Chapter 20
Twenty
Copeland
Today’s my first week back to work at the family business, and I already need a few hours off. Chandler looked at me funny when I told him I had something come up this afternoon and wouldn’t be able to work. He made sure it had nothing to do with our mom and her health and just nodded with a grin.
I’m pretty sure he knows that whatever I have going on today involves Ellison.
He couldn’t possibly guess that we’re going to a doctor’s appointment for her and the baby.
Our first one. We took the tests, but we need it confirmed by a medical professional.
I read that she needs vitamins, and I really just need someone qualified to tell me that my girl and my kid are both healthy and doing okay.
And if they’re not, explain how I fix it.
Life is finally giving us a break, giving us the future we’ve always planned, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to fight every single fucking day to keep it that way.
I don’t care what we’re faced with. I’m ready to protect, to defend, and to love that woman and our baby, and any future kids we might be blessed with, until I take my final breath.
Dramatic, maybe, but it’s me, and that’s how fucking much I love my wife. Okay, she’s not my wife yet, but the moment she said yes, that’s what she became to me, and I’ll never think of her any other way.
“I’m heading out,” I tell Chandler.
He nods. “I’m headed over to Magnolia Estates to shoe the trail horses,” he tells me.
“I’m headed that way, too,” I tell him. I try not to smile, but I can’t help it.
“Little brother, are you skipping out of work your first official week back to hang out with your girl?”
“The answer to that will always be yes.” I chuckle. I go on to clarify, “We have plans, and it was a last-minute thing that couldn’t be changed. I’m sorry to drop it on you last minute. I can stop by and help finish up when I get back.”
“Nah, it’s fine. The schedule is still light for just me. It’s been a while since you’ve done farrier work. I wanted to make sure we eased you back into it.”
“I’ve been helping out and doing just fine,” I remind him.
He nods. “I know, but I thought with Mom’s appointments and whatnot—you’ve been doing the majority of that—I could help out, and if we keep the schedule light, either one of us could handle the load with that.”
“Makes sense. I’ll call you when Ells and I get back, and if you’re still there, I’ll come help you finish up. Get you home to that wife and kids of yours a little earlier,” I tell him.
“I’ll be done,” he assures me. “Colter has baseball practice, and the coach has to be there.” He grins.
“Damn, we’re getting old,” I tell him.
“We are. You ever plan on making me an uncle?”
I don’t know how I keep a straight face and not let my happiness about our baby shine through. “Yeah, Chan, I plan on making you an uncle. I just got my girl back,” I remind him.
“I figured you’d have a ring on her finger by now,” he says.
“Got the ring,” I admit. I don’t tell him that I have two rings, because there’s no point bringing up the past. I bought her a new one earlier this week, and it was my lucky day that they had her size in stock.
“What in the hell are you waiting on, Cope?”
“I already asked her,” I admit. “But I didn’t have the ring. It was one of those moments where I didn’t want another second to pass by without knowing she’s mine forever. Now, I need to do it the right way.”
“You need any help?”
“I think I’m good, man. But if I do, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“Well, get on with it, will ya? My kids need some cousins, and I want to be Uncle Chandler while I can still have fun with them.”
“You’re forty, not eighty,” I remind him.
“Hey, eighty-year-olds can still have fun,” he jokes. “But really, I want to see you happy, Cope. I know marriage and kids with Ellison was always the plan. I’m glad after all these years, you’re getting the life you wanted.”
“Me too, brother. Me too.”
He slaps me on the back, and we both head to our trucks. I follow him out of the driveway to Magnolia Estates. He waves as he keeps on moving to the barn, while I park outside the inn and head inside to get Ellison.
I find her in her office, staring out the window. “Penny for your thoughts,” I say, stepping inside.
She turns to face me with a smile on her face. “Hey, Cope.”
“Hi, baby. You ready for today?”
She nods, her eyes glassing over with unshed tears.
“There’s going to be more of this,” she says, smiling and pointing at her eyes.
“I just… It’s all happening, Copeland. Everything we ever dreamed of, and while I’m thrilled, I’m also still hurt.
My mom—I’m having a hard time getting past what she did. ”
Moving around her desk, I crouch down beside her chair, and she turns to face me. “She loved you, Ells. I don’t know that I forgive her for taking you from me, but she kept my letters. I’d like to think that eventually she would have done the right thing.”
