Happily Letter After(68)

“My grandfather.”

“Cool name.”

He moved the sheet to gaze at my naked body. I loved the way he looked at me.

Sebastian seemed like he was pondering something. “You know, the fact that I didn’t think to stop when we were having sex is really telling. I’m usually so responsible. And I think part of why I slipped is that I’m just so damn comfortable with you.” He blew out a breath. “But I’m sorry I didn’t check that it was okay with you first.”

“I would’ve stopped you if I was worried. But if you want . . . we can just forego condoms now that you know.” I winked.

“I think I’d like that . . . a little too much.” His eyes then landed on a scar on my abdomen. It was the first time he seemed to notice it. Sebastian traced his finger along it. “What’s this?”

I looked down at myself. My heart raced a little because telling this story might lead to me admitting other things.

“My appendix burst when I was a teenager. I had to have an emergency surgery.”

“Shit. That must have been scary.”

“It really was. It actually . . . caused some complications for me.”

A look of concern crossed his face. “How so?”

“It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I have time,” he said as he gripped my hip and pulled me toward him.

I wasn’t sure if it was too early in our relationship to be bringing it up. But this was the perfect window to talk about it. His not knowing had actually been eating away at me a little bit. I didn’t think he would judge me. But regardless, I still felt like it was something that I needed to tell him. Since we were on the subject, there was probably no better time than the present.

I took a deep breath in. “A few years after my appendix burst, I started experiencing pain. I was in my late teens. I went to the doctor to get it checked out, and when they examined me, it turned out I had scar tissue blocking my fallopian tubes as a result of the appendix rupture. That meant that basically down the line, I might have trouble getting pregnant.”

His expression darkened. “They couldn’t do anything for you?”

“Well, I ended up getting surgery to repair them, but they couldn’t remove all the scar tissue, so there are no guarantees. I was told that in the future, they could become blocked again. It’s possible that I won’t have a problem, but at the time, I really became quite worried that maybe I wouldn’t have any luck getting pregnant someday when I was ready. My doctor knew how anxious it was making me. So she encouraged me to consider having some of my eggs harvested. That way, if one day I reached a point where I couldn’t conceive naturally, I would have young, healthy eggs for IVF.”

Sebastian blinked a few times to process that information. “So you froze some of your eggs . . .”

“Yes. But . . .” Here was the part I needed to brace myself for. It was something I’d never told anyone I’d dated before. “Shortly before the procedure, I started to think about everything that my mother went through . . . losing her ability to conceive from the cancer and struggling to adopt. It all worked out in the end, because she got me. But not everyone is as lucky as we were. I’d always wanted to do something to honor her. So an idea came to me . . . since I was going in for the harvesting-eggs procedure anyway.” I swallowed and continued. “My doctor expected to get a good amount of eggs because I was young and healthy. I wondered if that might be my only opportunity to donate some to a family in need, in honor of my mother.”

His eyes slowly widened. I couldn’t gauge what he was thinking.

So I continued. “It made me feel like I was not only doing something to protect my future fertility but to also help someone.”

Sebastian blinked a few times. “Wow. That’s . . . certainly an honorable decision for someone so young to have made.”

“Yeah. I mean . . . I didn’t want to ever have to do it again. I figured since I was going through all the trouble, if there was ever a time to make that kind of decision, that was it. So I bit the bullet.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I don’t even know why I was so compelled to admit this to you now. It’s just . . . you asked me about the scar, and I felt like this was the right time to let you know.” I looked into his eyes. “I hope you don’t think any differently of me because of my decision.”

The seconds that passed where he didn’t immediately say anything were excruciating.

Then he cupped my face. “I would never judge you for making a decision that helped someone else. Don’t ever think that. It’s definitely . . . surprising . . . but not something that makes me think any differently of you, Sadie. If anything, I admire you even more for doing that.”

I let out a long, relieved breath. Not sure why I expected that to be harder than it was. I supposed I didn’t have to admit anything to him at all, and he would have never known about that decision I made all those years ago. But deep down, I think it would have bothered me to not know how he might have felt about it or whether he would have looked at me differently.

“So . . . these eggs . . . ,” he asked. “Did they go to different people?”

“No. I didn’t want that. I wanted them to all go to one person in need—a cancer survivor like my mother. And I didn’t want to know who that person was. It was important to me that there be no contact at all. I just wanted to help someone. So I made sure it was all anonymous. To this day, I have no idea whether anything took . . . whether there was a baby who came from it.”