Everything feels different, softer, on the heels of the news that Avery is pregnant.
Her body is warm against mine, her breathing slow and even. I start to ease myself from behind her, and she makes a soft sound of protest, her fingers tightening where she holds onto me.
"Stay here," I tell her, pressing my mouth to her shoulder. "I'll be right back."
In the bathroom, I run water into the tub and adjust the temperature until it's right. Warm enough to soothe, not hot enough to overwhelm. I add a few drops of the bath oil she keeps in the cabinet, the subtle floral scent rising with the steam.
When I return to the bedroom, she's watching me from the pillows, golden hair tangled, skin still flushed. The sheet has slipped to her waist, and the sight of her bare breasts, the soft curve of her stomach, sends a pulse of heat through me evennow. My body's response to her is reflexive. Constant. I'm not sure there will ever be a moment when I look at this woman and don't want her.
I hold out my hand. "Come here."
She takes it without hesitation, letting me pull her up and steady her when she sways. I lead her into the adjoining bathroom, which is humid and warm with steam. I help her into the water first, my hand firm on her arm as she steps over the edge and sinks down with a sigh that travels straight through me. Then I slide in behind her, and she settles back against my chest with a contented little moan.
“Mm, this is nice,” she says, resting her head back against my shoulder.
She relaxes naked and warm in the circle of my arms, water lapping at our skin. My legs bracket hers, and my hands find her waist, holding her close while the heat seeps into both of us.
My cock has had more than its fill, but it responds to the feel of her like it always does. The pressure of her round ass pressed against me is a torment I’m happy to endure.
I reach for the soap and work it between my palms before running my hands over her shoulders, down her arms, across the planes of her back. She sighs again, deeper this time, and sinks into my touch. Trusting me completely. Surrendering the way she does when we're alone, when the world can't reach us.
My hands drift lower. Find her belly.
I pause there, my palms spread against the soft skin where our child is growing. Five weeks. Our child is barely anything yet, but the knowledge of it reshapes everything I thought I understood about my life.
Avery’s hands cover mine, gently holding me against her.
For a moment there's only this. The warmth of the water. Her body in my arms. The impossible reality of what we've made together settling into my bones.
But my mind won't stay quiet. It never does.
The fear has been circling since she first pressed my hand to her stomach and said the word that changed everything. I've been holding it at a distance, refusing to examine it too closely while we found our way back to each other. Now, in the stillness, it pushes forward and demands attention.
I think about my father. The way he looked at me when I was young, after my mother died, as if I was a problem he hadn't asked for and didn't know how to solve. The silence that could stretch for days. The other times, when instead of ignoring me he would erupt with angry words that came without warning.
At least he never touched me—other than that terrible night when I came to him with a truth I’d been holding inside me for too long, and in a fit of drunken anger he struck me. Sent me through a pane of glass at our modest little house in Key Largo.
My past had a monster much worse than my father and his grief-borne neglect. A monster whose crimes surpassed volatile tempers or drunken fists. The damage my grandfather inflicted had been carved into my father's soul and then, later, perpetrated on me.
Two generations of men who destroyed what they should have protected.
Now I’m going to be responsible for another. My child. And the thought that terrifies me most isn't the danger that might come from outside. It's the danger that might already live inside me.
Avery shifts against me, her thumb tracing slow circles on the back of my hand where it rests on her belly. “You’re too quiet. Is everything okay?" Her voice is soft, but it cuts through the spiral of my thoughts. "Talk to me, Nick."
I could deflect. I could tell her it's nothing. But we promised each other no more lies, and this fear that’s simmering in the pit of my stomach is only building. I can’t allow it to poison thismoment or corrode any others. Avery deserves more than that. Our child does too.
"I don't know how to do this." The confession is thick in my mouth, my voice a low rasp. "I never learned how a father is supposed to be. All I know is what I don’t want to be."
Avery's quiet. Waiting. Giving me space to find the rest of it.
"What if it's in me?" My jaw tightens against the admission. "The violence. The destructiveness. I know I’ll never be what my grandfather was. But what if our child looks at me one day with the same fear and pain that I felt around my father?"
The water is still around us. She hasn't moved, hasn't pulled away from the ugliness I'm showing her.
"What if I'm already broken in ways that can't be fixed?"
She turns in my arms. Water sloshes against the sides of the tub as she repositions herself, her thighs sliding over mine until she's straddling my lap, facing me. Her breasts press against my chest, her hands come up to frame my face, and even through the weight of everything I just said, my body registers the press of her naked against me. The heat of her center so close to where I'm already half-hard again despite everything.
