Chapter 14

I regret nothing.

-Krisney after she eats an entire family size box of Lucky Charms

Krisney

Avoiding him was incredibly hard when all I wanted to do was go to him.

The first time I felt the babies kick, I’d picked my phone up to call him, to tell him he needed to come over immediately. But then remembered that I needed to move on with my life and calling him to tell him wasn’t a good idea. It was just letting the door swing back open when I’d tried with all my might to close it.

When I’d wake up in the middle of the night, my heart pounding a million miles an hour from a nightmare, I’d wanted nothing more than to call him and tell him about my dreams.

I never did.

Then, when I’d see everyone in town and take in their judgment—I wished for nothing more than to have him at my side.

He’d tried to be there.

After the day Pepé died, he’d tried relentlessly to insert himself back in my life, but I’d done everything in my power to make sure that that didn’t happen.

The only thing I wasn’t able to accomplish was getting a new doctor.

Torres and the other doctor practicing with Reed in the office wouldn’t take me as a patient.

I’d heard through the grapevine that Reed had told them in no uncertain terms that if they took me on, he’d leave.

And since the practice was so swamped, they’d refused to take me on.

Meaning that three months after telling him that I wanted nothing to do with him, I still had to see him at least once a month.

This would be my third month seeing him, and I’d been shoring up my defenses ever since the last appointment.

***

“They’re moving well?” he asked excitedly.

I nodded, unwilling to speak unless I absolutely had to.

I didn’t want to chance telling him that I loved him, I missed him, and I wanted him to move in with me so I didn’t have to have his babies alone.

Hence the staying quiet bit.

My emotions were fucking everywhere, and I knew that if I could just get through this appointment, that I would make it another day without him.

I would.

He started to massage my stomach, and I had to clench my legs together to keep from jolting at the contact.

I knew this wasn’t anything sexual in nature in the least, but all he had to do was touch me, and I was panting for him.

I gritted my teeth when he moved down to just above my pubic bone.

“You feel this?”

My hand automatically went to his, and he guided my hand and pushed. I felt something round and hard.

“Yes,” I croaked.

“That’s a butt.” He laughed. “And this up here…” He moved my hand to a spot just above that. “That’s the head of baby A.”

The head was sideways by my lower ribs on my left side.

“This is baby B, head here.” He moved my hand again to my upper ribs, then pressed. “And this is the back.”

“How do you know this?” I blurted as he moved my hand down the length of the baby’s back.

“Practice,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.

They were happy.

He was happy.

And if I was being honest, I was the happiest I’d been since the last appointment.

“I start a new job on Monday,” I told him.

He held my eyes.

“Where?”

“At the dentist on Main Street. His old dental hygienist quit.”

Reed’s laugh was happy.

“That’s good news. I wasn’t sure you were going to get to utilize your degree.”

I’d gotten my degree in dental hygiene while in the Army and then had practiced somewhat in Alabama when I was in the Reserves. When I was sent to Germany, it’d been for my old job—which was a whole bunch of office work that I realized rather quickly that I was no longer cut out for.

That’d been the deciding factor to wait until I found a job that I knew I’d stay at, and not do one just for the temporary while I looked for a new one. That wasn’t fair to the employer or to me.

“I’m thinking it's good news, too. He also said that maternity leave won’t be a problem, because the old dental hygienist is willing to come back while I’m out for the six weeks.”

He nodded, giving my stomach one last press, before he pulled away.

“You know what today is?”

I nodded.

That’d been another reason why I was anxious.

It was the exam that would tell me what the sex of the babies I was carrying were.

After one more lingering glance at my belly, he stood up and walked to the sink where he washed his hands out of habit.

I tried not to be offended that he would think he’d need to wash his hands, and struggled to get up.

I was forty seven months pregnant with twins, and I felt like I was as big as a house.

I probably looked it, too.

Yet, the scale at the front of the office told me that I’d only gained my original twenty pounds.

Which was surprising since I was eating everything in sight.

