Page 62 of Savage Claim

I closed my hand, as if balling up the towel would make it go away. “It’s fine,” I said. “Dr. Coleman said this would happen.”

But Lorenzo refused to be soothed. He was already moving back into our bedroom. “I’ll just give him a call.”

I went after him, uncaring that I was still naked and damp from the shower. “We don’t need to,” I insisted. “I’m fine.” I reached for Lorenzo’s hand and put it on my belly, right over where the baby was squirming away. “Feel that? We’re fine.”

Still, even with the evidence beneath his hand, he called Dr. Coleman out for a house call. I slipped on a bathrobe and brushed out my hair while I waited. It was no use arguing with Lorenzo, and if he needed to know one hundred percent that the baby and I were okay, who was I to argue with him?

We met with Dr. Coleman in Lorenzo’s office. Both Gemma and Amalia wanted to know what was going on, but Lorenzo shooed them away. “If there’s something to worry about, I’ll let you know,” he said. I caught my sister’s face as he shut the door: a mix of worry, anger, and sorrow. I almost asked if he would call her back, but I had a feeling that this fell under the category of things that he refused to give ground on.

“I brought a portable ultrasound,” Dr. Coleman announced.

“I didn’t know that they made them that small,” I said, skeptical that it was actually accurate, which prompted a ten-minute explanation of the thing in his hands. It sent images to an app that he had downloaded to his phone, and so far, every time he’s compared it to the ultrasound at the office, the results are the same.

That was good enough for me.

I sat in one of the expensive armchairs, leaning back so that Dr. Coleman had access to my belly. He used a little bit of gel that he brought with him to help with the glide of the doppler. It didn’t take long to get a picture of the baby. “Wow,” I breathed, holding the phone in my hands. “That’s a real baby.”

Dr. Coleman chuckled. “They go from looking like little aliens to looking like infants surprisingly fast.” As he slid the doppler over my skin, the softthud-thud-thudof the baby’s heartbeat could be heard from the phone’s speakers. “Do you want to know what you’re having?”

I jerked, eyes wide. “You can tell?”

The older man stared down at the phone screen and smiled. “Sure,” he said.

I glanced at Lorenzo, who was staring at me like I had hung all of the stars in the sky. I felt a flutter in my chest. The way he was looking at me was the exact way I had always hoped a man would before my attack had me giving up on love altogether. “Do you want to know?”

“If you want.”

I rolled my eyes. Helpful, as always. “We’d like to know,” I told the doctor.

He fiddled with the angle of the doppler for a moment. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re having a boy.” He pointed to a spot on the picture, as if to show me what he was looking at, but it all looked like so many blobs to me. I trusted his judgment.

A boy. I knew it. I met Lorenzo’s eyes again, trying to see if this was good news or not, and his expression was entirely overwhelmed. “Lorenzo.”

“They’re fine, right, Dr. Coleman?” he asked, outright ignoring me.

The doctor nodded, smiling now. “They’re perfect,” he said and pointed at the ultrasound image on the screen. “All of the baby’s limbs are the right size for his gestational age, and his heartbeat is right where we want it to be.”

Lorenzo let out a breath; it sounded a little like the air coming out of a balloon. His shoulders visibly relaxed, and when I reached for his hand, he laced our fingers together. “You worry like a little old woman,” I teased.

He caught my chin between his thumb and pointer finger of his free hand. “I worry the exact right amount,” he said.

I made a show of rolling my eyes. “Whatever you say.”

His smile was pleased. “Exactly.” He let go of my chin. “When is our next scheduled appointment?”

I let Lorenzo and Dr. Coleman hash out the details of the next appointments—they were arguing over whether another ultrasound was necessary in two weeks—while I sat and enjoyed the soft somersaults happening in my belly. “We’re going to need a strong name,” I said, mostly to myself, mind already running through all of the possibilities.

Dr. Coleman finally agreed that they could do a “proper” ultrasound with the machine at the office at our next visit, and Lorenzo walked him out. Both Amalia and Gemma squeezed into the office the second that the door opened.

“Well?” Gemma asked, impatient. “What’s going on?”

“Everything is fine,” I assured her. My smile grew wide. “I’m having a boy.”

Amalia squealed and wrapped her arms around my shoulder. While Amalia was squeezing the life out of me, I saw Gemma backing out of the room. She had a queasy look on her face. It stung to watch her go, but Amalia’s joy was so big that it was hard to feel any semblance of sadness.

“We need to celebrate,” she decided, tugging me from the office. “What do you want for dinner? I’ll make anything you want.”

“Have you been cleared for cooking duty?”

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