Beyond These Walls (The Walls Duet #2)(52)

I stayed silent for a moment, listening to her, as she fussed over him.

It must have been breakfast time because she shouted, “Don’t you dare spit that out!” She laughed and then said, “You little troublemaker!”

Despite my mood, I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to my mother interact with Grace’s child.

Would Mom’s reaction be the same with mine? Or would it be much like Jude’s with nothing but fear and panic?

I’d just lied to my mother about my health and the entire experience left me feeling cheated and robbed. Robbed of the happiness and bliss that comes from telling my husband I was expecting our first child. Robbed of that exquisite joy of seeing his eyes flare with pride as he swept me up into his arms, ready to tackle this new journey in life. I felt stripped of those jubilant calls we would make together, huddled around the phone, as we shouted to our friends and relatives that we were pregnant.

That was how all of this was supposed to be.

“Mom,” I started, biting my lip to keep the emotions at bay, “what was it like for you when you found out you were pregnant with me?”

The line was silent, and I realized my question might seem out of the blue, so I followed it up in a rush with, “I was just wondering since you had Zander there, and I was thinking about Grace and the day she told me she was expecting.”

“Well, it wasn’t easy,” she answered.

“How so?” I pressed further.

“I was alone, young . . . scared. Your father—the man who donated the sperm,” she corrected herself, “bailed and there was just me against the world.”

She never liked to refer to him as my father. She never liked to refer to him much at all. To talk about him gave him importance, and in her mind, he didn’t deserve any. After the small amount I’d learned, I tended to agree with her.

“How did you make the decision to—”

“Keep you?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I’ll be honest. It wasn’t easy. I don’t envy anyone who has to make that decision. Society has its opinions on it, one way or another, but it truly is a personal decision, and I wouldn’t judge anyone who has to make it. I debated it for days until it finally dawned on me.”

“What?”

“How many times a day I said the word me,” she said. “Every reason and every argument I could think of for ending the pregnancy all boiled down to me, how it would affect my life. Then, I realized how self-centered I sounded. I was balancing the life of a child, a life I’d helped create, all because of me. I decided I’d spent too long focusing on the word me, and it was time I started looking out for someone else’s well-being first.”

A sad smile tugged at my mouth. “And you’ve been doing so ever since.”

“Best decision of my life,” she answered.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“For what?” she asked. She continued to coo back and forth with Zander.

“For loving me, for choosing me, and for telling me exactly what I needed to hear.”

I hung up before she had a chance to respond.

Jumping quickly off the bed, I dialed a new number on my phone and began making plans, ones that would perhaps thin the thread my marriage was dangling on.

But it was time to think beyond the idea of me or even us.

I needed to protect our child.

I needed to become a mother.

I’D BEEN STARING at the blank computer screen for what seemed like hours now.

After Googling every possible thing I could think of, trying to figure out anything and everything about Lailah’s condition, I was left with more questions than answers.

There was a reason the doctors always warned against the Internet.

A plethora of information could be helpful or turn even the most optimistic person into a crazed hypochondriac.

Right now, I had no what idea what to think.

There were cases, people even, that I’d found online that were similar to Lailah. They had given birth to full-term healthy babies and lived to watch their children grow. But there were also the horror stories, the ones that made my stomach turn from just thinking of the possibilities.

How could we risk it? Why would we want to?

If Lailah wanted to be a mother, there were several other safer options for us. After everything we’d been through to get here, could we really be so careless with her health?

I hadn’t gotten a shred of work done in the time I’d been in my office. I had marked myself out that day anyway, so besides my secretary, I wasn’t sure anyone really noticed I was here.

It gave me peace and silence, which only made the thoughts in my head that much louder.

Rising from the desk, I stretched out my neck and shoulders and walked toward the large windows overlooking the city below. Whenever I found myself stressed from work or in need of some sort of resolution, I usually found myself here, tracing the steps of my father.

Counting didn’t work much for me today, so I focused on Lailah. Thinking of her was my calm in the storm, my anchor when things got to be more than I could handle. But today, her smiling face was replaced with the harsh angry words we’d exchanged and the hurt and betrayal I’d seen in her eyes as she sat across from me, protectively curled around herself.

I felt bitter, useless, and f*cking cheated.