Page 79 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“I know.” Kaisen didn’t argue it, didn’t try to stretch the visit out the way I half-expected him to. He just reached for his cane where he’d propped it against the rolling table, settled his weight onto it, and looked at the two of us with something in his face that hadn’t been there when he first walked in—something softer, more exposed, like the visit had worn a layer off him that he hadn’t planned on losing.

“I’ll head out,” he said. “I just—” He stopped, seemed to weigh whether to finish the sentence, and then finished it anyway. “I just wanted to at least be an uncle. Since I didn’t get to be a dad today.”

I felt that one land somewhere under my ribs, sharp and sudden, the kind of hit you don’t see coming, even when you should have.

Because he was right. Some version of today should’ve had two names on it, and it only had one. And no matter what else was true about Kaisen Landry, that particular grief was real, and it had cost him something specific and irreversible that no amount of my own boundaries could pretend away.

“You are one,” I said, and I meant it in the moment I said it, even with everything else sitting unresolved underneath. “You’re her uncle. That’s real, Kaisen.”

“Thank you.” His voice cracked a little on the two words, just enough that I heard it. He cleared his throat like he was embarrassed by the sound of himself. “I mean that too.”

He looked at Amai one more time, and something passed between them that I wasn’t fully part of, some old current running under the surface that had nothing to do with me or the baby or the last six months of chaos. Two brothers measuring each other the way brothers do, checking for weakness, checking for softness, checking to see if the other one had moved an inch.

“I’ll let y’all rest,” Kaisen said. “Congratulations again.”

He didn’t try to touch the bassinet on his way out. Didn’t try to sneak one more look past Amai’s shoulder. He just gathered himself, the cane tapping soft against the tile, and made his way to the door, pulling it open with more care than the situation probably called for, and easing it shut behind him the same way he’d opened it—quiet, deliberate, like noise itself was something he’d decided not to bring into a room that had earned its silence.

The door clicked shut.

The balloons kept bobbing gently against each other by the window, the little rustle of foil and latex the only sound left in the room besides my own breathing and the soft mechanical hum of the compression cuffs still doing their job on my legs.

Amai exhaled hard, dragging a hand down his face. “That man got a way of sucking the life out of a room now.”

“He does,” I said.

“You good?” He came and sat on the edge of the bed the way he had earlier, close enough that his weight tilted the mattress toward him a little.

“I’m alright.” I was still holding the bear, running my thumb along the little knit scarf without really thinking about it. “That was weird as hell, though. Right? I’m not making that up?”

“You ain’t making shit up.” Amai’s voice had lost the sharpness it carried with Kaisen and gone back to something closer to tired. “Man walked in here with enough balloons to float this whole building off the foundation.”

“He was about to call her his daughter.”

“I heard him.”

“You think he meant it? Like actually meant it, not just tired-and-said-the-wrong-word meant it?”

Amai was quiet for a second, long enough that I knew he was actually thinking it over instead of just reassuring me for the sake of reassuring me, which was one of the few things about him that had gotten steadily better since we’d started doing this whole thing for real.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Grief makes people say all kinda shit they don’t mean to say. Or it make ’em finally say the shit they been meaning to say the whole time and just ain’t had the nerve.” He looked at me. “I can’t tell which one that was.”

“Me either.” I set the bear down on the tray table next to the water pitcher, needing my hands free for a second, needing to not be holding something he’d given her while I tried to sort through how I felt about the man who’d given it. “He’s not wrong about the uncle thing, though. That’s real. He lost a whole kid and didn’t get nothing in return but a room full of somebody else’s joy.”

“I know.” Amai’s jaw did that tick again, but softer this time, more resigned than angry. “Don’t mean I trust the way he looked at her.”

“I don’t fully trust it either,” I admitted. Saying it out loud made it more solid somehow, more real than just letting it sit knotted in my stomach. “But I also feel like shit for assuming the worst the second he walked in. Before he even said anything. I looked at that man standing in the doorway with balloons, and my first thought was what the fuck does he want, like he came here with a knife instead of a teddy bear.”

“That instinct ain’t wrong just ’cause it feels mean,” Amai said. “You been through enough with that man to earn being suspicious of him walking through a door.”

“Maybe.” I looked toward the bassinet, toward the small rise and fall of Tru’s chest under the hospital blanket, steady and unbothered by any of what had just happened four feet away from her.

Amai didn’t say anything to that. He just reached over and took my hand, thumb moving slowly across my knuckles, and I understood the silence for what it was—not disagreement, just him not having a good enough answer to make either of us feel better about it.

“You want the balloons moved somewhere you don’t gotta look at ’em?” he asked after a minute, nodding toward the cluster still floating by the window, the gold and silver catching the hallway light every time somebody walked past outside.

“No,” I said. “Leave ’em. They’re for her. Don’t got nothing to do with whatever’s going on in his head.”

“You sure?”