Chapter 13
Thirteen
Sadie
T he waiting room is stifling. Some relaxing piano music is playing overhead, and the women around me have various stages of round stomachs and excited smiles or expressions of discomfort.
When I start biting at the corner of my thumbnail, Luke reaches over and pulls my hand away from my mouth, so I hold it in my lap, picking at the nail where he can’t see.
I hum along to the music, and he glances sideways at me.
“Relax,” he says lowly. It’s meant as a command, not a comfort.
“Easy for you to say,” I reply in a whisper.
“One step at a time, Miss Green,” he replies.
There’s a couple sitting across from us. Their hands are linked between them, and they keep looking at me and Luke, the woman smiling tightly. I want to tell her to stop. We’re not the same. But she has no clue. Luke isn’t my boyfriend or husband, and this isn’t even his baby.
I should tell him he can go. He doesn’t need to be here .
But I can’t bring myself to do it.
I don’t even catch myself chewing on my thumbnail again until he stops me. This time, he holds my hand in place, squeezing my palm between his fingers. He’s scolding me, and something about it grounds me.
“Sadie,” the nurse calls with a clipboard and a grin.
My eyes widen, but instead of standing up, I freeze in place.
Luke squeezes my hand again. “Stand up.”
I swallow and do as he says, but my hand doesn’t release his. When I glance down at him, my eyes are pleading. I don’t want to go in there by myself.
And he can tell.
Everyone in the waiting room is staring at us, even the nurse.
God, what am I doing? Am I seriously expecting him to go to my doctor’s appointment? Why? We’re not friends or lovers. He’s my teacher. And something else I can’t explain. This is ridiculous.
So I pry my fingers from his hold and walk away.
“That’s me,” I say to the nurse. She holds the door open for me and I walk through, but before it closes, Luke slips through.
I glance back at him in shock.
“Right this way,” the nurse says as Luke and I have a silent conversation with only our eyes.
My body is tense as I follow her into the room and take a seat on the paper-lined table. Luke looks so uncomfortable as he sits in the chair. Regret washes over me that I’m forcing him in here with me. The minute this nurse leaves, I’m telling him to go.
What a disaster I am.
“Okay,” the nurse says as she sits on the stool in front of the computer. “What was the first day of your last period?”
I cover half my face with my hand, blocking Luke from view. “August seventh,” I reply.
She types that in. “And you’ve had a positive at-home pregnancy test?”
I wince. “Yep. ”
Her eyes track over to Luke in his chair. I can’t even bear to look at him at the moment. “Well, we’ll need a urine sample, and then the doctor will come in and do an exam.”
“Okay,” I groan.
After the nurse does all the vital stuff, blood pressure, temperature, etcetera, she leaves with an empty plastic cup and a paper gown I’m supposed to put on. I immediately look at Luke in the chair. “You can go.”
“What?” he asks with mild surprise.
“You don’t need to be here for this, and it was wrong of me to ask you.”
He shifts in his seat. “I’m not leaving you here alone, Sadie.”
“Why not? I’ll have to do all of this alone, Luke. I can tell how uncomfortable you are, so just go. This isn’t your problem.”
His jaw sets in a firm line. Then he stands from his chair, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. But he doesn’t move toward the door. Instead, he stops directly in front of me so my knees are pressed against his hips.
As he reaches out and takes my jaw in his hand, my eyes go wide and my breathing stops altogether.
“You don’t tell me what to do, Miss Green,” he says. “It’s the other way around. Understand? Now stop being such a petulant brat and go pee into the cup. Now .”
Chills scatter down my body as I stare up at him. All of the anxious thoughts in my head quiet as I focus only on the touch of his fingers on my face and the commanding presence of his words.
“Okay,” I whisper.
He lets me go and backs up to allow me to jump down from the table. I don’t look at him as I slip out of the room toward the bathroom, and the entire time I’m peeing in that cup, I’m questioning how in the hell he does that.
How does he always know exactly what to say to silence my mind? Why does it have such an effect on me? I normally hate being told what to do. And in any other situation, I truly cannot stand Lucas at all. Which makes it that much more infuriating that he has a special talent of playing me like a puppet on a string.
It makes me want to scream. Everything he tells me to do, I want to do the opposite. I want to fight back against him just to see him get mad. As mad as he was in the classroom that day.
But in situations like this, when I need something to ground me, his commands give me exactly what I need.
