Page 66 of Seeking Happily Ever After

“Nick?”

“No.” He shook his head. “She needs to be okay, Steph. She has to be. I can’t lose her.” He looked at his friend. There was nothing but kindness and understanding reflected back at him. “I love her, Steph.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. I love her,” he said again. “So much. More than anything in the world. It’s different with Amelia—I love her, too. But...”

“Nick?” Steph put her hand on his arm. “I know.”

He stopped and looked at her. “You know?”

She nodded.

“Like you know it’s not just for show? That somewhere along the way I fell for her?”

“Besides the fact that you already told me?” She grinned. “Yes. I knew. Right at the beginning,” she said with a small laugh. “I think you fell for her the first time you met her. But yes, I know. I think everyone knows.”

He let his lips curl up into a small smile.

“She’s going to be okay, Nick. She will.”

“She saved Amelia.” He dropped his head, at the memory of what he’d seen. How he’d found her like that. Unconscious, with the baby protected and loved. She’d gone to her. “Can you even imagine, Steph? What it must have taken for her to go to her?”

Steph shook her head.

The police had told them that Charlotte had obviously been in the altercation with Billy at the upper cabin before making her way to the main lodge—and Amelia. “What if she hadn’t have been there? What if she couldn’t have gotten to her?”

“But she did.”

He nodded. She did. “But how could she have—”

“Mother’s instinct.”

Mother’s instinct?

Yes. That made sense. She was the only mother Amelia knew. And now she might not be okay. All the doctors told him was that she’d lost a lot of blood. Maybe too much.

She had to be okay. And not just for him. But for Amelia. That kind of love…thatwasa mother’s love. Amelia needed Charlotte, too.

“Mr. Newton?”

Nick spun on his heel to see the doctor in a white coat with a clipboard.

“You’re Ms. Davis’s fiancé?”

“Yes. I am.” Nick didn’t hesitate. “Can I see her? Is she okay?”

Behind him, Steph murmured something about getting the rest of the family and she disappeared.

The doctor nodded slowly. “She has a long way to go,” he said. “And she’s lost a lot of blood. We’ve given her a transfusion and done surgery to repair the blood vessel and remove the bullet. She’s a very lucky woman. If the bullet had been even a fraction of an inch over, it would have hit some vital organs as well, and…” The doctor shook his head. “I don’t say this very often, Mr. Newton. But your fiancée, with the wound she had and the amount of blood she lost…she shouldn’t have made it. It’s a miracle that she pulled through.”

A miracle.

It was all Nick needed to hear, but the doctor was still talking. At some point, Jeremy and Charlotte’s parents arrived and were standing next to him. “She’s a fighter, that’s for sure,” the doctor said. He repeated what he’d just said to Nick for their sake, but Nick could only focus on two words.Pulled through.She was going to be okay.

“She’s sedated now,” the doctor continued. “But you can see her. She should be awake soon. But she’ll be very tired. So keep your visits short.”

He ached to see her. To hold her hand in his and tell her exactly how he felt about her. For real. Not because she was helping him out or they were just being casual, with no expectations. No. He was in absolutely, completely in love with her. With his whole body and mind. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to put his eyes on her and know for sure that she was okay.

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