ALEXSEI
One month later…
The door to the bedroom opened. It was just enough noise to rouse me in the middle of the night.
“No. For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t tell me he’s still not asleep…” I groaned it quietly as I pushed my head back against the pillow. Chuckling lightly to myself as Kalina approached the bed in the dark of the night, I saw the irony of it all.
Those nights when Misha was a baby and I thought it would never end. That I’d never actually sleep and just be a zombie.
He was easy.
Nicky was something else.
I spent hours walking him. Bouncing him. Rocking. Singing to him, which only made him cry more. I gave him the bottle. Kalina tried to nurse him too.
“Did you try the bicycle leg thing in case he’s just gassy?” I asked her.
I hated for her to get up and try with him, but she admitted that while she loved how I volunteered to handle the bad nights, she couldn’t stand the sound of his crying. And often, he really did prefer her—or the milk she’d give him.
She didn’t say anything.
Sitting up and confused why she was so quiet, I blinked and squinted to find her in the darkness.
Maybe she was just really fucking tired, like I was. And delirious for sleep. I wouldn’t push her to be chatty now.
Yet, as I sat up and she strode toward the bed, I realized no cries came from Nicky’s room.
“Kalina?”
“Home, turn the bedroom light to fifty percent,” she told the smart home devices we used in our brand-new residence.
I blinked, shielding my eyes from the brightness as she came to me. “What…?”
She sat. Next to me and oddly jerky and stiff with the movement, she stared at me.
“What’s going on?”
The last time she’d come to me in the middle of the night with that panicked and anxious expression was when we were at the mansion. When she’d been pushed out of the silent treatment and avoidance of me to inform me that she was pregnant.
Lo and behold, she held out her hand.
With a simple release of her fingers on the item she held, she dropped another slim, white, plastic stick into my lap.
Still blinking, still waking up, and still desperate to sleep for more than five minutes, I let out a harsh exhale, a huff of surprise. My mouth hung open as I was fully pulled out of sleep.
“Are you?—”
“Seriously,” she replied, cringing at me with a happy yetohmigodsmile.
“You’re pregnant?” I asked, sounding like a moron because yes, I was holding the test in my hands.
“I’m pregnant!” she replied with more of thatohmigodshock. “Again!”
Laughing lightly, I pulled her over to me to hug her. She was still stunned, but she moved toward me and sat in my lap.
“Kalina, how…” It really was like déjà vu. When she told me she was pregnant with Nicky, I was so confused and shocked. We’d used protection at the cabin. All except the first couple of times, we’d taken steps for hernotto get pregnant because she hadn’t wanted to then. She was only just learning about it all, losing her virginity and exploring with me for the first time.
And now, it was still a huge surprise. She’d just had Nicky, and while we waited for the full post-partum period of abstinence, we had made love on our honeymoon, just eight weeks after Nicky was born.