Neither the nurse nor Reed seemed to be worried, though, so I chose to count that as a good thing as I tried not to think about my eating habits.

I’d just barely made it up onto my elbows when Reed was there, helping me to sit.

“Sorry,” he muttered, immediately releasing me once he had me in an upright position.

I bit my lip to keep from crying out at the loss, and made my way up to standing.

Once he was sure I was steady, he walked to the door and opened it, allowing me to exit in front of him.

I did, and I tried not to think about the way I was walking away from him yet again.

I hated leaving.

The only time I ever felt happy was when I was with him.

Pregnancy fucking sucked, because all I ever thought about was him…my babies that I got pregnant with by him. What he was doing. Where he was at. Whose baby he was delivering.

It just kept getting worse and worse, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle staying away.

I might just beg him for anything, admitting that I was an utter moron for telling him to stay away.

Scraps were better than nothing—that I was quickly realizing.

“Caria, please let everyone know that I’m headed to the ultrasound with my…Kris.” He gestured to me with his head.

Caria’s eyes flashed, then she nodded.

Reed, however, didn’t notice. His eyes were all for me as he gestured to the door. “Let’s go.”

He was practically bouncing in his pretty, bright yellow shoes.

I wanted them. I was so transfixed on them that I didn’t think to even ask why he was going with me. I knew where the ultrasound floor was. I also had taken the path quite a few times before, mostly because also on the same floor was the lab that I had to do my sugar testing at the week prior.

“Krisney?”

I looked up, startled to find Reed that close, and blinked. “Yes?”

“What are you looking at?”

“Your shoes,” I told him. “They’re pretty.”

His mouth kicked up into a grin. “I like them, too.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

I couldn’t.

His smile was enough to make me feel like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

Absently I rubbed my hand over my belly, smiling slightly when a foot kicked out at where my hand was resting.

“Are they moving again?”

He pressed the button for the elevator, looking at me, waiting for me to answer.

“Yes,” I said, stepping onto the elevator once the doors opened. “You can feel.”

His eyes took in my sincerity, and then he reached forward, almost hesitantly, and put his hands back onto my belly.

This time it was different.

This time, there wasn’t anything he was doing that I could blame on him being a doctor.

No, this time, it was out of pure pleasure.

And I could read that pleasure all over his face.

Moments after his hand met my stomach, I felt a rather rambunctious kick slam right into his palm.

And the smile that he awarded me with was nothing less than euphoric.

“I wonder what they are…”

The doors slid open, and he stepped away.

Immediately I missed his heat.

I was also mad at inanimate objects—IE the elevator doors—for opening when all I wanted him to do was never stop touching me. Not ever again.

Goddammit, I was such a loser.

I was the one who told him to stay away.

I was the one who…

“You coming?”

I shook off my temporary insanity and hurried behind him, trying in vain to keep up with his long strides.

“Slow down, Daddy Long Legs,” I called, hurrying after him.

There was only so much I could do, though, seeing as I had such short legs.

“Sorry, Caterpillar.”

I snorted, remembering how we’d come up with those stupid nicknames all those years ago.

In fact, it’d been something similar to what had just happened, and he’d called me that because I was a slow, short-legged person. I’d called him daddy long legs because he was so fast.

The bad part? He didn’t even blink when he called me that. It was as if he’d called me that numerous times, as if the last time he’d said that had only been just yesterday, instead of a lifetime ago.

Fucking hell.

Then, he had to go and make matters worse by grabbing my hand, leading me through the office, and straight back to the ultrasound room, bypassing not just the waiting room, but the ultrasound room I’d used the last time I was there.

“Uhhh,” I started to say, but was interrupted when a happy-go-lucky voice filled the hallways, seeming to bounce off the walls. “Reed, my boy!”

I laughed when I saw a man, much older than Reed, walking down the hall toward us.

He may be old, but there was no way in hell the man was out of shape.

He had to run or something, because Jesus Christ he was tall and fit.

