Page 76 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“She’s terrifying,” Amai said. I laughed softly, careful of my own body still recovering from everything it had just been through.

We sat quietly for a minute, just the sound of the hospital’s machines humming somewhere in the background or the occasional squeak of shoes in the hallway outside our door. I watched him watch her, the way his thumb moved slow and careful along the edge of the blanket she was wrapped in, like he needed the contact even through the fabric.

“I keep imagining another bassinet,” I said.

I hadn’t planned to say it. It just came out quietly into the stillness of the room. Once it was out there, I didn’t try to take it back.

Amai’s eyes came up to mine.

“I do too,” he said.

I hadn’t expected that. Not because I didn’t think he felt it, I knew he did. I’d watched him carry that grief right alongside me, but I hadn’t expected him to say it right then, in this room, with the joy of the day still so fresh on both of us.

“I keep picturing two cries instead of one,” I said. “Two little faces. I had names picked for both of them before we even knew—I had this whole thing in my head, this whole future, two kids fighting over toys, two kids arguing about who got more attention. I had all of it.”

“I know,” Amai said.

“And it’s not that I’m not happy.” My voice caught, and I had to stop and breathe through it before I kept going. “I am. I’m so happy, Amai. Look at her. She’s perfect. She’s everything.”

“She is.”

“But I keep looking at her and thinking about who should’ve been right next to her. And I feel guilty for even thinking it today, of all days, but I can’t make it stop.”

Amai shifted Tru carefully against his shoulder, freeing one hand to reach across the space between us and take mine.

“You don’t have to make it stop,” he said. “Not today. Not ever, if you don’t want to.”

I looked at him. “You’re not gonna tell me to just be grateful?”

“No.” His grip tightened slightly on my hand. “I’m not gonna tell you that. I don’t get to tell you how to feel about your own son.”

Something in my chest loosened at that, some tension I’d been carrying without fully realizing it, bracing for a version of this conversation that didn’t happen, a version where he tried to smooth it over, tried to point me toward the joy in the room and away from the grief sitting right alongside it.

“He was real,” I said. “Even if he never took a breath outside me. He was real.”

“He was real,” Amai agreed. “I think about him too. I think about what he would’ve looked like. Whether he would’ve had Kaisen’s face or something more like yours. Whether he would’ve been loud like his sister already is, or quiet.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if that’s weird. Thinking about a kid who’s biologically Kaisen’s like he was mine too.”

“It’s not weird.” I squeezed his hand. “You claimed both of them before you even knew which one was yours by blood. That’s not nothing.”

“Doesn’t feel like much now.”

“It’s not nothing,” I said again, firmer. “That’s love, Amai. However you want to call it.”

He was quiet for a long moment, looking down at Tru’s sleeping face, at the small, even rhythm of her breathing.

“I don’t want to pretend he didn’t happen,” he said finally. “Just because she’s here and she’s healthy and she’s ours. I don’t want that to erase him.”

“It doesn’t have to,” I said. “She can be enough even though he’s missed.”

“Both things can be true,” Amai repeated, like he was testing the shape of the words, deciding if he believed them yet.

“We don’t have to figure all of it out tonight,” I said, feeling the exhaustion of the day pulling at me and my body finally starting to demand the rest it had earned. “We got time. We got years if we want it, to figure out how to hold both.”

“Yeah,” Amai said. “We got time.”

He stood, careful not to jostle Tru, and came to sit on the edge of my bed instead of the chair, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him against my side. He shifted her so I could see her face again, so small and impossibly complete, her tiny chest rising and falling in that fast, delicate rhythm newborns have.

“Hey, Tru,” I said softly, reaching out to touch the curve of her cheek with one finger. “You don’t know it yet, but you got a whole family out there losing their minds over you. And you got a brother who never got the chance to meet you, but he’s part of your story too. Always will be.”