“Yeah, I just…” Slowly, a little bit of clarity spreads through his dark eyes and he crosses over to me, touching my stomach. “I never let myself think this far ahead. I’m not sure I ever thought I’d live long enough to do something like this. Jesus. We made a baby.”
Tristian dips down to kiss me, so hard and deep that I almost miss Killian’s words.
“Whose do you think…？”
I tear away from Tristian’s lips to blurt, “It’s ours.” I tackle my step brother right there on the bed, pressing a kiss to his mouth. “It’s all of ours, no matter what.” He gazes at me with this dumbfounded expression, which I suppose is fair. We might have been talking about this, but it was such a hypothetical. “That’s the one thing I want,” I tell him, holding his face in my hands. “I want it to be all the best parts of all of you.” Looking back and forth between all of them, I plead, “Promise me we’ll never need to know. Promise me if it comes out looking more like one of you than the others, you won’t love it any less.”
The tears come again, springing them all into action. They huddle around me with soft words and gentle touches, but I don’t have the chance to explain that I’m not sad or frightened.
I just already see the promise in their eyes.
36
Tristian
“She takes her prenatal vitamins and I cook all her food—all natural, nothing packaged or processed, organic when possible. We follow the diet given by the doctor.” I say all of this while the nurse fusses with the machine, flipping switches and adjusting knobs. I really wish she’d give me something here. “The birthing classes start next month, but Story is already taking pregnancy yoga. Twice a week. Her last blood tests were—” I pause to flip through the folder, trying to find her latest lab results, but they’re all mixed up in insurance papers and legal forms. “They looked… fine,” I lamely finish.
“Sounds like you’re doing everything right.” The smile she gives me is a little pandering, and that only causes my blood pressure to rise. Higher. Here we are, being the model almost-parents, and we can’t even get a little validation? She turns to Story, giving her a warm look. “The technician will be here in a few minutes.”
“Thank you.” Story winces and shifts on the bed. “I’m just eager to get it done so I can finally pee.”
The nurse laughs, acting breezy and annoyingly carefree. Story had to drink an entire bottle of sugary juice beforehand to both fill her bladder and provide a marker for the insulin test. “I’ll tell her to hurry.”
The instant the door closes, I pounce. “Are you comfortable? That table looks like something they picked up off the side of the fucking road. Do you need a pillow? We really should have done this at home. My mother’s doctor makes home visits. I’m sure—” I lean over Story, trying to adjust the exam table, but she swats me away.
“Tris, Jesus Christ, I’m fine.”
“You seriously need to chill,” Rath says, frowning at a chart on the wall. It’s a graphic showing the stages of a pregnancy, and the four of us have already isolated Story’s position in the timeline. Our baby is the size of a lemon. He tilts his head, squinting at the fetus drawing. “It’s just a sonogram of a lemon-sized clump of cells.”
“Just a—” I snap, fighting back the wave of anxiety. It’s new and difficult to control. Story is only fourteen weeks pregnant and I’m already about to go insane. I don’t know how these other two can seem so casual about it all. “It’s a test, dickhead. That means you can pass, and it means you can fail.”
I rest my hand on Story’s belly, but there’s not really a bump there yet. If the doctors in this town were a little more prone to bribery, then maybe we could have gotten this sonogram earlier. But they kept insisting it was useless before ten weeks, and then pushing me off until this afternoon. Ever since we got the news, I’ve suffered through a string of emotions. Usually, I keep it a little closer to the vest, but now that we’re here, I can’t help but feel nervous about what the sonogram will show.
“Bro, we got her the best doctor, vetted by you personally.” Killian is kicked back comfortably on the stool by Story’s other side, fiddling with the end of her braid. “The practice has a dietician, midwife, doula—the whole deal. They provide home visits, give Story excellent care, and didn’t even blink at the fact this kid has three dads. There’s no reason to micromanage this. It’s out of our hands.”