Chapter 3
Chapter Three
EMILY
T hree soft knocks precede the slip of a woman that enters the dim ultrasound room.
The tech looks up and then stops whatever he’s doing with the machine, setting the wand back in its spot and standing from the stool.
The woman smiles quickly and then focuses on me, her eyes lighting on Beau for a moment.
“Hi,” she says warmly. “I’m Dr. Mins. Lovely to meet you both.” She holds out her hand, and I shake it while still awkwardly half-sitting, half-laying down on the bed. Beau’s all smiles as he takes her offered hand next. She turns to the tech. “Everything looking good so far?”
He nods. “Left it ready for you in case you wanted to grab any extra visuals.”
“Fantastic. If you’ll let Angela know to prep a new room for them, that would be perfect.”
She sits in front of the ultrasound machine as the tech leaves with no fanfare at all, shutting the door before the dim room can be flooded with the hallway light.
“Let me just grab a good one to give to you both real quick,” she says, putting the wand back on my exposed stomach.
It only takes her a couple minutes to get a view she likes, and then a small machine is printing out a single black and white photo onto glossy paper.
“Growth is right on track. So at just shy of nine weeks today, you’ll be due right around the middle of May.
I can give you an exact date once we’re going over the first trimester information in an exam room. ”
I take the small, glossy paper, but that sense of wonder so many describe doesn’t settle over me.
It… it’s just a blob of silver on a grainy black background.
Beau leans forward, his own awe evident in the sudden breath he sucks in and the careful way he takes the picture when I offer it to him.
Dr. Mins helps me sit up, and then she pulls up something on the computer in the corner.
“You had paternity testing done, yes?” she asks.
I give her another quiet affirmative. “Let me just get those results pulled up here, then. They should be finished running by now. Ah, yes, here they are.” She clicks on something.
“It’s negative. Is there another pack member you would like to test against? ”
A lump crowds my throat, but I shove down the emotion trying to climb its way out of my chest. I’ll have time enough to cry over doing all of this alone. Right now I just need to get through the appointment so I don’t miss any important information.
Beau’s the one that manages to answer. “No, ma’am.”
Dr. Mins gives another warm smile. “Very well, then. Let me get you to an exam room, and we’ll go through the rest of your intake appointment.”
Beau walks beside me, close enough his shoulder brushes mine, but no one says a word as Dr. Mins opens a door along the hall and ushers us quickly inside. I ease onto the exam table, ignoring the slowly rising vanilla scent emanating out from me.
“I’ll have the nurse do your full blood panel and then be right in afterward.”
The door closes with a heavy click that reverberates through the sedate room.
Beau wordlessly drops into one of the two hard plastic chairs tucked into the corner opposite the bank of cabinets full of displays and supplies.
He cradles the ultrasound pictures in his large hand, carefully avoiding getting fingerprints on the glossy surface.
The view of him way too large for the small chair—the faded brown ball cap worn backwards covering his short blond hair, his legs spread wide, his boots dirty and the hem of his jeans caked in mud—has a ball of heat sizzling low in my stomach.
For the first time since the three of us made out in that bar’s parking lot in April, I shove the feeling away.
“You can go grab a coffee or whatever while I finish,” I say, picking at the paper covering the exam table, focusing on the terrible impressionistic artwork on the wall rather than the cowboy across the room from me.
I really, really shouldn’t have let him talk me into driving up here together.
I’m sure he’ll want out of here as soon as possible now that we know for sure the baby’s Triston’s and not his, and the idea of managing the entire drive back to Jackson makes me just as nauseous as the morning sickness I’ve been dealing with for several weeks.
“Are you thirsty?” he asks, glancing up from the ultrasound picture. “I can grab you some water while we wait for the nurse to come back.”
Just the idea of water has me wanting to throw up. The grimace is reflex. He smiles, a quick flick of one corner of his mouth. That ball grows a bit brighter, hotter.
“I can check if they have juice instead.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” I shake my head. The small tilt of his lips disappears as his eyebrows furrow. “You don’t have to stay here for the rest of this. You can go grab something to eat while I finish up.”
“Why would I leave?” he asks with earnest confusion.
I shift on the edge of the table, crossing my ankles. “It’s just going to be a ton of information packets and another blood draw according to Olivia.
He raises a single eyebrow. “You told Olivia? Damn, that probably means Hudson knows now, too. I wanted to see his face.”
I purse my lips.
“I swore her to secrecy, so he shouldn’t.”
The girls are good about things like that, no matter the secret—or the time frame.
It’s still a bit disconcerting to know that Brielle was the woman my brother spent years getting over before applying to be a pack with Caleb and Brandon.
Even more impressive is that Melissa and Olivia hadn’t uttered a freaking word about it for an entire decade.
A couple weeks while I sort through figuring out the logistics of having a literal child is nothing for her.
Beau nods, a devious smirk lighting his eyes. “Sweet.”
The mischief he’s clearly calculating in regards to his brother is almost enough to have me relaxing. Instead, I say, “Really, Beau, you don’t need to sit here bored with all of this.”