“That doesn’t make it better, and she wrote that letter to me because she was never going to tell me.”
“I don’t know. I think she wrote that letter out of guilt, and in the off chance something did happen, she wanted to explain the best way she knew how. Think about finding my letters in the attic with no explanation at all. At least we know why.”
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“Have you read them yet?” She was so upset when we found them on Sunday that she carried them down to her room but didn’t want to open them.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I know they’re going to break me open, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I know they exist. I know you wanted me, and that our own miscommunication also played a big role in what kept us apart. I want to read them, but I don’t know if I’m ready yet.”
“They’re yours, and they’ll be there when you’re ready, and if you’re never ready, that’s okay, too. We’re looking forward, not backward, and we have so much happiness in front of us, baby. It’s okay to never read them and to let the past stay where it belongs—behind us.”
“It’s just so hard to feel so deliriously happy and so sad at the same time.”
My heart hurts for her. I hate to see her sad. I understand, and I’m pissed, too, but for me, I got my girl back. She’s going to be my wife, and we’re having our first baby. I’m on cloud nine, even knowing we were sabotaged by her mom.
I do feel like her mother meant well. Kathy Moran loved her daughters fiercely, and I think that love led her to make a choice she knew was wrong but didn’t know how to come back from without her daughter hating her.
Should she have done it? No, but she did, and we’re still here, in love, and living the rest of our lives together.
“I wish I could carry this for you,” I tell her, gripping her thighs lightly.
“You are, Copeland. You’re just as much a part of this as I am, and you can cuss her, say whatever you’re feeling.”
Her words crack something open in my chest. I swallow, my throat tight. If I don’t choose my words carefully, they’ll come out too big, too raw to survive the air between us.
“I feel love, Ells. So much love for you, and for our baby.” My voice shakes, and I don’t bother trying to steady it.
I splay my hand across her abdomen. It’s warm and solid beneath my palm, impossibly real.
She’s not showing, but there’s a piece of me—a piece of us—and our love growing inside her.
“I feel like I can breathe for the first time in years.”
It’s strange, realizing how long I’ve been living on standby. Through the pain of missing her, of not having her in my life. Being with her now is a gift, one I’ve wanted for so damn long but had thought our time had passed.
“I’m terrified,” I admit quietly, because if we’re doing this honestly, then all of it deserves to be said.
“Of messing it up. Of not being enough. Of losing you again. Both of you. But even that fear feels like a promise. It doesn’t crush me.
It just reminds me how much I care. It reminds me of how much more I have to lose this time around.
I got my family, you and our baby, and I can’t lose that. I won’t survive it.”
I let out a soft laugh. “I feel like I’m finally standing exactly where I’m supposed to be. I longed for you for so long, and started to wonder if I made it all up in my head, and then I came back to town, and one look at you, and every feeling, every moment I remember was real.”
I lean closer, my forehead resting against her thigh. Being close to her grounds me. Finally, I look up, meeting her blue eyes. “I’m here,” I say, meaning it in every way possible. “With you. With our babies. You and our kids will never go a day without knowing what you mean to me.”
“Babies? Copeland James, are you trying to wish twins on me?” she asks, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
I smile, the heaviness of the moment lifting. “I could get behind some twins, but yeah, whether we have them one at a time or multiple at a time, I see babies in our future, Ells.”
“I want that, too.” Her smile is watery.
I stand to my full height and offer her my hand. She takes it and allows me to help her to her feet. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be late for our appointment.”
“Technically, it’s my appointment,” she teases, grabbing her phone from her desk and dropping it into her purse.
“And you’re my wife, and that’s my baby in your belly, so it’s our appointment.”
“Is that how it works?” she asks, blue eyes bright as she smiles up at me.
“That’s how it works with us. If other men don’t know how good they have it, and don’t think that way, I feel sorry for them.”
“You’re one of a kind, Copeland James.”
“Right back at ya, Mrs. James.”
“Not yet,” she singsongs, stepping out of her office and leaving me to trail behind her.
“Close enough,” I say, catching up with her and entwining our fingers.
“Let’s go out the back. I didn’t tell my sisters.”
“Are we going to tell people?” I ask her, as I push the door open for us, leading her to the truck.
