Chapter Twenty-Five
CHARLIE
The waiting room felt like a test—some twisted endurance challenge designed by the ghost of a midwife with a dark sense of humor.
There were too many bodies and not enough chairs, and every surface radiated a quiet, sticky tension.
Somewhere behind the check-in desk, Enya hummed faintly from a speaker, clashing spectacularly with the soundtrack of small children wailing in various keys and women moaning and bouncing in their seats, teetering on the verge of giving birth at any moment.
Tally sat next to me, bolt upright, her spine so straight it looked painful. Her hands were folded over her belly, fingers twitching every few seconds. She wasn’t breathing like a person who wanted to stay in the room.
To our left, a woman balanced two squirming babies in her lap—both red-faced and wailing, their fists thrashing.
And if that wasn’t enough, she was clearly pregnant again, her belly rounding out beneath a stretched t-shirt.
She bounced her knees in an endless rhythm, eyes glazed with the kind of exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix, thumbing through her phone, probably looking for an escape route or a portal to another dimension.
Then came the toddler.
Barefoot, dressed in nothing but an oversized t-shirt and a sagging diaper, he wobbled across the carpet like a tiny drunk uncle at a wedding and zeroed in on Tally.
He stopped right in front of her, looked up into her face like she was the Virgin Mary herself, and then—without warning—hacked a lung directly into her lap.
Before either of us could react, his chubby fingers had latched onto a fistful of her curls with terrifying strength.
There was a cacophony of screeching—hers, then his, then mine, if I’m being honest—as we scrambled to dislodge the kid and return him to his equally horrified mother.
When it was over, Tally didn’t say anything. She stared at the exam room door, her eyes wide, mouth parted slightly, like she was seriously considering launching herself out the nearest window.
“You good?” I asked carefully, my voice low. I didn’t want to spook her more than she already was.
She didn’t look at me. Didn’t move. She kept her gaze fixed on the door, hand braced on the waiting room chair, ready to bolt.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered.
I turned her toward me, slow and careful, like defusing a bomb with zero training. My hands hovered at her elbows, waiting to see if she’d cry, snap, or both. When her eyes met mine—wide and panicked—I gave her my best version of calm, which was probably closer to please don’t explode on me.
She recoiled like I’d flashed a knife.
“What is that face?” she hissed, like I’d somehow made it worse.
Immediately, my mouth fell back into its usual, well-worn scowl. “I’m trying to comfort you,” I muttered, though it came out more growl than whisper, like my voice didn’t know how to operate at bedside-manner volume.
Before she could respond, the door to the exam rooms swung open. A nurse appeared, chart in hand. “Tallulah Aden?”
Her eyes landed on us—on me with my hand still awkwardly cupped around Tally’s arm, as if I could physically steady her. There was a faint smile, one of those soft, maternal kinds, and then a glance flicked from Tally to me.
“And will the father be joining you today?” She didn’t ask, not exactly. She assumed.
I opened my mouth, ready to explain that I wasn’t that guy. That I was the one on puke patrol. The reluctant chauffeur. The last-minute, worst-case scenario babysitter. That I was only here to make sure she didn’t collapse or pass out on a street corner.
But then I looked at her and I saw what I wasn’t supposed to see. It flashed behind her eyes, just for a breath, but it was enough. Not panic. Not discomfort.
Fear.
The deep, agonizing kind that didn’t belong in a room like this, didn’t belong on her face, and sure as hell didn’t belong in the eyes of someone walking into a doctor’s appointment alone.
So I nodded, and the lie slipped out before I even realized I was saying it.
“Yeah. I’ll go back with her.”
Tally turned slowly to look at me, and the fear, the shrill, deer-in-headlights look softened into something much calmer. Something like relief.
***
Tally sat on the edge of the exam table, her posture too straight to be casual, the thin paper gown rustling every time she shifted her weight.
It was bunched awkwardly around her thighs, the stark white of it jarring against the golden warmth of her skin.
She looked steadier than she had in the waiting room—less like the woman who’d been three seconds from bolting and more like someone working hard to stay upright, one breath at a time.
The room had settled into that particular kind of quiet found only in medical offices, where even the fluorescent lights seemed to buzz with unspoken tension.
It wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind of stillness that made you feel observed even when no one was looking.
