Always Yours

by Grace Owens

  Damn him for redeeming some of his asshole-ness by offering to drive me home.

  Chapter 6

  ◆◆◆

  IT WAS THE night before my doctor’s appointment and I was a nervous wreck. I hadn’t heard a word from Cailean. I didn’t know what he had decided, if he had even decided on anything. I hated being left in the dark and a part of me - a tiny part - had wanted him to chase me down those stairs and told me he would be there for me no matter what. Of course nothing had happened. No phone call. No texts. No uninvited visits at work or at home. Nothing.

  I needed support. Especially if I was going to do this by myself, which was what I had started telling myself to prepare for. I needed to figure out what to do about work; so far it was a secret and apart from a few vomiting sessions, everything was normal in the office. I just needed to wait out the time until they announced which one of us interns got the job. Once I was hired, they weren’t allowed to fire me for being pregnant. At least then I would have a secure income to support the two of us.

  Holy crap, there’s going to be two of us…

  Allie must have sensed my stress when she saw me a couple of days ago because she suggested a girls’ night. At first, I wanted to tell her no and bury myself underneath my blanket, but then I realized that it might be exactly what I needed. Besides, what better way to tell Hanna about my surprise?

  I had ended up going straight to Allie’s house after work, wanting to put in a few extra hours to prove that I was still in the running, so Hanna was already there.

  “Finally, she’s here,” she said as I walked through the front door and handed me a glass of wine. “Sorry, we already started without you.”

  “Started what exactly?” I asked, eyeing the wine I so desperately wanted to have drink of.

  “Eating and drinking, of course.” Her tone suggested it was obvious and it probably was. I was just too nervous to do anything but setting the glass of wine down on the kitchen counter before sitting down. “Come on, you’ve got some catching up to do.”

  I could feel Allie’s eyes on me from where she was standing by the oven as Hanna pushed both the wine and some food toward me. She knew I shouldn’t be drinking it and the reason as to why it was still untouched whereas normally I probably would have half of it downed by now.

  “Actually, there was something I wanted to tell you,” I said, mostly to Hanna, but this was something I needed to tell Allie as well even if she already knew half of it.

  “Why do you sound so serious?” Concern was pulling at Hanna’s gentle features.

  “Because…” I started, wondering how the hell I was going to tell her - tell them. Allie stepped closer and nodded at me to continue. What the hell, just blurting it out seemed to have worked fine with Cailean. “Because I’m pregnant.”

  There were a few moments of silence that felt as if they went on forever. It was different than when I had told Cailean because I actually cared for these people. Without their support, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Their reaction mattered to me.

  “Huh?” Hanna finally grunted out, staring at me in confusion.

  “I’m pregnant,” I said again. “There’s apparently a baby growing inside me.”

  Another long stretch of silence. I was thankful for Allie’s silence as she busied herself with preparing the snacks.

  “Please, for the love of all that’s Holy, don’t tell me that the father is the mystery guy from Vegas,” Hanna pleaded. I had no idea why her words made me feel offended, but they did. So what if it was?

  “Well, who else could it be?” Allie interjected before I could confirm what Hanna had said.

  “She seemed pretty cozy with Cailean at my wedding,” Hanna shot back and looked at me with hopeful eyes. “That was what, more than a month ago? The timing adds up.”

  “We went to Vegas seven weeks ago,” Allie supplied.

  “Guys,” I interrupted before it could go on much longer. “It’s both.”

  Judging by the look on their faces, I should have elaborated a bit more because they looked absolutely horrified.

  “How’s that even possible?” Allie asked in confusion, her eyebrows pinching together in an adorable way as she tried to solve my unintended riddle. “Twins?”

  I let out a small chuckle, welcoming the small joy among all this heavy shit.

  “No, Cailean is both,” I answered, feeling as if a part of the heavy weight on my chest was finally been lifted. “He’s the mystery guy from Vegas and the dad.”

