Chapter 12
STEFAN
So maybe I pushed too hard with the teasing.
But watching her get all worked up is addictive. That flush creeping up her neck, the refusal to meet my eyes—it reminds me of how she looks when I’m making her come, when my fingers are buried inside her and she’s right on the edge.
She smacks my hand away when I reach to help her onto the exam table.
She’s pissed, that much is obvious. But it just makes me want to taste her more, see if I can make that flush spread even further.
Drop to my knees right here in this sterile exam room and put my tongue on her until she forgets why she’s mad.
But Dr. Kostas wedges himself between me and Olivia’s open legs, perched on his little wheeled stool.
When I start to go join him, Olivia points at the floor with a finger. “No. You stay up here.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Nothing you’ll ever see again.” Her jaw is locked tight, teeth grinding together.
Fine. I’m not a complete bastard, despite what she thinks. I move behind her and watch the doctor go about setting up the gadgetry. The ultrasound machine hums to life, its screen casting a blue glow across the dim room.
“Alright.” At least Dr. Kostas keeps his eyes on the monitor instead of on my woman. “Here we go... We’ve got a good visual of the fetus. Right... there.”
All the tension melts out of Olivia like someone cut her strings. The anger fades from her face. A smile takes over, transforming her completely, and her eyes grow damp. She’s beautiful when she’s angry.
But right now? Right now, she’s devastating.
“And this... is your baby’s heartbeat.”
Wump-wump-wump-wump.
The sound hits me like a freight train. I realize I’ve been watching Olivia this entire time. Not the monitor where I can see my child for the first time.
I turn my attention there. There’s not much to look at on the screen. Calling it a squiggly peanut is generous. Just a gray blob against black nothingness, barely distinguishable from the surrounding tissue.
But that heartbeat... fuck, that heartbeat makes my own speed up, pounds in my ears until I can’t hear anything else.
It’s brilliant. Beautiful. Life-changing.
That sound proves I’m looking at a person. Not just some abstract concept, not just the consequence of a deal that was fucked from the start.
That sound is my child. A life I made with a woman who might actually be perfect for me, even if neither of us planned it this way. Even if she doesn’t know it yet. Even if she hates me right now, sitting here in this too-bright room with its stench of antiseptic and cheap air freshener.
My father used to say love and hate were closer than people thought. Two sides of the same coin, he’d say over his evening vodka. It never made sense to me until this exact moment, watching Olivia’s profile as she stares at our baby like it’s the second coming.
“It’s still too early to tell the sex of the baby.” Dr. Kostas’s intrusion is grating against the moment. “But in a month or two, you can find out if you want to know.”
I wish he’d shut up now. He’s killing the moment with his procedural bullshit. Olivia seems to agree, because she just nods without really listening, her eyes glued to the screen as if she’s witnessing a miracle.
Which, I suppose, she is. We both are.
Her face and the sound of our baby’s heartbeat filling the room—I can’t decide which is more beautiful.
Maybe I don’t need to pick.
“Perhaps you would like a moment?” Dr. Kostas gets up from his stool.
I nod once without looking and he leaves, throwing a knowing smile over his shoulder as he closes the door behind him.
I move closer to Olivia. She’s breathing fast, her fingers twitching toward the screen like she wants to touch it.
“I can’t believe it... That’s our baby...” The anger has drained out of her completely. She looks relaxed now, happy, younger somehow. “It didn’t feel real until just now.”
“The morning sickness didn’t make it real?”
She turns to me. “Are you done being an ass?”
“I could promise you that. But then you’d be bored.”
She rolls her eyes, but I catch the ghost of a smile. “The doctor didn’t need to know about our sex life.”
“He’s a doctor. He knows how babies are made.”
“I know how babies are made, too.” She turns back to the screen, transfixed. “Doesn’t mean I’m not totally floored right now.”
“That’s because this is your baby. Our baby.”
She flinches, then sighs. “I didn’t know I wanted this. Until right this second.”
“You never thought about kids?”
Her gaze goes distant, unfocused. She doesn’t seem to notice my hand on her arm, my thumb tracing circles on her skin. “I did, sometimes. But not seriously. I always thought it would happen in the future, after I’d set up my practice and everything was established... settled. After I was happy.”
“You’re not happy now?”
Her eyebrows pinch together. “I don’t know. Between all the kidnapping attempts, it’s hard to figure out.”
