Chapter 43 Violet #2
Her words confirmed my suspicions. “No, nothing like that,” I assured her. I bit my lip. “This is going to sound really odd, but I don’t want to do the ultrasound until Whip—I mean, Wyatt—is here.”
Willa smiled at me. “Oh, he’s the father? That’s totally understandable.” She glanced at X and Levi. “You two are her friends, then?”
I had no idea how to tell someone that no, they weren’t my friends. And Levi had already started nodding, clearly not wanting to start an uncomfortable conversation.
But something inside me needed this woman to know that no, these men weren’t my friends. They were my family. “No,” I shook my head. “They’re the baby’s fathers too.”
I knew I didn’t have to explain myself to a complete stranger, but something in me wanted her to understand. “I love them.” I shrugged. “All three of them.”
Willa patted my hand. “Oh, I’m very familiar with unconventional relationships, sweetie.
You don’t need to explain. My son, Colt, has been in a relationship with a woman and two other men since he was in high school.
” She smiled proudly. “My two grandchildren are a result of that love, so you’ll get no judgment from me.
” She put the ultrasound wand back in the machine.
“You all just sit tight until your partner is cleaned up, and then we’ll have a search around and see if we can find a little heartbeat for you all to hear. ”
Later that night, Whip sat in a wheelchair on my left, his leg covered in strips of fresh white bandage.
X sat to my right, holding my hand so tight I thought I might end up needing an ultrasound on that to check for internal damage.
Levi was next to him, his hand resting on my thigh buried beneath hospital blankets.
His leg bounced nervously, and all three of them were fixated on Willa as she nudged Whip’s chair over a little so she could get the ultrasound machine where it needed to be.
Despite the three men around me, all twitching and barely breathing, it was me Willa turned to. “You ready?”
My heart thumped against my rib cage. My brain whispered threats that I wasn’t ready at all.
But I hadn’t been ready for Will and Ari to walk into my life either, and yet I hadn’t hesitated in saying yes to giving them a home. I hadn’t been ready for three men to love me, and yet opening myself up to them and a lifestyle that society wouldn’t accept had been the best thing I’d ever done.
So I nodded at Willa.
I was ready to be pregnant. To grow a baby we’d made with love and to raise it.
After everything else we’d been through, this seemed like the most natural, easiest thing in the world.
I closed my eyes and squeezed X’s hand.
“Please be okay. Please be okay,” he murmured.
My heart freaking shattered for him. He wanted this so much.
Willa pressed the gooped-up wand to my belly, and for an agonizingly long minute, nothing happened.
I stared at the screen, not having any clue what I was seeing.
Willa moved the wand around, poking and prodding me, her poker face better than anything I’d ever seen, her expression giving away absolutely nothing.
Until she glanced over at me and smiled. “Want to hear the heartbeat now?”
I widened my eyes. “There is one?”
She nodded. She flicked something on her machine, and the most glorious sound filled the little curtained-off cubicle.
The tiny thumping heartbeat of our baby.
X elbowed Levi. “You gonna cry?”
I waited for Levi to come back with a smart-ass response, but his voice was choked and gruff when he replied, “There’s a good chance I might. Fucking hell. Listen to that.”
“Is it weird if I make this my ringtone?” X grinned and took out his phone. “Too late, I’m doing it.”
I had to hold in a laugh at that. I glanced over at Whip, knowing this had to be painful for him.
He was the only one out of the four of us who had done this before.
He had to be remembering the times he’d sat in a seat at his wife’s side and listened to his child’s heartbeat.
Only to lose them before they’d even truly begun to live.
“Are you okay?” I reached for him, and his fingers gripped mine tightly. “It’s totally fine if you’re not.”
But he smiled over at me. “I feel more at peace today than I have any day since I lost them.” He leaned over the armrest of his chair and brought my fingers up to his lips to kiss. “Thank you.”
I didn’t know what exactly he was thanking me for, but all I cared about was that he was happy.
I really hoped that somewhere in the hospital, Nyah was getting the same sort of news. “Willa? My friend, Nyah, would have been brought in a few minutes before our ambulances got here. She went ahead with her partner, Dax. Do you know where they are? Can I see her?”
Willa frowned and pulled a device from a pocket on the ultrasound cart. “How do you spell her name?”
I spelled it out, and she typed it in, but the frown didn’t lift from between her eyebrows. “There’s nobody here by that name.”
I squinted at her. “Are you sure? They were right ahead of us.”
But Willa shook her head. “We’ve only had two ambulances in so far today. Yours and the one Wyatt came in. Maybe they took your friend to a different hospital.”
That didn’t sound right. “Is that something they commonly do?”
“No, not unless her injuries were life-threatening.”
Worry trickled down my spine, but I was fairly confident Nyah had been in decent shape. She’d been walking and talking. She was probably dehydrated and would need to be treated for her miscarriage. But none of that should have equaled an emergency.
Levi squeezed my leg. “She’ll be okay, wherever they’ve taken her. She has Dax with her.” He grinned. “I don’t think he’s going to be letting her out of his sight ever again.”
I smiled at that too, remembering the way she’d flung herself at him and how he’d melted around her. His relief that she was alive and the love he had for her so evident in the way he’d scooped her right off her feet and cradled her close like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.
Levi was right. Dax was never going to let her go again. Francine was dead. Nyah was safe, and so was I. I guessed we both no longer had jobs at Clean Sweep, but that seemed insignificant in the scheme of things.
Jobs would come and go. But I had a lot more than a job waiting for me outside these hospital doors. I gazed around at my men. “Take me home.”