PREGNANT
PREGNANT
The word stared back in bold black letters, no ambiguity, no faint lines to argue over.
Ben made a sound — half laugh, half broken growl — and then his arms were around me, lifting me clean off the floor. He spun me once, careful even in his frenzy, then set me down and dropped to his knees right there on the tile, hands framing my stomach like it was already sacred.
“Fuck,” he rasped, pressing his forehead to my belly. “We did it. You’re carrying my baby.”
Tears blurred my vision, happy and overwhelmed. I laughed through them, fingers threading through his dark hair.
“Yeah. Looks like it.”
He looked up at me, blue eyes shining, fierce and soft all at once.
“I told you I was going to put a baby in you.”
I snorted, wiping my cheeks.
“Pretty sure your exact words were a lot filthier than that.”
A slow, wicked grin spread across his scarred face, but his voice dropped into that low, reverent register he saved for moments like this.
“I told you, angel — that night in the lodge, when I had you pinned to the bed and you were begging so pretty — I told you I was going to fill you up, breed you deep, make you mine in every way that matters. I meant it. Every single time.”
Heat flashed through me at the memory of one of the first nights he’d stopped pretending he wasn’t going to bury himself inside me, maybe even the first night he stopped being careful. Sometime mid-December, right in the thick of the Game, when the lines between truth and lies had blurred and all that was left was raw need.
“Conception was probably that week,” I said softly, doing the quick math. “Right around when everything went to hell and back.”
He rose slowly, hands sliding up to cup my face, thumbs brushing away the tears.
“Best hell I’ve ever been through.”
I leaned into him, forehead to his chest, listening to his heart thunder.
“We’re having a baby, Ben.”
“Yeah,” he whispered against my hair, arms wrapping around me like he’d never let go. “We’re having a baby.”
He kissed me then, slow, deep, full of wonder and possession and promise. When he pulled back, his grin was boyish and devastating.
“Better start thinking about names,” he said. “And a nursery. And maybe soundproofing our bedroom, because I plan on keeping you pregnant as often as you’ll let me.”
I laughed, the sound wet and joyful, and kissed him again.
Outside, the winter night pressed against the windows, but inside Ashgrove House, everything felt warm, bright, and brand-new.
Chapter
Forty-Three
BEN
February 14
I’d never beennervous in a doctor’s office before. Not even the day they finally pulled the breathing tube after the coma, when the room was full of surgeons and Henry stood guard like a sentinel, ready to throw hands if anyone so much as looked at me wrong. Back then I’d been too foggy, too raw, to feel anything sharper than dull relief.
But sitting in this waiting room in Fairhope, Chrissy’s hand tucked tight in mine, I felt like my skin didn’t fit right. The place smelled like antiseptic and fake lavender, the kind of scent designed to calm people that only ever made me want to punch something. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A fish tank gurgled in the corner. Some generic love song played low — Valentine’s Day bullshit piped in to make the pregnant women smile and the partners feel romantic.
