Page 119 of Call You Mine
But I’m already looking at her.
Looking at mywife.
Looking at my family.
Georgie might not be mine on paper—yet—but she’s mine in every sense of the word.
Just like Ava.
And our baby.
As Rumi, Emerson, Jack, and Evee join us, the girls wrap their arms around Ava and Georgie as Jack claps me on the shoulder, his way of saying congratulations. The courtroom is loud and animated, our shared relief and happiness almost overwhelming.
I watch Ava, committing that smile to memory, knowing that now I’ve seen it, I’ll never get enough.
And then I watch as she, almost subconsciously, brings a hand to her stomach. It’s small. Barely anything. No one notices—except for us. My eyes drop, just for a second. Then lift back to hers. Everything unspoken sits there between us.
“Okay, okay,” Emerson’s voice cuts in, warm and teasing as she steps forward. “Are we celebrating, or are we all just going to keep crying in a government building?”
Rumi laughs, already pulling out her phone. “No more crying. Pictures first. Then more crying.”
It’s a day I know I’ll remember, regardless of the pictures, but we pose and smile anyway.
CHAPTER 43
AVA
“So what are we?”
Anderson raises a brow at me from where he sits on the chair next to where I’m laying on the exam table. We just got into our room for our first doctor’s appointment, and I figured now was as good a time as ever to pose the question that’s been heavy on my mind.
I don’t know if I ever felt the excitement that I imagine most first-time mothers feel when they see the positive pregnancy test. I don’t know if I ever will.
For me, I immediately felt the responsibility—heavy enough to press against my ribs.
In the same way the baby will.
There’s a literalpersoninside of me.
Not an idea, not a maybe—a human being who is already depending on me in ways I can’t even fully comprehend.
Every thought feels like it matters more now, like there’s a right way and a wrong way to carry this, and I’m somehow supposed to know the difference instinctively.
But I can’t trust instinct.
I need something measurable, something tangible.
Something I can get exactly right, so I know nothing will slip through.
“You really want to have this conversationnow?” he asks, a dry chuckle escaping his lips.
I shrug my shoulders, tapping the tips of my shoes together, counting each tap with one part of my brain while the other tries to stay focused on Anderson. “Why shouldn’t we have it now?” I ask.
“I can come up with a few,” he deadpans, squeezing my hand between his fingers just as I get to seventeen. “The first one being that the ultrasound technician will be here any minute.”
I huff out a breath, reaching my hand behind my head where it lays on the exam chair. I don’t tell him that’s exactly why I’m bringing it up right now.
Logically, I’ve known this pregnancy is real since the positive test—all thirty-four of them. I knew it was real when I told Anderson, and everything between us changed. I thought accepting these feelings that have grown for him, accepting his feelings for me, was going to be this huge, world-changing event.
