Page 42 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)
Teagan
At bedtime, I tap Elliott’s hip to signal that the kids are asleep. I motion for him to sit at the table in the kitchen, but I’m too anxious to do anything other than pace a few steps back and forth while I chew the cuticle around my thumb, making it bleed.
Elliott turns his chair and grabs my hands, forcing me to stop and face him. “Say what you need to say.”
“I don’t want any more children,” I blurt, on the verge of hurling when the blood drains from his face.
“You want to give the baby up for adoption?” he asks, as distressed as when we had the blow-up before I left the cabin with Davis and Goldie.
“No! I-I meant after this one. I’m going to ask the doctor to tie my tubes.”
Elliott lays a hand over his heart before leaning forward with his head between his knees, breathing hard and fast. I rub his back, bending over to give him an awkward hug that ends when he straightens and wraps his arms around my legs, pulling me against his naked chest .
“You scared me something awful,” he says, his voice cracking. He blows out a long, shaky breath, laughing it off weakly. “Four’s a good number. Any more than that, and we’d probably have to move.”
“This is our home.” I may not have lived here long, but my roots are already burrowing deep into the dense soil of this land. “We’re never moving.”
Elliott’s eyes crinkle with a growing smile. “Good.”
“So you’re really ok with not having…you know…” I whisper the next part with a wince. “Not having any kids of your own?”
Elliott frowns, and yup, I want to hurl again. But then he says, “They’re all ‘my own’, Mama.”
“Damn you, Elliott. You’re always making me cry. I hate crying.”
He laughs. “I know, but I can’t promise not to do it again. But what I can do,” he says, lifting and carrying me back to our bed and sweet babies, “is make sure they’re all happy tears.”
* * *
It’s nerve-racking leaving the property for the first time since we moved back to the cabin.
So far, with no sign of Mom, we’ve ventured out of the cabin, going a little farther each day with Storm, of course, trotting along beside us so the kids can play.
There’s so much to explore, like the dirt track that Elliott wants to build and the makeshift shooting range where Elliott has started giving me lessons.
The land is simply gorgeous, my roots growing deeper as Elliott and I have walked along, hand in hand.
As we drive to the nearby town that is larger than ours and hosts the hospital where I’ll be giving birth, Elliott and I keep a close eye on the cars around us, the kids in the back seat, since I declined Layla’s offer to babysit.
I’m nervous enough as it is about being away from Dustin and Sydney when they start at their new school in two days.
Elliott and I are both stunned when the receptionist at Dr. Patel’s office pushes her blue glasses with a beaded chain up to wear them like a headband over her closely shaved, deep plum colored hair and tells us, “A donor has already paid the balance ahead of time.”
“Who?” Elliott asks.
“He asked to remain anonymous,” she says.
Elliott raps his knuckles twice on the counter. “Ahh, so it was Russell.”
The receptionist raises a brow, and her silver tongue ring clicks her teeth when she says, “I didn’t say that.”
He snorts. “Didn’t have to. I know my brother.” Then he asks, “Just the balance today or…?”
“All of them.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask Elliott when we sit together on one of the padded benches while the kids play at the provided sensory table, waiting to be called back to the examination room.
“He can be an ass sometimes,” Elliott grumbles, resting his hand on my knee, his heat penetrating the denim material of my black jeans that I can no longer button up around my waist. “But he also has the biggest heart of any man I’ve ever known and likes taking care of his people, simple as that.”
I’m stunned again to realize that there’s no question I’m now one of those people. That I have people, too. A real family.
“Though I could have paid the balance myself,” Elliott says. “Or you could have. ”
I cut a look at him, confused by his quip delivered without bitter sarcasm at my lack of funds, like it would have been if Quincy had said it. “What?”
Elliott grins. “You know, since you’re now part-owner of Berenson Trucking.”
“WHAT?”
The receptionist pulls her glasses down and peers over the counter, watching us with curiosity.
Elliott says, “I called my lawyers earlier—”
I cut him off when I ask, “You have lawyers? Multiple?”
“Yup. I’ve started the process of splitting my shares and updating my will to add you and the kids.
You won’t have to work at the diner or dance hall, or anywhere else, for that matter, if you don’t want to.
A pre-wedding present from me to you,” Elliott says in a raspy voice, now stroking the side of my face.
