Mae smiled. “I don’t think that has completely sunk in. I’m someone’s mom.”
“A beautiful little someone. I hope they look just like you.And they’ll have your commanding personality, bossing us around our home by the time they’re two.”
She nodded, placing her head down on his shoulder. “I don’t want a white picket fence though. I want to live somewhere that has wide open spaces. Where the kids can hop on their bikes and ride a little ways to get to our neighbors. Maybe there’s land, or a house we could renovate, down the way from Lily and Gunner’s?”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Being neighbors with our friends?”
“No. Although that does sound nice. But you said ‘the kids’. I’m all in on this plan, Mae. I love you. I love this baby.”
“We love you, too.”
Thirteen
Stone fell asleep, his hand still resting on her belly. He’d never felt so fucking happy in his whole life. He needed to get a ring.
A real ring. And a real proposal. Because she’d turned him down. But he knew she would say yes. They were meant to be. And they were having a baby. A little girl who would look just like Mae, with striking brown eyes and dark, silky hair. Or a little boy, who’d love his mama more than anything else in the whole world, just like Stone had when he was a kid.
She’d fallen asleep while he whispered all his plans to her. Not just of the house, and the dogs he would learn to love. But of afternoons spent in the park, pushing their baby in a swing. Of nights spent together in the nursery, laying their baby down in the cradle he would carve for them. She’d fallen asleep before he really got to tell her about that, but he could see the intricate wooden swan design already in his mind. It was going to be something they could lay all their babies in, and pass down to grandchildren one?—
His eyes popped open the instant a scream shattered the silence in their room.
“Shit! Mae?” He sat straight up in bed, feeling for her, but she wasn’t there. Instead, his hand came away from the sheets wet. Had she gotten sick in bed right beside him and he hadn’t woken up?
His brain finally caught up, the light from the bathroom flooding into the room. Was the shower running? What the fuck was going on?
Stone walked as fast as he could, ignoring the way his body protested at the sudden movement as he turned on the lights for the bedroom. His feet slammed against the floor until he stepped inside the bathroom and was met with rolling waves of steam. The sight of her curled up in the corner of the shower, still in her nightshirt, on the tile floor with crimson red swirling all around her, stopped him in his tracks.
“Michaela! Oh shit…” That’s when he finally looked down at his own hand, his heart pounding painfully in his chest as he saw the red staining his skin. The pain in his chest pulled as he stepped fully clothed into the shower, trying to figure out the source of the blood so he could stem the flow.
“I thought the water would h-help,” she sobbed. “I didn’t know… I…”
He stepped into the shower, careful not to bump her as he moved towards the tiled wall.
“Ow,” she cried, her arms banding tighter around herself. “It hurts. S-So bad.”
Frantic, Stone ran his hands all over her body. “What is this, Mae? What’s happening?”
“I’m losing the… I’m… Stone…. help.” Her whole body shook under his touch, but he didn’t know whether that was from the pain she seemed to be in or the fact that she was crying so hard. “I can’t lose our baby. I d-don’t want to lose her…”
He reached out to check her pulse. Fuck, it was thready at best. Stone reached up, turning down the hot water to a moretemperate setting. If she was dizzy, or lightheaded, or having an issue with her blood pressure, the hot water would make the symptoms worse.
“Sweetheart…” His voice was so thick with fear he felt it suffocating them both. This was his expertise — helping someone who needed medical attention— but it had never been the woman he loved bleeding at his feet before. And fuck, he felt so unbelievably helpless.
Mae shook her head, and it was hard to tell where her tears stopped and the water running down her body started. He brushed the droplets from his own face before trying to get an answer again.
“This…” Stone sank against the shower wall, waiting, silently begging her to give him an answer. “I’m going to pick you up, Mae. I’m going to get you both help. That’s all… that’s all I can do. Can I do that? Is that what I should do?”
He never expected her hand to reach up and move his over her belly. She pulled at her sleep shirt, soaked and stuck to every curve of her body, before she settled his hand on her skin. Over the hard swell.
“Our baby….” she cried.
His worst fear, laid bare at his feet. It had only been a few hours since Mae told him she was pregnant, and now she was sobbing on the shower floor that was covered in her blood. She had told him, and it was only just registering.
She was miscarrying.
She was losing their baby.
