37. Ava

Chapter 37

Ava

I stared at the glass door on the other side of the waiting room, watching it like a hawk as I sat uncomfortably in my chair.

As angry as I still was with him, I didn't want to do this alone.

Adrian had agreed to come, but I didn't know if he'd meant it. I'd given him a location, a day, and a time four days ago over text, and he'd said, I'll be there . But the clock was showing my appointment time, and in the haze of everything that had happened and my unwillingness to fully recover, I couldn't help but think the worst.

"Ava Riley?"

I turned my head to the woman standing at the door that led back to the exam rooms. She stood in blue scrubs, her brown hair braided back and nearly wrapped around the stethoscope that hung limply around her neck. She offered me a soft smile when I nodded to her.

The glass door at the front swung open as I pushed myself to my feet.

Adrian stepped in at three o'clock on the dot, his nose pink, his gaze flitting between me and the woman waiting for me. "I'm here," he huffed, almost as if he were out of breath. He slid his gloves off and stuffed them in his pocket. "I'm sorry. There was traffic."

This is Manhattan, there's always traffic. I bit my tongue but gave him a tight nod in acknowledgment as I gathered my things and followed the woman through the door, Adrian right behind me.

I tried not to let it bother me that I hadn't seen him since that day in Washington Square three weeks ago. He'd called me exactly once since then, and I hadn't answered. He'd texted me a handful of times since I sent the email and each one had felt like an insult to injury. I'm sorry. I fucked up. Can we talk?

"So you're fifteen weeks, is that correct?" she asked, eyeing my stomach as she pulled the paper sheet over the bed.

"Yeah, approximately."

Adrian sunk into the chair to the right of the bed, his eyes trained on me. "She had to go into the hospital about four weeks or so ago and they confirmed she was eleven weeks at the time," he said.

"I thought you said this was your first ultrasound," the woman said, eyeing me jokingly as she patted the paper on the bed invitingly.

"It is. They didn't have an ultrasound tech on hand that day," I explained.

"Gotcha, gotcha," she grinned. "Have a seat and lay back for me. Dad, if you want to help her get her shirt up, that would be super useful."

I stared at her. Is she seriously insinuating…? "He's…he's not my dad…"

"She doesn't mean it like that," Adrian said softly, reaching out a hand for me to leverage myself onto the bed. I glared at him, but took it, hoisting myself up and back into the not-so-comfortable bed. "She's referring to me as the dad."

The woman chuckled lightly as she pulled her wheeling stool over. On her chest, a name badge swung loosely that read OB Sadie Langdon. "I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. It's just what we say in reference to the father, and we usually call you Mom as well. I won't if you don't like it, Ava."

I swallowed as Adrian stood, holding out his hand again and lifting my back just slightly off the paper, enough to slide my shirt up to my bra. "It's fine," I said. "Just because he's older, you know, I thought you got confused."

He lowered me back before sinking into the chair again, his hand still holding onto mine. "Completely understandable. This is your first time," he said.

Sadie chuckled again as she squirted something clear onto what looked like a VR machine controller. "Not your first rodeo?"

"Second," Adrian grinned.

"Well, congratulations to both of you," she said, offering us a cheerful smile as she wheeled a little closer. "This might be a little cold."

Instinctually, I squeezed Adrian's hand when the chill of the lube pressed against my stomach. He squeezed right back.

"I'm assuming the hospital gave you some paperwork regarding prenatal care," she said, focusing her eyes on the screen with an intensity I hadn't expected.

"Yeah, I've been taking the vitamins and staying away from the foods it told me to." I tried to crane my neck to see the screen, but it was no use.

"I'll show you once I've got a clear view," she offered. "Don't worry."

It felt almost alien to lay there with the device roaming across my broadening stomach, Adrian's eyes flicking between me and the woman beside me. But the longer we sat and the more my anxiety grew, the more he watched me and me alone, his fingers squeezing mine reassuringly.

"Well," she grinned, pulling my attention back to her, "that'll explain why you're bigger than I thought you'd be at fifteen weeks."

I blinked at her. Bigger?

"We've got three heartbeats going."

My breath caught as she turned the screen toward me, holding her hand steady on my stomach. "Three heartbeats?" I breathed.

Adrian's hand squeezed so hard I worried my bones would break.

"Yours, and both of the babies," she explained. "Don't worry, there's not more than two."

"Twins?" Adrian breathed.

Sadie nodded, beaming at the both of us. "Twins. Both look great."

I tore my gaze from the screen when Adrian huffed out a little breath in surprise. His eyes went glassy as he looked from me to the monitor and back, the corners of his lips pulling up. He lifted our joined hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of mine.

For a moment, just the briefest second, I let myself not be angry with him long enough to feel the wave of shock and excitement and happiness that came from it.

"Twins, Aves," he laughed breathily. He sniffled, wiping his nose on his free hand and catching a stray tear that broke free with his thumb. "We made twins."

I chuckled along with him. "We did."

"Do you want to know the sexes?" Sadie asked, moving the stick around a little more and pulling my attention away from Adrian. "I need to add it to your file, but if you don't want to know I can keep it to myself."

"Yes," we said in unison.

We sat silently as she searched around more, taking photographs as she went and capturing better angles. The anticipation was killing me, and there in the lower right of the screen, I could see my heartbeat creeping up toward triple digits.

"All right, we've got a girl," she said, narrowing her eyes as she took another photograph.

"Lucas is going to lose his mind," Adrian chuckled.

"And…another girl!"