I stayed where I’d been for most of this ride—on the periphery.
Hands in my pockets, back to the counter, doing everything I could not to intrude.
She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t press.
A soft knock broke the silence, followed by the click of the door swinging open.
The doctor entered with the brisk efficiency of someone who’d said the same things a hundred times already today.
She didn’t hesitate as she slid onto a rolling stool and came to a smooth stop at the foot of the table, flipping through the chart in her hands.
“You’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you, Tallulah,” she said, her tone lighter than the air in the room.
Tally scooted herself back, then reclined against the crinkling table, her eyes flicking to me for the briefest moment before she spoke. “Tally’s fine,” she said lightly, but there was an edge beneath it. “Tallulah’s the girl my mom’s still yelling at back in Newnan.”
The doctor gave a quick laugh, then lifted the gown. That was my cue to turn my head and fixate on a spot on the far wall—some motivational print about maternal health that I suddenly found fascinating.
“This’ll be cold,” the doctor warned, and I heard the squelch of gel being applied.
The lights dimmed as a nurse I hadn’t even noticed passed behind me and rested a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Come stand over here,” she whispered, guiding me closer. “You’ll get a better look at the screen.”
I moved automatically, careful not to crowd the table or Tally. Her arm was tucked above her head, her breathing slow and shallow, almost comfortable. And then—
The machine hummed, the wand pressed down, and for a moment, all I heard was static. A low, watery whoosh, the kind of sound that lives deep in your ears after a long night out. Then, clear and steady, it came—that rapid rhythm, fast and strong.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
A heartbeat.
The doctor smiled, small and satisfied, then turned the monitor toward us.
There on the screen was a tiny figure, strange and perfect. It was still a little alien-looking, but it had arms. Ears. Feet. Little hands waved, like it was mid-story. It had a spine. A heartbeat. A center that pulsed steadily and strongly, clearer than I expected.
And those feet. The same ones I’d felt pressing into my palm that night. I could almost feel them again now, shifting, stretching, making their presence known. Right there in front of me.
It was all so very real and unimaginably beautiful.
“Heartbeat sounds great,” she murmured, her tone clinical but soft enough to catch me off guard.
Tally’s fingers found mine without warning. She didn’t grip—only settled there, warm and tentative, then tightened slightly until her palm rested fully against mine. I turned my head enough to meet her eyes.
She was smiling, not wide or certain, but it was there, that upward curve halfway between awe and disbelief. “Now you look like you’re the one about to hurl, Pruitt,” she whispered, her voice unsteady with nerves she was trying to pass off as sarcasm. “Don’t go getting all mushy on me now.”
I didn’t answer. I let the corner of my mouth pull up in return, my jaw clenched too tight to let anything else slip through.
Because whatever was shifting beneath the surface—whatever had cracked open in me the second that sound filled the room—it was already finding space I hadn’t offered, pushing against parts of myself I’d kept locked down for years. And it wasn’t going anywhere.
Neither was I.
***
“So let me get this straight,” Magnolia said, leaning across the bar at O’Malley’s like she was about to hear a murder confession. “She hitchhiked—from New York to Georgia—to rescue that scraggly little poodle she drags around like a designer handbag?”
I took a slow pull from my drink and nodded. “Swear to God. It was her grandmother’s dog, and when she found out her momma was going to ditch her, she popped her thumb out and made her way down south.”
Sutton clutched her chest. “That is… incredible.”
“Y’all know something crazy, too?” I set my drink down.
“We went for a walk through the square after her appointment, and she was telling me that one time she tackled a man trying to rob an influencer doing an outfit check video or, I don’t know, but she straight up linebacker wrestled him to the ground and got the girl’s purse back. ”
Both of them stared at me, slack-jawed. Magnolia blinked first.
“She’s incredible,” she breathed.
“She’s done so much with her life, too,” I added, because apparently I wasn’t done.
“She’s worked at pizza joints, salons, did hair and makeup for some off-Broadway thing Dig was in.
She’s traveled all over the world, seen the Northern Lights, and the running of the bulls.
Stuff we’d never even dream of doing. And, she caught every moment on her camera. ”
Lee, who’d been half-listening from the next stool, let out a wheezy, full-body laugh that caught the attention of half the bar.