“Just to be clear, mine was a rescue mission. I was your knight in a shining SUV, in case you missed it.”
“I was distracted by all the family drama.”
“We all have baggage.”
“Sure.” Her nose wrinkles, and even that is cute somehow. “But usually it’s not so extreme. I was neglected as a child, I’m a disappointment to my parents, I had a weird uncle—that’s normal baggage. Yours is Law and Order: SVU level. Multiple seasons.”
“Didn’t realize we were competing.”
Her face shows the tiniest smile before she locks it down. “I want this baby to inherit more than just tragedy, Stefan.”
“Why do you think I picked you?”
Her lips pucker, half-smile, half-scowl. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe you looked at me and thought, That’s exactly the sucker I need.”
“Did I say that?”
“Something similar.”
“Christ, I sound like an asshole.”
“If the shoe fits.” But there’s less venom in it now.
I drag my fingers down her arm, feeling the softness of her skin. Goosebumps break out across her skin immediately and the fine hairs stand up wherever I touch. That’s a good sign. So is the way her pupils dilate, black swallowing up that pretty hazel.
“You want to know the real reason I decided I wanted you in this baby’s life?” I don’t wait for her to ask. “It’s because I knew you’d make a good mother. And I knew this baby would need one.”
“How could you possibly know I’d make a good mother?” Olivia shakes her head. “I don’t even know that.”
“Then maybe you are a sucker.” I move closer. Her eyes lock on mine. Her lips are inches away, still pink from where she bit them. “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. You’re perfect.”
Her lips part—an invitation if I’ve ever seen one.
I put my hand on her leg and drag it up to her thigh, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her clothes. She freezes in place.
“Our child is going to need you. God knows I can’t give the kid normalcy. But you can. Everything about you is generous and warm and loving. You make people feel special and heard and important. You’re the mother every child needs. Can’t blame me for grabbing you the second I realized that.”
“Stefan...”
I don’t let her finish. My mouth covers hers, swallowing whatever she was about to say.
It’s been too long since I last kissed her. Her lips tremble beneath mine, soft and uncertain. I can taste salt—tears maybe, or just her. My fingers move against her neck, feeling her pulse race under my touch as the kiss deepens from soft to heated, from tentative to demanding.
As my fingers climb higher up her thigh, I feel the wall slam back up.
She wrenches away from me, breaking the kiss with a gasp that echoes in the small room.
“No!” She won’t look at me. “You can’t just kiss me and expect everything to go back to normal. I can’t pretend you didn’t lie to me about everything.”
She pushes herself off the exam table. As she does, she accidentally disconnects the sonogram machine, the plug yanking from the wall.
The sound of our child’s heartbeat disappears, taking the last bit of magic with it. The room feels too quiet now. Achingly cold.
“I should have told you about my plans for the company,” I whisper. “But I didn’t because I’d decided not to go through with it.”
She pushes her hair back from her face, and I notice her hands are shaking. “Then why were those documents in your desk?”
“I was ending those plans.”
“Meaning you hadn’t actually made the decision yet. I found out and that’s what made you abandon it.”
“Christ, Olivia, those plans were in motion before.”
“How do you expect me to trust you?” Her voice cracks. “Your story changes constantly. But I think the only time you were honest with me was in the beginning. When you told me you didn’t want a relationship or marriage.”
I drag a hand through my hair, forcing myself to stay patient even though I want to grab her and shake some sense into her. “I was being honest. But things change. People change. Maybe you changed me.”
She presses a hand to her chest. “That’s a beautiful thought... but it’s never true, is it? It’s just something women tell themselves to justify being with a man they know will never change.”
This doesn’t feel like foreplay anymore. This feels like pouring gasoline on a fire, watching it whoosh up in flames that’ll burn us both.
“What are you trying to say, Olivia?”
The redness is back in her face, tension in every muscle. Her hands are shaking harder now. Her eyes keep darting around the room like she’s searching for an answer in the motivational posters and medical diagrams on the walls.
Even as she tells me what she wants, I know she’s not sure herself. I can see it in the way she’s holding herself, brittle and ready to break.
“I want us to go back to our original arrangement. Co-parents. Nothing more. From here on out, we’re not a couple. In fact, I’m starting to realize we never were.”
The ultrasound machine sits there unplugged, useless. Dr. Kostas’s notes are scattered on the counter. The smell of that gel is still in the air, clinical and sharp and inhuman.
And Olivia is walking away from me, her hand already on the door handle.