If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(10)
Author: A.L. Jackson

“You ready?” I asked.

She blinked. “So ready.”

Her message was clear, rang in my ears and in my heart, a promise that every question of my devotion to her had been erased from her mind.

She clung to me as we turned our faces to the test sitting beside us on the bathroom counter.

I felt her lose her breath, and I wound my arms around her a little tighter to hold her up as her legs weakened beneath her.

Two pink lines.

This time, there was no question she was shaking. She trembled in my arms. “Christian,” fell as a breath from her mouth, bled into the room as wonder and awe.

Two pink lines.

There was no greater joy than what I felt in this moment. It just didn’t exist. Nothing else could compare.

She was crying as I knelt on the floor in front of her. I wrapped my hands around her waist, buried my face in her stomach where our child grew. Where a new life had begun.

I was overcome.

Elizabeth gentled her fingers through my hair. I tipped my head back so I could look at her. I slipped my hands to the outside of her waist in the same second she took my face in her hands.

“We’re going to have a baby, Christian,” she said.

Saying it aloud seemed to rip something open inside of her. She choked over a cry that spoke of so many things—shock and relief and joy, crushing the vestiges of disbelief that had lingered in these walls.

“A baby,” she whispered again through a fervent sob. “Oh my God, Christian… I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling right now. How happy I am. I didn’t think I’d ever get to have this again. I’d accepted that it was only ever going to be me and Lizzie.” Passion poured from her mouth, her spirit seeking understanding in mine. “I…I…” She stumbled over her thoughts, wet her lips as she looked at me through bleary eyes. “You know, you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted this with…the only one I’d ever give this to. Thank you for finding me, for loving me, for filling up the void in my life…for giving me this.”

“God, Elizabeth…”

How could I respond to that when I’d been the one to leave that void in the first place? But I knew…knew I was the only one who fit in that void, because it was Elizabeth that perfectly filled mine, too. “Nothing in this world could make me happier than this,” I urged.

Unchecked tears streamed down her face, and she took me by the hands and held them flat at her stomach.

I swallowed over the lump wedged at the base of my throat, my hands burning into her flat stomach that would soon grow round.

In the fading light of the room, we held our child.

My mind raced with images of what was taking hold in the deepest places of Elizabeth’s body.

Was this a boy or girl?

I wondered if again the child would take after me the way Lizzie did? Maybe have a tiny cleft like the one Lizzie wore on her chin and the same shock of black hair on her head? Would he watch the world through intuitive, blue eyes, just like Lizzie?

Or would she be a small Elizabeth, would her eyes be warm and brown, would blonde curls frame her face, would her heart go on in unending innocence, kindness, and compassion?

Or would this child defy the imaginable?

“I’m so happy, Elizabeth,” I whispered at her stomach, hoping that maybe this child could sense the devotion flooding from us, the love we had already found ourselves in.

I’d forever regret not being there for Lizzie. Even though my spirit had recognized her the second I saw her, the truth was, I’d only known my little girl for a matter of months. But somehow, somewhere in the bleakness of that time, she had still made her mark on my heart. Through time and space, she’d managed to touch me. She had stirred something in me that I never wholly understood until the moment I first saw her.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that this child already had, too.

A smile washed the entirety of Elizabeth’s face, those same images I’d been thinking of before so obviously playing behind her eyes.

Then she offered a soggy grin. “Lizzie is going to be the best big sister. I can’t wait to tell her.”

“I can’t imagine a better big sister.” I smiled up at her, running my hands up her stomach then wrapping them firmly around her waist. I tugged her a little, rocked her forward.

Her hands fell to my shoulders for support and a tiny giggle of surprise rolled from her mouth. She raked her bottom lip between her teeth.

God, she was always pushing me to the edge of sanity, driving me a little mad because only this girl could stir these impossible things in me, wind me up and tie me from the inside out. In the same pass of her hand, she managed to put me at the greatest ease.

She was what made me complete. She was what made me right.

“How’d we get this lucky, Elizabeth?”

She touched my face and slowly shook her head. “I have no idea…but I’m not going to let it go.”

Two Weeks Later

Elizabeth was on her knees on the bathroom floor. For what had to have been the tenth time in the last thirty minutes, she vomited. Her entire body trembled and shook as she purged the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She squeezed her eyes shut, her back arching as she lifted up higher on her knees and gasped for a breath.

I swept back the hair matted to her forehead, lifted it from her neck that was drenched with sweat.

God, this was complete torture. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so helpless in my life. All I wanted was to fix her, to make her better, to take it away.

And I couldn’t do a goddamned thing.

She gulped for air before she lurched forward and heaved again. This time, nothing came up. An indistinct whine fumbled from her mouth as her muscles clenched and strained, and she gripped the edge of the toilet as her body fought to expel something that just wasn’t there.

With a heavy sigh, I placed a kiss to her temple. “Hold on a second.”

Harshly she nodded, and I climbed to my feet. Grabbing a washcloth from the linen closet, I ran it under cool water and wrung it out. My footsteps were subdued as I shuffled back to her.

I knelt down beside her. “Here,” I whispered, wishing to find anything that would soothe her, even in the slightest way.

She felt miserable, and it caused me physical pain to see it.

That pain contorted my face with sympathy when I hooked my index finger under her chin and drew her face toward me.

Shit.

She looked awful…and beautiful.

How was that even possible?

I swept the cloth over the moisture gathered on her brow. Elizabeth whimpered, and her eyes fell closed as she allowed me to take care of her. I dabbed the cloth gently at the chapped skin of her lips.