Page 98 of Devotion
“Let’s just say, I’ve been observing you for a while. Call it my superpowers.”
I snorted at that, then said, “I found out yesterday. Eight weeks.”
The scream that came through the phone made me hold it at arm’s length. Somewhere in the Hunter household, Jace was probably already sanitizing something in response to the noise.
“I’M AN AUNT!” Anna yelled. “I’m an AUNT, Miley! Oh my God! Our babies are going to grow up together! They’re going to be best friends! I’m already planning playdates!”
“Your twins are nine months old, Anna.”
“And they need friends! Have you told Christopher?”
“Not yet. I’ve been working up to it.”
“You’re telling your husband, not defusing a bomb.”
“It feels like both.”
The kitchen door opened behind me. I turned.
Christopher was in the doorway, jacket over his shoulder, tie loosened, holding a single white peony because he brought me one every Friday, without fail, since the night he proposed for real. His face told me he’d heard at least part of the conversation, maybe most of it.
I froze. Anna, on the phone, must have sensed the shift because she started yelling: “TELL HIM! TELL HIM RIGHT NOW! MILEY Torres VALE, IF YOU DON’T?—”
“I’ll call you back.” I hung up mid-sentence.
Christopher set the peony on the counter. He looked at me. The kitchen was quiet except for the ice maker dropping cubes and my heart doing something violent behind my ribs.
“Were you going to tell me,” he said slowly, “or was I going to find out when the kid starts cooking?”
My eyes burned. “I planned to tell you tonight. Over dinner. With ambiance. Not in a kitchen that smells like onions.”
He crossed the kitchen in three steps and lifted me off my feet. I yelped, grabbed his shoulders, told him to put me down because I just ate. He didn’t put me down. He held me against him with my feet off the ground and spun me once, and a laugh came out of me that was surprised and bright, bigger than joy and warmer than happiness, a sound I’d never made before.
He set me down and cupped my face. His eyes were wet.
“I love you,” he said. “And I love this little one already.” His hand moved to my stomach, resting there with a gentleness that didn’t match anything about the man the world knew.
“I love you too,” I said. “Husband.”
He kissed me. I kissed him back. And the peony sat on the counter between us, white and simple and beautiful, and the kitchen hummed with the sound of a life that was ours.
For the girl who once sat on a bathroom floor at three in the morning, listening to a stranger’s voice on a phone screen, wondering if she was allowed to exist, this was the answer.
Not a fairy tale. Better. A real one. Messy, earned, full of garlic, sticky notes, and a man who slept on closet floors and brought her flowers every Friday.
She didn’t need to earn the right to exist.
She just did.
