“You’re not surprised?”
Sitting back down, she leaned forward with her elbows on the mattress beside me. “Honey, I’m surprised but ecstatic. That man in the waiting room isn’t the Elijah he’s been for the last two years almost. He’s the man we knew before he lost his best friend.” At my look, she nodded. “Yeah, we know. Jackson filled us in on what happened with Coop’s parents, and it all added up. I mean, losing Cooper wasn’t easy on him, but I know for a fact it was his parents who made Elijah withdraw from life and turn into someone who couldn’t find light in it.”
I only knew some of what’d happened with them, but every time I thought about it, I wanted to smack them both silly. Grief twisted your mind, I knew that from personal experience with Mum, but to lash out like that, blaming someone who’d lost a brother? Fuck that. Making someone miserable didn’t cure grief, and blaming someone who was faultless didn’t make it better either. They would know that by now, so why hadn’t they apologized to him yet?
“How far along are you?”
Putting my hand over my stomach, still trying to figure out where inside the baby was inside of me, I said, “Fourteen plus three.”
She frowned and tilted her head. “So, seventeen weeks? How is that possible?”
“No, apparently that means fourteen weeks and three days.”
“Wow.” She sat back, looking amazed. “When can you find out what you’re having? You’re going to find out, right?”
“I didn’t ask,” I shrugged. “I was too shocked by the fact I was seeing a baby inside my stomach. Then it started doing this little rave type dance, and that was it.”
“Shit, I missed it,” she pouted, sitting back. “You can get recordings of your scans now, so next time do that so I can see it if I’m not with you.”
One of the first things that’d hit me after I’d found out about the baby was that I was alone in this pregnancy. Yes, I had family and Elijah, but I didn’t have my mum to hold my hand through it and answer all of the questions that would come to me over the next however many months I had left.
Now, listening to Ari and how involved she wanted to be, I realized that I wasn’t alone. I still missed Mum and wished I could call her up to ask her things, but I had a lot of people who’d be there for me.
“When I moved here, I didn’t think I’d find happiness. All I wanted to do was escape and survive, you know?” Seeing as how she’d been in that room in the cabin with me when I was shot, yeah, Ari got what I meant. “But even with what we went through, I think this is the most at peace I’ve felt since Mum died. I know I still have Orson to worry about, but I feel like I’ve found the place for me when I wasn’t even looking for it.”
Grabbing my hand, she squeezed it gently. “I love that, and I’m relieved you feel that way. You’ve got a lot of us behind you, Dahl, so don’t you ever forget that.”
She wasn’t kidding. I doubt any of them even knew how many members there were in her family, and once they found out about the baby… Oh, shitting shit.
“Do the rest of the family know about the baby?”
Throwing her head back, Ari burst out laughing. “I’m fairly certain my aunt was sending a text to all of them when I came in here to share the good news, so you’re going to be inundated with them soon enough. Hell, Gramps and Grams will probably come through that door in about an hour, absolutely beside themselves that they’re getting to keep you.”
It was a scary thought, but it also made me feel warm inside. Initially, they’d been slightly intimidating, even though Hurst and Linda were the most loving couple I’d ever met, but it felt good to be wanted like that by them all.
“Getting to keep me,” I snorted.
“You laugh now, but you know as well as I do that if they got the chance, they’d probably kidnap you.”
Eh, she wasn’t wrong there.
Again, the thought made me feel good, but at the same time, I could feel tears starting to build, and I didn’t want to be one of those women—the ones who cried at the first thing.
“Anyway, tell me what’s happening with you? I’m trying to remember how long it’s been since I saw you, but I don’t even know how long I’ve been in here.”
“It’s been four days since I saw you. I wasn’t in on Monday. Tuesday, and Wednesday you were off sick, Thursday you were brought in here, and today’s Friday.” Well, that answered that. “And I’ve got news.”