I'm so sorry for the long wait between chapters! I've been having some trouble with my eyes but I've got glasses now and they seem to be helping a lot, so hopefully updates will pick back up again. If you're waiting on a chapter of Riptide, that will be coming soon, too! I just have a few things to edit.
Anyway...on with the show. I think you already know what the results are going to say, but let's get Bella and Edward in the know, too.
Someone Else's Baby
April 14th 2021
Bella can't sit still.
She also can't stop staring at the manila envelope lying on the kitchen island.
The courier delivered it with a cheery smile and a "Have a great day, Ma'am."
Like he couldn't tell her world was crumbling around her.
Like he didn't know he was holding the answer to perhaps the biggest question she'd ever ask herself.
Is Milo my biological son?
Her phone pings, and as she snatches it off the counter hoping it's Jacob responding to her mayday, she feels a jolt of panic.
I think I'm outside. Edward.
Slowly tucking her cell into her pocket, Bella drags in three big breaths, frustrated when her heart still speeds and her panic doesn't subside even a little.
When Edward had called to ask if he should meet her at The Daily Grind, she'd hesitated before rattling off her address instead.
Now, she isn't sure it was the best idea, but at the time all she'd been able to think about was how much she didn't want to fall apart in her favorite coffee shop in front of all the other customers.
Whatever the results in the manila envelope say, she knows herself well enough to know that she'll be emotional.
Another ping.
Your neighbor let me in. On my way up.
"Okay, okay," she whispers, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes as she focuses on just breathing. A minute or two later, footsteps out in the hall precede a faint but audible sigh and three gentle raps of knuckles on the door.
Bella isn't sure what to expect when she opens it up, but a part of her relaxes at the sight of Edward looking as frazzled as she feels.
Camaraderie. I'm not alone. We're both going through this. We're strangers tangled up in this mess together, for better or worse.
His eyes are rimmed red, hair a mess around his head—she tries not to pay it much attention since she's been fighting that battle with Milo all his life.
Coincidence.
Until recently, she'd never put much thought into them, into the seemingly random coincidences that unfold every single day.
This—Edward's perma-messy hair matching Milo's—could be one of them.
"Come in," she murmurs, both surprised and a little amused by the way she quickly scans the living area for mess as he steps inside.
He doesn't care about the apartment, Christ.
In a moment of panic when she realized she'd invited Edward to the home she shares with her son who may, actually, be his, Bella had tucked every photo that contains Milo out of sight.
She catches him glancing around and realizes the gaps between all the other frames are as glaringly obvious to him as they are to her.
"Would you, um...can I get you anything? I just made a fresh pitcher of lemonade yesterday…"
Edward nods stiffly, hands jammed in jean pockets. "Yes, please."
Bella's stomach twists with secondhand anxiety, but the faintest flare of comfort spreads through her chest, because she knows exactly how he feels. In a weird sort of way, she's glad his discomfort is so obvious, because there's absolutely no doubting that hers is on show. She knows very little about him except the pleasantries and basic details they shared at the coffee shop.
He's Edward Cullen, thirty-seven, born in Washington, raised in Chicago, now a Washington resident once again.
She has no idea of anything else about him…
Except that he might, tragically, inconceivably, have spent the last twelve years raising her son while she nurtured his.
Leading Edward into her kitchen, she studiously ignores the envelope on the counter and sets about getting the fresh lemonade and two glasses. As Bella pours the soda, her eyes find Edward's gaze trained intently on the answer to a question she never thought she'd ask, but one that's been on her mind for days, now.
Is Milo my biological son?
"Here you go," she murmurs, a pang in her chest when Edward chugs most of his drink before releasing a soft, pleased sigh.
Milo does the exact same thing.
Another coincidence, she tells herself. I'm sure thousands, millions, of people do that.
For a few, heart-in-mouth seconds, they just stare at each other.
Father to mother. Man to woman.
Then he speaks. "I've waited weeks for this, but now the moment's here…"
Bella's lips curl up, just slightly, in a humorless smile. "I'm scared, too. Terrified, actually."
