Page 115 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“Maybe nobody has,” I say, which lands between us the way true things tend to.

“Exactly.” His jaw tightens for a second. “All the guys who had her and let her go, or made her feel like she was too much, or not enough, or whatever bullshit they sold her on. She’s smart, Harper. Like actually smart, the kind that catches you off guard when you’re not expecting it. And gorgeous. And funny in this quiet way she doesn’t even realize is funny. And I just.” He shakes his head. “She’s way out of my league. I don’t know what I did to deserve her in my corner, but I’m not questioning it.”

I look at him for a second.

“You know I’m very glad you two found each other,” I say.

“I owe you for that push.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I just pointed. You did the rest.”

He nods, quiet, doing the face again, and I let him have a second with it.

“What about Sophia?” he asks.

I groan and drop back against my pillow. “Sophia is currently downstairs having whatever conversation the three of them are having without me, which means I have approximately a forty-five minute window before she comes up here and I have to be a functional human being.”

“She’s going to be okay with it,” Raph says.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know Sophia.” He tilts his head. “She’s going to scream first. And then she’s going to cry. And then she’s going to ask if she gets to be the godmother.”

I stare at the ceiling.

“What if she doesn’t?”

“Then she doesn’t. And you’ll still have a family that showed up for you before you even asked them to.” He taps the floor beside him twice, which is his version of a punctuation mark. “You’ve got three men who love you and a baby and Odette and me and your entire chosen family going full send on this with you. Sophia’s allowed to take a minute.”

I turn my head and look at him.

“You’re annoyingly good at this.”

“I know.” He grins. “Now move over, you’re not lying down alone while you wait for your life to explode.”

He climbs up onto the bed beside me, on top of the covers, and we both stare at the ceiling, and I let myself just breathe for a minute without performing anything for anyone.

It’s the first time all day I’ve been still enough to actually feel it, the happiness sitting underneath everything else, quiet and enormous and not going anywhere.

42

KILLIAN

I'm on the phone with my legal team when the door opens without a knock.

Sophia has never knocked in her life. I don't know why I still register its absence as a surprise.

“Dad.”

I hold up one finger without turning around. Thomas, who handles my estate planning and has the patience of a man who's been billing me by the hour for fifteen years, keeps talking through the specifics of the inheritance amendment. I've added language for a second beneficiary, a child not yet born, the biological parentage deliberately left unspecified in the current draft because we're still working out how to structure that cleanly across three potential fathers without the document reading like a contract dispute waiting to happen. The health coverage is cleaner, direct, attached to the estate's existing policy, effective immediately. The employment contract extension is already drafted.

“Dad.”

I hold up the finger again.

“Killian.”

I turn.