1 i The test was perfectly accurate. Congratulations. Courtney, you're pregnant. /I
The words kept ringing in her head, days later, and her mind was still processing it. i Pregnant /I . She had dreamed of it for so long, especially in the days after her miscarriage, and had always been denied. But now, Dr. Meadows was telling her that the pregnancy test she'd taken was right. Her dream was possible again, at a time in her life when she needed it.
The past five years of her life had been a whirlwind of emotions, from joy to despair. They were some of the happiest times and also some of her worst. There were times when she marveled that she was alive through all of it, that any of them were. Some of them weren't. Today, she was in a completely different place than she'd been years before. She'd been married to AJ, fighting with him against his family, who cut him off for marrying her. They'd fought against everyone. Now, he was dead and she'd hated him when he took his very last breath. His hatred for Jason had been eating away at him for as long as he'd been alive and it finally caught up with him.
And Jason. After AJ, she found someone else to love, ironically the brother that he'd hated with everything he was. But Jason wasn't the person AJ made him out to be. They could have still been together, she always thought, if only their child had lived. If only she hadn't jumped into the freezing ocean waters to escape from Alcazar. If only she'd had enough faith in Jason's love for her. He was the love of her life and always would be, but that, too, was in the past.
Now, she was pregnant with her second child, technically, even though the first hadn't lived long enough to be born, and she didn't know who the father was. Courtney wasn't sure if she even cared to know, it wouldn't affect the love she felt for her baby already. But, other people would care, especially the two potential fathers, Jax or Nikolas. Her ex-husband Jax or the man she loved now. Both deserved to know and would want to take responsibility. It would be a more difficult situation if Jax were the father, since she didn't love him anymore and they weren't together. They both needed to move on with their lives and a baby would tie them together forever. But it would be loved either way. Nikolas would be thrilled with the news of a child. It would undoubtedly complicate the already hostile feelings between he and Jax, especially if Jax was the father, but even if it was, he wouldn't hold it against her or the baby. He wasn't like that.
Courtney wasn't going to allow the paternity situation to get to her. She was giddy; she was finally getting something she'd wanted for years but thought she could never have. She was surprised that someone hadn't stopped her in the hospital hallway to ask her why she was smiling so much. She had seen Jason just after leaving Dr. Meadows' office and he'd asked what was going on. Of course, she'd told him. It was funny to her that just after she'd found out, she'd seen Jason, the man who was the father of her first child. Things seemed to come full circle and she was able to tell him about this baby, the way she wasn't when it was his.
After everything she'd been through, and was still going through, it seemed as if things were looking up. All she needed now was a paternity test.