“Hey, Boyce. We’re here to get the Hail babies checked out and over.”

The man looked at me, and his eyes changed.

“I had no clue that it was that Hail.”

Reed laughed, and I felt like I was left out in the dark on who this man was to Reed. I’d never seen him in my life, and honestly, I knew everyone here.

This man, though?

Never seen him before.

“I’m glad you could follow me back here. I was worried about you.”

Reed’s words had me glancing back between the two men like an annoying bobble head doll.

“Oh, shoot,” Reed said. “Boyce, this is Krisney. Krisney, this is Boyce, he’s a…used to be a sonographer with the Army. He’s retired now, and he moved back here, what was it…a month ago?”

Reed turned to Boyce, and Boyce nodded his head. “It was time. It’s nice to meet you, Krisney.”

I smiled.

“Boyce is gonna do all the fun stuff today.”

My brows rose at that.

Reed winked at me, though, understanding my hesitation. “It’ll be okay.”

With that, he led us into a second room, and this time it was with a huge fucking couch off to one corner of the room. The exam table was smack dab in the middle of it, and the biggest TV I’d ever seen was taking up the wall across from the couch and the table.

Reed didn’t take the couch, though.

He took my hand and helped me up onto the table, and then stood beside me while shoving up my shirt.

I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t liked seeing him so excited.

“Do y’all want to know the sex of the baby?”

“Babies,” Reed corrected, then looked down at me. “Do we want to know?”

I’d originally planned on saying yes. But what came out was a resounding, “No!”

Reed looked like I’d ran over his pet cat. “Really?”

“Really,” I confirmed.

He sighed. “I guess that was what we’d planned on doing from the very beginning, anyway. I just never expected you to actually go through with it.”

When he said from the ‘very beginning’ he really meant the very, very beginning. We’d talked about children on our second date.

I’d told him that I didn’t want to know. That I wanted to be surprised. To find out the sex of our babies with him in the delivery room.

Oh, if I only I knew how wrong I’d be.

If I’d known, I would’ve found out right then and there.

***

“Any problems you want Dr. Hail to be aware of?”

I shook my head.

“Good.”

I paused, remembering something.

“These stretch marks, though,” I muttered, lifting my shirt slightly and showing Reed’s nurse.

The nurse grimaced right along with me.

“Those are going to be there forever.”

That came from the bitch that hated my guts.

I had a feeling that she and Reed had something going on before I came along and ‘ruined things’ by showing up pregnant.

Then again, at this point, they could have started something right back up.

I’d left Reed standing only a foot away from Pepé’s grave over three months ago, and I had stuck with my guns ever since.

After our last doctor appointment, I’d left him standing in the elevator, watching me leave with a sad expression on his face.

But I couldn’t help it.

I needed to protect me at this point, not Reed.

And that was what I’d planned on doing.

But Caria? Yeah, I fucking hated her. With a passion.

I was blaming it on the hormones, but I knew had I not been pregnant, I still would’ve hated her just as much.

I’d seen her around town before with him. Once last week while at Subway, and another time while at the gas station when I’d been filling up. They’d been getting coffee.

I never got the confirmation, but I tried valiantly not to think about what Reed might or might not have done with her.

It hurt too bad.

Literally, every time I even came close to thinking about it, I was reminded that though we now shared children together that would be born in a few months, we weren’t anything more than that.

We were still in the same exact spot as we’d been when this all started.

Apart.

“I’ve heard using the stretch mark lotion doesn’t really help,” Reed’s nurse, Opal, interrupted my inner musings. “You’re just spending the extra money on it when you could get the same results from using the Wal-Mart brand.”

I grimaced.

That’d been what I’d been using.

Shit.

“Well, what the heck do I use now?” I muttered almost to myself.

Opal patted my hand as she finished up with my blood pressure, and I stood up while also stretching my back.

Who knew having two kids growing inside of you would cause a relatively healthy woman to feel this much pain?

There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t have something that hurt. And the more days that passed, the more stuff that hurt.

