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“Hey,” she whispers, and I shift, rolling off her and lying beside her. She’s still on her back, staring at the ceiling. “I have something to tell you.”
Her head tilts to look at me, and her eyes glaze over. There’s a hitch in my stomach. She bites her lip in that way she does when she tries to hide her happiness. I use my thumb to pull the flesh from between her teeth. Then her hand goes to her belly.
My eyebrows shoot up without any prompting from my brain.
“Really?” I breathe, and she nods with a laugh. I grab the back of her neck and pull her in for a kiss, wrapping her up in my arms. “How long?”
“Eight weeks.”
“Jesus, woman. You are fertile,” I tease her.
Eight weeks. We had talked about having more when Kell turned one. We might be young, and it might be reckless, but she wants kids, and lots of them. I want her and everything that comes with her. She weaned off her MS meds and went off birth control… like, eight weeks and two days ago.
A loud wail bursts through the wall, and Nova sits up.
“No, I’ll get him,” I say, kissing her quickly and hopping out of bed. I throw on sweatpants and trudge to the spare room. Kell’s standing at the edge of his crib with one leg hoisted up on the rail, trying to make a break for it.
“Whoa, buddy.” I step forward, scooping him up. His pudgy hands grab at my beard.
“Dada.” He smiles, and I pretend to bite at his fingers.
Kell screeches with laughter. “Fwop, fwop.”
I lean over into his crib to grab his stuffy, and Kell touches my shoulder where the jagged scar will forever remain. Life is a lot more mundane these days, with Lisa in prison for attempted murder, and my biggest worry is Kell eating too fast and choking on his carrots.
Being a dad is natural for me. Tab likes to remind me it’s because I’m childish myself, but this shit is fun. And exhausting and frustrating and terrifying, but more than any of it, the things that have always been missing for me are in her. My heart is in Kell, and now one more.
I make a big show of carrying him to our room and pretend I’m going to give him to Nova before whooshing him away.
“Mama!” he says and then shrieks with laughter as I yank him back. “Mama, mama!”
Finally, I let Nova take him, and he immediately lunges for Figgy, who jumps off the bed and glares at us all. Me and Fig might get along now, but while this growth in the family is exciting for me, that poor feline is not impressed one bit.
I flop down on my stomach on the bed, and Kell climbs on my back. “Yee Yee,” he says, and Nova smiles at us both.
“Are you happy?” Nova asks. It’s a question she asks me often, her way of showing her heart, her insecurities.
“Insanely happy.” I kiss her forehead, and Kell bellyflops on our heads, resulting in a yelp from Nova and a burst of laughter from me. I spring up from bed and pick up our son, hauling him over my shoulder to change his soggy diaper. “But I know someone who won’t be happy at all if we’re late.”
“Yee Yee!” Kell screeches again.
Yee Yee is Millie, Kell’s favourite human on the planet. Nova laughs and hops up, throwing on a robe.
“Yee Yee is getting a bit spoiled with these parties.” Nova chuckles, and I challenge her with a playful stare.
“You want to bring that up with Del?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head and disappears into the bathroom.
Kell babbles loudly to himself, and I almost make it through changing him without him trying to escape, but this kid does not sit still. He’s a goer. A doer. An act now and think later kind of kid.
“Little dude,” I chuckle, wrestling him into the outfit that Nova picked for the party. “You’re stressing me out.”
I sit back against the crib as Kell sprints out the door. Nova catches him on his escape, and her soft smile is full of the kind of love I’d been desperate for my whole life but just didn’t know it until I met her.
“You getting bested by your one-year-old again?” she teases me.
“Forrester, how are we ever going to manage two of these creatures?” I slump forward dramatically.
