Page 53 of Together

“He’s here!”

Nik and I whip our heads in the direction of the doorway to see Dean radiating a kind of happiness I didn’t know existed in the world. Nik stands abruptly, and because I was close to him already, we’re now just inches apart. His hand automatically goes to me, holding onto me under my forearm. His nearness makes me sway on my feet. His scent is so intoxicating, I want to press my nose to his skin and breathe him in.

“He?” Nik whispers and Dean beams. He squeezes my arm and even if I wasn’t staring directly at him, I would be able to see the emotion written all over his face. “Josie okay?”

“Both are perfect. She was a champ. Yelled at the doctor to do better, and when he came out, she told him he was the best doctor she could have asked for. He said it was completely normal.”

The corner of Nik’s mouth ticks up. “Sounds like her.”

“Details?” I ask, because that’s what women do. They want to know about the baby.

“Big boy. Eight pounds, twelve ounces, twenty-one inches long. Tons of dark hair.”

“Name?”

“Josie wants to tell you. Ready to come meet your nephew?”

“Hell yeah.”

I had planned on staying here in the room, wanting to give this time to them as a family. But Nik has other plans. He’s dragging me right along with him.

As we enter the room Josie is staying in, I hear a soft humming to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine.”We sanitize our hands at the station next to the door.

“Hey,” Nik says, his voice cracking.

She looks up at him and smiles. “Hey, you. Come meet Jay Nikolas.”

Nik gasps. “Josie,” he whispers. “Dad would have…” he trails off and his hold on my arm grows stronger. “Dad would have been honored to have him as his namesake.”

“And you? Are you okay with him taking your middle name?”

“Stupid questions don’t deserve answers,” he jokes.

“You want to hold him?”

“Of course.”

Nik takes little Jay in his arms with such ease, if I hadn’t already been pregnant with his child, I would have gotten pregnant just from watching him hold his nephew. He bends down, whispering into Jay’s ear and nuzzling kisses into his cheek. Holy crap, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Nik holding a baby is the stuff of fantasies. My breathing goes a little shallow and water pools in my mouth.

Nik is quite literally mouth-watering right now.

Just as the thought stays locked in my brain, he looks up at his sister and smiles. His bright white teeth are beaming. “He’s perfect.”

No. I cannot be expected to handle this. The urge to take a trip down memory lane and remind ourselves what it was like when we made our little bundle is strong. It’s more than just my hormones working overdrive. I think it’s too soon in the pregnancy for that side effect.

Josie doesn’t realize that I’m in the middle of a mental breakdown over here, doing my best to resist the temptation to climb him like a tree. She’s just babbling on about their baby as if everything is normal.

“I know. We’re totally having a litter of kids. Look what we made on our first go-round. It would be doing a disservice to the world by not populating it even more with lookers like him.”

“Did you not forget the last few hours of your life, babe?” Dean asks, chuckling.

She waves him off, much like Nik did to me earlier. “Already forgotten.”

Nik moves closer to me, his clean scent overwhelming in my current state. I didn’t need to add that to my already heightened desire. But just like Josie, Nik’s completely unaware of my struggles. He simply looks down at his nephew and signals to me that he’s about to let me hold him. “Your turn, Ash.”

He passes the tiny little bundle over with such gentleness and care and then I’m holding a newborn baby in my arms. I stare at him, perfectly round cheeks. Puffy face from going through a traumatic experience, that of pushing his body through a hole the size of a walnut. His arm jerks, whipping back and forth, little wrinkly fingers spread apart.

“Hi, little guy.” He makes a cooing sound and I coo right back. How could you not? This baby is so pretty. Josie wasn’t wrong about that. “You are certainly a gorgeous baby,” I tell him. His eyes are closed, already bored with me. I take the moment to lean down, inhaling that soft baby scent. Only… well, he doesn’t smell all that great. And he has some white stuff on him. And now he’s beginning to get fussy, not full-on crying, yet. I bounce on my knees, swaying him gently side to side. “It’s okay, buddy. Are you getting hungry? Is that what the fuss is all about?” I use a voice that I don’t recognize as my own. It’s a little high pitch and sickeningly sweet but I don’t care. “You’re so precious, aren’t you?”

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