Page 73 of Bolo's Curveball
CHAPTER 24
Devyn
Ireally liked Bolo’s family. The MC was only half of it. I still needed to meet his parents and his other brother, but the MC half? I knew I was going to get along with them just fine. They made it so easy to join in with them. Once they’d started harassing each other, before dinner even began, I’d been put immediately at ease. Replace the harassment with five women talking at the same time and you had me and my sisters.
“Devyn?” a nurse called. Her expectant eyes settled on me as Bolo and I stood up. Then her eyebrows shot up as she got a look at the giant next to me.
He tended to get that reaction a lot. I was getting used to it. People were either shocked at his size, or women were checking him out. He seemed oblivious to it all, though I doubted he was. Not much escaped his notice. He’d been sitting there, sizing upevery person who walked into the OBGYN’s office, for the last ten minutes while we were in the waiting room.
Most of the women got a cursory glance, but the men were studied from head to toe in case they could be a threat. It came off as such a natural thing for him I wasn’t even sure if he was casing the place for my benefit so much as it was just what he did. Though the way he kept shifting toward me a little here or there told me he was definitely keeping tabs on me and the baby as well.
Knowing that had chased most of my nerves away, though now they were back in full force. I wasn’t usually a super anxious person, but today was the day we were meeting with Dr. Natalie again and my blood pressure hadn’t dropped any during the week. And last night Bolo and I had taken our relationship to a new level.
I considered that as I followed the nurse down the back hallway toward the exam rooms. It wasn’t exactly anewlevel. A new, previously visited briefly, level. And we’d visited it three times last night alone. Which was probably why I was only slightly nervous today, and not a mess.
Give a girl some orgasms and it was hard to remember why you were supposed to be worried. Not to mention when those orgasms came with your very own six-five, sexy, heavily muscled biker bodyguard? Yeah, what was I supposed to be anxious over again?
The nurse got my weight and sat us in a room where she took my blood pressure. “One thirty-three over eighty-eight,” she said in a soft tone. There was no judgement there.
Though I wasn’t sure why there would be. It wasn’t like I was purposely making my blood pressure high. Still, it was hard not to feel responsible.
Bolo got out of the chair once the nurse left and came to stand by me. He wrapped his arm around me and tucked me inclose to his side. Sitting on the exam table, my head only reached to his chest, so I leaned it on him. It was like he had this sixth sense about when I needed comfort. Let me tell you, that was priceless to have in a partner. I hoped that continued because he just always knew when and how to soothe me.
We needed to talk, of course, about our relationship and where it was going. Especially now that we’d had sex again. And again and again. But that was a problem for later. So was the fact that I still needed to get Camila and Rue alone to chat with them. And I needed to go talk to my parents since we’d gotten in a fight, albeit a minor one. My sisters were calling and checking in, too, and I hadn’t called them back yet…and now the anxiety was coming back.
Bolo squeezed me tighter against him and I smiled up at him. There he went again, just knowing that I was working myself up. This was all new for me. I was pretty sure the addition of worrying about the baby was making everything else crowd my mind. Because usually I could compartmentalize and handle problems as they surfaced without everything else piling on. But that wasn’t possible for me right now. Any problem seemed to make all the others worse. It snowballed until everything was a massive issue. I didn’t like feeling this way.
Dr. Natalie came into the room, smiling at us. “Hello again. How did your week go?”
Bolo cupped the back of my neck, squeezing gently before he went and sat down again.
“It was good,” I said, automatically. “I mean, my blood pressure didn’t go down, but everything else was…good.” I gave her a small smile. “How was your week?”
“It was good, thank you,” she said, giving me a reassuring smile. She probably dealt with nervous first time mothers all the time. “Did you bring your numbers?”
I handed over the notebook I’d carried in. Inside, neatly printed in a list was every date, time, and result from when I’d taken my blood pressure over the last week.
“This looks great,” she told me, glancing up at me then back down at the book.
“It does?” I asked.
“I mean, it’s neat and legible,” she replied with a laugh.
“Oh, yeah. That.” I gave her and Bolo a sheepish smile.
Bolo grinned at me but didn’t say anything. He just crossed his arms over his chest. I knew his silence didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention. He was watching the doctor like a hawk, probably analyzing every facial expression she made, but he wasn’t interrupting with questions or comments either.
“So, this is definitely going to be a problem,” Dr. Natalie said, handing me back the notebook.
“Oh.” My heart dropped.
“It’s okay. I just want it to be in the one-twenties over seventies and these are all…higher. They’re not terrible right now, but they are higher than they should be for thirteen weeks pregnant. It just means we need to get you onto some medication to help lower that blood pressure. We’ll keep it as low as we can for as long as we can. Hopefully, we’ll be able to ride out the remainder of your pregnancy on that and have no other issues.” She gave me a reassuring smile.
“And if we can’t?” I asked.
“Well, this can develop into pre-eclampsia, where we’ll struggle to keep your blood pressure under control. But we’re nowhere near that yet, and it might not happen. We’ll see how the meds do for you.”
“And they’re safe to take?” I asked. “I mean, for the baby?”
