“It’s not selfish at all, Annie. But if you don’t speak up, no one knows what’s on your mind. Honestly, I think it’s perfect. I can’t imagine that Lissa or Dan would care one way or the other.”
I shrugged unsure of what to say.
“Next was what, Gray? There’s no need for you to be concerned about Gray. I’m handling the situation, and I promise I won’t lose my job in the process.”
“What are you going to do to him?” I was pissed, madder than an old red hen, but I never wanted to hurt anyone—regardless of what they’d done to me. I just wanted him to leave me alone. The drunken visits, the random calls to my office—it all needed to stop.
“Dan and I are handling it.”
“Shit. So, I need to be prepared to bail you out of jail?”
He laughed at me, but I was on the verge of crying. I knew women’s cycles matched up, but I’d never heard of friends experiencing pregnancy hormones at the same time. I was overly emotional for no reason.
“Maybe, but it’ll be worth it. Have money for Dan, too.” He paused before adding, “But if you get that call, it’s probably better not to tell Lissa.”
“That brings me to my next point. I understand why Dan wants to move in with her. I know he’s shoved up her ass because of the pregnancy, but is it good for the baby to have Lissa stressing about buying a house and moving?”
“There she is.”
I knew what he was talking about. He’d sworn I would be controlling and freak out about every little detail. To date, that hadn’t happened, but this wasn’t little.
“Trust me, Dan isn’t going to do anything that will put either of them in danger. That’s the whole reason for his not wanting to wait. He wants to take care of her. It’s not like she’s going to be lifting furniture and carrying boxes. I’ll hire movers if I have to.”
My body relaxed into Brett. The couch seemed to consume us both. I just wanted him to hold me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d climbed into his lap, but I did just that. Like a child, I sat my butt on his thighs and hugged his neck. He stroked my back, and the tension waned.
Monday came faster than expected, and Brett had been right. Lissa and Dan were happy to oblige my request to wait to find out the sex of our baby, but we all desperately wanted to see the little darling and get new pictures.
I’d taken scads of photographs of Lissa every chance I got. I wanted to commemorate what she’d done for us, and I wanted to be able to show our son or daughter pictures of the pregnancy. I didn’t know if Lissa would want one, but I was working on memory books, carbon copies, so we both had the same thing. I couldn’t wait to add these pictures to those albums. It wasn’t just a tribute to her—Dan, Brett, and I were in there as well. It was a collection of our lives.
The four of us piled into the exam room, and the nurse brought in extra chairs for us to sit. She turned on the television in the corner, and it became a duplicate of the ultrasound screen so we could see what she saw without having to crowd around a tiny monitor.
Lissa ignored the rest of us and lifted her shirt, proudly displaying her rounded belly. I felt an enormous amount of pride, one that she was my friend, and two that it was my baby she was toting around. When the nurse put the wand on her skin, I turned my attention to the television and watched in wonder as my baby waved hello.
Dan held her hand but fixated on the image as the baby came into focus. Brett secured his hand to my thigh, with mine on top of his, our fingers lazily laced together. The whoosh of the heartbeat lulled me into a trance as I watched our baby move. The spine was so defined and the little profile surreal. Seeing him or her squirm around and try to avoid the noise from the ultrasound made this so much more real. My attention was laser focused on that little being. The world around me faded, and mentally I bonded with my child. I felt the connection for the first time. The sonographer clicked and typed and took measurements, the words leg, foot, spine would appear just before she clicked again, one by one she identified little body parts, and with each one, I got to know my child better.
We could have been in that dark room for five minutes or seven hours, I had lost track of time. All I knew when the lights came on was I was half way to the finish line, and I had a new stack of ultrasound pictures to swoon over for another couple of months.
I stood to collect my paper copies and the CD I’d requested. Suddenly lightheaded, I grabbed Brett’s arm for support. The stress of the last few weeks was catching up with me. I hadn’t been eating well, and my stomach was tied in knots. I had thought seeing the baby healthy today would ease some of that anxiety, but I found myself rushing to the restroom. The overwhelming hot flash subsided with cool water on my face, but it didn’t stop Brett’s worry.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, Lissa joked about me being the one sick when she was the one pregnant. She’d never had a single bout of morning sickness or discomfort. I’d never heard of anyone having a pregnancy as carefree as the one she’d experienced thus far. Brett insisted I call my therapist. He was concerned about the level of stress I was under, if it was physically affecting my health. I had to agree. It had been years since I’d made myself sick with worry, and I wasn’t coping well. Before the baby arrived, I needed this resolved.
Before we all went our separate ways for the evening, Lissa piped up and said, “Annie, what do you think about having a party instead of a baby shower?”
We were all standing in the parking lot of the doctor’s office. It was the end of the day, and most of the lot was empty. “I’m down. I haven’t really told any of my friends.”
“Seriously?” Her voice was several octaves higher than normal.
I shrugged. If she’d been through two miscarriages, she’d understand why I had stopped running out to tell the world our good news.
