7. Ellie
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Ellie
The couch was far less lumpy and somehow bigger than when I went to sleep.
Still in a haze of sleep, I blinked up at the ceiling, disoriented. The light was soft instead of the dim orange glow of the lamp, and the fabric under my fingers was smooth.
Wait. This was the bedroom.
Jerking upright, I moaned as the room tilted. My stomach rolled, and my hand flew automatically to my belly.
“Easy,” I muttered to myself, sucking in a breath. “You’re fine. We’re fine.”
Was I sleepwalking now? I hadn’t slept in a real bed since I left Gideon. Even though it wasn’t what we shared, the big empty space next to me was a reminder that I was alone. So how had I gotten here?
The last thing I remembered was the couch, bad reality TV droning in the background, my mind in a constant state of anxiety that I’d chosen wrong, and the ache in my chest of missing him.
A cabinet closed in the kitchen, followed by the unmistakable clink of a mug, and then footsteps came down the short hallway toward my room. Heavy, confident, absolutely not the hesitant shuffle of my elderly neighbor.
Panic shot through me. This wasn’t exactly the nicest part of town, but the crime wasn’t high anywhere. Someone had broken in. Wrenching open the nightstand, I grabbed the first substantial thing my hand wrapped around.
The doorknob turned. The door swung open.
With a shriek, I launched a giant purple vibrator like a grenade.
A large hand shot up and caught it midair. There was a startled grunt. “Good morning to you too,” Gideon yawned before he glanced down at what he was holding. His eyebrows went sky-high. “Is this… a weapon?”
Heat scorched my face. “Give me that.”
“Have you been keeping a tentacle fetish from me?”
“What the hell are you doing in my apartment? I kicked you out! How did you get back in?”
With a mysterious smile, he obediently set the vibrator on my dresser and stepped farther into the room, holding out a mug. “I brought coffee.”
“I’m pregnant,” I snapped.
“It’s decaf,” he said quickly. “I know you’re not supposed to have caffeine.”
Annoyed, I snatched the mug and brought it close to my chest. “You didn’t answer my questions.”
He didn’t flinch at my tone. “Your neighbor gave me her key. I slept on the couch after I moved you. It’s not as uncomfortable as it looks.”
I gasped. “That traitor.” It had taken me three weeks just to get her to say hello to me, and after a few minutes, she just handed him a key to my apartment?
Maybe she really did hate me.
He had the nerve to look amused. “She grilled me for twenty minutes about how badly I’ve treated you before she’d even let me carry her groceries. I wouldn’t call her a traitor just yet.”
I shoved the sheet aside and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “You need to leave. I have an appointment.”
His brows pulled together. “Is it a doctor’s appointment?” Was that a note of hope I heard in his voice?
“Yes,” I said finally. “It’s a doctor’s appointment.”
His whole face lit up. For a second, he looked like the man who used to show up at my crappy little apartment with takeout and a ridiculous grin, like just seeing me had made his day.
“There’s no breakfast food in the apartment. Do we have time to stop somewhere and grab something to eat before we go? Or is it too hard to keep food down? What about some toast?”
I didn’t miss the we and briefly closed my eyes. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he wasn’t invited, but this was his child, too. He was here, and once I made it clear that he wasn’t welcome, there would be no more doctor’s appointments for him. What could it hurt?
“There’s a diner across the street from the doctor. Toast is fine,” I muttered. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed.”
He didn’t get to see me naked anymore.
After throwing on a large T-shirt and some leggings, I walked out to find Gideon practically vibrating by the door. He held out a jacket for me. “Car keys?”
I snorted but shrugged into the jacket. “You think I have a car?”
“You don’t?”
“Welcome to my glamorous new life,” I said dryly. “We take the bus.”
For the first time since he’d walked into my bedroom, he looked actually thrown. “The bus.”
“Yes, the bus. That big metal thing on wheels that appears when you’ve been standing outside for twenty minutes questioning your life choices.” I opened the door and gestured grandly. “Come on, Your Highness. Time to mingle with the peasants.”
I fully expected him to balk, to pull out his phone and summon some luxury car from thin air. Instead, he followed me out without a word.
