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Tears come instantly.

No warning. No permission.

Just floodgates bursting wide open as I curl my hand protectively around his fragile back, terrified to move, terrified not to.

“Hi,” I whisper, my lips brushing the soft down on his head. “Hi, baby boy. I’m your mom.”

The words feel foreign and familiar all at once, like trying on a name I was born to wear but forgot how to say.

I look up and Fletch is already crying. Silently, like he can’t bear to make a sound and risk breaking the moment. His hands are fists at his sides, and when our eyes meet, I swear the world stops spinning for just a second.

“I missed everything,” I choke out.

He kneels beside me, his hand resting on my knee. “No, you didn’t. This… this is the beginning.”

We stay like that, wrapped in warmth and wonder, until the nurse returns and gently lifts Kingston from my chest. I almost beg her not to take him. To let me keep him pressed against my heart a little longer.

But then she places Kody in my arms.

And I forget how to breathe all over again.

Where Kingston is delicate and still, Kody is fire and motion. His fingers curl against my skin, his legs twitching like he’s ready to take on the world. He snuffles once, then settles against me like he knows me. Like he remembers me.

I kiss the crown of his head, my tears slipping into his hair. “Hi, Kody,” I whisper. “You made it.”

Fletch crouches again, one hand brushing over Kody’s back. “They both did.”

I nod, the ache in my chest twisting into something softer. Something whole.

I don’t know how long we sit there. Minutes. Hours. Maybe forever.

But for the first time since I opened my eyes in that hospital bed…

I don’t feel like I’m waking up from a dream.

I feel like I’ve finally stepped into the life I was always meant to have.

The hallway outside the NICU is quiet.

Too quiet.

Like the world knows we just touched something holy and it’s giving us space to breathe again.

Fletch wheels me back to my room in silence, his hand resting on my shoulder like a tether—steady, grounding. We pass two nurses talking in hushed tones and a janitor mopping up a spill near the vending machine, but no one looks at us. No one dares break the spell.

Not yet.

When we get to the room, he helps me into bed like it’s the most natural thing in the world—like he’s been doing it for years. Like this is our normal. And maybe it could be, if I let it.

If I’m brave enough.

He pulls the blanket up to my waist and hands me a cup of ice chips like I didn’t just hold our children against my chest for the first time. Like he hasn’t watched me shatter and come back together a hundred times in the span of an hour.

I take a chip between my fingers, press it to my lips, and close my eyes as it melts on my tongue. Cold and clean. A reset.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to see that,” Fletch says softly, lowering himself into the chair beside the bed. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, like the weight of everything he’s been carrying has finally settled in his bones.

“See what?” My voice is raspy but steady.