I nodded.
“You’ve done six. And they all look the same.” He looked at me, eyes wide, his face frozen with sheer awe and adoration. At me. There was no panic, no fear. Just wonderment. “Are you pregnant?”
I laughed loudly at his gaping mouth, emotion written clearer across his face than any book I’d ever read. He was happy.
I sat down on the floor, thankful for the plush carpet Ava had insisted on. My legs felt no longer able to hold me up, my brain needing the energy to process everything and I still felt sick. “I’m pregnant,” I said, confirming it. “You’re going to be a daddy.”
He sat behind me, a position that had become our usual it seemed. His arms went round me, palms on my stomach and I felt wetness on my neck. My big man who had been a marine was emitting tears. “The antibiotics?”
“Probably. And a lot of sex.”
“I’d better get Nick round to start converting the lofts.”
“There’s time,” I said. “Possibly around seven or eight months yet. Eight tops, I think.”
His lips stayed on the top of my head and he was quiet, thinking before he spoke as he always did. “Are you happy?”
I turned around in his arms. “I’ve never known I could be this happy. I’m scared, you know, I’m going to have to grow a baby and give birth, but I can’t wait.” And then the tears came in torrents and he held me and laughed and we talked and predicted and both cried.
Outside had suddenly become dark and the building quiet. “Everyone’s gone,” I said. “How on earth did we manage to not be interrupted by anyone?”
“I might have made some threats,” Killian said. “Nothing violent, just that if they interrupted us I’d miss playing the game on Sunday.”
I smiled. “Make the most of those games, mister,” I said. “Your Sundays will be spent changing bottoms and making up bottles in a few months.”
He stood up, lifting me up with him and holding me steady. “I thought you might be pregnant,” he said. “You barely drank on Saturday when everyone was round and you started looking pale.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
He shrugged. “I’m male. It was a hunch. When did you suspect?”
I shook my head. “A week ago, maybe. And then I realised I’d missed my period. Possibly two periods.”
“The moor,” he said. “I bet it was when we were on the moor.”
I stood on my toes and kissed him. “We’ll be able to work it out soon enough. Now take your baby-mamma home. I think I deserve a foot rub.”
He shook his head, his hands tender on my skin. “And so, it begins…”
Epilogue
Killian
“We’re going to take you into the operating room now. I promise you that everything’s going to be okay, we just need to get your baby out,” the nurse said.
I watched as Claire closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “I know it will be fine,” she said.
For the past ten hours she had screamed at me as she contended with labour pains and the strange state she had fallen into where she was completely paranoid about everything and everyone. Our baby was ten days late, not unusual for a first child apparently, but things had been slow even when they’d started moving and now the baby was in distress.
We’d gone through possibilities around giving birth. We’d talked about a home one, and then Claire had decided that wasn’t such a good idea. There had been the choice of a caesarean, but she’d wanted to avoid the longer recovery time. A water birth had been the first choice, but as I’d said to her – clearly at the wrong time as she had responded with a lot of swear words – you don’t always get what you want.
As long as both Claire and our baby were okay I didn’t care. I’d gladly hand over my left nut, kidney and lung if it meant they’d be happy and healthy. Hell, I’d offer the rest of me, but I really wanted to be there to watch our child grow up.
I was handed scrubs and told to wash up, the nurse rightly more concerned with Claire than me. The bleeping in the background grew louder and louder and I steadied on to the sink for a moment, wondering how this situation right now was making me feel as if I was about to lose consciousness when I’d seen human torture first hand.
“It’s perfectly normal to feel a bit woozy,” the nurse said. “It’s your fiancée and child. But they’re in good hands.”
I turned around and saw Claire looking at me, her brown doe eyes wide, her lips curved into a soft smile. “I’m okay,” she said. “Come over here. But I don’t think you should look over the screen.”
