Page 16 of Dare To Marry You
Basically, my brain is good enough at thinking up worst-case scenarios that I’ve come up with countless ways I could make our wedding day go really fucking wrong.
But right now even though we’ve got a thousand minor details to finalize for the wedding, I have to stop worrying about all that. Because there’s a different priority today.
Pushing open the door to the midwife’s office in Westport, we hurry in from the cold. There’s still a lot of snow on the ground, but roads are plowed and salted, and life as usual has resumed after the storm that kept me stranded. Kat shivers and pulls off her gloves. “Damn, it’s cold. I know I’ll regret saying this in the summer when I’m as big as a house, but I wish it were warmer right now.”
I take her coat and then lace my fingers with hers. “I’ll keep you warm now and cool you off then. Whatever you need, Kitty Kat. Consider me your personal manservant.”
Her light giggle bounces off the hall. It’s a relief to hear, especially after witnessing how sick she is in the morning the last couple of days. The helpless feeling of watching her heave into the toilet, being completely unable to offer any relief except for fucking crackers and ginger ale, is awful. But Kat says that the midwife can prescribe her some medicine to help, which meant this appointment couldn’t come soon enough.
“As my manservant, is it your duty to massage my stinky feet at the end of each day?”
I nod somberly. “No foot is too stinky.”
Kat rolls her eyes as I drop her hand and wrap my arm around her shoulders. “C’mon, let’s go see our nugget.”
A short while later, the midwife Shannon is rolling over a cart with an ultrasound machine on it. “Lucky for you, I just got a new warmer for the bottle of gel.”
I have no clue what that means until Shannon pulls out a bottle of what looks like blue hair gel. She squirts some onto the end of a strange wand thing that Kat told me is called a transducer and turns to us with a smile. “Ready to see your baby’s heartbeat?”
Both of us nod rapidly, and I notice Kat’s eyes are already glistening. Good. That makes me feel better about the moisture I can feel building behind mine.
Then the most amazing sound fills the room. “It’s so fast!” I blurt out, and both Kat and Shannon chuckle.
“Yes, a fetal heartbeat is a lot faster than ours. Over 140 beats per minute. Your little one is giving us a nice strong listen, which is great.” She gives us a confident smile, then looks back to the screen. “Okay. Lets see if we can find them.”
My eyes are glued to the small screen where a grainy black and grey image is. Right now, all I see are squiggles and lines, but eventually, a black shape appears and right in the middle…
“Holy shit, Kitty Kat,” I whisper. The shape is unmistakable, even to my untrained eye. “That’s our baby.”
Kat’s hand squeezes mine so tightly it hurts. When I look at her to see why she’s not replying, I see tears streaming down her face. Bending down, I kiss her cheeks, swiping away the wetness with my mouth. “Babe. These are happy tears, right?”
Her head bobs up and down, but apparently, my girl is still incapable of speech. Shannon moves the wand around a bit and we lose the perfect view, but it’s imprinted on my mind forever now.
“Okay, measurements all look great. I put you at close to ten weeks already. I just want to check a couple more things, then we’ll print some photos and you’re good to go.”
When we step out into the winter wonderland, it’s as if the entire world has shifted on its axis. Because in my coat pocket are three black-and-white photos that have changed my entire life.
We stop in at the pharmacy next to the midwife’s office and fill Kat’s prescription, then make our way to a café nearby.
Once we’ve both got tea — peppermint for Kat and black for me — since she still can’t handle the smell of coffee, I gingerly pull out the ultrasound images again.
“This makes it all so real,” she says quietly, a soft smile on her face. “Like, obviously, it’s real, but now, seeing our baby. Hearing their heartbeat. It’s so much…more real.”
“You realize there is one problem we haven’t yet discussed.”
Her eyebrows raise over her tea cup. “And that is?”
“How to prevent your brothers from murdering me when they find out I knocked you up before the wedding.”
The rest of the week flies by, between work and last-minute wedding stuff. Until it’s Saturday, the day before our wedding. I come home from the store with a new box of peppermint tea for Kat and find her sitting in our spare room, smoothing out the clothes I bought when I was stuck in Vancouver, running her hands along the soft fabric with a smile.
“I thought nesting happened at the end of pregnancy.” I drop my hands on her shoulders and kiss the top of her head. “C’mon, Mama, we’ve got a wedding rehearsal to go to.”
Kat tilts her head back, and I automatically kiss her upturned lips.
“I know. But how can you expect me not to get all mushy about the stuff you bought?” Her head turns slowly, taking in the three bags of baby clothes and other stuff. “You went more than a little overboard, Hunter.”
“No, I didn’t,” I reply firmly, helping her up to stand. “I went just the right amount of overboard.”
