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She stared at me for a moment, calculating. Whatever was on her mind, she wasn’t certain that she would be able to share it with me. I wasn’t going to push her, but I needed to know if there was something going on, something I needed to hear. I didn’t want all of this slipping through my fingers just when it felt like I was finally getting a grip on things.
Paulo had doubled security at her family’s safehouse and had started relocating to a new property, somewhere we could purchase and build up the Caroni base once more. We still had a decent amount of allies in the city—or, at least, a decent amount of people who were willing to go against Gregor because of the trouble he had caused them at one time or another. The enemy of their enemy was their friend, or close enough as made no difference. I would take it. Nobody was spilling the truth of the fact we had survived the fire, or that we had returned to the city, and I would take that for the time being.
But, right now, the only thing I was worried about was her. Everything else just vanished from my mind. I wanted to make sure she was okay. She was my priority, had been since all of this had started. She was the reason I had thrown myself into this in the first place; I couldn’t just stand by and let her get pulled into something that she clearly didn’t want.
"I don’t know how to say it," she murmured, shaking her head, her grip tightening on the fork on the table in front of her.
"You know you can tell me anything, right?" I reminded her. "I’m not going to be mad."
"I can’t …," she trailed off, searching for the words, for the right way to get this out. She shook her head again, biting down on her lip.
"I’m sorry," she whispered, looking up at me. "I … I wish there was some way I could …"
She closed her eyes, paused, gathered herself. For a moment there, I had seen a flash of the girl I had known all those years ago, the girl too scared to stand up for what she wanted. But she was a different woman now, and she had to see that, just as clearly as I did. No matter how tempting it must have been for her to just hide out in that familiar place, where she didn’t have to face the truth, she was here with me now, and I needed her to be honest with me.
"There is," I told her firmly. "Whatever it is, I can handle it."
"I’m pregnant."
There it was. Those words hung in the air between us, so enormous I didn’t even know how to sort through them in my mind. She was … She was pregnant? I should have known it was a possibility, but the reality of being faced with it was far different than just the passing potential. This was … a lot. A whole hell of a lot, after everything both of us had already endured.
She watched me intently, trying to read into my reaction, trying to work out what was happening inside my head. I didn’t even know, not yet, the shock of it too enormous for me to sort through right now. I hadn’t given much thought to having kids, and I had been so focused on everything else that had been happening between us up until this point, I certainly hadn’t considered having kids with her …
"Alex?" she asked me, her voice small, nervous. I rose to my feet, came to her side of the table, and sank down to my knees beside her—a position of deference, in some ways, but more importantly, one that would bring us to the same level. One that would let her see that I was serious when I said I wanted us to be equals in this.
"That’s amazing news," I told her.
"You don’t have to say it if you don’t mean it," she blurted out, drawing her gaze away from mine. I caught her face in my hand, drawing it back around to me.
"Hey, look at me," I murmured. "I mean it. I mean it, okay?"
She stared at me, scanning my face again, as though searching for some kind of proof that I didn’t actually mean a word coming out of my mouth right now. But, when she saw that I meant it, she sank forward against me, dropping into my arms with a flood of relief.
"God, Alex," she breathed to me, clinging onto me for dear life. "I don’t know … I can’t …"
"It’s going to be okay," I promised her, and I felt a shock of protectiveness rush through me as I held her there in my arms. It had been there before, of course, when I had seen that look on her face in her wedding picture, but now, it was even more intense. Now, it was about our child, not just her, not just me. I squeezed her close, looping my arms around her, holding her near to me, making sure she couldn’t slip through my fingers. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
"You really want to … You’re happy about this?" she asked as she pulled back. I nodded, and I felt a smile I couldn’t deny crack across my face all at once.
I’d never been involved with anyone seriously before in my life, but there had been a part of me drawn to the idea of settling down with someone—interested in building a family of my own, just the same way my father had when he had been around my age. When I worked to consolidate his empire, I thought of some child, far off in the future, who would one day step up to take over from me. But now, here? I had the chance to make that child a reality. With a woman I had known practically all my life—a woman who I had fallen for, hard and fast. A woman I knew would make the most incredible mother. It was like everything had come together just the way it needed to.
"I really am," I replied. "Are you?"
She hesitated for a moment before she replied, as though she hadn’t actually considered her answer to that question until I had laid it out in front of her like this. I couldn’t blame her. She had spent most of her life trying to do what was right for other people, it only made sense she would struggle to consider her own needs when faced with something like this.
"I think so," she replied, nodding, her eyes lighting up, as though all the possibilities were just laying themselves out in front of her for the first time. "I … I was so scared about having a baby before, you know, when it was Gregor, but with you …"
She gazed at me. I could see our whole history swimming in her eyes there for a moment, everything we had been through, everything we had both survived. We might have been apart for a long time, but she couldn’t fake the look she was giving me right now. No, this was real, and we could both feel it.
"I had such a crush on you growing up," she admitted, laughing slightly, her cheeks turning pink as she recounted it. "I never would have thought … I mean, you didn’t even look at me twice back then."
"You were Leo’s little sister," I reminded her. "He would have flipped out on me if he thought for a second I was going after you."
"Would you have?" she asked, gazing at me curiously. "If you thought it wouldn’t have been a problem for him?"
"I don’t know," I admitted. "My father, he pushed me away from your family—he was worried about the issues it would cause with his gambling, all the debts he owed. I don’t think it would have been right back then, with you so young, with everything that was going on."
"No, you’re right," she agreed. "It’s better that it happened this way."