“It’s not boring.” He shrugs and leans back in the chair, letting his legs widen even more. He sets one booted ankle on the opposite knee and adjusts the ball cap, pressing the sides of the bill closer together. “Even if it was, I’d still want to be here for it.”
I can’t help but frown. “Why? It’s not like you have a stake in the game at this point. You don’t have to pretend to be interested.”
He gaze whips to me, all easy relaxation gone from his body. His frown is deeper than before.
“What do you mean I don’t have a stake in this?”
My eyebrows furrow as I mirror his frown with my own.
“You heard the doctor. The paternity is negative.”
He crosses his arms, the ultrasound propped on his open knee.
“So?”
Is he really going to make me say it out loud? It’s not like I have much pride left at this point. I’d like to keep some scrap of it.
One thick eyebrow rises above those dark green eyes, and I suck in a hard breath.
Fine. I guess I don’t need any pride.
“So you’re not baby trapped.” I say the words as neutrally as I can, but a bit of bitterness sneaks in. “You don’t have to sit through this.”
His eyes flash, and the line of his jaw hardens. He uncoils himself from the chair, grabbing the ultrasound a second before it falls to the ground. His attention is unwavering as he closes the menial distance between us. Without a word, he eases the glossy bit of paper into my hand.
“What do you see in this?” he asks gruffly.
“A weird looking jelly bean I’m supposed to already have an emotional attachment to somehow.”
Beau laughs, some of the coiled frustration falling away from his body.
His eyes are still bright, though. “Exactly. A jelly bean that’s going to become a baby.
A baby with brown hair that’ll probably be curly and freckles that will get darker in the summer because they’ll be spending all their time trying to keep up with their cousins.
They’ll love horses or flowers or birds or rocks.
They’ll want to stay up all night staring at the stars trying to figure out where the constellations are. ”
He eases closer to me, his knees brushing mine.
“Maybe,” I hedge. “But they’ll also cry and throw up and not sleep and need cuddles in the middle of the night.
They’re going to have heartbreaks that can’t be fixed and injuries that will have everyone around them wanting to curse the earth itself for letting them get hurt.
You don’t need to subject yourself to that when it’s not even your baby. ”
Beau’s eyes narrow. He pushes my knees apart, deftly wedging between them.
“Come on, you know me better than that.” He cups my cheeks, his callouses catching on my skin. “You think Caleb doesn’t think of Cam as his simply because he’s got Brandon’s genes?”
I carefully shake my head. Of course not. All three of them had loved Kayla, the Omega they’d bonded and had Camden with. Her suicide had devastated us all.
“That’s right. Camden’s just as much my brother’s and your brother’s.
Doesn’t matter how he happened. That boy is theirs until the day the world stops turning.
” He presses a thumb into my lips, and his voice drops an octave, a force to it I’ve rarely heard.
“Emily Monroe, this baby’s mine just as much as you are.
There’s no trapping happening, and I’m pissed as hell that you think that at all. ”
“You’re sure?”
I hate how fragile my voice is, how thin and thready, like one mean comment will break it.
Alphas are supposed to be strong and confident, the leader of the pack.
Especially me, the girl who spent her childhood growing up surrounded by irritating boys who wouldn’t know subtlety or tact if it hit them across the face.
I’m confident. I’m strong. I’m… I’m entirely out of my depth.
I keep my hands tucked in my lap, the ultrasound picture pressed against my thigh where it won’t get bent.
I swallow to try and dislodge the lump growing in my throat.
Vanilla weaves around us, soured by the fear coursing through me.
Beau lets one hand slide into my hair. The empty messages on my phone from Triston settle like a ton of bricks on my chest. I gather my courage and give Beau the out again.
“You really don’t have to do this. This—” I gesture broadly to the small white room around us, “is a whole lot more than the summer of fun we’d all agreed to in April.”
“It is.” He nods but doesn’t pull away. “But you know I’m not scared of hard work.”
His thumb is soft where he runs it across my cheek and over the shell of my ear. I can’t help but shiver, goosebumps rising on my skin in the wake of his touch.
“A hard launch is going to make people talk even more than just me being pregnant will.”
Beau shrugs again, unbothered by the gossips in town. “You done giving me reasons to leave you here before you risk getting hurt?”
My mouth falls open, indignation blistering through my veins. He only smirks.
“I know you,” he whispers. “If I leave now, before it all gets any more real, you can continue on in your bubble, convinced it doesn’t hurt and that you can do it all alone—that you like doing it all alone.
” He twists a strand of my hair around his finger.
“But you don’t like doing it all on your own.
You never have, even when you were taking over Monroe Ranch from your dad before Brandon died. ”
He kisses me, his lips soft. Before I can really respond, he pulls away.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers, “so stop trying to come up with ways to give me an out, all right? I’m not taking them.”
A soft thread of… something weaves around the indignation, softening my resolve. Slowly, I nod once.
“Hard launch us, firecracker.” His grin is brighter than the sun on a July afternoon. It crinkles the skin around his eyes, those small lines that have developed over the last couple years deepening for a heartbeat. “It’s practically a Pierce tradition at this point.”