Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 92843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Still struggling to stop crying, I let out a sob, and couldn’t suppress the loud groan that followed it at the feeling of someone cutting open my guts. Holy shit, I’d never felt pain like it.
“Leave us,” a deep voice said, but I couldn’t focus on it as I breathed through the pain all over my body. There literally wasn’t part of me that didn’t hurt, including my heart.
“Uh, I-I’ll just go and get her something for the p-pain,” Brenda stammered, and then I heard the door closing behind her.
For some reason, that just made me cry harder, and I hated myself for doing it because it made it worse. I wanted to curl up into a ball, but I couldn’t even roll onto my side or lift my legs.
I was stuck, alone, and in pain, and my babies were with strangers somewhere. And I was an emotional wreck.
I felt something press down on the bed and assumed she was back, until a big hand gently stroked my hair off my face. “Calm, baby. You’re going to make yourself sick.”
If there was one thing that could cut through what I was feeling at that moment, it was anger.
Dropping my hands, I pulled my head away from his hand, holding my stomach when it pulled with the movement. Taras didn’t have a right to touch me ever again. He lost it when he broke us.
Ignoring the tears, I glared up at him. “Why are you here?”
He was staring at his hand, which was still where it had been when I’d moved my head away from it, but hearing my question, he looked away from it to me.
“I’m here for you and my sons. Where else would I be?”
If I had a gun, I’d have shot him. How fucking dare he?
“Where else would you be?” I asked, sounding as incredulous as I felt. “How about with your wife?”
He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. Instead, he tilted his head like he was thinking.
I hated myself for doing it, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from moving down to his hand to see if he was wearing a wedding band, torturing myself, until I looked at both of them and saw that he wasn’t.
“I don’t wear one because I’m not bound to her, Nell,” he said softly, not misinterpreting what I’d done. “It wasn’t that I wanted to marry her, I had to—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I whispered, looking away from him. “You can leave now.”
“You’re going to have to hear it at some point, baby.”
“No, I don’t.”
The bed jostled slightly, and I thought he was leaving, but then his phone appeared in front of me with a photo on the screen.
“This is who they call Baby A,” he told me, then swiped his finger across it to another photo. “And this is Baby B. Their Apgar scores are eight, which the doctor tells me is good for premature babies, and especially good given the circumstances of their early arrival. They’ve had some blood taken, and Baby A screamed his head off, proving he’s got great lungs.”
I was so transfixed by the sight of my sons on the screen, and so desperate for any information I could get on them, that I didn’t care how close he was to me now as he leaned over me, holding his weight off me with his spare hand.
“Baby B cried a bit but not as much as his brother, which worried me, but they’re monitoring him, and said he seems to just be quieter than his brother.”
I listened to the information and absorbed it. I was caught up in my first glimpse of my sons since I’d had my ultrasounds.
They both had dark fuzz on their tiny heads just like Taras did, and their noses were slightly smushed in the photos, so I couldn’t credit one of us with those yet. I wanted to see what color their eyes were, because I’d hoped they’d get their Dad’s unusual shade of hazel, but they were shut in the photos.
Really, it was hard to tell who they looked most like, and that disappointed me. As much as I hated him, I wanted them to look like Taras so that I had a link to him.
“Considering they’re twins and premature, they’re both at decent weights, I was told. Baby A is four pounds and ten ounces, and he’s sixteen point eight inches long.
“Baby B is four pounds and seven ounces, and he’s sixteen point five inches long. How you carried them inside you without buckling under the weight is a mystery to me,” he continued, as I swiped my finger back and forth through the photos.
“They’ve said they need to stay here for another two or three weeks until they hit over five pounds in weight, and they’re happy with their progress.”