Page 232 of Say My Name

He bends over us. His hand hovers several inches above the baby's back as if he's afraid the wrong touch could hurt something this small.

“You can touch.”

His palm settles carefully over our child.

The breath leaves him in a broken rush.

“Elena.”

That’s all he can say, but his voice holds everything. All the fear, all the love he couldn’t name for years.

“I know.” I say it the way I couldn’t in my kitchen months ago—not as a deflection, but as an answer.

He presses his forehead to mine. Tears run down his face as he looks between me and the baby.

This is the man who offered to give me a child before he understood why the thought of another man doing it made him furious. He showed up early to every appointment with a notebook. He learned which questions were useful and which ones came from fear. He cleared his calendar, turned off his phone, and stayed beside me while I squeezed his hand hard enough that he may never regain full circulation.

He wanted this long before he could admit he wanted me too.

His voice cracks. “You did it.”

“We did.”

“You did more.”

“Significantly.”

A wet laugh escapes him. “Significantly more.”

The nurse eventually asks whether he wants to hold the baby.

He looks at me before he answers, his own desperate longing held in check. “Are you ready for me to?”

My throat closes. It’s such a simple question, but it’s the entire point. He isn’t assuming. He isn’t taking. Even now, when he wants this so badly he can barely speak, he asks me.

“Yes.”

He sits in the chair beside the bed and holds out his arms. For once, Dominic Rowe holds out his arms, uncertain.

The nurse helps settle the baby against his chest.

He goes still again.

“Support the head,” I murmur.

“I am.”

“You look worried.”

“I'm holding an entire person.”

“A very small one.”

“That makes it worse.”

His thumb moves carefully over the blanket. The baby squirms once, then settles against him.

Dominic stares down at that tiny face. When he looks at me, his mouth opens, but no words form. It’s not that he has nothing to say; it’s that there are no words big enough for what he’s feeling.