“Let’s see what the doctor says. There’s a part of me that wants to wait. They say twelve weeks, and I don’t know how far along I am yet. I think they’ll do bloodwork today to confirm.”
“We know when it happened. I remember that day vividly,” I tell her.
She blushes. “I know, but let’s just take it one step at a time.”
“You got it, babe.” I kiss her before opening the truck door and making sure she’s buckled in. I’m ready for whatever life tosses at us, as long as at the end of every day, this woman is sleeping in my arms.
Ellison is sitting on the exam table in her white gown, and her legs are bouncing. The rough paper of the gown makes a swishing sound in the room with each jostle of her legs. I’m sitting, so I stand and go to her, offering her my hand, and she instantly calms.
“Why are you so nervous?”
“What if the tests we took were wrong?”
“Then we keep trying.”
“What if something’s wrong?”
“Then we face it together.” Before she has a chance to ask another hypothetical question, her doctor, Dr. Ormes, steps into the room. She’s around our age, and she’s smiling, and I can feel the tension drain from Ellison’s body.
“Well, looks like congratulations are in order. You’re pregnant.”
“Really?” Ellison whispers.
Dr. Ormes smiles. “Really. I’d like to do an ultrasound today, if that’s all right with you. I know you said you’re pretty certain of the time of conception, but this will give us a clear picture.”
“Can we tell the gender?” I ask.
“Depends on how far along Ellison is. If your calculations are correct, it will still be too early to tell.”
I look down at Ellison to find her already looking at me. I bend and peck her lips with a kiss. “We get to see our baby,” I say, the emotions of the moment lodging in my throat.
Dr. Ormes goes on to say that in the early weeks of pregnancy, a transvaginal ultrasound is required, which sounds horrific for Ellison to endure, and for me to watch, but it’s what our baby needs, and it will give the doctor a better view, or that’s what she says.
I have no idea what we’re about to get into.
The ultrasound tech comes in, and Dr. Ormes steps out to see another patient, telling us to schedule an appointment in four weeks and to call if we have any questions or concerns.
Thirty minutes later, we’re still parked in the same spot, the engine running, the hum of the air conditioning filling the silence of the cab.
I clutch the strip of ultrasound images in my hands.
I can’t stop looking at them. It’s as if staring harder will make them tell me something new.
We’re nine weeks along. Mom and baby are healthy.
Healthy.
The word echoes in my head like a heartbeat.
“Cope,” Ellison says breathily from her spot in the passenger seat. Her voice wavers, but her tone is full of wonder. “This is really happening.” She swallows hard, and her eyes glisten. “We’re really having a baby.”
I try to speak, to say something, anything, but everything I can think of feels inadequate, like they’re too small to carry everything swelling inside me.
Joy.
Fear.
Awe.
Responsibility.
It’s all there, mingling together until it presses so heavily in my chest, I can barely breathe. We’re having a baby.
Reaching over the console, I hold her hand tightly. She squeezes back, and I feel the warmth of her skin and the steady pulse of life beneath my fingers. For a moment, the world shrinks to this truck, this quiet moment, this tiny, impossible life growing inside her.
All those years ago, this was our dream. We were young and full of hope, and all we knew for certain was that we loved each other and always would.
“I love you, Ells. I love our baby,” I whisper, my voice trembling.
She looks at me, tears still glistening in her eyes, but there’s a lightness there, too, a quiet joy that makes my heart ache. “I love our family,” she says softly, her fingers squeezing mine before she presses our joined hands to her belly, over the life we created together.
For a moment, nothing else exists. No past mistakes, no fears about the future, no noise from the world outside.
Just us. Just this fragile, perfect beginning.
I breathe it in, trying to memorize every detail.
The curve of her smile, the sound of her voice, the steady rhythm of her pulse through her hand.
Even the sounds of the city outside of this truck. I never want to forget a single moment.
Life isn’t about being ready. Life is about showing up. And I’m here. We’re here. And somehow, against all odds, we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.
The quiet settles over us like a warm blanket. Somewhere inside me, I feel the flicker of something bigger than both of us, something that will grow and stretch and change us forever. And in that moment, I know one thing for certain: I wouldn’t trade this, not for anything in the world.
We sit here a little longer, basking in the glow of today’s news, holding on to each other and the impossible miracle resting quietly between us.
This is just the beginning.