My heart beat drums inside my chest as I try to keep my shit together. “I’m gonna be a dad?”
Tears stream down her beautiful face as my mind flashes forward.
I’m holding my newborn baby girl in my arms. She’s so tiny, her skin so soft I can hardly stand how fucking adorable she is. It fills me with warmth. All I want is to take care of our child as I drown in the perfection of my baby girl. I want to smother Prinie with the love and affection she deserves. I glance down at Prinie on the delivery table, she’s glowing she’s so perfect. There’s nothing in this fucking world that could tear us apart.
They say an addiction is like a nasty habit. The secret to permanently breaking any bad habit is to love something greater than that habit.
I will always love Prinie and our baby more than any need for my fading addiction.
I will always love them greater.
I reach out pulling Prinie to me while my lips spread wide across my face in delight.
“Are you smiling?”
“I can’t stop. I’m so fucking happy.”
“You are? I thought you’d be mad.”
“I can’t think of anything I want more in the world than to have a part of you and a part of me as something we share.”
Prinie wipes her face, then leans in kissing me. I kiss her back with as much enthusiasm as I can find, but then she suddenly pulls back. “Wait.” I furrow my brows. “The testing… what if it comes back positive? What does that mean for our baby?”
My hands begin to go clammy as my leg muscles tighten. I’ve only just received this miracle in my life, I can’t have it taken from me. “Okay, get dressed. We’re going to see Chills.”
We stand, quickly rushing around getting dressed, and head for the door, but I turn back racing to the bed to grab the positive test. “I don’t want this out of my sight.”
Prinie grabs my hand, and we head to Chills and Chains’ room.
I need to figure this shit out. Now!
I need Chills to tell me this is all going to be okay.
Because if it’s not, this could be the one thing that truly breaks me.
PRINIE
Racing toward Chills and Chains’ room, we don’t spare a second as we run for their door.
We stop.
Look at each other and something passes between us—trepidation.
Wraith knocks a little firmer than I would have considering they have their own baby to attend with.
The door flies open.
Chains is glaring at us, disheveled as all hell. “The fuck do you want knocking like tha—” he stops speaking, then continues, “Oh… VP, how can I help you?”
I shove Wraith to the side. He grumbles as I exhale. “Chains, we need to speak to Chills. Is she up?”
He peers over his shoulder, then not even a second later, she appears in the doorway holding onto a sleeping baby Kobe. Seeing their baby does something to me. My hand instantly runs to my stomach as Wraith wraps his arm around me, obviously having the same gamut of emotions flowing through him at seeing baby Kobe too.
Chills follows my action, and her eyes widen in recognition. “Chains, take Kobe for a walk.” She offloads her son into Chains’ arms.
He scrunches up his face. “But I don’t even have shoes—”
“Go!” she demands, shoving him out the door past us.
I grimace. “Sorry, Chains,” I call out as he marches off down the hall.
Chills reaches out, pulling us inside the bedroom. Wraith closes the door as she rolls her shoulders.
“Have you done a test?” she asks.
“How did you?”
“A mother knows all the signs.”
Wraith brings his hand up, showing her the pregnancy test. Chills checks over the positive display with an exhale. “Okay. First of all… do you know how far along you are?”
“Not far, maybe three weeks.”
“I’ll run a blood test to be one hundred percent sure it’s positive. The tests we’ve been running didn’t include the markers for possible pregnancy, that’s why I didn’t pick it up. I should have run the test, in all honesty, I just didn’t think it was something on your radar. But, don’t worry, it’s okay, we will look into it and deal with what we need to as we go.”
“No, Chills we need to know now. If one of my tests comes back…” I pause trying to get out what I need to say. “If I test positive for say… HIV, what does it mean for our baby?”
Her eyes fall to the floor for the briefest of seconds, and in that moment, my heart tears itself to shreds. My eyes well with tears as I grip hold of Wraith so tight my knuckles turn white.
Chills rolls her shoulders. “I’ll be honest with you… babies born to mothers with positive HIV are given medicine within six to twelve hours of delivery... hopefully it protects the infant from the mother passing the infection to the baby during childbirth. But… there are never any guarantees.”
I try to swallow a lump in my throat, but it stays there trying to suffocate me.
“From there, the baby will be tested at between fourteen to twenty-one days. Then again between one to two months. And then again at four to six. If the tests show the baby has contracted HIV, they will receive antiretroviral therapy, which will help the child live
