My husband hadn’t been happy that he’d had to leave my side, but I was more than a little thankful he wouldn’t have to see that.
As soon as he was through the door, Jordan sprinted to my side, kissing me as if he hadn’t seen me in weeks instead of less than half an hour. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good,” I assured him with a bright smile. Now that the scary part of having a huge needle put in my spine was over, I was great.
While the moms got comfortable in the chairs around my bed, the nurse was already placing the medicine into my IV that would get my labor started. For the next few hours, I sat up in bed and played board games with Mom and Alexis while Jordan rubbed my shoulders and neck. Other members of our family came and went, promising they would be with my dad and Jared Moreitti in the waiting room, where the moms had banished them because neither one of them could handle the anticipation of what was going on in my private laboring room.
Six hours in, the doctor came in and broke my water then said he was going for some dinner.
But no sooner had he reached the door than I started feeling an intense pressure in my lower abdomen and bottom. “Aw, fuck!” I cried, my hands gripping the rails of my bed.
“What?” Jordan cried, his face turning gray. “Baby, what’s wrong.”
“Well then,” the doctor said calmly as he came back to my bed and pressed the nurse’s call button. “Let’s just take another look, shall we?”
I heard Mom and Alexis murmuring excitedly to each other while Jordan scrubbed his hands over his tired face. “Is she okay?” he demanded just as the two nurses came into the room. They didn’t even approach me, just started prepping.
“Arella, take a deep breath for me,” my doctor said in that soothing voice he was known for. “Jordan, why don’t you help her pull her knees up to her chest.”
I felt my husband’s hands tremble as he did as he was instructed. Mom came around to my other side and helped too while Alexis moved to stand beside her son. Another intense pain hit me and I tried not to cry out, but it was too much and I whimpered just as the doctor told me to push.
Two more and then the room was filled with the angelic cry of my beautiful baby girl. She was placed on my chest, and the grandmothers started sobbing. “She’s so beautiful,” Alexis cried, her hand rubbing over the baby’s thick, dark hair. “Hello, little beauty. I’m your nonna.”
The baby started snuffling around my chest, and I helped her find her way to my breast, in complete and total awe at how beautiful she truly was. I couldn’t take my eyes off her even to blink. All that dark hair Mom had warned me she would have because my heartburn had been ridiculously horrible. I saw myself in the shape of her nose, lips, and even her jaw. Her fingers and toes were so tiny, I felt like I was holding one of my baby dolls from when I was a little girl.
Jordan left my side long enough to cut the umbilical cord, and then the nurses were taking the baby to the other side of the room to check her over while the doctor took care of me.
“Can you feel that?” Jordan asked in a strangled voice.
I frowned up at him. “Feel what?”
“He’s got his arm inside you up to his elbow,” he rasped out, looking even more gray in the face than he had earlier.
“Just helping the placenta out,” my doctor said as he finally rolled his chair back and placed something in a medical pan. “You did great, Arella. Not a single tear.”
Mom brushed my hair back from my face. “Didn’t even break a sweat,” she said with pride in her voice. “I’m going to go tell your dad that you’re okay and he’s finally got his granddaughter.”
I grinned. After Nevaeh and Braxton announced they were having another boy, Daddy had started grumbling that all he was going to have were grandsons. Not that he truly minded. He adored Conrad and Carver, who was only three weeks old now. But he’d been hinting that he hoped I was having a girl. Jordan and I had known for months we were expecting a daughter, but we’d wanted to surprise everyone with the baby’s sex since we hadn’t gotten to do the surprise-we’re-expecting dinner the day Garon had tried to take me.
Alexis took one last longing look at her granddaughter before saying she was going to go tell Jared, giving me a wink as she followed Mom out the door. I knew she was giving us a moment alone, or as alone as we could be with the nurses and doctor still tending to our baby girl and me.
Jordan brushed a kiss over my forehead. “You did so great, Mommy.”
“I couldn’t have done it without your help, Daddy.”
He snorted. “I didn’t do much of anything.”
“No, babe, you were a great leg holder,” I teased and tugged him down for a quick kiss. My heart felt full to the point of bursting, and it was all thanks to him. “We finally get to tell everyone her name,” I murmured sleepily. “I can’t believe I was able to keep it a secret this whole time so that no one would know we were having a girl.”
“I was just about to ask if we had a name,” one of the nurses spoke up as they finished swaddling our precious baby. “What should I put on her chart?”
“Braelyn Angelica Moreitti,” Jordan told her, then spelled it out for the woman so she could get it right for the baby’s birth certificate.
