“You’re right,” he nodded against me. “When we decided we were ready to finally do this, I didn’t think it would be so difficult to find a surrogate to work with or waiting for her to get pregnant. This has been the longest two years of my life.”
I ran my hand down his arm and smiled. “Yeah, I swear if your mom could have carried our baby, she would have done it for us.”
Jordan’s face screwed up. His lips curled up in a sneer. “That’s disgusting.” His whole body shuddered. “Let’s not speak of that ever again.”
“Deal,” I snickered. “We’ve made all her dreams come true. First, she got to plan our wedding, and now we’re giving her a grandbaby. She can’t ask for anything else.”
“Until she wants another grandchild, which better not be for another few years.” He rubbed his hands over his legs. “I swore they said we could go in soon, and we’ve been sitting out here for what feels like an hour.”
I looked down at my watch and then back up at my husband, who was more nervous than he was letting on. “It’s been twenty minutes.” I stood and pulled Jordan up with me. “Let’s go for a quick walk and try to relax.”
He looked to the room the nurses took Stephanie, our surrogate, into. “But what if they come out and say we can go in?”
Putting my arm around his shoulders, I started to pull him down the hall. “We’ll have someone text us, and we’ll rush back, but I think not staring at the door waiting for someone to come out will help.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m more nervous than ever before. I didn’t think it could get worse than not knowing how my parents would react to finding out we were seeing each other.”
“And look how that turned out,” I smiled down at him. “They love me.”
“They do,” he affirmed, rubbing his thumb over my wedding ring. “Almost as much as I love you.”
Stopping, I pushed Jordan by the shoulders into the wall. Looking both ways down the hall to make sure there was no one around, I gripped the side of his neck and angled his head as I leaned down and slipped my tongue into his waiting mouth.
Lashing his tongue with mine, Jordan slipped one hand up the back of my shirt. His fingers dug into the flesh of my shoulders.
Breaking the kiss, he rested his head on my shoulder. “Thank you. You’re the perfect distraction.”
“Hey, if I didn’t think we were ready for this step in our lives, I never would have agreed to any of this.” He raised one lone, dark brow at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. “No matter how much your mom begged.”
“Jordan. Cash,” Maggie shouted as she jogged down the hall. “It’s time. Hurry,” she said, running back the other way.
Jordan gripped my hand in a death hold and proceeded to pull me back past the waiting room and to the room Stephanie was in. “This is it.” He turned to look at me with a crooked smile spread across his handsome face. “After today, we’ll leave this hospital not as a couple but as a family.”
He was right. Our nights of going out to restaurants and hanging out at the bar until closing on the weekends were over. We were going to be lucky if we got a solid night of sleep in the foreseeable future.
“I know,” I smiled, knowing I probably looked like a crazy person. I was so excited. “Let’s go meet our daughter.”
I didn’t expect all kinds of pandemonium to break loose the second we stepped inside, but that’s what we walked into.
“Breathe, Stephanie, breathe,” a nurse was saying as she stood by Stephanie’s side.
“Did we miss it?” Jordan shouted, rushing over to Stephanie’s side.
“You got here just in time, daddy,” the nurse smiled over at him. “Her labor is progressing rapidly.”
“What does that mean?” Jordan looked around the room franticly.
One of the nurses looked to Jordan with a reassuring smile that I was sure she used on many of the dads who came through the maternity ward. “You won’t have to wait long until you meet your baby.”
“Did you hear that?” He looked to me like a kid on Christmas morning.
I nodded, moving to the other side of Stephanie to hold her hand. “You’ve made us the happiest people on the planet. Thank you for giving us our family.” My eyes clouded over as I spoke.
Stephanie’s eyes filled with tears right before her face turned into one of pain.
“Alright, Stephanie, I want you to give me a big push, and this will all be over soon,” the doctor said from between her legs.
Jordan and I took Stephanie’s hands and let her bear down on us as she gritted her teeth and pushed as hard as she could. She was one strong woman. I swear she was close to breaking my hand.