Chapter 293 Doctor's appointment

Chapter 293 Doctor's appointment
Sage's POV

He was already there when I arrived.

I had not expected that. I had expected to get there first, to be inside and composed before he walked through the door. Instead he was standing in the car park of Millbrook Family Practice at nine fifty-two in the morning with his hands in his jacket pockets and the fading yellow edge of a bruise still visible on the left side of his face.

Diego was in the passenger seat beside me. He had offered to wait in the car and I had told him to come in. I needed someone in my corner in that waiting room and Diego was the right person for it.

I got out of the car.

Ryder looked at me. I looked at him. It was the first time in four days and it was different from the last time I had seen his face, which had been at the kitchen table with the question already forming behind his eyes. This version was stripped back. The exhaustion was real and visible and he was not trying to hide or mask it. He just stood there and looked at me like a man who had spent four days understanding the full size of something and was not going to pretend otherwise.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said back.

We went inside without touching.

The waiting room was ordinary like a regular hospital. Chairs along the walls. A low table with magazines nobody was reading. A fish tank in the corner that the practice had probably installed to be calming and that mostly just gave people something to look at that was not each other.

We sat next to each other with Diego on my other side and none of us said much. Ryder looked at the fish tank. I looked at my hands. Diego looked at his phone.

The doctor was a small woman with quick careful hands and the manner of someone who had been doing this for a long time and still took each appointment seriously. She asked me dates and I answered and she nodded and then she said let's take a look and the room changed register completely.

The gel was cold.

The screen was positioned so we could both see it clearly.

And then there it was.

Six weeks was not much visually. A small curved shape, grey and white on the screen, and at its center a rapid flicker that the doctor pointed to and said that's the heartbeat, and everything in me went completely still.

That flicker was a heartbeat.

That was our baby.

Ryder exhaled beside me. A long slow breath that he had clearly been holding since the moment we walked into the building. I heard it and I did not look at him because if I looked at him right now I would not be able to hold anything together and I needed to hold it together for another few minutes.

The doctor gave us the due date and the measurements and the list of what to start and what to stop and the schedule of coming appointments. I absorbed all of it. In the background of every word she said was that small flickering thing on the screen.

We walked out at ten forty-five.

Diego held back at the entrance without being asked, understanding exactly what the next few minutes needed to be. Ryder and I stood in the car park in the morning light and looked at each other properly for the first time since he had walked out of the house four days ago.

"I need to say something," I said.

"Okay," he replied.

"I need to say all of it and I need you to let me finish."

"Okay," he said again.

I looked at him. At the bruise. At the tiredness he was not trying to hide. At the eyes that were giving me everything they had the way they always did when he was listening completely.

"What you did was unforgivable," I said. "I am not softening that word. Unforgivable. Not because I will never move past it but because it should never have happened. Because I gave you no reason for it. Not one. And you did it anyway on the morning after the best night of my life."

He said nothing.

"This is the second time," I said, "that I have stood in front of a man and had to prove that my body and my faithfulness are real. The second time I have been accused of lying about something this fundamental. The first time was Bradley, who I eventually understood was capable of anything." I looked at him steadily. "You were the man I chose after Bradley. You were supposed to be the evidence that I had not been wrong to trust someone again."

Something moved through his face that I did not look away from.

"My heart may not fully heal from this," I said. "I need you to hear that. Not as a threat and not as a punishment. As the honest truth of what this cost. What you did landed in a place that was already damaged and it made that damage worse and the scar from it may be permanent." I paused. "I am telling you that because you deserve to know the real cost. Not the version where I say it was bad but I'm managing. The actual cost."

He said nothing. He had promised to let me finish.

"And I still love you," I said. "That is also true and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I loved you when I threw that ring box at the wall. I loved you when I sat on the kitchen floor after you left. I loved you when I read the document you signed and when Diego told me what you said to him." I looked at him directly. "I love you and I want to try to work through this. Not because the love cancels out the damage. Because the love is real enough to be worth the work even when the damage is also real."

Ryder looked at me for a moment.

"Everything you said is right," he said quietly. "I am not going to argue with a single word of it."

"I know," I said. "That is partly why I said it."

I looked at the car park and then back at him.

"I need some time," I said. "And I need space to think properly. I am going to stay with Jaxon for a while."