Page 148 of Bride For Daddy
"Partners." I lift my head, finding his eyes in the darkness. "Is that what we are?"
"That's what we've always been. From the second you walked into my office with an insane proposal and refused to take no for an answer." He kisses me—soft, certain. "Partners in crime. In survival. In whatever comes next."
"What comes next?"
"Ask me in the morning. After coffee."
Six months later,the test is positive.
I'm sitting on the bathroom floor—cold tile against my thighs, positive pregnancy test in one hand, Dad's lighter in the other—when Sergei finds me.
He stops in the doorway. Reads the test. Reads my face.
Then he's on his knees in front of me, and the sound he makes isn't quite human.
"Sergei—"
"You're—we're?—"
"Pregnant." The word comes out wondering. Terrified. "Due in November. If the math is right. If I haven't fucked up the calculation. If?—"
He kisses me silent. Hard and desperate and wet, because he's crying, and now I'm crying, and we're both kneeling on bathroom tile like lunatics.
"Ours," he breathes against my mouth.
"Ours."
"I need to call—Mila needs to know—she's going to be insufferable—the PowerPoint was right?—"
"Sergei."
He stops. Looks at me. Grey eyes shining in bathroom light like storm clouds breaking.
"Breathe."
He laughs. "I can't. You took my ability to breathe four years ago, and you've never given it back."
"We're going to be terrible at this," he says.
"Probably."
"The baby's going to be damaged by proxy."
"Almost certainly."
"Mila's going to try to train them as a spy before they can walk."
"Without question."
"They're going to have homicidal grandparents in their genetics."
"On all sides."
"I love you," he says. "I love you, and I love Mila, and I love whoever this is, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve it."
"You already deserve it."
"Liar."
"Prove me wrong."
He carries me to bed and does exactly that, and outside the window, spring finally arrives in Brooklyn.
New beginnings.
After everything, still possible.
Still ours.
