ELEVEN
CASEY
Another doctor’s office,another examination table. Lexi’s lying down, her shirt bunched up under her breasts to reveal the swell of her belly. She’s twenty weeks, her bump soft and round.
She should be happy. We’re about to see whether we’re having a boy or a girl, but her expression is lost.
She’s staring at the ceiling, like it holds all the answers and I’m a heart beat from losing my shit.
Since Lexi got written up, she’s withdrawn more and more. I don’t know how to bring her back and she’s too shut down for me to break through the walls she’s thrown up.
I suspect more is going on than she’s telling me, but every time I ask her she denies anything else has happened.
I’m scared.
My beautiful little wife is never quiet. She’s a fucking rocket, a hurricane with a sassy mouth.
I stroke her bump while we wait for the tech to get set up, bringing her attention to me. Lex smiles, but it’s brittle, like she’s not really here.
“You okay?” I ask her softly.
She nods. “Just nervous.”
The tech turns, the probe in her hand, stopping my reply.
“Okay, let’s see what baby’s doing in there.” She squirts gel onto Lexi’s belly, then presses the probe into her skin.
I hold my wife’s hand, leaning down to press a kiss into her hair. “Love you,” I murmur, sensing she needs to hear it.
She squeezes me, some of the tension draining out of her. “I love you too. So much.”
Fuck.When she says it like that it wrecks me.
Nobody ever loved me before Lexi. Nobody ever made my life feel worth something. So seeing her hurting fucking destroys me.
“Baby looks good,” the tech says. “Measuring right on track for twenty weeks. Do you want to know the sex?”
Lexi peers up at me, even though we already discussed this before we left the house.
But that little check, just to make sure I haven’t changed my mind, makes me love her even more than I already do. “Yeah,” I say. “We want to know.”
The tech turns the screen toward us. Between the grainy image, there’s a baby-shaped object filling the screen and my throat gets tight.
“That’s your baby. There’s the spine, and the head.”
I don’t blink. I don’t look away. I don’t breathe. Fuck. That little bean is our kid—growing inside the woman I love. It’s so fucking surreal. Even though I know she’s pregnant and I’ve seen the baby on screen before, this time it hits different.
“You okay?” Lexi asks me.
I nod, not sure I can speak.
The tech squints at the screen. “It looks like baby is a… girl.”
My heart spasms and stops. Lexi lets out a barely contained sob. “We’re having a daughter?”
The tech smiles. “Yeah. It can be hard to tell sometimes depending on the position but she’s not being shy. She’s a girl.”
A daughter… A little girl with Lexi’s eyes and sass. I can already see her running around our feet, giggling hysterically, curls bouncing around her face. I didn’t know I could love someone I’ve never met, but my chest fucking bleeds for this kid.
