Page 58 of Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake
“All right, here we are,” Dr. Herrara said, using one hand to move the mouse on the portable computer next to her, clicking a few buttons on the ultrasound machine. She turned the monitor so Lizzie and Rake had a clearer view. “There’s your baby.”
Rake stared at the screen, seeing a black ellipse in a sea of static gray, a tiny blob floating in the blackness.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He glanced down at Lizzie, wondering if she was similarly awestruck by what they were witnessing. Their bewildered eyes locked, the moment splitting open between them, time spreadingout and emotions refracting around them like a kaleidoscope, fear and love and excitement and worry and a sharp sense of joy. They turned back to the screen.
“And here’s the heartbeat,” Dr. Herrara said, clicking another button. A steady, methodic whooshing sound filled the room, a tiny blinking pulse on the screen matching the rhythm and becoming the center of their world.
Lizzie’s hand squeezed around Rake’s in a viper grip that traveled up his arm and fisted around his heart. Everything felt real and magnified and terrifying, like all this time he’d been living in a box, and the sound of the baby’s heartbeat crumbled the walls to dust and left him overwhelmed by sunlight.
Dr. Herrara turned off the machine shortly after, offering a few last-minute notes that neither Lizzie or Rake really heard in their dazed state. Lizzie got changed, and they checked out, receiving a small printout of their beautiful little bean baby.
Outside on the sidewalk, they stared down at the grainy picture, each pinching a corner of it between their forefinger and thumb. Rake’s heart felt like a giant flapping bird that threatened to burst from the cage of his chest and take off in flight. He didn’t know what to do with all these feelings.
At the same moment, Lizzie and Rake tore their eyes away from their perfect blob and met each other’s gaze. Rake watched as Lizzie’s features transformed from blank and slack-jawed to a delicious grin. It was a grin that could rival a star in the way it dazzled—the way it lit up the constellations of her freckles and creased the edges of her eyes where one small tear rolled out of the corner. It was impossible to look at that smile, to look at their blob, and not feel the same enormous grin break across his own face and fissure through his body.
They stood there for a moment, as a sea of people parted around them, moving along with their day as if Lizzie and Rake didn’t hold the single most precious photo of the most gorgeous smudge in the history of the world in their hands.
Rake couldn’t say what came over him, whether it was the way Lizzie’s tongue darted out to lick her lips, or how his blood heated and his pulse quickened with the enormity of the moment. But he had to touch her.
He crushed his mouth to hers, wanting to imprint her happy smile onto his heart. And, Lizzie being Lizzie, she didn’t act surprised at all. She molded into him as if it was the most natural thing in the world for Rake to kiss her like his life depended on it. And that’s what it felt like.
Happiness and one hundred other unnamable emotions flooded him so sharply, so painfully, he needed to anchor himself to the moment, to her, or else he quite simply might die from the feelings. He hitched her body closer, one hand cradling the back of her skull while the other snaked around her waist. She twined her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss, her tongue sliding over his in a way that drew all his attention to the silk of her mouth.
She pulled him toward her, causing them both to stumble until her back met the building behind her. Lizzie let out a soft groan that echoed in his bones, static electricity humming just beneath his skin, against her lips. He wanted her. Badly.
And that thought was enough to make him realize he needed to stop.
He tore away from the kiss, turning his back and rubbing his knuckles across his lips in a vain attempt to lose the feeling of her on them.
“Fuck,” he said, dragging his hands down his face then turning back to her. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
Lizzie was panting, her cheeks and nose burning with color. Rake didn’t miss the flash of vulnerability in her eyes after his words, but she straightened her spine, brushing a hand over her hair and down to her stomach.
“It’s fine,” she said, plastering on a teasing smile. “I know even on my worst days I’m nearly irresistible, and what withyou having the emotional range of a caveman, it only makes sense that you would get all primal after seeing proof of your giant spawn in me.”
Rake let out a hollow laugh, still trying to get a grip on his pounding heart.
They made their way back home, opting to walk while Lizzie kept up her usual stream of observations. Rake listened to every word, seeing hundreds of beautiful things he never would have noticed without her clever eye.
When they finally made it back to the apartment, the air conditioning was a relief from the raging humidity.
“So,” Lizzie said, patting her hands awkwardly against her hips and looking around. “We’re going to be parents… It seems more real now.”
Rake ran his hands through his hair. “It does.”
They stared at each other, small bricks of shyness and intimacy and lust stacking up between them. In typical Lizzie fashion, she bulldozed through them.
“Wanna order some pizza?” she asked, kicking off her heels and fumbling for the zipper on the back of her dress. After a moment of contortion, she dropped her arms and backed toward him. “Will you unzip me?”
Rake swallowed, his whole body heating and throbbing as if she’d just asked him to bury his face between her thighs. Doing as she asked, he pulled down the zipper, the scratch of its teeth from her neck to her hips reverberating around his skull. The dress dropped in a red wave, pooling at her feet. She stepped out of it and moved toward the bed area, completely unaware of the impending physical crisis she just thrust upon Rake.
He stared, all her luscious curves hugged by black nylon shorts that covered her skin from mid-thigh up to the edge of her strapless bra.
It shouldn’t look sexy. But it did.
“What are you wearing?” he asked, his voice coming a little hoarse.