Chapter 325: Chapter 327: I Am Pregnant
ARIA’S POV
She heard the car at seven fifteen.
She was in the sitting room. Not doing anything. She’d tried reading and put the book down. Tried the Foundation emails and closed the laptop. Tried just sitting and managed that for approximately four minutes before she stood up and went to the window and watched the drive.
The headlights.
The car stopping.
His door opening.
She went back to the sofa and sat down and picked up the book she wasn’t reading and told herself to breathe normally.
The front door.
His voice in the hallway....something brief to Sebastian, the specific tone of a man finishing his day, the sounds she’d learned over a year of this without trying to learn them.
His footsteps.
The sitting room door opened.
He came in still in his jacket, phone in his hand, already saying something about the Foundation board’s email that Morrison had apparently forwarded to him directly which they were going to have a conversation about....
He stopped.
He looked at her face.
He stopped talking.
The phone went into his pocket.
He looked at her for a long moment....reading her the way he always read her, the way she’d never been able to stop him from doing, her face an open book to this specific man no matter how many years she’d spent learning to keep it closed.
"Aria," he said.
"Hi," she said.
"What’s happened."
"Nothing bad," she said quickly. "Nothing bad has happened."
He looked at her.
She looked back at him.
She’d been rehearsing this all afternoon. Had gone through it in the bathroom after her mother had left, in the car, in the kitchen while Mrs Chen made dinner and pretended not to notice that Aria was somewhere else entirely. She’d had words. Sentences. A reasonable calm way to say the thing.
She picked up the test from the cushion beside her.
Held it out.
He crossed the room.
He took it from her hand.
He looked at it.
The sitting room was completely silent.
She watched his face.
****
DAMIEN’S POV
He looked at the test.
He knew what it was before he took it. Had known from the moment he walked through the door and saw her face.....the specific expression she wore when something enormous had happened.
He’d seen that expression before.
Never quite like this.
He looked at the result.
Positive.
He read it twice.
The sitting room was very quiet around him. The estate sounds distant and irrelevant. Everything narrowing to this, the test in his hand and Aria on the sofa and the word positive and what it meant.
He looked up from the test.
She was watching his face.
Terrified. Trying not to look terrified. Doing the thing she always did....holding herself completely still and letting nothing show except that he knew her face completely and he could see all of it.
"Say something," she said. Quietly.
He set the test down on the coffee table.
He sat beside her on the sofa.
He looked at her face up close and felt something moving through his chest that was too large and too warm and too complete to contain properly.
"How long have you known," he said.
"Since this afternoon." She paused. "Mom figured it out at lunch before I did."
"Of course she did."
"She was very calm about it."
"She’s always calm."
"She told me she knew exactly how you’d react."
He looked at her.
"What did she say," he said.
"That you’d react the same way you react to everything I do." She held his gaze. "Like I’m the only thing in the room."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he reached out and took her face in both hands.
She went still.
"Are you okay," he said.
"Yes." Her voice came out slightly uneven. "I’m.....yes. I’m okay." She swallowed. "Are you...."
"Yes," he said.
"You don’t know what I was going to ask."
"You were going to ask if I’m okay with this," he said. "And the answer is yes."
She looked at him.
"Damien...."
"Aria." His thumbs moved across her cheekbones. "Yes. To whatever you were going to ask. Yes."
She looked at his face.
He looked at hers.
She’d been watching this face for a year. Had learned every version of it, the controlled professional version, the version he wore when he was containing something, the version that only existed here in the private spaces between them. She’d thought she knew all of them.
This was a new one.
Open in a way she didn’t have a word for. Something underneath all the usual layers that she’d never seen quite this close to the surface.
"Say something else," she said.
He looked at her.
"I’ve been thinking about this," he said. "Not planning it. Not...." He stopped. "Just. The idea of it. Since before I asked you to marry me." He held her gaze. "I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t something I had a right to want without asking you first."
She stared at him.
"You wanted this," she said.
"Yes."
"Before you proposed."
"Yes."
"You never said...."
"No," he said. "Because it was your choice. Not mine." His hands still on her face. "Everything about this is yours. Your body. Your timeline. Your decision." He looked at her steadily. "I’m just telling you that I’m not....that this isn’t...." He stopped. Started again. "I’m not managing this. I’m not containing it. What I feel about this is not something I can keep controlled and I want you to know that."
She looked at him.
He was telling the truth.
She could see it, the thing she almost never saw completely. Damien Blackwood not managing something. Not containing it. Just letting it exist on his face for her to see.
Her throat did something.
She pressed her lips together hard.
"Don’t," he said quietly.
"I’m not...."
"You’re about to cry and tell me you’re not crying."
"I’m a doctor," she said. "I don’t...."
"You cried at episode nine of a cooking show," he said.
She made a sound that was not a laugh and was not a sob either.
He pulled her in.
Her face against his chest. His arms around her. His chin on the top of her head. His heartbeat under her cheek beating way too fast.
She let herself listen to it like a lullaby.
They sat there for a long time.
Neither of them moved.
Neither of them needed to.
****
Later that night,
The test was still on the coffee table.
The estate was quiet around them. Mrs Chen had left dinner and disappeared with the tact of a woman who understood everything without being told anything.
Aria looked at the test.
"We should tell people," she said.
"Not tonight," he said.
"Mom already knows."
"Your Mom always already knows."
"We should tell Grandfather."
"Not tonight," he said again.
She looked at him.
"Tonight," he said, "is just us."
She looked at the test.
She looked at his face.
She thought about herself as a four year old at a kitchen table saying Mama I’m going to learn how to fix people.
She thought about what she was building now.
What they were building.
"Okay," she said.
They sat in the sitting room while the estate went dark outside and the east garden was just a shape in the window.
She wasn’t afraid.
She wasn’t afraid of any of it.