  “But…” Hanna started, unable to finish her sentence for some reason. “But you saw him at my wedding and you didn’t say anything.”

  “Because we don’t exactly have the greatest history.” I cringed, not wanting to tell them about our past, but at the same time, it felt as if I needed to in order for them to understand. “We actually met in high school. It was the whole classic bad, foreign boy, bully versus the awkward girl with no friends. How I ended up married and knocked up by him, I don’t know.”

  I toned it down a lot. Mostly because I was too embarrassed to tell them, but also because this wasn’t what we were supposed to talk about. I was pregnant and I needed support. I didn’t want to dredge up stuff that were meant to be buried and I definitely didn’t want to talk about Cailean, no matter how big his role was in me ending up pregnant.

  “No way,” Hanna breathed out.

  “Hold up one second,” Allie said, raising her hands to stop what we were doing, which was nothing. “Rewind to the part where you said you married the guy.”

  Crap, crap, crap. Crappity crap.

  “I didn’t say that,” I said, trying in vain to take my words back by playing stupid.

  “I need something stronger than this,” Hanna said and downed the rest of her wine before she left to search for the heavy stuff. I felt bad for worrying her and I wished I could have found a better way to tell them. Hell, I wish I didn’t have to tell them anything. If there was one thing I wanted to wish away more than anything, it was my night with Cailean.

  “I don’t think it’s fair for you to just toss that out there and then not explaining. That would be just like those vague bitches on Facebook we complain about all the time,” Allie said disapprovingly when Hanna made it back with Lord knows what in her glass. “Even if you didn’t mean to say it, you did.”

  “Fine… I woke up married to Cailean Baker that morning in Vegas.” The admittance brought shame and my cheeks heated up in embarrassment. “I don’t know how it happened and apart from a couple of snapshot memories, I don’t remember much either.”

  “What I want to know is how the hell you didn’t recognize him? He’s sort of hard to… you know, miss.” Allie’s question was something I had asked myself a thousand times over and I still didn’t have an answer for it.

  “It had been almost eight years since I had last seen Cailean. The guy I met in Vegas introduced himself as Tyler and his accent was way more American than what Cailean’s had been, at least as far as I remembered it being. There were a few times where I thought I recognized him from somewhere, but in my alcoholic daze, I think my brain saw what it wanted to see – a handsome guy who was interested in me.”

  “And you thought it was a good idea to get married,” Hanna said almost accusingly, but quickly recovered and said, “Sorry, it’s just that after all the wedding planning I have been doing, I was looking forward to help you plan your wedding and I didn’t even get to see you do it.”

  “Trust me, it wasn’t something I had planned on doing and if I could take it back, I would.”

  “So just divorce him,” Allie suggested as if it was the easiest thing.

  “I can’t.” I sighed heavily. “I have to wait until I get hired full-time to save up enough money for a lawyer. So unless he decides he wants a divorce, it ain’t happening right now. And believe me, he doesn’t.”

  “But if you guys didn’t like each other in high school, then why the hell would he want to stay married?” Another
good question from Allie.

  “I don’t want to talk about high school.” I truly didn’t. I wasn’t ready for that. “But let’s just say he liked making my life miserable. Staying married to him is making me feel like that hopeless little teenager again.”

  “You’re so far from being hopeless or weak,” Hanna said, coming over to give me an encouraging hug. “This is a huge deal and honestly, I probably would have killed him by now if I was in your shoes.”

  I knew she was joking. While Cailean was an asshole, he didn’t deserve to be dead. Maybe a punch to his perfect nose, but not death.

  “Does he know about the baby?” Allie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And…?”

  “I haven’t heard from him since I told him,” I admitted, biting my thumb nail, an action that proved how much that little fact affected me.

  “That asshole.” The grumbled sentiment came from Hanna, but Allie nodded in agreement.

  Silence fell over us as we all seemed to stew over Cailean’s actions as well as my predicament.

