Page 66 of Accidental Groom
I recoil, just a step. “Excuse me?”
“How am I to know it isn’t mine?”
That stops me cold, my head spinning like he’s given me whiplash. But a laugh escapes me, loud, angry, bitter. “You can’t be serious,” I scoff. “You never even wanted to touch me. You couldn’t even get it up the one time we tried. I’m almost threemonths, George, and if my math is correct, that’s at least amonthafter you were limp in my hand?—”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about?—”
“Don’t I?” I laugh. “You flinched when I put my hand on you. You made excuses. You ran off to Croatia and Thailand to fuck your way through beach clubs instead of marrying the woman who had agreed to go through with it. And now you want to act like you’re entitled to judge me, entitled to try to claim mychild?”
His jaw works, but he says nothing.
I step back, disgust curling in my stomach like nausea. “You walked away. You forfeited everything. You can’t just throw temper tantrum after temper tantrum to try to get things back.”
His eyes narrow at me, and he steps back, nodding either to me or himself. “We’ll see.”
Then he turns, keeping his eyes on me for a moment too long before he disappears back into the main house, leaving me out here in my confusion and shock and utter disgust.
It’s only when I get back in the cottage, the door locked and dead bolted behind me, that I realize my hands won’t stop shaking.Please don’t let him have seen.
I grab my purse from the floor where I’d apparently dropped it in my mad dash, digging frantically for my phone. The screen blurs on it for a second as I unlock it, or maybe it’s just my eyes, but I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t?—
Ross answers on the second ring.
“Hey, Lena,” he chirps. “Everything okay?”
The words come out broken. “We have a problem.”
Chapter 22
Harry
Dr. Frasier is as cold as usual as he finishes up the scan, the wand gliding over the small mound of Elena’s stomach with at leastsomecare. “I’m not as good at this as Mary,” he says, turning the screen so Elena and Sarah can both see. “But everything looks on track. Heartbeat’s strong. The fetus is, I believe, measuring right on track for fourteen weeks.”
Elena exhales, her head falling back against the cushions with relief and awe. Sarah scrunches her nose, saying something about how she thought doctors called it a baby when it's wanted, and Dr. Frasier stumbles over an apology for the midwife, Mary, being on vacation and him having to cover this portion.
I, on the other hand, can’t stop staring.
I’m sitting in the armchair furthest from Elena so she can have her sister by her side, but I can’t stop wanting to be closer, can’t stop thinking about how I’ve been through this before. Been to all the scans, all the check-ups, the scare of Braxton-hicks, the delivery — with Geraldine. Decades ago.
But this feels new in ways I wasn’t expecting.
Dr. Frasier taps a few keys on the machine, focusing intently before glancing back at us. “Mary can do the full anatomy scan in six weeks,” he says. “That’ll be in her office in town. She’s gotthe whole set-up for it there. I don’t feel confident enough to try to tell you the sex, so if you want to know, you’ll have to wait for that one.”
Elena looks over at me, a glimmer in her eye like she’s not sure whether to smile or cry. “We haven’t decided if we want to know yet.”
I nod, clearing my throat, take a deep breath to control myself from doing something stupid like letting a tear fall this early. “We’ll decide later. Don’t worry about that for now,” I say to her.
Dr. Frasier nods and pulls the wand off Elena, passing her a warm towel to wipe the jelly off her stomach. Sarah leans forward, pointing at a glob of it that slid down and around to the back of her waist, and Elena groans in slight irritation.
“I’ll be back in a second,” Elena says, pushing up off her bed and holding her shirt up to stay off the glob. “Just gotta… wipe myself down.”
“Apologies,” Dr. Frasier says, but it’s noncommittal.
Sarah sits back as Elena steps out of the room, her arms folding over her chest, an air of protective sharpness around her that I’ve noticed over the two trips she’s taken down and now recognize asdistinctlyWhite-family.
I shift my weight in my chair, adjusting the cuffs of my shirt more out of nerves than necessity. Being alone with a woman I barely know and a doctor who is hellbent on thinking I murdered my wife isn’t exactly the most calming atmosphere, but Dr. Frasier slips out of the room, mumbling something about needing a cigarette, and it gets infinitely more awkward.
Sarah doesn’t waste time. Her head snaps toward me the moment the door shuts behind Frasier.
