Page 47 of Soul

We face each other, our bodies touching everywhere…and we wait.

“Are you scared?” her voice shakes a bit but she lets it out with a slow breath.

“Yes,” I answer instantly. “But not for the reasons you think.”

She licks her lips and pushes a lock of my hair off my forehead. She’s done it a million times before, but somehow, now, it means more. I close my eyes and just feel her touch. It’s like a balm over the jagged edges of my psyche. “Tell me,” she pushes.

“I’m scared that he’ll get to you and possibly our baby.” I admit the fear needling against my chest making my heart pound. I put a hand over her stomach. “If my baby is in there, it’s my job to protect it and its mother. I haven’t done a very good job of protecting you and the thought of not being able to protect our child guts me.”

Tears fill her eyes and she kisses me. “Chase,” she whispers against my lips. “You’re the only one who can protect me. Keep our baby safe. Don’t you know that?”

I groan, roll on top of her and settle between her thighs. She holds me close, arms wrapped around my back. We hug, for a couple long minutes until my phone alarm goes off in the bathroom. “That’s the buzzer for the tests.” She gasps and cuddles me close. For a moment we just hold one another while the annoying beep goes on and on. “Okay, I’m going to get it.” She nods.

Entering the bathroom feels like I’m walking into a flame. This moment could change our lives forever. I grab the box and the paperwork that came with the tests without looking down. I want us to do this together. Everything together.

I settle the box directly between us as we both sit Indian style on our bed. “Okay, you want to look first or together?”

Her eyes are so green and filled with so much fear; I lean forward and kiss her. She holds my jaw and kisses me back with a fierce possession I haven’t felt since our wedding night in Ireland. Finally, she pulls back. “You read them to me.” She sits back and clasps her hands in her lap.

I nod then look down into the box at the first one. “Two lines?” I look up at her and her eyebrows come together in confusion and she grabs at the papers. “What the fuck does that mean? Two lines for yes, two lines for no.” She shakes her head and moves to grab for the papers.

“Read another one,” she says.

“One side is a line, the other a plus symbol. What the fuck?” I look up hoping she’ll know what that means and she shakes her head skimming the materials. “Christ!” How can this be so God damned difficult?

“What’s the last one say?” she blows out a breath, her red hair moving with the effort as she pours over the three different papers.

I look down and stop cold. The last one is mechanical and definitive. There is absolutely no guesswork needed, no searching through the paperwork to understand the symbolism of one line, versus two, a minus or a plus symbol.

“Um Gillian, baby,” I hold up the test. Her eyes zero in on the words that I’m staring at. Her hands come to her mouth on a gasp.

The little test has a grey screen with dark, bold, black writing. The text is clear as day as the indicator clearly says the exact word we needed to see to be certain.

PREGNANT

Chapter Sixteen

Gillian

It’sas if the little screen starts flashing.Pregnant! Pregnant! Pregnant!

I open my mouth to say something but words fail me. Chase gets up and starts pacing the room. His hands tunnel into those dark locks and yank on the roots. He really needs to stop doing that. He’s going to end up bald if he doesn’t. For now though, the situation warrants an extreme response, and while I can’t come up with a thing to say, I’ll allow him his own freak-out. I watch as he walks from one side of the room to the other, back and forth. On the tenth cut across the plush carpet, he stops and looks up to the sky on a sigh.

I can’t help but enjoy the view. My husband’s body is magnificent, golden skin, tapered waist, muscles everywhere they’re supposed to be on a twenty-nine year old man. A man who’s about to become a father.

A mother. I’m going to be someone’s mother. I lay a hand over my stomach protectively while looking down. I caress the skin that’s there, hoping that my baby feels the unconditional love I’m sending.

As I’m bonding with the idea that I have a baby growing inside of me, I feel the bed dip. Chase crawls over to me and lies on his stomach. His head is uber close to my stomach when he looks up. “Can you feel it? I mean, our baby?” The question is so innocent, so unlike the demanding, business tycoon I met almost a year ago. Chase is so different now than he was then. All that’s happened to us, the stalker, the abduction, his mother’s death, our eloping, and now this and he’s still here, worrying about me.

“No,” I smile softly and lick my lips. “But I imagine him there, growing, a testament to our love. That’s what he is.”

“He?” Chase’s eyes turn up to mine, his question laced with hope. I shrug noncommittally. In my mind, Chase is so powerful, his swimmers must be, too. So yes, I think our baby is a he. Another perfect specimen of mankind made to drive women of the world absolutely insane.

“Chase…” I swallow not knowing how to ask this question, not wanting to but knowing I need to know where he’s at with this. I can’t go one more minute knowing I’m going to be a mother with the thought that I’ll have to do it alone. Abortion is not an option, never would have been when Justin took motherhood away from me all those years ago either.

My husband pulls my hand away from my stomach. He grips my hips and pushes my legs out so they are caging his body. I allow the movement not knowing what he’s doing but appreciating him close anyway. Once he gets my legs spread and his body lying on top of me, he scoots my body down, my head falling to the pillow. He has his face hovering over my stomach, so close I can feel the warmth of his breath. He leans forward, pushes up my camisole and kisses every inch of my belly. Every single last inch he presses his lips to and holds for long seconds. It’s as if he’s making sure that with every press he’s giving his love.

“Mine.” He growls while covering my entire stomach and pelvis with his two large hands. Tears fall before I ever realize I’m crying. I don’t have to ask him how he feels. Of course, I know instinctively his reaction. It’s Chase. When it comes to me, our future, our child, he’s going to be possessive. Dangerously so. He looks up at me, his eyes a steel blue the kind that would normally issue fear in the person they are directed at. But not me. I know him too well. He’s just feeling too much, too quickly and when he does, especially when it involves me…he loses his shit.

---