"Tell me," he says.
I watch his chest rise like it's already too full to hold whatever this is. Turning underneath him until we're chest to chest, I takehis hand and press it flat against my stomach. "I'm pregnant. You're going to be a father."
For a second, his face doesn't move at all, and then realization breaks across it all at once. He looks down at his hand on my body, and his lower lip trembles. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
He laughs, a rough sound I've never heard out of him before, and presses his forehead against mine again, like he needs to be close to me while this settles into him. "A baby."
I nod, laying my hand over his on my stomach. "Our baby."
He pulls back, and there's a different look in his eyes now. "Marry me, Lydia."
He takes my hand off his chest and holds it against his lips, kissing the tip of each finger. "Really marry me. Do it because you want to and not because I told you that you have to. Marry me because you want me."
All this time married to this man and he has never once asked me anything that mattered. Not really. Not like this, and now he's here waiting on me like the answer hasn't already been decided.
"You're already my husband," I say, testing it.
"I want to be a husband you chose." His voice is quieter than I've ever heard it. "Not the one who chose for you."
I feel my eyes fill again, and I don't fight it this time.
"Yes," I say. "Yes, Nico. I choose you. I'm choosing you right now, out loud, on purpose. I'll marry you, forever and ever and ever."
Relief moves through his face, quiet and unguarded, something I've never seen from him before, and he kisses me like the word yes is the only thing he's ever actually needed to hear.
He laughs against my mouth, a startled, boyish sound that I wouldn't have recognized before.
"Say it again," he says.
"Yes, Nico, I'll marry you."
"Again,piccola."
"Nico, yes." I'm laughing now too, both of us giddy and wrecked and wide awake at once. "I'll say it every day if you need me to."
"I'll hold you to that promise," he says.
I think about the girl who married him not knowing what she was walking into, terrified and proud and too stubborn to say so, and I think about how far that girl has come to end up here, wanted, asked, chosen right back.
Nico presses his palm flat against my stomach again, like he's introducing himself to whoever is in there, and something in his face goes softer than I have ever once seen it, softer than even he seems to have expected.
"Hi baby," he says quietly, to nobody and everybody at once, and I have to bite my lip to keep from crying all over again.
Outside, the sea murmurs in Long Island Sound, indifferent to us, same as always. In here, there's a scar under my thumb, a hand over my stomach, and a man who's finally asking instead of commanding, and I think that whatever comes next, we get to choose it together now.
And that's everything.
42
LYDIA
The phone ringsat six in the morning and I already know before I answer it.
"Lydia." Dr. Okafor's voice, careful, the way it always is when she calls me herself instead of having a nurse do it. "She's waking up."
I'm out of bed before she finishes the sentence. Nico sits up beside me, hair a mess, eyes going sharp the second he sees my face.