I leave the pee cup on the table the nurse told me to before I wash my hands, change into the stupid backless gown, and head back to the exam room. Luke is still in the chair, staring down at his phone. I let out a huff as I sit back down on the exam table, wanting to tell him just how much of a prick he is.
He ignores me, and it makes me even angrier.
Just when I’m about to start a fight, the door opens, and the doctor walks in.
“Hello, Miss Green,” she says in a warm, friendly tone. Then she turns to shake Luke’s hand and I grimace to myself.
“He’s not,” I blurt out as Luke looks at me quizzically before shaking the doctor’s hand anyway.
“So…” she starts, taking a seat on the rolling stool. “Your test came back positive. And according to your cycle, your due date should be around mid-May but we will get a better idea of dates after your scan.”
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
“Okay,” I mutter, not quite excited and not quite devastated. Somewhere in the middle.
The doctor looks at me with an uneasy smile as if my reaction is not what she expected, so I paste a big fake smile on my face. “I mean…yay.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Luke smirk to himself.
“We’re going to do a quick ultrasound to take a look at the baby,” the doctor says.
My brows shoot upward. “Now? Really?”
“Yep,” she replies, rolling toward me. And when she pulls out those humiliating stirrups on the table, I think I actually die of mortification. Oh God. “Go ahead and lie back. Dad, I’ll have you come stand by her head.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“He’s not!” I blurt out, and the doctor only replies with a smile.
I’ve never been in a more awkward room in all of my life. If there were a God, a meteor would collide with the planet right now and save us all from this humiliation. But no such luck.
“Lie down, Sadie.” Luke’s voice brings me back down to earth. Clinging to his calm demeanor, I recline on the exam table and stare up at the fluorescent lights and ceiling panels.
Even as he stands next to my head, he won’t look down at me, not that I want to meet his gaze anyway. I work in a sex club. I literally watch people get naked and do shameless things every single day, but watching this doctor lube up a plastic-wrapped probe about to go inside me has me feeling more uncomfortable than I’ve ever been in my life.
“Ready?” she asks, and I quickly nod without looking at her.
Luke is just staring unfocused across the room away from my parted legs. After this, he’s definitely going to kick me out of his house. And maybe even out of his class. We’ll never survive this. It’s too awkward.
I freeze as the doctor slips the probe inside me, and I pray she just gets through it all quickly. I keep glancing up at him to see how miserable he is. I wish he’d say something, like tell me to relax or tell me it’s okay or?—
A quick thumping sound fills the room.
My eyes shoot to the screen. So do Luke’s.
“Is that…” he mumbles.
“That’s the heartbeat,” she says with a smile. “It sounds nice and strong.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
For a moment, I forget there’s a medical-grade dildo stuck up my vagina, and my broody English professor is standing next to me. There’s nothing else but that heartbeat .
Then, for the first time since I walked back into the room, he looks at me, and our eyes meet. We’re sharing the same expression of astonishment. With that, he rests his hand on my shoulder, and I’m not sure why, but it’s nice.
“There’s just one, right?” I ask, looking at the screen, trying to make sense of the small pulsing black-and-white circle in the middle.
“Just one,” she replies.
“Thank God.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with twins?” he asks, a sliver of a smile on his face. “I’m a twin.”
“They usually run in the family,” the doctor says before pulling the probe out.
“Yeah, but he’s not?—”
“He’s not the father,” the doctor says with a laugh as she touches my knee. “I understand, Miss Green.”
I grimace with embarrassment as she removes her gloves and helps me up. After giving me the rundown on all the things I can’t do and things I can’t eat, she slides us a pamphlet and a long slip of paper with multiple photos of the white pulsing blob we just saw on the screen.
“Congratulations, Miss Green. We’ll see you in four weeks.”
And with that, she leaves.
The room is bathed in awkward silence, and I wish the heartbeat was still playing on the monitor. It gave me something to focus on. Instead, I’m starting to panic again. Sitting on the table in my paper gown, I close my eyes.
“Say something,” I mumble.
“Get dressed,” he replies, and I feel something soft touch my arm. When I open my eyes, he’s holding my clothes out to me. “I’ll be in the waiting room.”
As he moves toward the door, I try to focus on his task and his command. But before he leaves, he turns back toward me with one hand on the knob .
“You can do this, Miss Green. The road ahead might be tough, but I believe you’re tougher.”
The door clicks as he opens it and disappears into the hallway before it closes again.
There’s a gentle tug on the corner of my lips, and I swallow a smile of pride as I hop down from the table and start to get dressed.