Page 95 of Expecting an Argument
I shook my head. “These…these aren’t my babies.”
The nurses tried to reassure me, but I ignored them as I instinctively looked up at Beau for help. He held a loose fist against his lips as he looked at the babies, his eyes glistening.
A faint itch of recognition tickled the back of my mind. I had seen the face of my twins before—not in an ultrasound, but on the wall of the second story landing back at Fontaine Manor.
My cheeks rose with a smile as I looked down at the twins, then back up at Beau. “These aren’t my babies, they’reyourbabies. They look exactly like—”
“I know,” Beau rasped, nodding his head slightly. “I…I see.”
He was stone still, as if he could freeze his incoming tears in place to keep them from falling.
I wiggled my toes, just to make sure I could move from the waist down, and then scooted over in the bed to make room.
“Well, come on,” I said with a pointed glance to the empty spot on the mattress. “Get in here and meet your children.”
Beau carefully sat in the bed, easing beside me so he wouldn’t startle the sleeping babies. His shoulder brushed against mine and his ribs mashed against my side. He was far too big for the hospital bed, but I still invited him to take up every remaining inch of space.
His face softened as he looked at the twins. He gently stroked Annie’s cheek and she gave him a tiny smile. Brady grunted in his sleep and his arm burst out of his swaddle, but Beau caught his little fist and held it.
“Our perfect babies,” he whispered as his thumb lightly traced Brady’s fist.
With a silent sigh, I rested my head on Beau’s shoulder. I had all of Beau’s love before, but that soothing warmth grew beforemy eyes, encompassing not just two, but four hearts.
And it felt wonderful.
The nurses helped us unwrap the babies from their swaddles and I breathed a sigh of relief when both twins latched for their first tandem feed. We braved through their first diaper changes. I discovered a small cleft on Brady’s chin that my mother also had. Annie’s slender fingers, just like her father’s, wrapped around my thumb and I nearly burst into tears.
All the while, Beau snapped picture after picture, his phone constantly vibrating as his mother responded to every image of the twins he sent her.
Sunlight bled through the hospital window and faded into a cool night, but time had become an abstract concept as we cared for the twins. When one baby settled down, the other would instantly start crying. We fed and burped and bounced the babies until we could scarcely keep our eyes open.
On top of meeting the twins’ every need, I was occasionally reminded that I was also recovering from major surgery. Nurses came in and out of the room at all hours. I was poked and pressed and given more pills than I could keep track of, but Beau stayed with me through it all—never complaining once.
On the second day of our hospital stay, a nurse came in with a stack of paperwork and a pen—the official government forms for the twins’ legal names.
I sat in the bed with the papers in my lap, my eyes scanning the blank forms, but then I looked up at Beau. He sat in the gray leather chair beside me with his eyes closed, holding the twins as they rested on his bare chest. Even though Beau was surviving on his third cup of drip coffee from the nurse’s station, his breathing wasn’t in his usual sleeping pattern. The twins, Annie under her lavender blanket and Brady under his sage one, had their cheeks smushed against their father’s chest as they slept peacefully in his arms.
A faint smile lifted my cheeks and I turned to my bedside table, where my mother’s ashes sat beside my breast pump and my hospital water jug.
Mom always told me I could do hard things, and she was right. I had braved through a tough pregnancy, swallowed my pride and accepted help, and survived a life-threatening delivery. Though victory after victory, one achievement was always out of reach—happiness.
I had always thought happiness was a temporary sunbeam that flashed in the gilt of triumph. I created my own happiness with an expensive pair of shoes, a strand of glittering Christmas lights, or the defeat of a bitter rival. Joy was earned, it wasn’t a state of being.
But when Beau came back into my life, I stopped trying to achieve happiness. At first, I was focused on mere survival—counting down the days until I could be back on my feet and continue conquering the world—, but then I found pockets of joy in mere existence. What began as quiet contentment with Beau had turned into deep comfort that led to occasional glitters of exhilaration—and he hadn’t made me earn any of it.
I had sworn off commitment because I had seen men take and take from my mother, but Beau was different. He gave. Not just money, cars, or jewels, but he gave himself, even when I wouldn’t reciprocate. Being with him had been so easy that I had thought I was falling into a trap, but what if I deserved an easy life? What if I deserved happiness?
Accepting that I deserved comfort and happiness from another person might have been the hardest thing for me to do, but like my mother said, I could do hard things.
I put the pen down on top of the forms. “Beau?”
He opened one eye. “Hmm?”
I wrung my hands in my lap. “You said you love me, but do you trust me?”
He blinked both eyes open and then stared off into a corner for a moment. Just when I thought the sleepless night had caught up with him, he turned back and looked at me.
“You’ve always been true to yourself and true to your word,” he responded. “Everything you said you would do, you’ve done. So, yes, I trust you.”
