Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Gage
Eight weeks.
The number sat in my chest the whole drive down to San Antonio, solid and specific in a way that the positive test hadn't quite been, the way the nausea every morning hadn't quite been. A number meant a date. A date meant a person. A person meant—
It meant the land was ours, but more than that…
…it meant we were making something together. That Millie and I had created a new life.
She was having my baby, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Millie had her hands folded in her lap and was watching the Hill Country roll by outside the window. She'd been quiet since we left, not the wound-up quiet of four weeks ago but something softer. Turned inward in a way that didn't worry me anymore.
I drove. Let her have it.
At her doctor's office, I held the door and she walked through. I thought about the last waiting room we'd sat in together—the lavender, the sunflower print, the AC set to the temperature of sensible expectations—and how far we were from that morning.
We sat, masks on, she looked around at the other women—some visibly pregnant, a few with partners, one reading something on her phone with the focused expression of a person doing research.
Millie had made that face for weeks before her first appointment.
I'd watched her do it at the kitchen table at six in the morning, cross-referencing things I couldn't follow, building a new spreadsheet.
Some things didn't change.
She looked at me sideways over her mask. "Last time we were in a waiting room together you were a stranger."
"Last time you propositioned me inside of forty minutes."
"I did not proposition you."
"You laid out a formal arrangement."
"That's called a proposal."
"In some circles."
Her mouth curved—I could see it in her eyes above the mask. "You could have said no."
"I did say no. Twice. You did more math."
"And it worked."
"It worked," I agreed.
She shifted closer, her shoulder settling against my arm. "You sat down next to me first."
"There was an open seat."
"There were four open seats."
I looked at the wall across from us. "The other ones looked uncomfortable."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh. I felt it against my arm. "That's the worst lie you've ever told me."
"I've told you very few lies."
"The chair, Gage."
"The chair had good sightlines."
She tipped her head up to look at me. I looked back down at her.
Two months ago she'd been a woman in a marigold mask doing math on a spreadsheet she couldn't make work, and I'd been a man with a problem I couldn't solve, and we'd sat in adjacent chairs and talked about inheritance law and saint's candles and somewhere in the middle of it something had shifted that I hadn't had a name for until much later.
I took her hand.
"Maybe I just thought you were pretty," I said. "Maybe I wanted to sit next to a pretty girl."
She laughed. "Maybe?"
"Maybe."
We were still looking at each other all moon-eyed when a nurse stepped through the door to the waiting room.
“Camila?” she said.
I squeezed her hand.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
They took us back to the ultrasound tech, where everything was already nearly ready.
The room was decorated on a shoestring—some kind of botanical print on the wall, a string of fairy lights along the top of the monitor cart, a small diffuser on the counter putting out something that might have been eucalyptus.
Cold, though. The AC was running hard against the July heat and I'd felt it the moment we walked in.
Millie sat on the exam table and I pulled the chair up beside her.
She reached for my hand without looking.
The technician came in, introduced herself, snapped on gloves, and asked Millie a few quick questions while she pulled up the machine.
"First ultrasound?"
"First one," Millie said with a nervous smile.
"Best part of my job,” the tech said, smiling back. “Don’t be nervous—nothing invasive, you just need to pull your pants down just a little and relax.”
Millie pulled her waistband down an inch and the tech moved the wand into place. I kept her hand in mine as we all watched the monitor, the tech’s brow furrowing.
“Alright…” she said, humming to herself. The screen just showed static and grey shapes, nothing distinct. “It can take a second to find this early, but—ah! There we go.”
I squinted.
And right there–
All the breath went out of me in a big whoosh. Millie gasped at the same time, squeezing my hand.
It just looked like…a curved shape. Tiny, but there, and ours.
“There they are,” the tech breathed, clicking on their monitor as they took readings. “And…if you look close at that little flicker—that’s the heartbeat.”
I'd known. I'd known since the test, since before the test, had been so certain that Millie had laughed at me about it. But knowing and seeing were not the same thing, and I felt that gap close all at once and something move through me that I didn't have a name for and didn't need one.
"Strong heartbeat," the tech said. She clicked something, took a measurement. "Good size for eight weeks. Everything looks exactly like it should."
Millie's hand tightened around mine.
I looked at her. She was looking at the screen, jaw set, eyes bright.
The tech looked over at her when she sniffled. “Oh, mama,” the tech said with a sympathetic smile. “I know! It’s cool, right?”
“Yeah,” Millie breathed. “I’ve just…I’ve wanted this for a long time. Didn’t know if it was going to happen.”
“Mm,” the tech nodded, looking back at the screen—clicking, taking more readings. “You’ve been trying for a while?”
I exchanged a look with Millie. Not at all; it felt like it had taken no time at all, like maybe I’d knocked her up that very first night.
But how were you supposed to explain that you’d just met in a fertility clinic two months ago, that you’d never expected to come into each other’s lives in the first place? It was…funny and absurd and—
“Yeah,” Millie confirmed, glossing over all that. “It’s been a while.”
The printer started up and we went quiet again, the tech handing over the photo as soon as it was printed. She smiled at both of us again and gestured toward the door.
“You’re welcome to go whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Congratulations.”
Then she left the two of us alone with two printed photos of that small, grey shape.
Our baby.
Millie stared down at it, brow furrowed. I’d seen clearer pictures of tornados and rainstorms on radar…but I didn’t care.
It was the best thing I’d ever looked at.
“You’re amazing,” I murmured.
She looked up at me. “It really wasn’t that hard,” she laughed. “I mean…living in a gorgeous man’s house and making this happen in any way possible? Not all that bad.”
I reached out to cup her face, tilting her chin up toward me.
“This is…it’s not something I ever really wanted or thought I’d have,” I said. “Been too busy with the business and the ranch and—” I paused. “Then came you. Everything I ever wanted.”
She exhaled, her shoulders sinking, and her eyes sparkled in the darkness of the ultrasound room.
Then she just said, “Yes.”
I frowned, cocking my head.
She couldn’t mean—
“I know it hasn’t been six months,” she rushed out, “but…I want to be your wife, Gage. I want this baby to come into the world with us married—”
"Millie—"
"I know what I said." She shook her head.
"And I know how this looks. Two months, knocked up, saying yes in an ultrasound room.
" A short breath. "I don't care how it looks.
I've spent my whole life making things happen on other people's timelines—other people's weddings, other people's events, other people's perfect days.
" She looked down at the printout. Back up at me.
"I want my own. I want you. Not because of this—" she touched her stomach, "—but because you sat down next to me when there were four empty chairs and you didn't even try to hide it. "
I looked at her for a long moment.
"You sure?"
"I've been sure for weeks." Her eyes sparkled. "I just needed to stop waiting for something to go wrong."
I took the printout out of her hands carefully and set it on the tray.
Took her face in both hands. She was still up on the exam table, which put us almost eye level, and I looked at her straight on in the dim room—the fairy lights catching in her eyes, the diffuser going, the AC still cranking away against the July heat outside.
"Then yes," I said.
She blinked. "I asked you."
"And I'm answering." I took her mask off to kiss her once, firm. "Yes."