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Just like the one he lost.
Without thinking, I squeezed his hand.
He jerked, looking at me with tears in his eyes. Then his lips stretched into the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
“We’re having a daughter,” he whispered.
And because I was pregnant, staring at my healthy baby girl and the hottest baby daddy on planet Earth, I replied, “Yeah, we’re having a daughter.”
* * *
We didn’t speak on the ride home from the doctor’s office. Kip was pensive. But not shut off. He’d helped me off the bed in the ultrasound room, and his hands had stayed on me ever since. He drove one-handed, the other situated firmly on my thigh, moving up to rub my stomach at regular increments.
This appointment could’ve set him back. Even through my resentment of the man, I could understand that. Empathize with that. I was experiencing my own complicated fucking emotions. Sure, I was filled with relief that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. ‘Perfect’ was the word my OB used. Which was great.
And terrible. Myperfectbaby girl was thriving inside me. Moving inside me. Growing.
And I was becoming attached to her. To a life ahead that included her.
That meant it would be all the more terrible if something happened to her. Yes, the odds were in our favor now. The chances of losing her were drastically low. But I’d already been a part of the minority cases, so I knew I wasn’t protected by percentages.
I supposed Kip might’ve been thinking something similar. He’d experienced an anomaly that most people thought existed on the news, only happened to other people.
It was darkly ironic that we were two profoundly fucked-up people who’d lost things you weren’t supposed to lose. And now we were in a fake marriage that had somehow turned very fucking real.
When we got home, Kip said he had to go to work to “take care of some shit.” His voice had been faraway, and I wondered if he was going to retreat again.
That thought filled me with fear.
Only a day with him masquerading as a husband and a father, and the prospect of a future without him was more than a little daunting. I was only thinking this because of the trauma of these past few days, nothing else.
“I’ll call Calliope, get her to come sit with you,” Kip said, grabbing his phone off the counter.
“You will do no such thing,” I snapped. “I’m more than capable of being alone in my own house and not sticking my fingers into any sockets.”
He regarded me seriously, like he had to be convinced that I, an adult woman, was going to be fine home alone.
“Go!” I shouted at him.
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. He thankfully put his phone in his pocket.
He rounded the counter, stopping only when he got right in front of me. Then he put his hand on my stomach to lean in and gently kiss my head. I was so shocked I just sat there, letting it happen.
“I’ll come by with lunch,” he said against my forehead.
Then he left.
Without me arguing with him.
* * *
We just had dinner.
I’d requested Dorito casserole. Kip made it gladly, drinking a beer as he did so. I sat outside, pretending to read my book but really sneaking a whole bunch of peeks at him in the kitchen.
He looked really hot in the kitchen.
And he was acting all… nice. Still with the devotion. He’d come with lunch—sandwiches from the place in town that made their own sourdough, plus cookies from Nora’s bakery. And cake. Because he obviously knew I consumed sugar like it was going extinct.