  “Come on, let’s do what we came here to do,” Allie demanded after a few minutes and took the bowl of popcorn into the living room. “I think watching a romantic movie is very much needed right now.”

  “Or not,” I mumbled but still followed.

  “We need something that proves that there’s still romance out there,” Hanna explained and pulled me in for a hug.

  Putting my arms around her, I wanted to argue that the proof they were looking for was in their husbands. Just because mine happened to be an asshole, didn’t mean that romance was dead. I just hadn’t found it… yet.

  ↞ ♥ ↠

  Relief washed over me when I saw Cailean standing outside the doors to my office the next day. He was standing there awkwardly, hands in his black jeans’ pockets, shoulders hunched up, causing the black and white baseball tee to stretch around his muscles. Everything about his body language screamed nervous.

  Join the club, asshole.

  “You never told me where your appointment was,” he said as I walked up to him.

  “And you had to wait until the last minute to ask?” I was frustrated. Once the relief had settled, anger over the worry I’d had been feeling over the last week showed up.

  “I needed time to think.”

  A tiny pinch of guilt assaulted my chest. I shouldn’t have been so mad at him for letting me worry. This was a lot to take in. I had waited a week before I told him, after all. Still, not a single word after I drop such a giant bomb on him?

  “I’ll text you the address,” I said and started walking toward my car. If I gave in to my anger, we would never leave and traffic at this hour was horrible; I didn’t want to miss my appointment.

  “I was thinking we could go together,” Cailean said as he caught up to me. He seemed hesitant almost. “Besides, you kinda need my number in order to text me.”

  “Who says I don’t?” I grumbled, mad at him for being right. I didn’t have his number and I didn’t want it.

  “That angry expression on your pretty face is telling me all I need to know.”

  Smug bastard.

  He protested pretty heavily when I got into the driver’s side of my car, but there was no way I would have let him drive even if he knew where we were going, and leaving it here was out of the question.

  I could sense his negative energy all the way to the doctor’s office, but no matter how much I wanted to snap at him, I didn’t. I was too nervous about where we were going and how it was going to affect us to bother with his behavior.

  Luckily, check-in went pretty smoothly - if you didn’t count the urine sample I had to leave. Peeing on demand wasn’t one of my strengths as proven at Cailean’s house last week. It was even harder knowing what would be revealed this time. I knew in my mind that it would be the same results, but having a doctor read them instead of your baby daddy was slightly more terrifying.

  Cailean was still sitting in the same spot I’d left him at when I returned to the waiting room and it didn’t take long until a nurse called my name and led us into a small exam room where she continued with taking different vitals.

  “Please remove all your clothes and put this on; you can leave your socks on if you’d like. Dr. Blackburn will be with you shortly,” she said with a sweet smile and handed me a pink gown before leaving the room.

  I had done plenty of research about establishing a new patient-doctor relationship and what went on during your first prenatal appointment. I knew exactly what the gown was for, but that didn’t mean that I was less nervous about it.

  “Leave,” I told Cailean so that I could change before the doctor came.

  “Why? It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before,” he said matter-of-factly and sat down in one of the chairs in the corner.

  “I like pretending that you haven’t,” I muttered.

  “So I’ve noticed,” he mumbled and stood up with a sigh. But instead of leaving like I asked, he simply just turned around. “I’m not going to stand out in the hallway like a fucking creep.”

  “Fine, but don’t you dare turn around!” I hissed loudly, earning a chuckle from him.

  I quickly shrugged out of my clothes and changed into the gown, keeping my eyes on Cailean the whole time. Luckily, it was a gown that you tied in the front so I didn’t need to ask for his help to tie it.

  “I’m done,” I said quietly and sat back up on the bed, the paper rustling underneath me.

  He didn’t say anything, instead he just sat back down in the chair, leaning forward on his elbows. It didn’t take long before he started fidgeting.

