Wild Addiction (Wild #2)(63)
Author: Emma Hart

I nod. “Will it hurt the baby?”

“No, the illness itself won’t, but the dehydration can. Normally, I would listen in to baby’s heartbeat now, but since you’re so early, I probably won’t be able to pick it up.”

I curl my fingers around Tyler’s and squeeze. Hard. “So what? How can you check?”

“We’ll take you for an ultrasound at nine a.m. We took blood when you came in and I rushed the HCG results. The numbers put you at around nine weeks, so we’ll get a clear view of baby on the screen.” She stands. “The best thing you can do is get some sleep.”

“I’ll try.”

“And, Liv?” She opens the door and stops. “Don’t worry. Sickness is usually a good sign. It means you have high hormone levels and a healthy baby in there.”

I nod and watch as she closes the door. I turn to Tyler. “Nine weeks?” I whisper. “That means…”

“You got pregnant straight away,” he finishes.

“But we used condoms at first.”

“Then one split. I’m not in the habit of checking them, so I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“But it wouldn’t have mattered then because I had the implant. Obviously it didn’t work, but…yeah.” I look at our hands and tickle the inside of his palm with my fingertips.

He jerks at the sensation and snatches my hand, linking our fingers. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll never know how it happened, just that it did.”

I swallow and nod. “It’s definitely yours, you know? I didn’t sleep with anyone for a few weeks until you.”

He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses the back of it. “I never doubted it, baby girl. Now get some sleep, okay?”

“Because I haven’t already had enough,” I mutter as he gets up.

He sits in the chair next to the bed and rests his feet on the bars at the side. He clasps his hands on his stomach and closes his eyes.

“Ty?”

He opens his eyes, and I wriggle across the bed.

“Sleep with me?”

“I won’t make you ask twice.” He gets up and slides into bed next to me.

“Snuggle,” I whisper, nudging his arm.

He smiles and curls it around me. Careful not to dislodge my IV or the pulse thing on my finger, I rest my cheek against his chest. I slide my hand beneath his shirt and splay my fingers out on his stomach. The warmth of his skin is comforting, and his arm around my body and his lips against my forehead feel an awful lot like home.

“I want to be your addiction,” he whispers into my hair. “Okay? I want you to want me all the time. I want you to need to be around me all the time, because it’s how I feel about you. I swear this last week has been hell, baby girl. You just about ripped my goddamn heart out.”

“I’m sorry.” I slide my hand around to his waist. “But I had to. I had to do it.”

“I know you did—for you. But it’s over now. You’re not being away from me anymore. You clearly can’t look after yourself.”

I jab his side and he laughs quietly. “You’re a twat, Tyler Stone.”

“But I’m yours, so I’m a special kind of twat.”

I smile and close my eyes. Too true.

“Ready?”

I nod at the sonographer and hold my breath. My IV pole is standing awkwardly next to me on the bed and Tyler’s on the other side. He’s gripping my hand so tight that I think he’s cut off all circulation to my fingers.

“This will be cold,” the sonographer says right before spreading the gel over my stomach.

Cold my ass. It’s fucking freezing!

She smiles at my hiss of breath and presses a button on the machine. She grabs the ultrasound probe and wiggles it over my pubic bone, coating it in gel. Then she pushes down firmly and the screen in front of us fills with fuzziness.

“There’s the placenta,” she says, showing a big blob. “And baby is… Ah, right here.”

Tiny.

It’s so tiny.

And I can’t look away.

“Baby has a good, strong heartbeat,” she says, zooming in. “Right there.”

Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. A tiny, dark hole in the chest of my baby is its heart beating away. Inside me.

A small leg kicks out gently and I take a deep breath. The sonographer says something about measurements, but all I can focus on is that tiny little flutter going on inside me.

The baby jerks, a whole-body movement, and a tear rolls out of my eye.

Holy hell. That’s my baby.

A real baby.

Tyler’s grip on my hand tightens even more as he lifts it and kisses my knuckles. “Wow,” he breathes, his voice thick.

I don’t even think I can talk right now. I’ve never been so amazed by anything in my whole life. It’s incredible that the most mesmerizing thing I’ve ever seen is a tiny baby on a screen.

“You’re nine weeks and four days,” she says. “Your due date is… Ah. Christmas day.”

I chew the inside of my cheek. Of course it would be. Tyler doesn’t do anything by half.

She takes the probe away from my stomach and instructs me to wipe the gel off my stomach. Tyler does it for me, drying it with a clean piece of tissue. I roll my hospital gown back down, thankful I put on my big panties yesterday.

“Here,” the sonographer says, handing me three squares.

I look down at the still photos of the baby and smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiles.

Tyler helps me into the wheelchair and I grab my IV pole. He wheels me out of the room and into an elevator after thanking the woman himself.

“Baby,” he says, brushing the photo with his finger.

“Your baby.”

“Our baby.” He looks at me firmly then straight back at the image. He looks at it even as he pushes me out of the elevator and back to my room.

A nurse holds the door open for him, a knowing smile on her face. I sit on the bed, still clasping the pictures, and he puts the wheelchair to the side of the room.

“You look like you’re in love already,” I tease.

His lips tug up into a half grin. “How could I not be? The baby is a part of you.”

I turn my cheek into his palm when he strokes the side of my face. “We’ll be okay, won’t we? You, me, and the baby? We’ll make it work?”

“We don’t need to make it do anything. It already works.” He perches next to me. “I promise you, baby girl. We’ll all be okay, because for once in your life, you’re going to do what I want without arguing with me.”