A high-pitched scream leaves my mouth and I hear a crash in the other room.
I come running out of the bathroom and crash into Jace’s arms. He catches me, but just barely. I hold up the slender white stick triumphantly.
“We did it!”
Jace looks at me like I’ve lost my ever-loving mind, but then his lips part as realization strikes him.
He grabs my flailing hand and looks at the pregnancy test.
The positive pregnancy test.
After months trying to get to this moment we finally did it.
Paris must’ve been awfully lucky for us.
A grin breaks out over his face like the sun rising. “We’re going to have a baby?”
I nod, tears in my eyes. “You’re going to be a dad.”
“And you’re going to be a mom.”
He growls lowly and crashes his lips to mine. The test falls from my hand to the floor as my arms go around his neck.
He sets me down and presses his forehead to mine, his hands on my cheeks.
“This is happening.”
“It is,” I concur.
After all this time, it doesn’t feel quite real, like it’s too good to be true. All the wishing and hoping and heartbreak and tears have been leading to this moment.
We stand there, him holding my cheeks in his hands, for endless minutes. Like we’re afraid if we move it’ll burst the bubble and this won’t be real anymore.
I place my hands on his slender hips, grasping his shirt in my fists, and to my surprise I begin to cry.
“Nova,” he gasps softly, “what’s wrong?”
I sniffle and force my eyes to his. “I was beginning to think it was never going to happen.”
He rubs my tears away with his large thumbs, but just as quickly there are more there replacing them.
“You worry too much,” he tells me, and I laugh.
He’s right. Between finishing school, trying to start a business, Greyson, Owen, my parents, and now this, I’ve worried myself to death. I feel nothing has been going right, like the world has been conspiring against me, and while things haven’t been bad they haven’t been good, either.
I take a deep, but shaky breath, and nod to him that I’m okay.
He lets his hands fall and looks me over.
“This is happening,” he says again, like he’s trying to imprint the words into my brain and get them to stick.
I close my eyes briefly, picturing my belly round with our baby, the nursery, Jace singing softly to the baby.
God, it’s a wonderful picture, one I’m finally going to get.
Giving up Greyson was hard, but seeing him with his adoptive parents I can’t deny he’s been given a better life than what I could’ve given him. And if I’d been able to keep him, college would’ve been nearly impossible. I probably would’ve had to work like a slave to make ends meet. As much it sucks not having my son, I can’t deny both our lives are better for it, and at least now I get to see him. That makes all the difference in the world.
“I need you to hold me,” I confess.