Page 44 of The Virgin's Baby
There was no way I would bring up anything at that moment. I wanted her to have a clear head when I told her that the ball would be entirely in her court. Everything would lie in her hands.
After she got dressed, I found she was still a little woozy. I put my arm around her then saw the nurse coming with a wheelchair. “Go ahead and bring the car around to the front entrance. I’ll take her down.”
As I left to go get the car, I thought about doing the same thing when she had our baby. It would be me who would run to get the car to take her and the baby home.
It made my heart ache to think of that day never coming. I wanted it so damn bad. And I knew that was selfish of me, but I didn’t care.
What I would do was leave that up to Aspen. And I would have to be ready to accept it if she didn’t want to go any further. But I knew it would kill a small part of me if she didn’t want to.
Just like I had to accept everything else in my life, I would learn to accept it if she did that.
A part of me knew she wanted to have a baby. A part of me knew she wanted to have one with me.
But would she always only want my baby? Would she still want that if she couldn’t have me too?
Chapter Twenty
Aspen
Lubbock, Texas – August 25th
Things hadn’t been the best between Ransom and me. I had to keep my distance, so I wouldn’t fall in love with him. Or strangle him. I wavered on both sides most of the time.
He’d talked to me not long after the embryos were being made up in the lab. He told me that it was all up to me. I could keep the money even if I decided to end this and have the embryos destroyed.
I was impressed when he said that he wouldn’t seek another surrogate. If I didn’t want to go through with it, he was done trying. He admitted that he’d come into this thing without the purest of intentions.
I’d known that. I had to admit that I hadn’t either. But now that we’d come so far, and our little embryos were forming, I already had an attachment to them. One of them or possibly more would one day be our baby. I couldn’t have them destroyed. I wanted them all.
So, we had them implanted a short time later and were told to give it a month or two to make sure that at least one of them took. During that time, there were supposed to be all these sonograms and what-nots that I didn’t want.
Sick of being poked and prodded, I told the doctor that we would be back in a couple of months to see what kind of progress had been made. The doctor had cautioned me about ectopic pregnancies and other horror stories. I didn’t care. I wanted to live life out of that clinic for a while.
I’d done everything I could to get pregnant. I wasn’t going to do any more than that. I figured the two-month mark would be plenty of time to do whatever had to be done if the pregnancy had gone awry.
It hadn’t been easy—the not knowing. All I knew for sure was that I hadn’t had a period in over two months. Ransom and I were dying to know how many babies we had.
The car ride to the clinic was excruciating. “I’m so worried,” I confessed.
“About what?” he seemed confused as he carefully took the left turn to get to the parking garage. He drove so much more carefully now. It was funny in a way. “You know you’re pregnant.”
“I know. But I want them all.” I knew that would be nearly impossible. But I had a hard time thinking about one of those little embryos not making it.
He reached over to take my hand. “I want them all too. But I’ll be happy with whatever we have.”
I doubted that he thought the same way I did. I already thought of them as living babies. He most likely considered of them eggs right now. I didn’t know what he thought since we talked so little.
The baby or babies took center stage for me. Whatever happened between their father and me would play out on its own. I couldn’t just stop at that point because the man couldn’t love me.
He hadn’t loved me in the beginning. Why make that an issue now?
Plus, I figured my hormones had a lot to do with how I took everything. Maybe I wouldn’t ever love him.
If I kept away as I had been, that would’ve been a real possibility. I could just lead my life and him his. The estate was so vast that we only passed in the hallway at bedtimes and when we got up. We did eat meals together. That was mostly because the cook made the meals, and it would’ve been a pain in her ass if we took them separately.
After we parked, we got out of the car then headed inside. And suddenly I felt a wave of nausea overwhelming me. “Oh, God!” I grabbed my stomach then rushed to a waste receptacle half a football field away.
“What’s happening?” Ransom called out as he came after me.
