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“Ford?” Lola’s voice penetrated my thoughts. “What are you doing here?”
I didn’t take my eyes off Belle. She knew why I was here. She knew I needed an answer to my unspoken question, and when she nodded and whispered, “It’s yours,” my entire body felt like jello. My legs shook, my heart skipped a beat, and I knew my life would never be the same again.
* * *
BELLE
“It’s yours.” The words weren’t much louder than a whisper, but it felt like a bomb had exploded in the small waiting room. The moment I’d looked up and saw him standing there, his hazel eyes focused on nothing but me and the bump, I knew he knew.
I’d intended to go to him today and tell him everything. Tell him why I’d run away in the first place. It was part of the reason why I hadn’t answered my mom when she’d asked about the baby’s dad on the way here. I knew the answer to her question, I just wasn’t ready to tell her until I’d spoken to him.
“What?” Dad asked, his voice deadly. “What do you mean, ‘it’s yours'?”
I swallowed, and before everything that had happened at the cabin, I would have been terrified to turn to my dad and tell him I’d been sleeping with Ford. But now it didn’t seem that big in the grand scheme of things.
“Belle Easton?” someone called, and I turned to face the nurse waiting inside the doorway on the other side of the room. I stood slowly, not sure what to do. Did I ask Ford to come in with me? Or did I go in alone, just like I’d been doing for the last six months?
Mom stood and hooked her arm through mine, pulling me toward the doorway, and at the last second, I turned. “Ford?” His gaze snapped to mine, hope flaring inside his eyes. “Will you come in with us?”
“Belle, what’s going on?” Mom whispered, her tone sharp.
I didn’t answer her, and Ford didn’t hesitate to move toward me, not even when Dad ground out, “Don’t you dare go in there, Ford.” He didn’t heed his warning, and it was the first sign that Ford would be there no matter what. I’d never doubted it. I just hadn’t been able to entertain it, not when I’d thought he was dead. But it was different now. He was here. He would always be here.
Mom didn’t let go of my arm as the nurse led us to a room. “We’ll get some information, and then the doctor will come in and do a scan to make sure everything is okay,” she told us. “If you get up onto the bed, I’ll be back to check your vitals.”
She closed the door behind us, leaving the three of us in the small room.
“If one of you would like to tell me what the hell is going on now, that would be great.” Mom’s voice was like whiplash, and I understood why. She had no idea what was going on, and I opened my mouth to tell her, but Ford beat me to it.
“I’m the father.”
Mom’s brows rose. “Say what now?”
Ford cleared his throat but didn’t look away from me. “When I was assigned to Belle at the college, we…I…” He pushed his hand through his short hair and blew out a breath. “We—”
“Were in a relationship,” I interrupted.
“What?” Mom whispered, but the door opening and the nurse re-entering stopped her from saying anything else.
The nurse smiled at me and pointed at the bed. “Take a seat.”
I moved toward the bed and winced as I tried to get up onto it, but Ford rushed forward and placed his hands on the side of my stomach. His face was inches from mine as he bent down, and I rested my hands on his shoulders to use him to steady myself as I got up onto the bed. “Thank you,” I whispered to him.
“You’re welcome, Baby Belle.” He smiled, the kind of smile I remembered he used to give me, and butterflies swarmed in my stomach. He still made me feel exactly the same as he had the first time he’d kissed me, only now there was so much more between us. More than either of us could talk about right then.
“We’ve requested your records from the doctor in Five Oaks,” the nurse said, sitting on a stool with wheels attached to the feet. She pushed closer to me and Ford stepped back, but kept his distance from my mom. “We should have them in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, I’ll get some history from you.” She pulled a pen out of her breast pocket and clicked it. “When is your due date?”
“December sixteenth,” I told her, knowing the date by heart. It was just over four weeks away.
“Okay.” She wrote it down on her pad. “And do you know if you’ve had any complications throughout your pregnancy?”
“No complications,” I told her. “I did have Braxton-Hicks a couple of days ago. Three in a row.”
The nurse nodded. “That’s normal at this stage. It’s your body getting ready for the birth.” She smiled at me and pushed some of her blond hair behind her ear. “Let’s take your blood pres
sure, and we’ll get a urine sample after the ultrasound scan.”
“Okay.” I sat up a little and pushed my sleeve up, showcasing the fingermark bruises Curtis had left me with. The nurse didn’t comment on the bruises she could see, but I’d heard Mom on the phone to them an hour before we got here, so I had no doubt she’d given them a rundown of what had happened and the state I was in.