  “Stop fidgeting,” I told him. It was driving me nuts, but then again, almost everything about him was driving me nuts.

  “Sorry. Just nervous,” he answered with a shrug.

  “What do you have to be nervous about? You’re not the one who has to be prodded and flash your vagina to a complete stranger.”

  There was a knock on the door before he could answer my question.

  “Gertrude?” a short lady with dark curly hair asked, poking her head in the door. I nodded my head shyly and Cailean finally stopped fidgeting. “Hi, I’m Dr. Blackburn.”

  She held out her hand for me to shake, which I did before she moved on to Cailean. Something about her presence instantly made me calm and I found myself liking her. “You can call me Gertie,” I told her as she sat down on her little chair.

  “I’m Cailean,” Cailean said from his seat and shook her hand. I was happy about the fact that he didn’t find the need to elaborate further.

  “Nice to meet you guys, and congratulations!”

  Congratulations. It was the first time someone had actually said that word in regards to my pregnancy. It wasn’t as if I had been trying to get pregnant and was over the moon about being in this situation. Was congratulations even the right word? Was I happy?

  I didn’t know how, but Cailean seemed to have some sense of what was going on in my mind and sent me a small smile that almost took the breath out of me. It was small things like that that threw me for a loop - he was an asshole one minute and then seemed to care in the next moment.

  I shot him a tight smile in return and turned back to Dr. Blackburn.

  While it was a relief that Cailean was here to support me, it was somewhat embarrassing having to answer all the doctor’s questions in his presence - when was your last period? How long did it last? Was it a normal one? Did I experience any spotting so far? Any symptoms?

  I felt myself blush and wished that Cailean could leave the room for the questions. They were private enough that I didn’t want him to hear it. However, I was the one who had wanted him with me - and I still did want his support - so I didn’t want to be a hypocrite by asking him to leave.

  I tried to zone him out as I answered the doctor’s questions the best I could, but prior to being pregnant, there hadn’t been a need for me to keep track of things like when my last period had started.
And apart from the constant nausea, I hadn’t really experienced any symptoms so far.

  While her firing questions kept me occupied and focused, the more she asked, the more I started to freak out. This was really happening. I was at a doctor’s office talking about my pregnancy with my baby-daddy looking as handsome as ever in the corner of the room.

  After she asked another 800 questions – okay, maybe an exaggeration – she got down to business. And I mean lady business. This was the first time I’d ever had my vagina examed as there had been no need before – I’d had sex once before Cailean for Christ’s sake – and it was uncomfortable. Cailean did at least have the decency to move to the top of my head when the doctor asked me to lie down. Otherwise he would have gotten a clear view of my privates.

  The exam was over in a minute and then the doctor went on to exam the outside of my belly. The probing on my stomach wasn’t comfortable by any means and I wondered how she could possibly feel a baby in there. I tried to ignore Cailean, but it was hard considering he was almost to the point of hovering by now, too fascinated about what was happening to simply stay back a few feet.

  “Everything seems to be in order. Without an ultrasound to confirm, I can’t say for sure, but I would estimate that you’re around 8 or 10 weeks pregnant. So your due date should be somewhere around March 22nd,” Dr. Blackburn said with a smile and finally finished her probing. “Would you like to hear the heartbeat before you leave?”

  “We can?” Cailean asked in excitement.

  “Sure.” Dr. Blackburn let out a small laugh and turned around to get the Doppler - I had researched that, too, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit proud over knowing what it was called - and a squirt bottle. “This will be a little cold.”

  She squirted out a small amount of gel on my abdomen and started searching for the baby’s heartbeat. It wasn’t long until a soft and steady whooshing sound filled the room – our baby’s heartbeat. It was real. Someone was actually growing inside me. The evidence of it was so clear, I couldn’t help myself but feel emotional about it – what emotions it was, I had no idea, maybe happiness and joy mixed with sadness and hopelessness.