Page 29 of Once Upon A Second Chance (Once Upon A Time…To Happily Ever After #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Richard

“I’m pregnant.”

The words still echo in my head, soft but unmistakable, like the quiet chime of something sacred being named.

I set the kettle on the stove and turn the knob slowly, watching the blue flame bloom beneath it. The mug on the counter already holds a peppermint tea bag—decaf, because neither of us needs more adrenaline tonight.

I’m not even sure she’ll drink it. I just needed something to do with my hands.

Behind me, Penny sits at the kitchen table, one hand curled around her phone, the other resting over her stomach like she can feel the shift beneath her skin already.

She hasn’t said much since the test, and I haven’t pushed.

There’s a silence between us that isn’t cold or uncertain—it’s just... vast. Like standing on the edge of a cliff and staring down into the next chapter of your life, heart pounding, hands open.

I love her.

That’s not the question.

It hasn’t been the question in a long time.

The question is what I’m supposed to do now. Or rather, what I’m allowed to do without making her feel like she’s trapped in some small-town morality play where a surprise pregnancy comes with a diamond ring and a thousand assumptions.

I want to marry her—I’ve always wanted that, even when I didn’t know it. But proposing now? Would she think it was just because of the baby? Would it taint the thing I’ve wanted for years by tying it to obligation instead of choice?

My jaw tightens.

I want her to say yes. But I need her to know that I’d ask even if there were no test. No due date. No fear.

I’m about to turn and say something—maybe not the thing, but something real—when I hear it.

A sound from outside.

A cry.

Penny lifts her head at the same time I do, brows pulling tight.

There it is again.

Faint, shaky—"Help!"

We both shoot up at once.

"Mrs. Delaney," Penny breathes. She’s already halfway to the door, grabbing her keys and slipping on her shoes like it’s second nature.

I’m right behind her.

The porch light flickers as we burst outside, sprinting across the yard toward the small bungalow next door. Her lights are on, but the door’s ajar, a faint creak echoing as it shifts with the breeze.

“Mrs. Delaney?” Penny calls, rushing up the steps.

We find her in the hallway, halfway between the kitchen and the back bedroom, curled on the floor with one arm clutched against her ribs. Her hair’s askew, and her glasses are hanging by one arm from the neck of her sweater.

“Oh, God,” Penny mutters, dropping to her knees beside her.

“I slipped,” Mrs. Delaney gasps. “I was just getting tea, and the floor was wet, and—” She winces. “Think I landed wrong.”

I crouch beside them, quickly but gently checking her vitals. Her breathing’s shallow, but steady. There’s no bleeding, no obvious break, but she’s favoring her side like hell.

“I think you cracked a rib,” I say softly. “We need to get you looked at.”

Penny takes her hand, soothing. “We’ll get an ambulance, okay? You’re going to be fine.”

Mrs. Delaney nods weakly, trying to smile. “I know I am when I got you two superstars with me.”

I glance at Penny—sleeves rolled up, hair wild from the wind, jaw set like she’s ready to take on anything—and something settles in my chest. Not fear. Not even doubt.

Just certainty. Certainty that we would make it through, as a team. For better or for worse.

Maybe it’s just the hour—late enough that the waiting room of the hospital is quiet, but early enough the halls still buzz with shift change chatter and clattering carts—but I sense the looks and the stares.

Maybe it’s the way the nurses smile politely but cautiously when they recognize me. It’s not because of my name—it’s the story.

The scandal. The redemption. Small-town memory is sharp, and rumor travels faster than blood through a vein.

But tonight, none of that matters. Tonight, I’m just here with a neighbor and the woman I love.

Mrs. Delaney was lucky. They confirmed one cracked rib, no internal bleeding, and nothing worse than a bruised ego and a painkiller prescription.

She's tucked into a curtain-drawn cubicle now, half-dozing under a warm blanket and already asking if she can bribe someone into releasing her in time to watch the morning weather forecast.

While we wait for the attending to finish writing her discharge orders, I slip into shop talk with the ER resident on duty—Dr. Callahan, a young guy I vaguely remember supervising during a clinical rotation back in New York.

Small world, I guess. He’s a little star struck, which is unsettling, but I let it slide.

“Imaging looked clean,” Callahan says, scrolling through the scans on the tablet. “Minimal displacement on the sixth rib. Honestly, could’ve been a lot worse.”

“She mentioned hitting the counter on the way down,” I say, glancing over the scan. “I’d give her a follow-up chest X-ray in three days just to be safe. Make sure there’s no delayed pneumothorax.”

Callahan nods. “We’ll set it up. Thanks for your help tonight, Dr.—uh, Richard.”

I offer a smile. “Just Richard’s fine.”

I glance past him toward the far end of the hallway, where Penny leans against the wall just outside Mrs. Delaney’s room.

She looks tired, but solid. Still in the hoodie she threw on during the chaos, her hair pulled back into a lazy braid, her hands tucked into her sleeves like she’s trying to hold warmth close.

