Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
CHASE
I’d made this woman so many promises, but none as important as promising to be here for this baby.
So when she asked me to go to her doctor’s appointment this afternoon?
I left Dad to finish the steps on his own.
It was hard to believe that this time last year, all I had of Elena were a few text message exchanges.
Now, despite all the hell she’d lived through and the harm I’d caused, I was sitting next to the most beautiful woman in the world in a sterile doctor’s office with her rounded belly exposed.
My hands itched to run my fingers along her soft skin, to kiss her stomach, lower.
Staying away from booze and drugs was proving far easier than staying away from Elena.
Dad showing up with the miter saw interrupted us, not that it was a bad thing. Our moment in the kitchen had gotten… intense—but in the best way.
Still, we needed to move slow. I needed to move slow. To make sure I didn’t hurt her again.
Never again.
“A little cold coming,” the sonographer said as she squirted goop on Elena’s stomach.
I leaned in close, whispering, “What’s that?”
“It’s just ultrasound gel,” Elena said. “Water-based. Helps transmit the sound waves from the transducer into your body.”
Fuck, she’s smart. “I love it when you talk doctor to me.”
The sonographer laughed as she picked up this wand-looking thing and started pressing it into Elena’s belly like she was looking for buried treasure.
I narrowed my eyes at the screen. It looked like static. Like when your TV has no signal but still thinks it has signal? Yeah. That.
“Is it… in there?”
Elena rolled her eyes. “Yes, she’s in there.”
“Where? All I see are blobs.”
“There. That’s the head.”
The tech smiled like she’d heard this a hundred times and clicked something on her keyboard. The blob moved. Wiggled, kind of. Waved, maybe. Or flailed.
My eyes went wide. “Oh shit, she’s moving! Is that normal?”
“Yes,” the sonographer said patiently. “She’s a very healthy baby.”
I grinned and looked at Elena, who was smirking but also kinda teary-eyed. She reached for my hand, and I gave it to her real quick. My heart was hammering like I’d just run sprints up the hill behind the orchard.
The sonographer tried not to laugh as she clicked through more angles.
A sound filled the room. Loud, thumping, fast.
I jolted. “Is something broken?”
“That’s her heartbeat,” Elena said, a little softer now.
The whoosh-whoosh-whoosh echoed through the room like a drumline in a stadium. It was the loudest, strongest thing I’d ever heard—and it was coming from her.
Maybe this baby didn’t share my blood or DNA, but the moment that little girl kicked her mama’s stomach to say hi to me, she was mine. And I dared anyone to try to take her—or her mama—away from me.
The sound of her heartbeat pounded through my skull, drumming in time with my own racing pulse. Each thump hit like a hammer against my chest, stealing my breath.
I swallowed hard, and my brain short-circuited a little. “She’s really in there.”
Elena glanced at me, and even though she didn’t say anything, her fingers curled around mine. I squeezed back.
The sonographer moved the wand again. “There’s her spine… ribs… femur…”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “She’s got bones already?”
Elena turned to me, deadpan. “She’s six months along, Chase. She has organs. She pees.”
My brain stuttered to a halt, trying to process this new information. “She pees? Like... inside of you?”
Elena’s eyes sparkled with that know-it-all gleam I both loved and dreaded. Her fingers flexed against mine. “She’s got her own amniotic sac. It’s not like she’s just free-ballin’ in there.”
The medical jargon did nothing to settle my churning stomach. My throat tightened. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“She also swallows it.”
Blood drained from my face. “Elena. What the hell?”
She bit back a laugh, dimples appearing in her cheeks as she watched me squirm.
The sonographer busied herself with taking measurements, pretending not to eavesdrop.
“Technically she drinks it, then pees again. It’s a cycle.”
My free hand shot up, palm out. The room spun a bit at the edges. “Stop. Stop saying things.”
The sonographer finally laughed. “You’ll make a great girl dad.”
Elena smiled, but her eyes were a little glassy. “She’s healthy,” she whispered. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
I leaned down and kissed the side of her head. “She’s perfect.”
Even if I had no clue what the hell was happening on that screen, or how Elena remembered so many science words.
Even if all I could see was a blurry baby skeleton and freak out about her drinking her own pee.
Even if I didn’t understand half of it, I knew this much: she was ours. And I wasn’t going anywhere.