Reeve (The Henchmen MC 11)

He knew.

I guess, to be fair, the belly thing was a dead giveaway. But I just figured he would have thought I was plumping up. I had been eating more.

"How... when..." I fumbled, shaking my head a little.

"Didn't know for sure until this," he said, hand gliding over my belly. "Had suspicions as far back as when you claimed you had a stomach bug. Babe, you never get fucking sick," he added with a small lip-curving.

That was because I had finally perfected Babcia's healing tea. It stopped a flu right in its tracks when it tore through The Henchmen compound, dropping everyone in its path. Including Reeve. For about a day. Where I plied him with nearly a gallon of the garbage pail tea, vitamins, and water. And just like that, he woke up better.

The girls club had come to me countless times since then for doses to make the kids - or their husbands, or selves - choke down whenever they felt something coming on.

But, yeah, since I finally figured out her ingredients, I hadn't had so much as a sniffle. In years.

I guess it made sense that he thought something was amiss when I suddenly had a lingering stomach bug. Though, luckily for me, it hadn't lasted the whole trimester like everyone said it usually did. Just a good two and a half weeks of misery, and then I could roll over in the morning without wanting to throw up all over the floor.

"How long have you known?"

"Since the first day I woke up nauseated," I admitted, seeing no reason to lie.

"Babe," he said, hand leaving my belly to frame one side of my face, "why didn't you tell me?"

I took a deep breath, feeling my belly swirl around. "I was worried about how you would react," I admitted. "You said you didn't want this. We had been careful to make sure it didn't happen."

His gaze lowered for a minute, his head nodding, acknowledging that it was true, that this wasn't what he had planned on for his life.

"Roan told me something once a while back," he said, his head lifting again. "About some shit not being worth fighting. Think this is one of those things, babe. If we were as careful as we have always been, and you still got pregnant, this was just... meant to be."

"You're not upset?"

"Upset?" he asked, brows lowering. "No. Of course not. I'm fucking terrified," he admitted, making my heart constrict hard in my chest.

That took a lot for him to admit.

He was a man who wore his competence on his sleeve.

He didn't ever want to say that he wasn't sure he could handle something.

But he wasn't sure he could handle this.

"We can do this," I assured him, reaching out to put my hand at the back of his neck. "We've overcome every other obstacle."

"But a kid shouldn't be an obstacle."

"I think a kid is always an obstacle. Every parent has to come face-to-face with things about themselves when they start a family, right? You have to alter behaviors you don't want impacting the kids, traits you don't want them to inherit, learn your own way of parenting, so you don't repeat the mistakes your own parents made. It isn't just about diaper changes and picking a good pediatrician. There is real work going on on the inside too. So what if our work is a little different than someone else's? We can do it."

"You sound a lot more sure than I feel," he admitted, taking a deep breath.

"You'll get there," I told him, confident. If a man was this worried about being a good father, I was pretty sure that meant he would make a phenomenal one. "I'll make sure of it," I added, running my hand up and down his back when he moved forward to rest his head at the center of my chest.

A few weeks later, we were in the OB's office - a compromise I had made when Reeve insisted I needed a 'real doctor' on top of the midwife I had chosen for myself.

I had my shirt hiked up, and cold goop on my belly, and Reeve's hand in mine as the wand moved around, looking for the image.

And then there it was.

Our baby.

Reeve's hand squeezed mine first as the doctor turned the screen toward us. "Do you two want to know the sex?"

I felt my stomach twist as I turned to look at Reeve. We hadn't discussed this part, had chosen a gender-neutral yellow for the walls in the nursery, and hadn't really bought any clothes or accessories yet.

"Up to you," Reeve said, knowing I was perhaps a bit old school about these kinds of things. I would never forget the look of horror on his face when I told him I was going to have a natural birth. I was almost upset I didn't have my camera ready to capture it to show Wasp and Reese.