“Like no one knows?” she questioned.
“Our parents do, and you guys. But other than that, no, I haven’t told anyone.”
“Annie, your friends will flip shit. You’re going to have a baby in a few months. They’re going to be so happy for you. We need to do this. Please?” she whined.
“Penny,” Dan called out to her in warning.
“I think it would be fun. But I want to wait until we’re through the second trimester.” I didn’t add that once we were to twenty-seven weeks, it was possible for the baby to survive outside the uterus. “Oh, oh. Can we have it at Hooters? Maybe we can rent the whole place out and eat wings until we puke.”
“First of all, you don’t like wings, and second, why in the hell would you want to go to Hooters for a baby party?” Brett was clearly amused by my suggestion.
“So your dumb friends might actually show up. And I do like wings.” I corrected him, but I don’t. I never have. The only time in my life I’d ever eaten wings by choice was—I stopped myself from going there. “Men don’t like anything with the word baby attached to it. But they do love boobs—funny since those frequently have babies attached to them—and sports and beer. I don’t want to do a baby shower, but this way we could get all of our friends together and celebrate. They can even drink.”
“In all the time we’ve been together, there’s only been one time you ever ate wings.”
I willed him to stop talking. Begged him to read my thoughts and not inform our friends. If I could have kicked him to get him to shut up, I would have.
Thank God, Lissa wasn’t interested in my preference for bar food and interrupted Brett. “People can still bring gifts if they want to, though, right? You have to get presents.”
“I don’t know, Lissa. That just seems weird to me. If I were carrying the baby, it would be awkward at best, but this way just seems…I don’t know. Gauche.”
“Whatever.” She tossed her sunset-colored hair over her shoulder. “I’m telling people to bring you shit. And since you’re the mother, I get to play hostess.” A devious smile crept across her face.
There was no way Brett would go for that, but leave it to Dan to want
in on the conversation. “I think it should be our gift to the new parents.”
“The only way I will agree to this is if we all do it together,” I said firmly.
It was decided. And Hooters would be the location.
With the discussion of a frat party at Hooters to welcome our child, I thought I had managed to escape Brett’s attention. But when he pulled in to the CVS parking lot, I knew I hadn’t been so lucky.
“Do you want me to go in, or do you want to go?”
I didn’t know why I was mad. Probably because Brett was a man, and they weren’t supposed to notice anything, much less when a woman ate wings. I didn’t have my purse with me so I held out my hand for cash and unbuckled my seat belt. I didn’t even pretend to be happy trekking my ass into the drug store. When I got to the family planning aisle, I grabbed the first box I saw and stalked up to the cash register.
Here I was married, but somehow embarrassed to be buying a pregnancy test. This was sheer torture. Just because I had suggested chicken didn’t mean he’d knocked me up. Next thing I knew, he’d tell me I was having an affair with an Asian man because I picked up Chinese takeout. The whole thing was preposterous. So was my acting like a child and throwing the box at Brett when I got back in the car.
“Do you want to talk about this?” he asked.
“Just drive, Brett.” My tone was clipped.
Fear.
I was terrified of the news that little test would bring. Lissa was over half way to our due date. This couldn’t be happening. I’d hoped my nasty attitude might will the situation away, produce one line instead of two. The grief that came with miscarriage would overshadow what Lissa was doing for us. And for the first time since Brett and I had gone off birth control, I hoped I wasn’t pregnant.
The ride back to the house was eternally long and not in a good way. I didn’t know what he was thinking, and I’m sure he had no clue what horrible thoughts plagued me. God, we had been so stupid. We should have been using birth control, plain and simple, but it never dawned on me because we quit considering my carrying a child a viable option.
As he put the car in park, I tried to get out before he said anything, but he grabbed my wrist. My eyes stayed trained on the tree in front of me while I held my breath waiting for whatever he had to say.
“Sweetheart, whatever happens, is meant to be.”
I nodded and went inside. That’s what people said to suckers who lost. Those were consolation words. You didn’t win in life because it was meant to be, you won because you worked your ass off—only losers hung their hats on fate. Those were excuses that justified failure.
I didn’t need to take the test. I’d done the mental calendar in the car on the way here. There would be two lines, and if I was as far along as I thought, we’d conceived around the time Lissa had her second ultrasound. I’d spotted around the time of my missed period, but since I never had a heavy flow, it hadn’t dawned on me I’d actually missed it. Couple that with more exciting things like one of my best friends carrying mine and my husband’s child, and pregnancy wasn’t on my radar.
The instant my foot hit the bottom step of the staircase, Brett called out to me. Sorrow clung to his weighty words, his throat thick with emotion. “Do you want to do this together?” He spoke to my back while I hovered in hesitation.
Without a word, I glanced over my right shoulder, my lips between my teeth as I willed myself not to get overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation, and I held out my hand and nodded my desire.
His warm fingers wrapped around mine, and he trailed behind me as I ascended the stairs. Brett had the box in his hand, and I felt like we were attending our own funeral.