Blowing out a big breath, Edward rakes a hand through his hair and drags his eyes up from the envelope to her face. The pain and fear she sees in them is reflected back in her own, and for a split second, she considers suggesting they toss out the envelope and go back to their lives.
Their normal, unquestioned, imperfectly perfect lives.
But she knows, like he does, that they can't.
So, together, they decide to rip off the band-aid.
Edward's hands tremble as he reaches for the envelope. Bella slides onto a stool at the counter, her legs weak, and reaches out as he slides his thumb under the sticky seal.
Emerald green eyes shine back at her in question. Bella swallows hard, reminding herself that it could be pure coincidence Milo has green eyes. That Jamie wore dark contacts the night Milo was conceived, and might, too, have had striking jade eyes.
"Whatever this says…we'll handle it together, okay?" Bella whispers shakily, her heart thundering so fast she starts to wonder if she's about to have an episode.
Please, no, not now.
Edward curves the fingers of his right hand over hers, squeezing gently.
How odd it is, that such a touch from an almost total stranger calms her enough to pull in a few steadier breaths.
Fighting through the fog taking over her mind, Bella hears his quiet "Together," and unconsciously holds her breath as he releases her hand to rip through the envelope seal, slowly sliding the sheaf of papers from within.
"Oh…"
Edward's breath gusts from his chest in a big rush. Bella squints, palming her stomach and gripping the edge of the counter as her head starts to swim. Like in a pressure cooker, heat slowly takes over, dizziness along with it.
His face is blurred by the tears that begin to pour over her cheeks, but Bella can still see enough of Edward's expression to know that her life has been irrevocably altered.
More than when her parents died.
More than when Sue spotted her at an adoption fair and insisted she come home with her.
More than when she met Jamie and conceived her son.
And more than when she received that call from Edward.
His green eyes—Milo's green eyes—slide up to her face full of so much anguish that she can't stand to return his gaze.
That she knows their lives, and the lives of their sons, will never be the same.
"I can't...this doesn't...oh…"
.
.
Ow.
Bella squeezes her eyes shut against the bright light prodding at them.
It takes a few seconds for her memories to come flooding back; with them, a rush of agony so intense that it knocks the breath from her lungs and spears her through the heart.
This can't be happening. It can't. Milo is mine, nobody else's.
And then, a jarring realization.
I don't even know Edward's son's name.
The hurried rhythm of her heart makes Bella's head spin. She keeps her eyes shut and counts to ten, then twenty, waiting for the fluttering to slow.
After twenty years of sporadic episodes like this one, brought on by her heart condition, Bella is used to the process.
If she's quick enough, she usually manages to get somewhere low down or soft, but this time she was in the kitchen.
I don't hurt, though. Nowhere except the chasm that's opened up in my chest.
"Isabella...are you okay?"
Edward Cullen.
"Oh, shit."
A deep but quiet chuckle has heat burning her cheeks. Gentle hands guide her up to lean against the kitchen cabinet—him kneeling, and Bella pulling her knees up to press her forehead into them.
"Are you okay, Isabella?" he asks again, warm concern bleeding through the shakiness of his voice. The worry.
Without permission, a startling thought flits into her head like a fly sneaking through a cracked window.
He sounds fatherly. Has he used that dad-voice on his son?
She swallows hard around the lump in her throat and the bile rising up from her knotted stomach.
On my son?
"It's 'Bella,'" she murmurs, chasing it with a sighed, "I'm sorry. I don't…"
"You don't need to apologize," Edward murmurs, shifting to sit beside her. He offers a rueful little smile, a million different emotions swimming in eyes Bella knows as well as her own. "I'm sort of a pro at this."
Oh.
"Because...because your..."
Tears choke her before she can finish her sentence, but he nods, clearing his throat. They muddle through the awkward moment. "Yes. Lu—he has the same condition as you."
Her head still swimming just a little, Bella doesn't catch his slip, him almost saying his son's name.
"And he...he has fainting spells?"
