Page 50 of After-Party Consequences

The word added weight to the guilty brick in his gut.

How could he be a parent when this child could never be more than an abstract concept to a guy like him? He’d never known his own father—had guessed the guy was probably one of the other junkies in the drug dens his mother frequented, according to the social worker’s report he’d unearthed, before he’d stopped looking.

Charlotte let go of his hand to get ready for the sonogram in an adjoining room. He was introduced to Dr Chen as they waited in the examination room. She asked him if he had any questions, but he could feel the panic starting to strangle him. So he shook his head and didn’t ask the questions he’d thought about often in the past couple of weeks—while trying not to think about them.

Charlotte reappeared wearing a simple green gown. Her conversation with Dr Chen—detailing her current health—floated in the room around Cade as she lay down on a long couch. He rubbed clammy palms down his pants legs, aware his hands were starting to sweat. The hum of the machine opposite them powered up as the screen began to glow with an eerie blue light.

The chemical scent of the gel the doctor put on the wand she held, and the sight of Charlotte’s nervous smile as Chen pressed the wand to her bare belly, only intensified the chaotic swirl of emotions pushing at the edges of Cade’s consciousness.

A fast-throbbing beat—like the ticking of an overactive clock—cut through the noise in Cade’s head, and a picture formed on the screen.

‘There we are,’ the doctor announced with a smile in her voice. ‘Junior has a nice strong heartbeat, you’ll be glad to know.’

Charlotte’s sharp intake of breath dragged Cade out of his trance.

‘Oh, wow!’ Her gaze connected with his.

The sheen of raw emotion was unguarded, and so beautiful and brave and unafraid in that moment, his own pulse accelerated to match the giddy ticking of the amplified heartbeat.

Cade forced his gaze to the screen as the doctor pointed out the spine, the head, the legs and arms, already forming. Theskull looked enormous to him, the body curled in on itself. No wonder they called it the foetal position. The screen became filled with lines and dots as the doctor took what she said were essential measurements. Charlotte asked questions, most of which he couldn’t make out because of the blood thundering in his ears.

He couldn’t stop staring at the life they’d made together. Because of a busted condom. The life that hadn’t really been real to him until this moment—except as an opportunity to put his mark on the future. And on Charlotte.

What an arrogant jerk he’d been. To think he could manage his feelings towards this tiny human being the same way he managed his businesses.

Awe swept through him, stronger even than the afterglow when he made love to Charlotte. But right behind it was the fear. And the loneliness which made the weight on his chest crush his ribs. And suddenly he was back in that department store—waking up to find himself in the dark. Alone.

‘Cade, do you want to know the sex?’ Charlotte’s excited question pierced through the old nightmare.

‘Huh?’ he managed, trying to drag himself back to the present.

‘Dr Chen says the baby’s sex is clear enough for her to make a good guess, if we want to know. Although it’s not going to be one hundred percent at this point.’

But wouldn’t knowing the sex just make thismorereal?

‘Whatever you want to do is good with me,’ he said, struggling to cover the panic with nonchalance.

‘Okay.’ A frown creased Charlotte’s forehead. ‘Well, I’ve never been very patient.’ She turned to the doctor. ‘I’d love to know. Are we talking penis or no penis?’

The doctor laughed and then pressed the wand back into Charlotte’s abdomen. She pointed at the screen. ‘You see thatsmall nub? I think we’re talking the beginnings of a penis, Charley.’

A boy?He was having a son?

The rest of the appointment passed by in a daze as he attempted to keep the wave of panic at bay. He could imagine the child clearly now. But it only made the fear and insecurity worse. Because he could also see himself as a boy, his earliest memories becoming more vivid, leaping out of the place where he’d kept them locked down for so long. The scent of trash and urine, the shouts which made him cower, the darkness closing in, the nightwatchman’s torch searing his eyes and dragging him from sleep into a new terrifying reality. He’d been so defenceless then. How could he protect a child when he had never even been able to protect himself?

He managed to calm his breathing, get his giddy heart rate under control as he waited for Charlotte outside the sonogram suite.

When she appeared, she looked radiant. The short summer dress she wore clung to her body, accentuating her increasingly bountiful breasts. The shot of need was familiar, but with it was something else, something he’d noticed more and more in the past few weeks—something deep and visceral and raw. And almost as terrifying as seeing his baby for the first time.

Longing.

‘So, it looks like the baby is going to have a penis,’ Charlotte said as she tucked her arm through his. Her voice was light, her expression full of the joy he had seen in the suite. ‘How do you feel about that? Did you have a preference?’

‘No,’ he managed, still feeling as if he were walking through a fog.

‘Is the right answer...’ she said, but her eyes had lost some of their happy glow as he escorted her to his car in the parking garage below the building.

They drove through the downtown streets, his anxiety increasing as the silence he couldn’t fill stretched between them.

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