Page 277 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“Vieni.”
I obeyed, stepping close enough so that he could reverently corral me into his embrace. When he tipped his head down to look at me, the tears spilled like diamonds from his black velvet eyes. One fell on my cheek and felt like an anointment.
“Are you really?” he asked, his voice so ravaged it was almost hard to discern the question. “Are you having our baby?”
I didn’t notice I was crying until one of his rough-tipped thumbs brushed across my cheekbone, collecting the wet there.
I nodded because my voice was lost somewhere in the chaos of emotion storming my chest.
He closed his eyes then, slowly as if in pain, or maybe, as if his prayer had finally come true, and he couldn’t believe it was real. Gently, he pressed his forehead to mine and cupped my face as if it was fragile like an eggshell.
“You’re pregnant,” he confirmed on a shaky sigh. “With our baby.”
“I am, but there is a second part of your present.” I pulled away, but he wouldn’t let me go, so I lead him with an arm around the waist to the other present I’d wrapped and placed on the ottoman before the rocking chair.
He sat down in the seat, tugging me so I fell onto his lap. I grabbed the gift on the way, passing it into his hands as I curled up safe against his big body.
His hands shook as they opened the box.
Inside was a small black and white photo of the ultrasound Monica had given me two weeks before.
A photo of two tiny, perfect bodies curled up together like yin and yang.
“We’re going to have twins,” I whispered, in case he couldn’t tell from the ultrasound photo.
Dante stared at photo with such intensity it was palpable in the air around us. Tears fell from his eyes and sluiced down his cheeks, quick and silent. He seemed transfixed, unable to bear the amount of emotion coursing through his body.
I pressed my cheek to his heart and felt its racing beat.
“I always said I wasn’t a lucky man,” he finally murmured, his throat sticky with tears so his words were rough-edged. “I won’t ever say that again.”
Tears burned so hot in my eyes I had to close them as I curled even tighter in his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck, and clutched him to me.
We cried them, silent and strong, for a long time.
We’d been trying for years, from that first time on the hood of the Ferrari in the garage, and nothing.
So we’d gone to Monica two years ago and started hormone treatments.
Still nothing.
We had Aurora, who was everything, so we didn’t let it depress us as much as it could have, but it was hard when I’d always wanted to carry my own child, when I wanted so badly to see a baby with Dante’s black hair and lightly dimpled chin.
Last year, we tried IVF.
It didn’t take either time.
So we stopped.
I was tired. Dante was tired.
Even poor Aurora was tired of praying for a baby brother or sister that didn’t seem to want to come.
We stopped trying, and then, somehow, it happened.
I’d asked Monica about it, and she said it was actually fairly common. That the stress of trying to procreate could keep it from happening. When we gave up, we released that tension.
I had a slightly more romantic theory.