I tipped my head back onto the bed, not caring as the tears started to sprout. Twins. Two girls. This was unbelievable. This was everything.

"Twin girls," Adrian grinned. "Can you tell if they're fraternal? Identical?"

She shook her head. "Nope, you'll need DNA testing when they're born." The wand left my stomach a moment later and she wheeled back, grabbing a handful of paper towels before wiping down my stomach. "Everything looks great, though. I'd suggest taking things a little slower than the advice you've already been given would have said, but other than that, everyone's healthy and happy."

Adrian nodded his thanks and took over wiping me down for her. "Can we have a moment alone? Do you mind?"

"Absolutely not a problem," she grinned. "I'll go print off those photos for you, okay?"

The moment she slipped from the room and left us to our own devices, though, reality came crashing back down like a cartoon piano. It was as if a switch flipped inside of me, erasing all of the glee and stamping it down into the ground.

Twins.

Exciting, thrilling, and…fucking horrifying. Not only was I going to be giving birth, but it would be to two babies, doubling the chances of complications, doubling the risk of hemorrhaging, doubling the work out the other end. And Adrian…

Adrian had fully expected me to be okay with raising them mostly alone, with his help and his money where needed, purely because he wrongfully assumed I was the one who had gone to my father about us.

Adrian expected me to get through the pregnancy without him.

Adrian expected me to handle giving the babies to him when it was his turn.

Adrian expected me to…

"Hey, hey, are you okay?"

Blinking, I realized that my breathing and my heart were too fast, my eyes were unfocused, and my free hand was shaking. Adrian sat on the edge of the bed beside my hip, one hand gripping mine and the other resting against my stomach from where he'd pulled my top back down. His brows were furrowed as he looked down at me, his mouth parted just slightly, and I could feel the worry in his gaze, could feel the way his eyes searched mine for signs of a problem.

"Aves," he said softly. "It's okay. I know it's overwhelming, but we can handle two."

I stared at him, barely hearing his words over the thudding of my heartbeat in my ears. He didn't get it, not at all, and the damage was so destructive here that I worried there was no path to recovery, no path to righting this. "Yeah," I said flatly, turning away to look out the window as I tried to steady my breathing. "Overwhelming."

He lifted his hand from my stomach, reaching forward between us and brushing a strand of hair from my face so gently that I wondered if he was worried I was made of glass. I flinched. "Look, I…I know you're probably scared, and honestly, I'm scared too. But I'm not going anywhere…"

"It's not about the goddamn twins, Adrian," I snapped, my voice beginning to tremble as I forced myself to look at him. This felt wrong, like I was marking a day that should have been celebrated as one to be forgotten, like I was ruining a moment we'd had. But I hadn't spoken to him in weeks and I felt as though I were backed into a corner with an impossible decision—be with a man who clearly couldn't trust me, or go through all of this without him by my side. "It's about you. It's about this. It's the fact that you didn't believe me when I needed you to the most. It's the fact that you thought I could do that to you."

He didn't move his hand from where it rested on my cheek, but I could see the rest of his body recoil, could see the flicker of shame that crossed his face. His throat moved as he searched for the words, his head falling just slightly as he exhaled. "I was wrong. I know that, and I'm genuinely so sorry," he said. "I should have trusted you. I…"

"But you didn't." I steeled my gaze. I was tired of sobbing, tired of breaking down, tired of feeling the things he'd put me through over this. Showing my anger was different, though, and storming Dad's apartment showed me that I could at least be somewhat level headed in my anger. "You didn't believe me. You were fully convinced that I was capable of hurting you like that. And I can understand, to a degree—you've been hurt, horribly, and that's awful and a lot to process, but Jesus fucking Christ, Ade, you were so up your own ass that you were happy to leave me to deal with this alone."

He closed his eyes and hung his head, waves of black hair with streaks of gray falling forward. "I never would have made you do it all alone," he said softly. "I'm sorry, I know I said that before but I can understand how you would have worried about that regardless."

He lifted his head again, looking me dead in the eyes as he squeezed my hand.

"I was an idiot. I'll shout that from the fuckin' rooftops if you want me to," he continued. "Please, just let me make it right. However that looks for you, I'm willing to…"

"I'm not sure if you can make it right," I said, and it hurt to admit, hurt to speak the words that gave life to what I was feeling. "How am I supposed to trust that you won't think the worst of me again? How am I supposed to carry on when I'm being held to a standard you've created in your mind that I couldn't possibly live up to? Things won't always be certain and as it stands right now, all I know is that when things get hard, you don't believe me."

His hand slipped back, my ear falling into the space between his thumb and forefinger. His chin tightened as his lower lip wobbled slightly, measured breaths raising his shoulders up and down. "All I can give you is my word until I can show it."

I opened my mouth to reply, but the sound was cut short, choked as another lump filled my throat. "I want to believe that," I said hoarsely. "I do. But something broke in all of this, Adrian, and I don't know if it can be fixed. I don't know if it can be put back together."

His face fell. Every line that marked his skin loosened in a worried defeat, but a moment later they were back, determination setting in his gaze. "I'll fix it," he said. "I will figure out a way to fix this, Ava, because I am not going to give up on this. Not on us, not on the twins, not on you."

The ache in my chest spread outward as I sat there, caught in limbo somewhere between the love I still felt for him and the walls I'd been building to protect myself.

But then Sadie was coming back into the room with the photographs in hand, and whatever sense of realness we had at that moment faded away, slipping back into oblivion with the rest of it.