"Thankfully, they're few and far between these days. He's been on meds for a couple of years, and they've definitely eased most of his symptoms." He hesitates before asking, "Have you ever had treatment for WPW?"
"Four ablations," Bella admits with a nod, mustering a weak smile of her own when Edward hisses. "As you can probably tell, none of them successful. I, uh, I'm kind of an anomaly."
The curiosity on Edward's face hits Bella in a way that other people's never has.
Part of her wonders if he'd be this eager to hear about it if it weren't for the fact that his son has the same condition. If he'd be looking at her the same way.
If he's trying to work out whether the anomaly could, in any way, affect his boy because his boy is…
The boy I gave birth to, Bella finishes the thought with a shiver that ripples down her spine.
Getting to her feet a little too quickly, unable to stand the close proximity to Edward, she rounds the island and takes the opportunity to catch her breath. Palming her chest, though, she can't help but wonder if Edward's son's heart beats the same erratic rhythm.
"The extra electrical pathway is almost always on the inside of the heart," she finally says breathing out slowly, chest squeezing uncomfortably, staring out of the window at the little balcony where she and Milo ate breakfast this morning. "Mine isn't. It's on the outside."
Turning, she watches Edward's curiosity shift into confusion. His brows arch. "The outside?"
"Yeah. It took them until the last ablation to figure it out. I'm the only case my surgeon can find any record of," Bella adds in a murmur. "Everyone says it's nice to be unique...I'm one in seven billion, it seems, and it doesn't feel good."
Her mind casts back, to the first, second, and third procedures. She's aware that this conversation is delaying the inevitable, but he's not stopping her, so she continues.
Happy, for now, to ignore the life-destroying reality they face.
"Has...has your…"
"No." Edward shakes his head, his voice gruff when he adds, "No surgeries. Not yet. Just medications and a lot of tests."
"Right," Bella whispers, remembering the pain of having a surgeon burn parts of her heart while she had to lay still, glad that the little boy hasn't experienced that. "Well, during the last ablation, they discovered that mine is on top of a blood vessel. It's too dangerous to mess with, so I manage it with lifestyle changes. Medications didn't work on me."
Edward winces, and Bella realizes he's connecting dots, putting together what doctors have probably told him over the years, and her admitting that, sometimes, there is no hard and fast cure or fix.
That realization came, for her, after she died.
Four times.
"After the last procedure, my heart...stopped. There was blood around my heart and it couldn't pump right," she finds herself saying, the words soft, but Bella knows he's hearing them. "I flatlined four times and spent a week in the ICU and then a cardiac unit."
Talking about that time, those days that could have been her last, always garners interesting reactions.
Edward's isn't what Bella expects, though. Nor is it like any other she's witnessed. He deflates, the weight of her words knocking the wind from his sails, and it takes a moment before he speaks.
Finally, he sits heavily on the stool beside hers. "You...I'm sorry. That must have been…"
"Scary? Very. A kick up the butt to get on and enjoy life? Also that." Offering him a tiny smile, she admits, "The first time I went out after that, I met my son's sperm donor."
The words fall from Bella's lips without thought, and she fleetingly realizes that she feels comfortable opening up to this man. This relative stranger. Maybe it's because she can convince herself that she's telling Edward these things to be informative because his boy shares her condition, or perhaps it's because she wants to think about anything, everything, other than the reason he's really here.
The way their lives are now inconceivably intertwined.
Exhaling through his nose, Edward reaches over to squeeze her hand resting on the counter, a frown furrowing his brows and a swirl of ever-changing emotions in his eyes.
The thump of the front door opening and then closing cuts off whatever Edward is about to say, the sound of footsteps heading their way like a bucket of cold water over their heads.
whomp whomp whomp
Who is it? *twiddles thumbs*
Massive thank you to my fab ladies for helping make my words pretty. annaharding, maplestyle, and hotteaforme, you're the real MVPs here! And thank you to each and every one of you for being so patient and understanding with my disappearing act. As I said up top, updates should resume as normal now.
xo