“I didn’t think I’d be playing hide and seek with my birth control,” Lexi mutters.
“Your doctor might want to do a follow-up scan, just to make sure it’s not gone anywhere else, but I’m not seeing any sign of it where it’s going to cause problems for your pregnancy.”
“So there’s a good chance we flicked it out when we were…You know?”
Callie’s lips twitch. “It’s possible. Rare, but possible.”
She glances toward me, a smile tugging at her lips, but my chest feels heavy. Lexi is lying here with a probe shoved inside her while she’s run down and stressed because my dick booted her birth control out of her body?
The hand not wrapped around hers curls into a fist, my jaw locking just as tight.
My beautiful wife glances up at me, a soft smile on her face that I don’t deserve. “You literally defied all the odds of not only getting me pregnant while on birth control, you also did it so completely they can’t even find where it went.”
I want to laugh, but all I feel is fucking guilt that I might have hurt her, that she is having something invasive done because of me. Because I fuck her like an animal.
But then Callie says, “And there’s your baby.”
My words die on my tongue. On the screen there is a flicker of something. A kernel of hope. Of a future I didn’t think I would get.
And then she pushes a button and the room fills with the steady thrum of a heartbeat.
The world tilts sideways, the floor beneath me vanishing.
Lexi lets out a strangled sound, as if her world is also not steady beneath her feet. I’ve never seen anything so fucking perfect, and I can’t even tell what the fuck it is.
“That’s our fucking baby,” she whispers.
Ours. Mine and Lexi’s. Our kid. “Fuck. You don’t understand what you’ve given me,” I say, my lips pressing to her temple.
The way she looks at me, the love shining on her face, undoes me. I’ve never loved anyone the way I do her. I didn’t think it was possible until I saw that little flicker on screen. Now, my love is divided between them. And they will never want for anything.
“Is everything okay with the baby?” Lexi asks the question I should have fucking thought to.
“Everything looks good. You’re measuring right on track at around seven weeks. Gestational sac is well positioned, everything looks normal and there’s a strong fetal heartbeat. No signs of free fluid or abnormalities.”
Seven weeks…Seven fucking weeks.Now I’m coming apart for a completely different reason. “Two months you’ve been carryin’ my kid without knowing while I fucked you on every available surface like a fuckin’ animal.”
Lexi’s eyes widen and Callie suddenly busies herself with the machine.
“Casey!” She hisses my name, but all I can think is I should have been more careful with her. I could have hurt the baby.
“I put you on my bike. Put you at risk.”
The fight drains out of her at my words. “You didn’t. You just heard her say the baby is fine.” I scrub a hand down my face. “Hey,” she grips my cut. “You didn’t put me at risk, Casey. You put me first. Always. You loved me. Don’t rewrite that.”
“She’s right,” Callie says gently. “Baby is fine. A bit of rough and tumble isn’t going to do anything. This little one looks absolutely perfect and exactly how I would expect at this point in your pregnancy.”
Lexi bursts into tears, her chest dragging in ragged breaths as she tries to control herself. I capture the first few as they fall. “We’re really having a baby, Casey.”
I’m pretty sure my eyes are wet too, as I place my hand over her stomach where our kid is growing.
“I’m going to take care of you both.”
And I mean every word. I’ll raze cities to ashes if anything tries to touch her or the miracle she’s carrying.
SIX
LEXI
