Page 72 of One Breath After Another

He was also hard—just in a different way. She didn’t mind his hard warmth nearly as much as the cold plastic of the chair, though.

“About?” she heard Luca ask, his voice a murmur.

The exhaustion was clear in his tone. Like hers, too.

What time was it?

Penny didn’t know.

She also didn’t care to ask anyone else waiting there with them. That would mean speaking to people, and she wasn’t really in the mood when all she wanted to do was have a little nap. Once she realized—after Roz was admitted to a room where they were only allowed two support people to stay during birth—that it was going to be hours before the baby boy actually made his appearance, she asked Luca to take her home.

Not because she didn’t want to stay.

No, Penny remembered the dishes in the sink that Roz had left to load in the dishwasher before they left for the party. After she cleaned that, Luca helped to fix up the bathroom that the girls had used to ready for the party. And the explosion of clothes and everything else on the bed in Roz and Naz’s room. The laundry that had been left in the washer and dryer downstairs came next.

They also traveled two loads of gifts back to the house so then Naz and Roz wouldn’t have to worry about any of that when the time came. Once the house was in a better state—not that it was dirty in the first place—the two did a mop and sweep of the floors just because. It was one less thing for Naz or Roz to do when they arrived home, right?

That’s what she thought.

Luca didn’t mind.

Now that the two of them were finally back at the hospital, though, she was tired. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of the black dress that Roz convinced her to wear for the party. The item, at first, only made her cringe away. It was too tight—form-fitted in every possible way. She also needed flesh-colored tights underneath because it stopped at her knees. It was the first time she wore heels in ... years.

Yet, when she pulled the dress on, something was right. Maybe it was the way she could admire how her waist looked cinched in the middle or how her hips and breasts curved to give her that hourglass appearance. Somehow, in the many years that Penny had spent hiding her body, she missed when it grew into something different.

A young woman’s form.

Soft curves.

She still remembered thinking that she looked fragile in some ways. Unsure, even, as she took in the changes that could come to her own body—and even in her mind—simply by putting on a dress. It was frightening.

And yet, she liked it, too.

She liked the way she looked.

That was just ...

It blew her mind.

“Penny?” Luca asked.

She felt him lean forward like he was checking to see if she had fallen asleep leaning against him when she remained silent.

“Sorry, I was thinking,” she replied.

“About me being right?”

Ah, yeah.

She forgot about that.

“No, other things.” Sighing, Penny shifted a bit on the chair to lift her feet and set them on the other seat. It helped with the tension in her back, anyway. “You were right about giving Roz the gift and not being worried.”

She swore she could hear Luca’s smile behind her when he replied, “She loved it.”

It wasn’t even a question.

“Yeah, she did,” Penny whispered.