It didn’t take long to get the confirmation. Those two lines I’d prayed for a thousand times now shown like a beacon in the night when all I’d hoped for was darkness. We left the test on the bathroom counter, and both got ready for bed separately. What had started off as an amazing day had somehow turned somber.
The covers didn’t welcome me the way they normally did. There was nothing inviting about their shield. They didn’t offer any protection. But Brett’s arms still did, and it was there I fell asleep.
I did something last night I’d never done before. I dreamed about the little girl who couldn’t wait to meet her parents. We’d played in the grass, running, chasing butterflies, laughing, but we never spoke. She was older, but somehow, I knew she was mine. Maybe it was the dark, wavy hair that mimicked mine, or the way her bright green eyes glistened in the sun like Brett’s, or possibly the sound of her laughter reminded me of my own—either way, I knew one of these babies was a little girl.
A peace fell over me while I slept. It was still early, but the sun was trying to welcome the day, and I was overcome with excitement I couldn’t contain. I dragged my foot up Brett’s leg under the covers, trying to rouse him to wake. When he finally opened his eyes, I saw the same green I’d seen in my dream and couldn’t contain the smile.
“You’re in an awfully good mood this early in the morning.” He yawned and stretched before bringing his arms back down and around me. Thick muscles pulled my body close to his chest, and his lips met my temple.
“I think we should announce this baby at the party in a few weeks.”
He pulled back confused by my sudden change of heart. I couldn’t explain to him how I knew this was different, and I’d sound crazy if I told him about our daughter.
“I’ll be about sixteen weeks at that point, and we should be in the clear once we make it through the first trimester.”
“How do you know how far along you are?”
“Rough guess, but I’d bet money it happened the time of the second ultrasound.”
“What happened between last night and this morning, Annie? The shift has me a little concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re more positive, but I’m confused.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” I thought about the little brunette who’d run through my mind all night, and wondered how I’d ever get her out of my head. The high was euphoric. The giggle that escaped my mouth gave more away than I was letting on, but Brett didn’t pry.
Instead, he rolled himself on top of me and showed me how grateful he was that my mood had improved. Completely divested of our clothing, he sank in slowly and made love to me as though it was his sole purpose in life. He took the time to languidly enjoy my body, bringing out the greatest pleasure for us both. The way he rotated his hips with mine would forever change the way I viewed morning sex. I could wake up to this every day.
Chapter Fifteen
Brett
After enduring party planning with two pregnant women, one of whom had been incognito for weeks, I couldn’t wait to have this soiree over and done with. Had I ever been involved in the planning of a wedding, I’m sure I never would have agreed to any of this, much less helped choreograph the gathering.
Part of me wondered if Annie was making up for not having a reception by inviting everyone she’d ever known. She and Lissa had gone hog wild with the guest list, and everyone they invited said they were coming. There had been a blanket invitation issued at the DC, but I prayed to God Gray stayed away. Dan had gotten to him outside of work before I could. I doubted I’d ever know what was said, or what went down, but Gray hadn’t bothered Annie since, nor had he spoken a word to Dan or me.
The news of our surrogacy had spread rapidly through the DC, but we’d expected that when we invited people to Hooters. People had all kinds of opinions on the subject, but wisely, those who objected kept it to themselves. I’d heard through the grapevine that Gray had been rather vocal regarding his thoughts, but he hadn’t had the nerve to tell me to my face. In my estimation, those who supported us would show up tonight, and those who didn’t would stay away. But other than Annie and me, no one, not even Dan and Lissa, knew she was pregnant.
The first month after we found out had been touch and go. Every time she felt the slightest twinge, we’d rushed to the doctor.
She didn’t want to have rough sex for fear of tearing the sack loose. I had no clue what she was talking about but went along with whatever made her happy. This was one of those things. She clung to her secret, and the day we passed into the second trimester, she wept in my arms until she cried herself to sleep. She’d given up hope, but her doctor told us it happened all the time. When people stopped trying and quit stressing over it, the body did incredible things. This baby was meant to be here. Annie would still get her multiples, they’d just be a few months apart.
“Sweetheart, if we don’t leave now, we’ll be late.”
All I’d heard all day was that nothing fit, and I was waiting for her to echo that same sentiment down the stairs again to justify her tardiness. I’d never admit it to her, but the pooch on her tummy was cute as hell even if it was already wreaking havoc on her wardrobe. She could buy new jeans. I wasn’t worried about it. All I cared about was that my wife and babies were all healthy. If that was in a size four or a fourteen, it didn’t matter.
She finally came down, her little bundle hidden behind jeans and concert T-shirt. The heavy Doc Martens on her feet clunked down the stairs, announcing her approach. Her hair was down and curled, and she’d never looked more beautiful. It took every ounce of restraint I had in me not to turn her around and march her back up to our room and show her how she affected me.
Freed (Bound Duet Book 2) Page 22