Except her right hand keeps drifting back to her stomach. Lightly. Almost absently. Like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

A protective instinct. Quiet. Subconscious.

It catches me off guard.

Not because it’s strange—but because it’s not. Because it looks so natural on her. Because it’s real.

She’s not just thinking about being pregnant anymore.

She’s feeling it.

I step away from the nurse’s station and walk over to her, not saying anything at first. Just standing beside her in that soft white hallway filled with antiseptic and hums and after-midnight fatigue.

Her eyes meet mine, and she smiles. It’s a small smile, but not forced.

“You holding up all right?” I ask.

She nods. “Sure. I just wanted to give her a minute to rest before they wheel her out.”

Her hand brushes her stomach again, fingers splaying out a little, like she’s grounding herself.

And something in me just aches—with love, with wonder, with the weight of everything this is going to mean.

We’re going to be parents.

There’s a world before those words, and a world after.

And we’re already in the after.

“I was watching you,” I say quietly.

She arches a brow. “Oh yeah?”

“You’ve been holding your stomach.”

She pauses, looking down, then smiles faintly. “Have I?”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t offer an explanation, and I don’t press for one. Instead, I reach for her hand—the one not pressed to her belly—and link our fingers together, gently.

“I’m not sure I know what I’m doing,” I admit. “But I know I want to do it with you.”

Her grip tightens around mine.

And just like that, the waiting room hum fades, the charting noises dim, and it’s just us again.

The road stretches ahead, quiet and familiar. We’ve driven this route a dozen times now—back from late shifts, from my place to hers, from the Farmer’s Market on weekends. But tonight, it feels different.

Like we’re suspended in something softer, more fragile. The world around us is hushed, wrapped in that velvety darkness that only small towns get after midnight.

I keep one hand on the wheel and glance sideways at Penny.

She’s resting her head against the window, her legs pulled up slightly in the seat. Her eyes are open, but she’s not looking at anything—just letting the trees blur past like background noise.

She’s curled in on herself a little, arms crossed not tightly but unconsciously. Protective. Still processing. Maybe a little shaken by the sudden turn of the night.

Her other hand drifts down to her stomach again, fingers splaying absently.

It’s not dramatic or self-aware. She’s not playing to anyone.

It’s instinct.

And God, it undoes me.

I look back at the road and let my mind drift to the idea that’s been quietly taking root ever since we sat side by side in her bathroom and read the word together.

Pregnant.

The word still knocks the wind out of me. In a good way. In a terrifying way. In a way that feels like it’s pressing against every rib in my chest with a slow, steady pressure.

I want to marry her.

It’s not new—not some reaction to the test. It’s been there, under the surface, all along. Something patient, something steady. A truth waiting for its moment.

But now it’s louder.

Now I’m thinking about how I’d do it.

Not in Knoxville. Not where we were just kids falling too hard and too fast. That chapter was closed the minute I left her behind thinking I was doing the right thing.

I want to propose here. In Mount Juliet. In the town where everything got messy and real and somehow more beautiful than either of us planned.

I want the memory of the proposal to be something rooted in the life we’ve started now, not the ghosts of who we were.

Maybe at the lake just outside town—where the trees turn fire-red in the fall, and the water stays still enough at sunset to reflect the sky like glass.

Or maybe under the pergola outside the café she loves, the one with the string lights and the giant fern baskets she always compliments but never buys.

Or on the porch of the house we’ll live in someday, when she’s sitting beside me with bare feet and a sleeping baby on her shoulder and doesn’t know I’ve had the ring in my pocket all day.

Something ours, not performative. Not for a crowd.

For her.

For us.

But then the doubt slips in, low and quiet.

Will it feel like pressure? Like obligation? I can already hear people whispering—they’re only getting married because she’s pregnant. The kind of thing people in towns like this say in grocery store aisles and church vestibules.

She deserves better than that.

She deserves to know it’s not about should. It’s about want.

I won’t let a baby—not even our baby—define the shape of a promise I’ve carried for years. And I sure as hell won’t let it cheapen the moment I ask her to spend her life with me.

I’m so caught in my own thoughts that I don’t realize I’ve gone silent until Penny shifts in her seat, looking at me.

“You’re quiet,” she says, her voice still soft around the edges, like it’s been wrapped in sleep.

I glance at her, smile faintly. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

Her tone is casual, but the question lingers a little longer than it should—like she’s wondering if she’s part of what I’m thinking, or outside it.

I could tell her. Could start the conversation. But she looks tired, and more than that, folded inward. Not just from the hospital or the baby or the night.

From something deeper. She’s still adjusting to the idea of what’s next.

So instead, I reach across the console and slide my hand into hers.

She takes it immediately, no hesitation.

Her thumb brushes over my knuckles, lazy and warm.

“I’m here,” I say, because it’s the only thing that matters tonight.

She doesn’t respond out loud, but I feel her sigh more than I hear it—a long exhale that softens her shoulders and shifts her weight subtly toward me.

We don’t talk for the rest of the drive.

But it’s not silence, not really.

It’s comfort, and it’s a beginning.