The tick in his jaw pulsed when I had to pay his bus fare.
We got some odd looks, but I still got odd looks even though I’d been taking the bus for over a month now.
Most of the faces were the same, and I smiled politely as we walked to the center row, where there were some open seats.
As usual, the bus had a faint, unpleasant odor, but it was early morning, so at least there wasn’t much trash littering the ground.
When we sat down, he guided me to the window seat and immediately put an arm around my shoulders.
A spiteful part of me wanted to enjoy his discomfort, but he quickly relaxed and started grinning at others on the bus. He looked out the window and pointed out things he enjoyed, and patiently waited for me to indicate when it was our stop.
When we got off, he stretched and nodded. “Not bad, but it might get a little uncomfortable when you’re further along in your pregnancy. If that happens, we’ll figure something else out.”
I’d thought of that myself, but I didn’t have the luxury of affording anything else.
“I can handle a little discomfort,” I murmured as I walked to the diner.
Like every morning, my stomach rumbled, but also like every morning, I knew that the eggs and gravy biscuits I craved wouldn’t sit well, and I couldn’t go to the doctor if I was vomiting every two minutes.
I tried not to glare while I nibbled on my toast, and Gideon enthusiastically ate a giant plate of food.
Men. How fucking unfair was it that he caused this and didn’t have to suffer for a single second? I wanted to throttle him.
The waiting room in the office was crowded. A TV in the corner played a children’s show with the sound off. I checked in at the desk, feeling Gideon’s solid, steady presence at my back. When I sat down, he sat next to me, his knee brushing mine.
“Ellie Montgomery?” the nurse called after a few minutes.
I pushed up, heart hammering again. No matter how many times I did this, walking into an exam room always made me nervous. There was always the tiny, irrational fear that they were going to tell me something had gone terribly wrong.
“You can…” I began, turning to tell Gideon to stay put, but he was already on his feet.
The nurse’s gaze flicked between us. “Partner?”
Gideon straightened. “Husband.”
Something warm and painful twisted in my chest. I wanted to clarify that he was an estranged husband, but the words didn’t quite leave my mouth.
The nurse smiled. “Come on back.”
Being pregnant was humiliating. Not the baby part. That was… surreal and terrifying and beautiful in a way I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around.
No, the humiliating part was sitting on an exam table in a paper gown, ankles swollen, hair half falling out of a messy bun. It was even worse that Gideon was here to witness as I described in detail all the delightful, disgusting things my body had been doing lately.
“So you’ve been more tired?” the doctor asked, glancing at her chart.
“Yes,” I said, cheeks burning.
“And the heartburn?”
“Like my esophagus is a volcano,” I muttered.
“And the… gas?” she prompted gently.
I closed my eyes. “Legendary.” Let him want to stay in my apartment with me now.
I could feel Gideon’s gaze on me. I refused to meet it.
The doctor’s questions went on. Swelling. Constipation. Cravings. Weird dreams. Every single thing I’d been carefully compartmentalizing was now being laid out in the open with him sitting three feet away.
When the doctor asked, “Any concerns about discharge?” I nearly died.
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. I wanted Gideon to be magically transported to Mars. I wanted to not care so much about what he thought of me.
But every time I dared a quick sideways glance, his expression was the same: focused, worried, completely unbothered by any of it. He asked as many questions as the doctor did.
When the doctor moved on to the exam and the ultrasound, he slid his chair closer without being asked, his hand finding mine.
His fingers were warm and solid around mine, his thumb tracing circles over my knuckles like he could smooth out every anxious thought in my head.
“Would you like to know the gender?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. Gideon’s arrival was enough of a surprise for me.
“There she is,” the doctor said eventually, turning the screen toward us.
I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The now-familiar grainy image appeared.
“Oh,” Gideon breathed.
Tears burned my eyes. I stared at the screen, at our baby, at the proof that we had done at least one thing right.
“She looks good,” the doctor said. “Everything’s measuring where it should be.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
When the exam was over and the doctor left us to get dressed, I slowly got up from the chair. Gideon handed me my clothes, and my gaze met his.
And I promptly burst into tears.