Ethan, noticing my hesitation, stepped forward from the edge of the room. His tall, broad-shouldered frame parted the small crowd of women easily.
“Let the expert feel,” Lauren joked, leaning back and offering her belly to her brother-in-law. “Tell me if she’s going to be a soccer player, Ethan.”
Ethan offered a polite, practiced smile. He reached out, his large, incredibly skilled hand resting gently but firmly on the very top of Lauren’s abdomen.
It only took two seconds.
I watched his face. The polite, brotherly smile vanished instantly, as if it had been wiped away by a wet cloth. It was replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated panic—a terrifying, primal alarm that I had never, ever seen on the face of the man who routinely handled high-risk, life-and-death surgeries without breaking a sweat.
He didn’t just pull his hand away; he recoiled as if the blue silk dress had suddenly turned into live electrical wire.
He felt a heartbeat that was trying to survive, inside a body that was starting to fail. We thought we were celebrating a life about to begin. We didn’t know we had only minutes to stop two lives from ending.
“Ethan?” Lauren asked, her laughter faltering at his expression. “What is it?”
Before Lauren could finish her sentence, Ethan grabbed my wrist with a grip so tight it bruised. Without a word of explanation to the startled guests, he physically dragged me away from the armchair, pulling me through the crowded living room and out the sliding glass doors onto the freezing, wind-swept back porch.
“Ethan, what are you doing? You’re hurting me!” I hissed, prying my wrist from his grasp as the cold air hit us. “What’s wrong?”
