“I think it’s a she,” Marcus shrugged, getting a nod from Ned.
“Mom, can you find a good OB/GYN in Sarasota? I’m going to move Sadie and Dobby to the house until Orson Riley’s been found.”
Looking up at me with unfocused eyes, almost like she was in a baby fog, she nodded then immediately went back to looking at the pictures. Dad wasn’t much better, but the grin on his face was almost comical.
“She’s beautiful,” he said through the grin, reaching around Mom to smack me on the back. “You did good, son.”
“You, too?” Craig huffed. “Mr. Rossi, you’re going against what I said only seconds ago.”
“And I’m doing it on purpose, Craig,” he winked.
“Wait, what’s that you’re looking at?” Ari asked, almost scaring the shit out of me, seeing as how I hadn’t even known she was there until her head poked out from behind my parents. “Is that— Whose baby is that?”
I swear my chest almost exploded with pride. “Mine.”
“You knocked Sadie up?” she choked out, glancing at Ned nervously. Then, she swung around and poked Parker in the chest. “And you didn’t think to tell me this when you rang and said she was in the hospital?”
“That would be a violation of HIPAA, baby. You know that.”
“How does HIPAA override the best friend data disclosure act?” she cried, swinging her arm in the air. “I’m going to see her.”
Shooting us all a glare, she marched down the hallway in the direction of the rooms, only stopping when it occurred to her that she didn’t know which one Sadie was in.
“Next door on your right,” I shouted out, looking back at Parker, who was shaking his head as he watched her shove the door open and disappear inside. “The best friend data disclosure act?”
“Never a dull moment, man. Never, ever a dull moment.”
Dad chuckled, but the humor fled almost as quickly as it arrived. “Want to tell us what’s going on with your woman? Jackson’s filled us in on some of it, but I’m thinking we’re missing a lot of the facts.”
So, with Ned helping me, we laid out all of the information about the fucker and her health. By the end, Mom and MeeMee had made plans for Sadie and the baby, and the men had made some for her safety.
No matter what, she was going to have everything she needed and then some.
Sadie
It felt like I’d just closed my eyes when I was blinking them open again, squinting at the amount of light in the room.
Given how many people I’d had around me recently, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see someone in the room with me, but when I saw Ari watching me like a creeper, the squeak that came out of me proved it was still possible.
“So, you’re having a baby?”
Rolling onto my back, I dug around for the remote doohickey that raised the top of the bed, so I was sitting upright for this conversation.
First things first, though. I needed to ask a question about something that’d worried me earlier.
“How pale do I look right now?”
Sound vain? Well, try having hair that was naturally white blonde and your eyebrows and eyelashes being the same color. Then try having skin so pale you made milk look tanned. Add all of that together, and normally it was a strange look. But when you’d been hoiking your guts up for days on end, it would’ve been even worse.
Even being sick, I didn’t want to look like a freak, so I needed to know.
“Your eyebrows and eyelashes still have some of the color on them,” she waved her hand in the air.
She had beautiful dark eyelashes and eyebrows naturally, so she probably wouldn’t understand unless she shaved hers off or if she bleached them white. That said, it was a relief that you couldn’t vomit dye from your facial hair.
“Awesome,” I sighed, shifting around to make myself comfortable. “And, yes, I’m pregnant.”
Of all the things I expected from her, it wasn’t for her to jump up and throw her arms in the air, screaming, “Yes!”
“You’re not surprised?”
Sitting back down, she leaned forward with her elbows on the mattress beside me. “Honey, I’m surprised but ecstatic. That man in the waiting room isn’t the Elijah he’s been for the last two years almost. He’s the man we knew before he lost his best friend.” At my look, she nodded. “Yeah, we know. Jackson filled us in on what happened with Coop’s parents, and it all added up. I mean, losing Cooper wasn’t easy on him, but I know for a fact it was his parents who made Elijah withdraw from life and turn into someone who couldn’t find light in it.”
I only knew some of what’d happened with them, but every time I thought about it, I wanted to smack them both silly. Grief twisted your mind, I knew that from personal experience with Mum, but to lash out like that, blaming someone who’d lost a brother? Fuck that. Making someone miserable didn’t cure grief, and blaming someone who was faultless didn’t make it better either. They would know that by now, so why hadn’t they apologized to him yet?
“How far along are you?”
Putting my hand over my stomach, still trying to figure out where inside the baby was inside of me, I said, “Fourteen plus three.”
She frowned and tilted her head. “So, seventeen weeks? How is that possible?”
“No, apparently that means fourteen weeks and three days.”
“Wow.” She sat back, looking amazed. “When can you find out what you’re having? You’re going to find out, right?”
“I didn’t ask,” I shrugged. “I was too shocked by the fact I was seeing a baby inside my stomach. Then it started doing this little rave type dance, and that was it.”
“Shit, I missed it,” she pouted, sitting back. “You can get recordings of your scans now, so next time do that so I can see it if I’m not with you.”
One of the first things that’d hit me after I’d found out about the baby was that I was alone in this pregnancy. Yes, I had family and Elijah, but I didn’t have my mum to hold my hand through it and answer all of the questions that would come to me over the next however many months I had left.
Now, listening to Ari and how involved she wanted to be, I realized that I wasn’t alone. I still missed Mum and wished I could call her up to ask her things, but I had a lot of people who’d be there for me.
“When I moved here, I didn’t think I’d find happiness. All I wanted to do was escape and survive, you know?” Seeing as how she’d been in that room in the cabin with me when I was shot, yeah, Ari got what I meant. “But even with what we went through, I think this is the most at peace I’ve felt since Mum died. I know I still have Orson to worry about, but I feel like I’ve found the place for me when I wasn’t even looking for it.”
Grabbing my hand, she squeezed it gently. “I love that, and I’m relieved you feel that way. You’ve got a lot of us behind you, Dahl, so don’t you ever forget that.”
She wasn’t kidding. I doubt any of them even knew how many members there were in her family, and once they found out about the baby… Oh, shitting shit.