“Pre-wedding…” My heart trips over itself, rocked by another revelation—the revulsion at the thought of ever being married again, like I’d viscerally experienced each time Quincy proposed, is wholly absent when I look into Elliott’s eyes.
“You want to marry me? Even after I…” I tip my head and lower my voice to the barest whisper.
“Even after the way I dealt with my last husband?”
“Oh yes, I do. I very much do.” He kisses me, a lingering brush of our lips that we both want to take further, but sadly can’t at the moment. “I know just the spot where I want us to say our vows after we deal with the lurker situation.”
“You mean…?”
Elliott nods, and we pull apart when my name is called.
* * *
With a mountain of relief, Dr. Patel doesn’t talk to me like I’m the worst mother in the world after I tell her why I hadn’t been able to go to the doctor sooner, careful with my language around the kids.
Her kind, dark eyes are understanding, unlike my last OBGYN’s harsh judgment when I was pregnant with Kendall at my age .
Since I’m so far along in my pregnancy, once I’m done giving blood and am finished with my initial exam, a tech with hot pink box braids, wearing blue polka dot scrubs, rolls an ultrasound machine into my room for an anatomy scan.
Sitting in a chair beside me on the examination table with Kendall on his knee, Elliott grips my left hand tight while Dustin and Sydney stand on either side of him.
We’re all transfixed by the black and white images on the screen as the tech moves cold jelly around my abdomen with her wand, taking pictures and measurements.
“Hi, baby,” I say softly when we get a close look at their face and tiny button nose, my heart growing exponentially, already so in love with them.
Elliott hiccups, the sound the only thing that can draw my attention away. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” His lower lip trembles as he tries to hold it together, tears gathering at the inner corners of his eyes. My big, intimidating, silver bear is crying.
The tech asks in an upbeat voice, “Do you want to find out the sex, Mom and…?” She stumbles over what to call Elliott as she looks back and forth between us, her eyes catching on his neck tattoo before darting away.
“Papa,” I tell her. I have to laugh when that doesn’t clear anything up for the tech, and the baby is jostled from side to side on the screen like a cocktail shaken by a bartender, which the kids find infinitely hilarious. “He’s the baby’s dad, not mine.”
Elliott hiccups again.
“Oh, ok.” She blows out a nervous laugh, embarrassed when she whispers, “Sorry.”
When I tell her that, yes , we would like to know the sex, she moves the wand higher and presses a fingertip against the screen.
Elliott drops his head onto my arm as he grips my hand tighter, unable to wrestle back any more hiccups, my sleeve turning wet with his joyful tears. “We’re having a son, Birdie.”
The tech leaves the room to give us a few private moments while the kids hug Elliott, and I stroke his hair until he can gather himself.
“Have you thought of any names yet?” he asks, swiping his tears away with a thumb.
“Don’t laugh,” I say, squirming a little. “But I was thinking maybe Killian? I know it’s unusual and kind of on the nose, but—”
“Killian Berenson would be a strong name for a boy, if you want to take my last name.”
“I do.” I give the kids my phone so they can sit in the corner and watch cartoons, then curl my finger for Elliott to come closer so the kids won’t hear me.
“Palmer is just the last name the guy who forged our papers picked. It’s actually Chambers.
” Though I haven’t been a Chambers in so long that it doesn’t hold much meaning for me anymore.
“Teagan Chambers, huh?”
I’m a little sheepish when I confess, “It’s actually Tennessee, not Teagan. My grandpa named me.” Not to mention that Dustin and Sydney aren’t their real names either, but I never want to speak or even think of those horrible and ridiculous Zera-themed names again.
“Tennessee Chambers,” Elliott says, as if meeting me for the first time.
But I shake my head. “I’m keeping Teagan. Teagan Berenson. It would be confusing for the kids.” Speaking of them, I tell him, “It’ll be pricey, but I want to find someone here who can get us all new papers so—”
“You want to give the kids my last name, too?” He’s back to hiccuping again.
“ Our last name. Dustin, Sydney, Kendall, and Killian Berenson.”
“Damnit, Birdie.” He uses my knit sweater’s sleeve to wipe his face. “I’m never going to stop crying at this rate.”
When the tech returns to clean the jelly from my stomach and print out the sonogram photos for us to take home, I ask her, “How do you become a sonographer?”
“Is that something you’re interested in?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say with a thought to my future and what I want to do with my life, but also with a ton of self-doubt. Elliott said I don’t have to work, but I want to…just with a few extra days off for vacation and family time, for once.