AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ash and I have spoken often of growing our family. Collin is sixteen, and Lainey is fourteen. My gallery, a shared venture I opened with Kate, is established, and Devin works with us. We even premiere in New York at a friend’s gallery once a year. Ash is now a professor at the college he’s been with for five years. We’re slowing down, a little.
We have so much more love to give, but adopting was out of the question. What if there were blood tests? DNA samples? The possibilities of being caught were too high. Too fucking high. It meant there was only one option. After nine months of watching our baby grow in a surrogate, we’re about to hold him in our arms.
Ashton is greedy, beating me to the nursery. The nurse has our little guy wrapped like a burrito and is rocking him back and forth. We stop at the entrance of the nursery. They have a room set aside for this reason. It’s the first time we’re meeting our son. And he’s so beautiful.
It didn’t matter who the bio daddy was. He’d have both our DNA. No one knew this, of course. But, we had to know who the bio daddy was. It was important to keep this secret, and Ash asked me to do it. I wouldn’t say no, but it didn’t mean he would be any less the father to this boy.
Lainey was upset when we told her it was another boy, claiming she was even further outnumbered. But I had a feeling when she was able to hold him, everything would change.
“Okay, Daddies. Only one of you can hold him first. Who is it going to be?”
Ash holds up his hand, and I point to him. “This little guy is so cute, but I probably don’t have to tell you two that. Do I?” she asks.
Ash stares at his son. He probably sees the same nose we both share, along with the thick black hair sticking out of his beanie.
“Does he have a name yet?” the nurse asks.
“Aaron Carl James,” we both say at the same time. The nurse leaves, and it’s just us.
“Oh, Noah. He’s ours.”
He’s ours. There’s no doubt about that. And to think I was the stupid motherfucker who almost gave this all up.
I tip Ash’s face up to mine, and stare at him, then at Aaron. “You’re right, Ash. He’s forever ours. Because you’re forever mine.”
This is not the end!
52
Narrator
The children’s hospital, in the mid to late nineties.
The storyof Noah and Ashton James isn’t over. It won’t ever be over, because their love surpasses all understanding. It may make people uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, this is their love story. And they won. They overcame unbearable obstacles, in order to live their life together.
But there are details they’ll never know. It’s a part of the story, that I—the creator—put into motion the day the baby who was supposed to be named William Andrew James was born.
The helicopter touched down onto the top of the children’s hospital with the team from Issaquah, who tried to keep him alive on the ten-minute flight.
There were times the father of this baby looked over and his son’s lips were blue, and he didn’t see his chest rising and falling.
The pediatric NICU met the baby and the team of doctors and nurses who flew with the newborn, as they worked hard to keep him alive.
They were yelling numbers and words the father couldn’t understand. He watched his baby work so hard to breathe his first breath, and it had become so difficult for the little guy.
“Are you the dad?” One of the nurses from the children’s hospital asks, and he could only give her a nod of his head.
“I want you to come with us. We have a waiting room for you, and we’ll come get you the second we know anything.”
His thoughts were still on his wife, who was bleeding out when he made the decision she would have insisted on. He left his dying wife to be with the baby she wanted so desperately.
He followed them down to the same level the newborn NICU was on, and he paced the floor for what felt like hours. A doctor appeared in the waiting room, but he wasn’t one of the many that started working on his son right away.
“Mr. James. I just spoke with your wife’s doctor. She lost a lot of blood, and they had to perform an emergency hysterectomy. She’s in recovery, and she’ll be asleep for some time. Her parents are there, and your son, the first-born twin, is as healthy as an ox.”
“My wife, she’s alive?”
“Yes, sir.”
