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“But it wouldn’t have mattered then because I had the implant. Obviously it didn’t work, but…yeah.” I look at our hands and tickle the inside of his palm with my fingertips.
He jerks at the sensation and snatches my hand, linking our fingers. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll never know how it happened, just that it did.”
I swallow and nod. “It’s definitely yours, you know? I didn’t sleep with anyone for a few weeks until you.”
He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it. “I never doubted it, baby girl. Now get some sleep, okay?”
“Because I haven’t already had enough,” I mutter as he gets up.
He sits in the chair next to the bed and rests his feet on the bars at the side. He clasps his hands on his stomach and closes his eyes.
“Ty?”
He opens his eyes, and I wriggle across the bed.
“Sleep with me?”
“I won’t make you ask twice.” He gets up and slides into bed next to me.
“Snuggle,” I whisper, nudging his arm.
He smiles and curls it around me. Careful not to dislodge my IV or the pulse thing on my finger, I rest my cheek against his chest. I slide my hand beneath his shirt and splay my fingers out on his stomach. The warmth of his skin is comforting, and his arm around my body and his lips against my forehead feel an awful lot like home.
“I want to be your addiction,” he whispers into my hair. “Okay? I want you to want me all the time. I want you to need to be around me all the time, because it’s how I feel about you. I swear this last week has been hell, baby girl. You just about ripped my goddamn heart out.”
“I’m sorry.” I slide my hand around to his waist. “But I had to. I had to do it.”
“I know you did—for you. But it’s over now. You’re not being away from me anymore. You clearly can’t look after yourself.”
I jab his side and he laughs quietly. “You’re a twat, Tyler Stone.”
“But I’m yours, so I’m a special kind of twat.”
I smile and close my eyes. Too true.
“Ready?”
I nod at the sonographer and hold my breath. My IV pole is standing awkwardly next to me on the bed and Tyler’s on the other side. He’s gripping my hand so tight that I think he’s cut off all circulation to my fingers.
“This will be cold,” the sonographer says right before spreading the gel over my stomach.
Cold my ass. It’s fucking freezing!
She smiles at my hiss of breath and presses a button on the machine. She grabs the ultrasound probe and wiggles it over my pubic bone, coating it in gel. Then she pushes down firmly and the screen in front of us fills with fuzziness.
“There’s the placenta,” she says, showing a big blob. “And baby is… Ah, right here.”
Tiny.
It’s so tiny.
And I can’t look away.
“Baby has a good, strong heartbeat,” she says, zooming in. “Right there.”
Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. A tiny, dark hole in the chest of my baby is its heart beating away. Inside me.
A small leg kicks out gently and I take a deep breath. The sonographer says something about measurements, but all I can focus on is that tiny little flutter going on inside me.