It was a few hours later before we could have visitors. Jordan’s mom sat in the rocking chair near the window, and Mom placed Braelyn in her arms. The pure joy on Alexis’s face was too much to witness, and I had to blink back my happy tears.
“Hello, sweet Braelyn,” she murmured softly. The baby looked wide awake, her little mouth forming a tiny “o” while she stared up at her paternal grandparents as they gazed down at her in complete awe.
“You were right, dolcezza,” Jared said in a quiet voice as he touched his finger over the baby’s cheek. “She is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.”
“How are you feeling?” my dad asked, his eyes running over my face in concern.
“I feel great,” I assured him with a tired smile. “I’m already thinking of how many more times I can do this.”
“No,” Jordan growled, shaking his head as he looked up from watching his mom with our daughter. “This is enough.”
“But you promised we could fill up our house with all the babies I wanted,” I reminded him with a grin.
“I don’t like seeing you in pain,” he grumbled.
“I felt pain for like two seconds,” I waved him off, only half teasing. “I think I want a boy next time, though. Like Mia, a girl and then a boy. And then maybe another boy, followed by two more girls.”
I watched him pale, but instead of arguing, he bent and kissed me. “Whatever you want, baby. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”
I knew he meant it, but I didn’t want to put him through this too many more times. I hated seeing him so stressed over my well-being. And there was no telling if the next delivery would actually go as smoothly as this one had.
“Maybe just one or two more,” I told him as I covered his left hand, my thumb rubbing over where my name was beautifully inked onto his finger. I would never get tired of seeing his “ring,” nor the possessive thrill I got when other women checked him out and he dismissed them with a wave of that hand that showed those bitches that he was mine.
“I think one more couldn’t hurt anything,” Mom said with a wink at me as she sat on my dad’s lap. “After all, you’re going to be so busy with all those movies, you don’t want to overextend yourself with too many babies right now.”
I nodded in agreement, but my eyes lingered on my parents as they cuddled. We didn’t talk about what happened with Garon anymore, but I’d made them tell me about what he’d sent them. They refused to tell me what was in the letters he’d left Mom, not wanting to put even more disturbing images in my head.
After Garon was shot, Detective Kirtner took a forensic team to his house and found further proof that he was, in fact, my stalker. Not only had there been a cage full of the poor little birds he’d sent me in some of the pa
ckages, but there had been bottles of my favorite lotion beside his bed, along with pictures of me all over his bedroom wall.
Pictures that he’d taken with his phone at a distance or gotten from the camera in my dressing room, which were of me naked while I was changing clothes.
Kirtner had discovered that Garon had a therapist and, after speaking to the man, told us Garon had started losing touch with reality following the death of his father. Garon had never told the man about what he was doing to Mom or me, but the majority of their therapy sessions had been about Garon complaining about Pop-Pop not loving him enough and leaving all his assets to Mom and her children.
Crazily enough, Garon had left me everything in his own will. I guess in his fucked-up mind, he thought we were going to be together forever once he kidnapped me. I hadn’t wanted any of his money. It felt tainted and dirty. I donated it to an organization that helped victims of abuse and stalkers start over.
The stake he owned in Strive, however, I’d gifted to Jordan. Now he didn’t need to go through Winston Cline to do the supervillainess movies he wanted to franchise. I couldn’t wait to lose the twenty pounds I’d gained while pregnant so we could start filming the first movie.
The story of how Garon died and why had caused a huge media frenzy for a few weeks, but once it calmed down, life had gotten back to normal for us. I didn’t hold it against my parents for keeping anything from me, and they hadn’t done the same with me. We were all at fault, but we’d only been trying to protect one another.
Jordan stroked my hair back from my face, pulling me out of my head. “You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, touching his lips to mine. “We can have as many babies as you want, my love. I’ll suck it up and deal. I did promise you we would fill up our house, and I still want that too. Just give me a few weeks to recover from being scared something might happen to you.”
“Deal,” I quickly agreed.
And that was how we ended up needing to add a few bedrooms to our house…
Playlist
“Feel It” by Michele Morrone
“My Arms” by LEDGER
“Time After Time” by GUNSHIP
“Starving” by Hailee Steinfeld & Grey
“Wait for Me” by From Ashes to New
“Don’t Let Me Down” by Fame on Fire & Arcaeus
“Listen to Your Heart” by Through Fire
“Crystalline” by Amaranthe
“Naked” by Ava Max
“My Oasis” by Sam Smith (ft. Burna Boy)
“Me Because of You” by HRVY
“Shh…Don’t Say It” by FLETCHER
Needing Arella Page 20