“Anything for you, Babe!”
Epilogue
Henry
Sophia is great at organizing parties, including weddings. Not ours, but Hayes and Blaire’s. It’s a small ceremony at the house. Her brothers, her parents, and some close friends of both join the celebration. His mother excuses herself, claiming that in such short notice she can’t attend, but maybe she’ll do it when the baby is born.
I feel for Hayes. I wouldn’t want to be in a place where my mother couldn’t stand my wife.
My wife…well, our nuptials are something entirely different. Sophie wants a destination wedding, but since I wanted her to be Mrs. Aldridge right away, we compromised with a small wedding at the townhall with our family. Once we’re allowed to travel, we’ll get married wherever her heart desires.
Today we’re gathered at Leyla’s vet practice’s grand opening. For a man who doesn’t give two shits about his wife, Pierce went all out for her. He bought the lot. In case we fuck up, Leyla doesn’t lose her practice. The place is the size of a clinic, and she can attend to small and big animals. She also has kennels to shelter animals.
“Pup,” Arden points at a cute little dog coming into the store. “I want pup.”
“I want a baby, buddy, and you don’t see that happening either,” I tell him.
Sophia glances at me and smiles. “Really, you’re having a conversation with Arden about puppies and babies?”
“Just a few weeks ago you had me working really hard to accomplish it and so far, I don’t see anything happening,” I state, and she laughs.
“Poor thing, I tortured you for an entire week,” she says mockingly.
We decided to start a family right away. Our relationship isn’t new. We’ve been almost living together for three years—in my office, not in a house. But back when we started, we used to focus more on work than on life. These days we concentrate on our family and us—not in that order.
Though Blaire told us that it wouldn’t be easy since Sophia just stopped taking the pill, we could try a little harder the weeks she’s ovulating to increase our chances.
“You should make it up to me when we get to the office,” I suggest. “It could be an incentive in case I have to try harder next month.”
She rolls her eyes and bites her bottom lip to hide her smile.
We’re living in the mansion, but kept Sophia’s house where we have the office, guest rooms, and well…we still have our special room. Some Sundays we spend the entire day in there having sex, eating in bed, and just lounging. I understand Beacon’s need for space. Our family is important, but somedays you just want to be alone. In our case, with each other.
“Hey, let’s go. I want you to meet someone, Arden,” Sophia says, taking the toddler into her arms.
“Who?” I ask following behind.
“Emmalee,” she explains, trying to walk through the sea of people who came to support Leyla by bringing their pets on opening day. “Easton’s sister. I think she’d be great to help us with Arden now that Leyla is also working.”
“Just an idea here, shouldn’t Mills be meeting her first?”
She gives me one of those sideways glances that says, obviously, your idea is shitty.
Thankfully we’re stopped by Blaire who says, “Everything is here!”
“Are you sure?” Sophia asks, forgetting about the whole babysitter thing.
“We just tried the machine. As I said, I can’t promise you anything, but we can try,” she tells her and I’m suspicious about these two.
Ever since the Martina incident, I’m question their intentions about almost everything. What if the next time instead of taking over a company she decides to take over a country?
I still feel strange about owning Edelstein Electronics. Finding the right person to run it wasn’t hard. Yet, there are a lot of issues we’ve been ironing out.
“If you’re planning on taking over some new venture, I forbid it,” I say. Both women glare at me.
Sophia gives Arden to Vance because we can’t bring him with us, and we make our way to the clinic. Blaire takes us to the second story and to the last room.
Hayes is there staring at a grainy picture that I assume is his child. “Baby’s first pic?” I joke.
He smiles like an idiot in love. “Meet your nephew,” he states.
“Godson,” I correct him and give him a hug. “Congrats, man.”
When Blaire enters, she starts turning on a machine monitors, and changing the paper sheet on top of the examining table.
“It’s too early, if she’s even pregnant,” Hayes says.
“If she is, we can see the sack,” Blaire retorts. “But she’s actually peeing in a cup since we got the pregnancy tests along with the machine.”
Suddenly, I realize they are talking about my woman, and I want to be with her. I turn to look at Blaire, “Where is Sophia?”
“In our private bathroom. She’s waiting for you,” she answers.
“Is it time to try?” I ask as I enter the bathroom.
She sighs looking at the already filled cup and then at a thin blue strip next to it.
“What is that?”
“My pee and a medical pregnancy test,” she answers and stares at it. “According to Blaire, they detect if there’s human chorionic gonadotropin in my urine.”
“So we dip it?” I ask taking the strip of paper and submerging it inside the full cup. I stop at the line and wait for a few seconds as the paper instructions read. “And if we’re not?”
“We keep trying,” she answers. “Remember, I have been on the pill for years so it can take a long time.”
“We wait three to five minutes?” I groan. “This could’ve been faster if we had sent Julian to Happy Springs for a test.”
“He’s on vacation,” she reminds me. “And we’re not sending people to do stuff we can do ourselves.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Blaire doesn’t even wait to ask if she can enter. She just makes her way inside.
“Let’s just use the machine,” she suggests. “We can find out faster.”
“If I’m not, it’s going to be sadder,” Sophia sighs.
“This woman just wants to play doctor, let her be. Nothing is going to appear because you can’t be too far along,” I say trying to keep both of them happy because I swear, it seems like they are both going to cry.
Maybe having two pregnant women in the house is a bad idea and I should wait for my turn. They walk to the sonogram room, Hayes leaves so Sophia can get comfortable, and Blaire gets to work. There’s a knock on the door. My brother enters with a wide smile and then looks at the monitor.
My pulse accelerates because maybe he has good news. Then again, he’s always smiling like an idiot when he sees his wife. Not that I blame him, I’m no different when Sophia is around.
“You got it on the screen?” Hayes says, coming closer to the monitor.
Blaire nods, pushing buttons on the keyboard and taking pictures she whispers, “Do you see what I see?”