey had been asked to wait outside for the several tests and checkups that had to be done on her to be finished, so he'd sat on the floor, right outside the room.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and lifted his head to find Jason peering down at him. "Your neck must hurt with the way you're positioned," his best friend muttered, offering a hand. His neck was indeed sore, but he didn't dwell on it.

He took Jason's hand and allowed himself to be helped off the ground. Then he saw Melissa in one of the waiting chairs on the other side of the corridor, her eyes rimmed with dark patches. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She waved him off. "I should be asking you that. Mine is nothing coffee can't solve." Then she paused. "That's exactly what I should do." She stood, dropping the bag she'd been holding onto one of the seats. "Here's the bag you asked for."

"Thank you."

She smiled. "No problem." She hugged him tight, then pulled away. "I'll go get that coffee now." With that she walked off, hands raking through her hair.

"You were at work?" Trey asked quietly when he saw Jason was dressed in slacks and a shirt, the sleeves rolled haphazardly to his elbows.

"Yeah, sort of," Jason affirmed, shrugging. "Building negotiations, but it's no problem. I can pick up from where we left off another time."

Trey looked towards the door of the room Lexi was in, expelling a guilty sigh. "I'm sorry, but I just didn't . . . I didn't know what else to do." Jason caught on to the crack in his voice, and he guided Trey towards the chairs, taking a seat and hoping his distraught friend will do the same.

"You don't have to be sorry for asking for help when you need it," Jason said, looking up at him with a small smile. "You're always there for us, but when you need us, you act like it's a bother. Admittedly, the timing might be a bother for Sam and Mitch because they're still settling in with Wren, but I'm here."

Dragging his eyes away from the door, Trey sat next to Jason, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "Lexi told me the same thing once, you know? She said it was okay to reach out, that I didn't always have to be the strong one." He looked down at his hands, then he clenched them to hide the tiny tremors.

"The thing is that in this situation, I have to be the strong one. She looked so scared—" He broke off, burying his face in his hands. "Maybe I shouldn't have tried getting her pregnant again after the loss of our first two kids. Because if we lose these two, we'll surely go insane."

"I think I understand," Jason murmured, "not fully, because I haven't experienced anything to that extent, but I know what it feels like when you lose a baby—even one you didn't know of."

Trey's head whipped to Jason, his eyes wide. "I'm not sure if I heard right, but are you insinuating that you've lost a baby?" When Jason shrugged, turning away from him, Trey let out a pained laugh, unable to believe what he was hearing. "How come I don't know of this?"

"Well, for starters, she hadn't known she was pregnant. We found out she had been when she fell in the shower and bled all over." Trey's heart went out to his best friend, and grabbing his hand, he gave it a little squeeze. Jason squeezed him back, smiling sadly.

"You can't really miss them when you didn't know them, can you? There was a little pain over what could've been, of course, but it's nothing compared to what you've been through."