Yesterday it was my feet. Today, it was my feet and pubic bone. Next week, it’d be my entire body, I just knew it.

“You should try this.” Reed’s whatever the hell she was, ex hopefully, lifted a clear bottle and wiggled it at me.

I looked at the bottle and frowned.

“Oh, it’s okay. Caria sells essential oil,” Opal said, reading the hesitancy on my face. “She’s the oil guru around here. Just last week she gave some to Reed to help him sleep. Lavender, was it?”

I wanted to throat punch this ‘Caria’ chick. I’d never heard her name before, or even heard her mentioned around town, but maybe there was a reason for that.

Maybe they were trying to protect me.

Maybe, Reed really did have feelings for this chick.

“What’s in it?”

“It’s Patchouli oil. Patchouli helps recovery of the skin, and prevents ugly scarring, like what you’ve got going on there,” Caria explained, holding the simple bottle out.

I took it, mostly because Opal was staring at me as if to say, ‘Well?’

“What do I do with it? Just rub it on?” I asked. “And is it safe during pregnancy?”

Caria nodded, her face impassive, and said, “Yes. Completely, one hundred percent safe.”

Opal started to nod right along with Caria, and if it hadn’t been for Opal’s agreement, I might’ve thought that this oil she was giving me was poisoned.

But as I looked at the bottle, I realized that it was actually pretty damn official looking.

“You sell this oil?”

Caria nodded. “On my website.”

She then proceeded to pull out a card and handed it to me.

I took it, looking at the words on the little rectangle, and then nodded my head. “Thank you.”

“Kris…” Reed said, surprising the three of us.

Opal grinned. “I’ll see you in a moment, dearie. I need to go give a call to an insurance agency.”

With that Opal left, leaving only Caria—who was staring at Reed with such uninhibited devotion in her eyes—and me.

“Hey,” I said, clearing my voice. “How are you?”

Caria moved until she was standing next to Reed’s side.

“How are you?”

“She’s good. She said something about stretch marks, though. I gave her some oil to help with them.”

Reed didn’t even glance at her.

“Caria,” Reed said. “Would you mind leaving? I’d like to spend a few minutes alone with Krisney.”

I wanted to whoop in excitement that he’d told her to leave.

In fact, if I could rub her nose in it, I would.

“Do you want to go to lunch?”

Reed’s question startled me.

I wanted nothing more than to spend more time with him, but I couldn’t do it. I’d been doing so well.

He took in my hesitation, and likely my decision to say no. “I want to talk…I want to figure some things out.”

I wanted that, too.

This not talking about the obvious thing we were doing was starting to grate on my nerves.

“Okay,” I whispered.

He nodded, looking thankful.

“I know that the PA saw you, but do you have any questions?”

The PA for the office was having to work in three doctors’ patients today because all three of the doctors had been out of the office delivering babies.

I hadn’t expected Reed to be back.

Which had been what gave me a false sense of hope.

I’d let my guard down, thinking he wasn’t here.

Now I had to go to lunch with him.

Shit.

He winked at me and offered me his outstretched forearm.

“Let’s go.”

I took it, unsure whether this was a good idea or not.

He led me out of the room, down the hall, and to the door that separated the waiting room from the main office.

“Oh, hold on.” He held up a finger. “I bought you something.”

Then he was gone, leaving me standing there all alone.

I pushed the door open, thinking I’d wait in the hallway for him, when my name was called.

I turned and saw Opal heading toward me, stopping me before I could reach the door.

“Hey!”

I smiled when I saw her.

“Yes?”

“Caria said this tea would help with indigestion and is supposed to help with sleep. You were saying how it’s affecting you badly in the evenings. This’ll help with that. I take it myself sometimes.” Opal handed me the box.

I took it, again thinking that Caria had some ulterior motive in giving me things.

I took the box, knowing that I would likely not drink it.

But I hadn’t counted on Reed’s bombshell he’d dropped on me moments after walking into the Taco Shop, either.