The noise and the monitors. The pain and the panic and the ache that split me open from the inside out. It all dissolves.
There’s only her.
Her chest rising in tiny stutters, her fists curled like she’s still fighting her way here. Her cry, tapering off to a whimper, then a shuddery breath, like she recognizes something.
Me. Us.
“Oh,” I breathe, the word barely forming. “Hi, baby.”
She’s red and squashed and smeared with something that probably shouldn’t be beautiful, but it is. Her lips wobble. Her nose wrinkles. One eye flutters half open and then closes again, and my heart tears itself clean in half.
Reid doesn’t say anything; he’s shattered and still silently crying, a hand trembling as he brushes a single fingertip along her cheek.
“Holy shit, she’s cute,” he breathes through a broken voice.
I hum, feeling the warmth of her sink into me.
“And she’s got your mouth,” he whispers hoarsely. “But those fists? Definitely mine.”
I laugh, broken and breathless. “God help us both.”
He leans down and presses a kiss to her tiny forehead, then another to mine. His voice is low and shaking when he speaks again.
“You did it, Havoc.” He holds his lips to my head, breathing me in. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
I nod, tears slipping freely now, soaking down my neck as I watch my daughter. “And we’re so proud of you, too, baby.”
She shifts slightly, pressing her face to the curve of my chest, her tiny body tucked so tightly against mine it feels like we’ve always been like this. Like she’s always belonged right here.
“Do you want to hold her?” I ask, glancing up at Reid.
He doesn’t answer right away because he’s still staring—completely undone—like he’s afraid he’ll wake up if he moves.
I lift her gently toward him.
Reid sits on the edge of the bed next to me, arms out. And when I place her in them, the way his hands shake, the way hestares down like he’s never seen anything more fragile or more important, it nearly breaks me.
“She’s so small,” he murmurs, voice catching. “I thought I was ready, but—fuck—look at her.”
He sits beside me, cradling her close in the crook of his forearm, and reaches out to wrap his other arm around me.
“My girls.”
The world stays quiet, and the chaos fades. The fear recedes. All that’s left is the three of us, held together by sweat and tears and something I understand clearer than any other day in my whole entire life.
Love.
Moments pass. I don’t even know how long. But he’s still staring at her when he places her back in my arms and leans forward, brushing a finger along her impossibly soft peach fuzz head.
“She needs a name, Havoc. Before I lose my damn mind and start calling her Brick.”
I blink. “Brick?”
“You know. Strong and solid. Slightly terrifying in the wrong hands.”
“She’s not a construction material, Reid.”
“Fine.” He nods sagely. “Meatball.”
