A baby. Julian was going to be a father from the very beginning this time. He’d taken care of his brothers and Simone, and he’d walked into Micah’s life and become his dad. But he’d never gotten a beginning. The first kick, the first words, the first everything. He was going to get it now.
I couldn’t make it to dinner before I told him. He was at the stove when I came down, and he turned the second he heard me, looking me over. “You feeling better?”
“Yes. I figured out what’s wrong with me.” My heart was going fast.
“Did you ever think you’d end up here? Married. Father of two.”
“Father of one,” he corrected me.
“For about seven more months, yeah.” I brought the tests out and set them on the counter.
He looked at them. Looked at me. Looked back at them, and I watched it move across his face in order: understanding, then joy, and then, right behind the joy. Fear.
He set his spoon down carefully. “You’re pregnant?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“We’re having a baby.” Then his expression changed, worry creeping in. “Are you okay? How do you feel? When did you— how far along?”
“Julian.” I placed my hands flat on his chest. He covered my hands with his, and I felt the slight tremor running through his fingers, the joy and the fear stacked so close they were the same thing. I didn’t need him to tell me where the fear lived. I knew whose ghost was in the room.
“I’m happy,” he said quietly. “Extremely happy, Lyss. But… I need you to know, I’m probably going to be a lot about this.”
I studied his face, seeing the vulnerability he was trying to manage. I slid my arms around his waist and lay my head on his chest. “Julian Wade, I would expect nothing less.” I pulled back and looked at him. “And honestly? I’m looking forward to the princess treatment on steroids.”
The tension in his shoulders eased slightly. “You mean that?”
“I mean it. You need to hover? Hover. You need to research every doctor in the state? Go for it.” I smiled up at him. “Hovering and help I didn’t ask for and a car seat you’ll research for six weeks? I know who I married. You think I don’t want that turned up for this?” I put his hand on my stomach, the other playing in his beard. “Take care of us. However you need to. I won’t fight you on it.”
His shoulders let go, and he pulled me in and spread one hand wide against my back, and breathed out slowly.
“Okay,” he said.
I knew there would be hovering and worry and a version of protection that would probably drive me crazy at least once a week.
And I wanted it. I wanted my husband to take care of me. I wanted to be covered by him. I wanted to be nurtured and fussed over and held through every terrifying, beautiful part of bringing this baby into the world. I wanted to love him down and let him love me back in all the ways we both never knew we’d been waiting to love somebody.
And for once, I did not feel guilty or weak for wanting that.
I stood in my kitchen in my husband’s arms and thought about the woman I’d been years ago in a different kitchen. Smaller and disappearing, married but lonely, living a life that looked complete from the outside but was hollowed out in every place that mattered.
She never would have believed the life she would have on the other side of that.
I thought about how a few weeks after the wedding, I’d had a new sign made for the door.
Alyssa Carter-Wade, Esquire.
I’d stood on the sidewalk the morning they installed it, watching my new name settle into the glass.
I never took Malik’s name. At the time, I told myself it was professional and practical. Easier for work. Maybe all of that was true.
But maybe some part of me had known even then, long before I could admit it out loud, that taking the nameChamberswould not be a place I could rest. That I would need every bit ofCarterto survive that marriage. The grit. The survival skills. The stubbornness. The part of me that knew how to carry too much, swallow hurt, and get up anyway.
Carter was my mother’s name. The name she gave me. The name she’d worked under, struggled under, raised five children under, and still managed to make mean something. My mother had made mistakes. So had I. So had every woman I knew who was trying to survive with more responsibility than help.
But Carter was not shame to me. It was strength. It was Valencia Carter getting up when she was tired. It was her feeding us, correcting us, praying over us, loving us the best way she knew how, even when that love came wrapped in fear. It was every hard lesson I had to outgrow and every useful one that kept me standing.
I was proud of that name. I was proud of her. And the name Wade did not take that from me.
