Page 128 of Rebellious Hearts

“Sorry,” she mumbled and pressed the wand against my belly. Gray images appeared on the black screen, impossible for me to see what I was looking at.

Dr. Richards knew what she was doing, and she moved the wand around, pausing every now and then to type something on the keyboard.

“Here you go,” she said with a smile. “Here’s your little bean.”

Ben and I both looked at the screen and saw a tiny thing with an oversized head.

“In the next four weeks, Baby will change a lot,” Dr. Richards said. “Here you go.” She pressed a button, and the sound of a very fast heartbeat filled the room.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed.

“Is that…?” Ben asked, and we both stared at each other as the sound wrapped around us.

“That’s the heartbeat,” Dr. Richards said with a smile. “Strong and steady. It’s exactly as it should be.”

Ben squeezed my hand tightly, and tears welled in my eyes. Ben’s eyes looked pretty misty, too. But he blinked and it was gone.

Dr. Richards switched off the sound and printed out a strip of images. She handed them to Ben and handed me a paper towel to clean up before buttoning up my pants again.

“I’ll see you in the office,” she said, and then she left us alone.

“Oh, my God, Sofia,” Ben breathed, looking at the images Dr. Richards had printed out for us. “This is fucking incredible.”

“It’s crazy,” I said, buttoning my pants and sitting up. “I don’t even know what to say or to think. It all feels so unreal.”

Ben pulled me closer. “We have time to get used to it.”

I nodded, and he kissed me.

“Thank you for being here,” I whispered.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world,” he said with a smile, and then he gestured for us to go back into the office.

Dr. Richards gave me a script for a couple of different vitamins to get and made another appointment for us before we left her office.

We got into Ben’s car and sat together in silence for a moment.

“I love you,” I breathed, glancing at Ben.

He smiled at me. “I love you, too.”

“It’s going to be a scary ride.”

“It’s going to be a wonderful ride.”

He pulled me closer to him and kissed me.

“Next time we come here, we could find out what the gender is,” he said, breaking the kiss and starting the car.

I thought about it as we backed out of the parking spot and Ben turned into traffic.

“I don’t know if I want to know,” I said, looking at the cars slide by, the tall city buildings. “I kind of would like for it to be a surprise.”

“Really?”

I nodded and glanced at him. “Nothing between us has been planned. It will be fun if we keep with the trend, don’t you think?”

Ben chuckled. “Nothing between us is the way I would have done things. But then, if I was the one planning it all out, I would have fucked it up anyway. So yeah, let’s do it. Let’s keep this adventure a crazy one. Everything with you is a wild ride and I can’t wait to be there for it all.”