Page 104 of Glitterati Omega

“Isn’t it important?” he asked. “To … to know that I’m doing okay? Dr. Vilkensen said that putting on too much might put me at risk of premature delivery.”

Morgan rolled their eyes. “Roo. You’re having twins. Premature delivery is pretty much par for the course.”

“Oh.” Well, now he felt sick and worried all over again. “Is it?”

“Twins are considered full-term earlier than singletons, yeah. About thirty-six weeks.”

Rupert peered down at himself. “Another three months then,” he murmured.

“Mmhm,” Morgan agreed. “I’m moving your due date up.”

Rupert inhaled. “Is it really okay to deliver that early?”

Morgan shrugged. “Depends on you, depends on them. A lot of twins are born around then. Some go longer, which is better for them, but if you’re super uncomfortable or something’s going wrong, then we’re gonna make a decision.”

Morgan frowned, then made a soft noise in the back of their throat. “What?” Rupert asked, turning to them.

They sighed and looked down at their notes. “You’re already a little dilated.”

“Oh.”

Morgan nodded. “So, we wanna keep an eye on that.” They jotted something down. “Maybe cerclage. You have a midwife? They can do that for you. The goal is to keep them in there as long as possible, right?”

“Right,” he agreed.

Morgan typed something else into their notes. “I’m gonna recommend bedrest starting around thirty weeks.”

“What?”

Morgan looked at him. “Bedrest. We’ll keep an eye on it and maybe you don’t have to do it, but that dilation might be because of how much weight is pressing down on your cervix. If it gets worse, then putting you on bedrest might help.”

“Oh,” Rupert said.

“And,” Morgan murmured, “we’re gonna need to talk about birth—we’ll want to keep a really close eye on how they’re situated in there.”

Rupert rubbed his forehead. “This seems complicated,” he murmured.

“Uh, yeah,” Morgan agreed. “You just jumped from, like, medium-risk to super high-risk.”

“Oh. Well, that’s wonderful news.”

Morgan laughed humorlessly. “Yeah,” they agreed. Then they sighed and closed up their laptop. “Well, you’re doing fine for now, and we’re aware of everything, which is like … the best possible position to be in. So just keep doing what you’re doing, and we’ll figure it all out. Who knows. Maybe it’ll be just fine.”

“Maybe,” Rupert murmured, but he sincerely doubted it.

,

Winston had called at home and left a pile of paperwork for him to do around the closing for the vineyard in Hill Country. Charli hovered around him, gently chiding him for not taking breaks—“you’ve had a big day,” she told him, but he waved her off. The paperwork needed to be done.

Especially if he was going to deliver in a scant twelve weeks. He’d thought he had, well, at least a little more time. An extra month. Now everything felt rushed.

He worried at his reflection, before dinner, when he had to pull on a dress he hadn’t worn in a couple of weeks and found it was really the only thing in his wardrobe that had a remote chance of fitting him. It strained around his middle, the fabric clearly pulled too taut; its low-cut bodice could barely keep his breasts from spilling out.

He didn’t want to go to dinner, not even in his own dining room.

Winston was waiting for him, though, so he forced himself to make an appearance.

The candles had been lit, and Winston had apparently brought take-out from a little Italian hole-in-the-wall that was considered a local gem.