Page 148 of He Is My Bride

“Yep. Throw in the ultrasound pictures and me and Hanjun posing happily at the clinic in front of it, and there should be plenty of proof for anyone who might doubt the legitimacy of our child.”

“If Wang Guosheng’s earlier tricks are any indication of what to expect, he might want to pass all kinds of rumors to delegitimize you and your child. You should use every trick in the book to counter them.”

Li Ying agreed. The child would be a spanner in Wang Guosheng’s works, for sure.

“You don’t think he would try to hurt the baby?”

“You have to stop thinking that.” Anne put her hand on Li Ying’s. “The Wus will protect you. Although your and the baby’s security should be another reason for the Wus not to question your choice to carry the baby to term in another country: you are out of the Wangs’ reach here.”

“I suppose that’s right. Anyway, we haven’t discussed the details yet, but Hanjun should be the one to inseminate the first one so that it definitely bears his resemblance, and if anyone wants to accuse me of infidelity, they are free to do a paternity test. Surrogacy also lets us choose the baby’s gender, which, well, it would be nice if it didn’t matter, but I don’t mind either way, so I suppose a boy it is. It’s so damn old-fashioned…”

“‘The first one?’ Implying there’s going to be more?”

Li Ying grinned. “I think I would like to have more than one.”

“I guess it’s easy when you don’t have to carry them to term,” Anne grumbled.

“Hey! Is it weird that I actuallywishI could be pregnant for Hanjun?”

Anne blinked in surprise at Li Ying’s reaction. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know. It’s okay, I didn’t think I would feel this way, but… I mean, I am a man, at least most of the time, does that make sense?”

Anne wasn’t sure she understood, but she listened.

“It’s just so intimate between two people who love each other, to make another human, right?” Li Ying mused. “So, I thought I might want to be pregnant for real if I could, even if it started as a joke.”

“Hmm. Yet there are many people who can’t get biological children, for a multitude of reasons, and isn’t it also very meaningful to raise a child together?”

“You’re right. But… could we do a maternity photoshoot?”

“You bet! What about boudoir?”

“Yes! For Hanjun as a honeymoon gift!”

Anne rubbed her hands together excitedly, and so the besties started planning shoots.

—

Over that summer’s recess, with the wedding still a year ahead, Li Ying visited Shanghai for a couple of weeks.

He and Hanjun met with the wedding planner at Hanjun’s home and went over how they wanted to arrange everything in more detail, from the tea ceremony to the wedding reception.

“I know it’s a Western tradition,” Li Ying said, “but I wanna say ‘I do’ before the family and guests.”

The actual Chinese marriage happened when the couple got their marriage certificate from their municipal office, which Li Ying knew to be a very secular, very unceremonious occasion.

They had already begun preparing the paperwork for this. With Li Ying being a foreigner, there was much more bureaucracy involved.

The wedding itself would be a separate affair from this legal procedure, usually held months later, as in their case.

Since he’d been raised amidst American culture, certain traditions had become the standard for a romantic, perfect wedding in Li Ying’s mind, and so he wanted to add some things to the otherwise traditional ceremony:

“I want to cut the cake and feed it to each other with my husband.”

Li Ying looked at Hanjun, who was just sitting there, smiling.

He was happy to see Li Ying finally get more excited about the wedding.