Chapter 186
Married?
Cecilia dropped her mug of tea—the porcelain exploding on the kitchen floor. She wasn’t meant to hear the conversation between Grayson and Ryan as Grayson returned home that evening. But she’d happened to walk in at just the wrong time.
Asher and Clover were getting married.
“Cecilia—” Grayson said when he spotted her. She tried to fight back the tears in her eyes. It wasn’t fair to them for her to appear so heartbroken. Even if she was. Even if this was the most devastating news she’d ever heard.
“W-What?” Cecilia stuttered. “Why is he getting married? Why Clover? Why now? So suddenly, why?”
“Business,” said Grayson, shaking his head with a sigh. “They want to combine investments under one name. Easiest way to do that is a wedding. Said Olivia called off their fake engagement with his parents and this was an easy way to build his portfolio and keep his parents off his back.”
Cecilia’s heart was thundering. She dropped to the floor to gather up her shattered mug, yanking her thumb back as the liquid splatter seared her skin.
“Cecilia,” Sebastian said, quickly coming to her aid. He pulled her hand away and looked at a housekeeper, who was already fetching a mop and broom. “Thank you,” he said, drawing Cecilia away from the mess.
But something was wrong—very wrong. She clasped her stomach, a sudden pain shattering her thoughts. She hunched over in Grayson’s arms and let out a howl of pain.
“Cecilia—” Ryan was at her side suddenly, following her hands to her stomach. “Are you okay? Do we need to go to a hospital?”
Cecilia didn’t know what was happening. It was like a knife was repeatedly being plunged through her stomach. She nodded. If she hadn’t been pregnant, it would’ve been a pain she tried her best to ignore, but…what if it was the baby?
God…she was having Asher’s baby. And he was going to marry someone else.
She let Ryan heave her up into his arms and carry her out through the front door. Grayson buckled her in while Ryan started the engine and they pulled off from the mansion, leaving the other two behind. “What’s going on?” Cecilia asked, panicking as the pain continued to rake through her. It was like a little lightning bold, striking her in the core over and over. Ryan didn’t respond, but touched her knee, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Hold on,” he told her. “Everything’s fine.”
It certainly wasn’t, but Cecilia didn’t know what this pain could possibly be. What if this was it? What if she was losing the baby?
In a way, it would’ve been her answer to the Asher problem. No baby, no worries—Asher could marry who he wanted to. But was that really the truth? No, Cecilia would’ve still been upset. Still been heartbroken. The baby was just an additional factor—one that made all of this so much more frightening.
They arrived at the ER and Cecilia was quickly placed on a wheel chair and wheeled off to a room. Ryan was not allowed in it, which only made her panic more as doctors poked and prodded her below. She didn’t understand what was happening, and the entire time she laid there in a bleary fog—feeling their sharp instruments and the pain radiating through her body. It was nearly an hour before she had any results—an hour after the pain had begun to fade and Cecilia sat in the waiting room, her head on Ryan’s shoulder.
Then the nurse appeared, a clip board in his hand. “Ma’am. We’re ready for your ultrasound.”
“Ultrasound?” Cecilia asked. “Am I even far-along enough for an ultrasound?”
“No, I’d say we’re just in time. But this is mostly to make sure you’re okay. As far as I can tell the baby is fine.”
Cecilia was relieved by the news, but she still didn’t want to go alone. She pulled Ryan up by the arm. “He has to come with me.”
“That’s just fine,” said the nurse.
She let them into a room where Cecilia was laid on a table. Her stomach a small hill that could’ve been mistaken for something as simple as a little bloating. The nurse coated it in cold jelly and ran her instrument over it slowly. A small, foreign shape appeared on the screen—nothing but a mix of gray-black blobs.
“That’s it,” said the nurse. “Too early to tell the gender, but there we are.”
It was so surreal. Cecilia felt Ryan squeeze at her hand, but she was in a different universe entirely. All this time, there had been a small possibility that she wasn’t really pregnant—that the tests were false-negatives. That she’d just put on a little weight. But this proved it. It was palpable in front of her, and she didn’t know how to feel about it.
She turned to Ryan, tears in her eyes, a sudden panic setting in. “It’s his,” she admitted. “It’s his and I don’t know what to do.”
Ryan looked her over, swallowing visibly. It wasn’t the news she had wanted him to hear, but she had no one else to confide in. He was her best friend—her soul mate.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling her chin crinkle. “Don’t hate me.”
“How could I hate you?” Ryan asked. He wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes and leaned in to rest his forehead against hers. “Anything that’s a piece of you is a piece of me.”
Cecilia treasured his words, his voice, his warmth. She let out a soft sob—one that was more relief than sadness. And when she opened her eyes again, she was staring into that strangle little shape on the screen. It wiggled, moved like a little alien creature. But soon, it would have fingers—a face. A little nose.
For the first time, Cecilia felt something other than fear for her child. She felt…joy.
But despite how accepting Ryan was of the child, something still sat all wrong in her at the concept of Asher running off with Clover. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t right for him—he was supposed to be here.
He had to exist in Cecilia’s life. She was going to have his child.
She just needed to remind him somehow. To trigger his memory.
But for the next week, Cecilia couldn’t find him. Not at Clover’s apartment, not at his own. He wasn’t in Las Vegas yet, because on Cecilia’s occasional secret trips to the tower, she found Clover often getting out of her car. Wherever Asher had gone, he was still not back to himself. He was still not the Asher she knew.
In a way, it felt like someone she loved had dyed and left behind only a cruel shell of who he once was.
But in the times when she felt her heart fall, Ryan and the others picked it up again.
She had been pacing the mansion as she did most days, feeling her stomach, thinking about the little thing within and what their future would be like. When she heart a racket coming from one of the room, she paused and peaked inside.
“No you dipshit,” Ryan was cursing. “It goes in there.”
“Don’t be an asshole, I can’t see—the hole is too small,” Grayson was saying.
“Just force it in,” Sebastian chimed in.
Cecilia felt her face go red, wondering what kind of sick, perverted act she had just wandered in on. Then she saw them sitting there, trying to put together a furniture piece. Cecilia realized this was one of the rooms she had never visited. A larger guest room that had recently been flushed of all the furniture. The walls were painted like the sky—blue and pink with gentle clouds.
“Who did this?” Cecilia asked, gaping at the beautiful paint job.
“That would be Sebastian’s handiwork,” said Grayson. “For god’s sake, Ryan. Just hold it still!”
He was fighting to get a screw into a piece of wood. They were building something, but Cecilia didn’t understand what until she spotted the box in the corner of the room. A crib.
“You’re building a nursery?” She couldn’t help but laugh a little at the sheer joy and warmth the sight of it brought her. “You’re like seven months too early, you know that right?”
“In the greater scope of things, that’s not a long time,” said Grayson. “I’ve been reading up and premature births are on the rise the past couple years.”
“Reading?” asked Cecilia. “You’re reading parenting books?”
“Well, one of us has to know how to raise a kid. And your mom can’t do it all on her own.”
“What the hell do you think I am?” asked Ryan. “Chopped liver?”
“Have you ever held a baby?” Grayson speculated.
“I held a Fennec fox that one time I visited North Africa,” said Ryan.
“Definitely not the same thing,” Sebastian commented.
Cecilia couldn’t handle it. She bubbled over with laughter and tears, holding her stomach for fear that she’d wet her pants if she didn’t. The others looked up at her in confusion, but she couldn’t contain herself.
They were perfectly incompetent and she loved them for it.