Page 32 of Nine Months to Love

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STEFAN

So maybe I pushed too hard with the teasing.

But watching her get all worked up is addictive. That flush creeping up her neck, the refusal to meet my eyes—it reminds me of how she looks when I’m making her come, when my fingers are buried inside her and she’s right on the edge.

She smacks my hand away when I reach to help her onto the exam table. She’s pissed, that much is obvious. But it just makes me want to taste her more, see if I can make that flush spread even further. Drop to my knees right here in this sterile exam room and put my tongue on her until she forgets why she’s mad.

But Dr. Kostas wedges himself between me and Olivia’s open legs, perched on his little wheeled stool.

When I start to go join him, Olivia points at the floor with a finger. “No. You stay up here.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Nothing you’ll ever see again.” Her jaw is locked tight, teeth grinding together.

Fine. I’m not a complete bastard, despite what she thinks. I move behind her and watch the doctor go about setting up the gadgetry. The ultrasound machine hums to life, its screen casting a blue glow across the dim room.

“Alright.” At least Dr. Kostas keeps his eyes on the monitor instead of on my woman. “Here we go... We’ve got a good visual of the fetus. Right... there.”

All the tension melts out of Olivia like someone cut her strings. The anger fades from her face. A smile takes over, transforming her completely, and her eyes grow damp. She’s beautiful when she’s angry.

But right now? Right now, she’s devastating.

“And this... is your baby’s heartbeat.”

Wump-wump-wump-wump.

The sound hits me like a freight train. I realize I’ve been watching Olivia this entire time. Not the monitor where I can see my child for the first time.

I turn my attention there. There’s not much to look at on the screen. Calling it a squiggly peanut is generous. Just a gray blob against black nothingness, barely distinguishable from the surrounding tissue.

But that heartbeat...fuck, that heartbeat makes my own speed up, pounds in my ears until I can’t hear anything else.

It’s brilliant. Beautiful. Life-changing.

That sound proves I’m looking at a person. Not just some abstract concept, not just the consequence of a deal that was fucked from the start.

That sound is mychild. A life I made with a woman who might actually be perfect for me, even if neither of us planned it this way. Even if she doesn’t know it yet. Even if she hates me right now, sitting here in this too-bright room with its stench of antiseptic and cheap air freshener.

My father used to say love and hate were closer than people thought.Two sides of the same coin, he’d say over his evening vodka. It never made sense to me until this exact moment, watching Olivia’s profile as she stares at our baby like it’s the second coming.

“It’s still too early to tell the sex of the baby.” Dr. Kostas’s intrusion is grating against the moment. “But in a month or two, you can find out if you want to know.”

I wish he’d shut up now. He’s killing the moment with his procedural bullshit. Olivia seems to agree, because she just nods without really listening, her eyes glued to the screen as if she’s witnessing a miracle.

Which, I suppose, she is. We both are.

Her face and the sound of our baby’s heartbeat filling the room—I can’t decide which is more beautiful.

Maybe I don’t need to pick.

“Perhaps you would like a moment?” Dr. Kostas gets up from his stool.

I nod once without looking and he leaves, throwing a knowing smile over his shoulder as he closes the door behind him.

I move closer to Olivia. She’s breathing fast, her fingers twitching toward the screen like she wants to touch it.