Page 372 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

EIGHTEEN

Cupcakes were passed around the table—each with a mixture of pink or blue frosting on the top with tiny little baby shoes shaped from vanilla-flavored fondant. Siena had no clue what colored cream would be in the middle of the cupcakes once they bit into them. Her doctor’s office had sent over the gender of their child to the bakery in Manhattan that delivered the cupcakes to her earlier in the day.

Now, all their family had gathered.

It was time to find out what their baby would be.

A sweet little boy or a precious tiny girl.

She hadn’t thought much about it, really. Like her husband, she didn’t have a preference one way or the other. All she really wanted was a healthy baby. And no matter what, she loved her child already.

“Your turn,” Siena whispered to John.

He laughed, but she heard the stress in the sound. He smiled for their gathered, waiting family, but she saw the tension in his shoulders.

The further along in her pregnancy she became, the more changes she saw in John. Never toward her, but just him in general. She recognized his lack of sleeping, and his up and down moods. She saw his methodical cleaning, planning, and organizing even when he tried to hide it.

She wished he wouldn’t hide it.

It was so much harder to settle him back when he hid it.

Leonard would be at their house when they got back—waiting for John, as the man always did. Twice a week, and sometimes more if John felt it was needed, his therapist came for an in-home session.

They never opened up a discussion about John’s mental health to anyone who asked. They didn’t talk about his meds, his therapy, or anything.

Their choice.

John’s choice.

Leonard, however, would be there tonight because Siena had made a call and asked for him to come, not John. Sometimes, she needed to do that. Sometimes, she had to be the voice when John was not letting his come through loud enough.

John took the one cupcake Siena offered to him—the only one left. Everyone else around them already had one, and now they were just waiting on him, too.

“My turn,” John echoed.

Siena nodded, and smiled. “I love you, John.”

“I know you do.”

She always would.

“Everybody at the same time,” Siena said, directing her comment at the room, yet never looking away from John. “Okay?”

“You got it, babe.”

“Now.”

Everybody bit into their cupcake, and blue frosting colored up the middle of the sweet cake. John stared at the sweet in his hand for a long while, and Siena reached over to wipe a bit of blue frosting from his bottom lip while cheers lit up the room.

“It’s a boy!”

“A boy!”

John barely blinked as his father crossed the room to clap his son on the shoulders, and congratulate them. Jordyn followed behind Lucian, and did the same. Siena and John took a moment to take the congratulations, and the ones that followed from everyone else.

But soon, the room settled, their family faded as John looked at Siena, and it was just them once more. No one else.

He had wanted this gender reveal.