Accidental Surrogate

Chapter 283: Zoom zoom 

Sinclair

A crash sounds upstairs. The second one today. I groan and put my head in my hand, honestly not wanting to know.

“Dominic?” I hear my mate call, requesting my assistance. I press my eyes shut, ignoring her for just…just one minute. “Dominic!”

“Seriously,” Roger murmurs, looking towards the door. “What were you thinking, letting her put this insane plan into action?”

I drop my hand and glare at my brother. “Ask me that again when you’re mated,” I murmur, steeling myself as I head out of the room. Roger doesn’t say anything as I go, though I feel his eyes on me. I ignore it.

“Ella?” I call from the base of the stairs. The seat of her stairlift is at the top, so she must be up there.

“Dominic!” Her faint voice comes to me, sounding relieved. “Can you come help? I’m…stuck.” I sigh and pull myself up the stairs.

Three days. Three days she’s had her wheelchairs and her stairlift, and while I’m pleased to see her spirits raised, it’s been a nightmare for me. Three days of watching her zoom around, crashing into every thing I own. I’ve already imagined six thousand ways this could go wrong – Ella sliding off of the stairlift and tumbling down the stairs, Ella somehow miraculously managing to run herself over with the chair, Ella crashing through the banister and flying through the air like Evil Knievel… 1

And you’d think that I was kidding, or exaggerating, but…

As I get to the top of the stairs, I turn to see her wedged, somehow, behind a potted fern in the corner.

“How did you even…do this?” I ask, exasperated, as I walk over to her.

She gives me a bright, if embarrassed, little smile. “I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I just…went forward, and it was there…”

I sigh again – my three hundredth sigh of the day and lift the plant, freeing her. She zooms backwards in the wheelchair, grinding potting soil from the plant into my carpet as she goes. I sigh again. Three hundred and one.

“What are you even do-” I start, but she’s off already, waving to me as she heads down the hall towards our bedroom.

“Things to do!” she calls, waving over her shoulder. “Go back to work, I’ll catch up with you later!”

I shake my head, following her into the bedroom, eager to put a stop to this. “Ella,” I demand, striding in after her. “This has to stop – I’m going insane with worry –”

“What!” she exclaims, appalled, turning her chair in a little half circle so that she’s facing me. Why are you worried?”

hanging open a

her pouty little

my head. “Ella, in the past three days you’ve broken hundreds

“We can buy

she snaps her gaze up at me. I groan again and wipe a hand down my face, trying to figure out how to say this. “Sweetheart, you know I

“but” coming. I oblige her. But,” I continue, “baby, you’re the..you’re the worst wheelchair

“I am amazing at this! What are you talking about?!”

putting a hand on my heart. “Please, please believe me when I say this – and I love you – but you are awful at this

help but laugh with her. It’s so ridiculous. But I’m so grateful that she finally sees my

giving me a

drops open and I don’t even know what to say. Jealousy… has not even come into the equation. “Ella, seriously,”

picks up. “If I were bad

one of the chair’s wheels off the ground. My stomach drops as I lurch

gasp,

this chair can’t tip over, it’s built into the design

anyone can manage it,” I caution,

think you’re being just a little overprotective? I mean, sure, I get stuck behind a potted plant or two.” She shrugs. “So what? I’m fine.” She gives me a bright, happy smile, and I have to say it goes to

thinks I didn’t notice, the past week or so, how miserable she’s been. She thinks she hid it from me to let me go on with my work. But I noticed – of course I did, I could smell her misery on her, could feel it in my very bones. But I could also feel her pride every morning when she sent me off to start my day. In many ways that was the one thing keeping her together – the idea that she was doing this for the baby, and was letting me go for our people. That her misery was, in some way, an act of service for a greater

conscience could, and otherwise spending my time curled up with her, my troublesome little rose–gold

I stare at her now, as she smiles up at me. My sweet, clever girl.

chair for the day… my nerves are absolutely at their end. Please. For me. I’ll

a step closer to her, intending to pick

fingers over the command board and zooming past me, right out of my

to watch her fly out

you want to stop me,” she calls over her

of me as I launch myself after her, out into the hallway and to the top

her Ella gives a little half scream, half cry of laugher and delight, pressing the button on her stairlift frantically to make it go faster. Luckily, as it was built for the elderly, it has one speed: glacial. I catch her

emergency–stop button on the lift. Ella gives another little cry, laughing hard and beating her little fists playfully against me as I unbuckle her belt

of the office and looking up at us like we’re crazy. But I ignore him, carrying my mate definitively into the bedroom and laying her

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