Copyright 2018 by Colleen Hoover

Jeremy.
I didn’t notice the theft at first.
At first, after we found out that the night we got engaged became the night
we conceived, I was actually happy. I was happy because Jeremy was happy.

---

And at that point, other than my breasts looking better than ever, I didn’t realize
how detrimental the pregnancy was going to be to the machine I had worked so
hard to maintain.
It was around the third month, a few weeks after I found out I was pregnant,
that I started to notice the difference. It was a small little pooch, but it was there.
I had just gotten out of the shower, and I was standing in front of the mirror,
looking at my profile. My hand was flat on my stomach and I felt something
foreign, and my stomach was slightly protruding.
I was disgusted. I vowed to start working out three times a day. I’d seen what
pregnancy could do to women, but I also knew most of the damage was done in
that last trimester. If I could somehow figure out how to deliver early…maybe
around thirty-three or thirty-four weeks, I could avoid the most detrimental part
of pregnancy. There have been so many advances in medical care, babies born
that early are almost always fine.
“Wow.”
I dropped my hand and looked at the doorway. Jeremy was leaning against
the doorframe, his arms folded over his chest. He was smiling at me. “You’re
starting to show.”
“I am not.” I sucked in.
He laughed and closed the distance between us, wrapping his arms around
me from behind. He placed both hands on my stomach and looked at me in the
mirror. He kissed my shoulder. “You’ve never looked more beautiful.”
It was a lie to make me feel better, but I was grateful. Even his lies meant
something to me. I squeezed his hands and he spun me around to face him, then
he kissed me, walking me backward until I reached the bathroom counter. He
lifted me onto it, then stood between my legs.
He was fully clothed, just returning from work. I was completely naked,
fresh from the shower. The only thing between us were his pants and the pooch I
was still trying to suck in.
He started fucking me on the counter, but we finished in bed.
His head was on my chest, and he was tracing circles over my stomach when
it rumbled loudly. I tried to clear my throat to hide the noise, but he laughed.
“Someone’s hungry.”
I started to shake my head, but he lifted off my chest to look at me. “What’s
she craving?”
“Nothing. I’m not hungry.”
He laughed again. “Not you. Her,” he said, patting my stomach. “Aren’t
pregnant women supposed to get weird cravings and eat all the time because of
the babies? You barely eat. And your stomach is growling.” He sits up on the

---

bed. “I need to feed my girls.”
His girls.
“You don’t even know if it’s a girl yet.”
He smiled at me. “It’s a girl. I have a feeling.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, because technically, it was nothing. Not a boy, not
a girl. It was a blob. I wasn’t that far along yet, so assuming the thing growing
inside me was actually hungry or craving any particular type of food was absurd.
But it was hard for me to state my case because Jeremy was so ecstatic about the
baby, I didn’t really care if he treated it like it was more than it was.
Sometimes his excitement excited me.
For the next few weeks, his excitement helped me cope. The more my
stomach grew, the more attentive he became. The more he would kiss it when
we were in bed together at night.
In the mornings, he would hold my hair while I puked. When he was at
work, he would text me potential baby names. He became as obsessed with my
pregnancy as I was with him. He went to my first doctor’s visit with me.
I’m thankful he was at the second doctor’s visit, too, because that was the
day my world shifted.
Twins.