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“Yeah, right.” Malice snorts. “No one in their right mind would trust you with a wrecking ball.”
“That’s not true. People trust me with dangerous shit all the time.”
“We let you handle dangerous shit,” Vic comments dryly. “That doesn’t mean we trust you with it.”
The men keep bantering among themselves as more swings of the huge ball bring walls tumbling down. We stay until the mansion is nothing more than a pile of rubble on the ground in the middle of the lawn. Without Olivia around to pay them, the gardeners must have stopped coming, so the whole thing is overgrown and full of weeds, no trace of the immaculate landscaping left.
After a while, Victor checks the time and then puts a hand on the small of my back.
“We should get going, or we’ll be late,” he murmurs.
I nod, and we head back to the car, leaving the mess of what was once my grandmother’s seat of power behind.
I think of Misty as we drive, and how her house wasn’t where I belonged either. I think about the strip club I worked at, the school I fought so hard to get into. The whorehouse where I almost lost my virginity. There were so many wrong places that I ended up in over the course of my life, but they were all to get me to the right place. Here.
We pull up outside the doctor’s office a few minutes later, and all of us troop in. We got a few odd looks the first time we came in for an appointment, but now people are mostly used to it. I know it’s not uncommon for fathers to come with the mothers to ob-gyn appointments, but it’s not usually so many of them at once.
After I get checked in, we’re shown to the back. We settle into one of the exam rooms, and after I change into a gown, Doctor Simpson comes in.
“Ms. Hayes,” she greets me. “And, uh, everyone.”
I nod, grinning a little at the way she addresses my men. It’s clear she’s still not quite sure what to make of us, but I don’t even give half a shit. I’m so completely over second-guessing myself or feeling ashamed of who I am. And at least this woman is professional enough to brush past it, focusing on the matter at hand.
“Alright, then. Let’s get you up on the table, and we’ll get started,” she says.
She runs through a few standard questions, asking me if I’ve been eating well and about my morning sickness, which has improved a lot since the first couple weeks after I discovered I was pregnant. She also checks if I’ve had any pain or unexplained cramps or anything.
I answer all of her questions, then wince when she starts spreading the cold ultrasound gel on my stomach. She moves the wand around, and a sort of echoey sound fills the room.
It takes me a second to realize what it is.
“Is that—”
She smiles. “Yup. That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”
A sort of wild awe fills me, a lump growing in my throat. Logically, I understood that I was growing a person inside me, but hearing the heartbeat really drives it home. After I first realized I was pregnant, I had such conflicted feelings about it. I wasn’t sure I could raise Troy’s baby without constantly being reminded of that hell. But it helped that my men made it clear from the very beginning that they would support me no matter what choice I made, and that they didn’t consider sharing DNA with a Copeland to be a mark against the baby.
The guys look just as struck by the sound of the heartbeat as I do. Even Malice is standing with his jaw slack, a look almost like wonder on his face.
“And this…” Doctor Simpson taps a few keys on the keyboard attached to her equipment. “Is what the baby looks like right now.”
She turns the screen so we can see it, pointing out the shape on the sonogram. My baby.Ourbaby.
Victor smiles, tilting his head a little as he studies the screen.
“Beautiful chaos,” he murmurs. “Just like its mother.”
Something squeezes in my chest, and tears prick at my eyes.
The exam finishes up, and Doctor Simpson assures me that everything is looking good and progressing normally. She leaves the ultrasound machine frozen on an image of the sonogram, and I keep glancing at it as she tells me I can get dressed.
“I’ll see you in a month,” she says, then leaves the room.
The space seems to shrink now that it’s just me and my men. I can’t quite seem to catch my breath. My heart is racing, emotions crowding in my chest, tumbling over each other. They rise up higher and higher, filling me up to the brim until finally, they explode out as words.
“Marry me,” I blurt. “I mean… will you? Please?”
The men all react to that, surprise flickering across their expressions. They share a look, and then Ransom chuckles, glancing back at me. “Which one of us are you talking to, angel?”
