33
Penny
Hours later, a loud thud echoes through the house, and I jolt awake. Confused by how easy it was to sit myself up, I look down and realise my stomach is flat. For a moment, I panic and frantically pat my belly, searching for my baby, but then I realise that Beckett’s no longer beside me, and that this is a dream.
This is the dream, and I already know how it goes.
Reluctantly, I swing myself out of bed, slide on Becketts slippers and follow the sound of his voice out of the room, and down the hall.
The closer I get to the kitchen, the more nauseous I feel, but to my surprise, when I reach the end of the hallway, I don’t see him.
No Beckett.
I can hear him, but now his whispers sound like they’re coming from behind me, from the bedroom I just walked out of…
Weird.
I turn back around and approach cautiously.
When I reach the doorway, I pause, and I wait.
“I love you.”
There it is .
My subconscious is a real fucking bitch for making me re-live this over and over.
I huff, step forward, and walk into the bedroom, ready to get this over and done with so that I can wake up, but when I see Beckett standing in front of me, shirtless and holding a baby in his arms, it feels like my entire chest cracks open.
“Yeah, I do,” he whispers down to the tiny person he’s clutching to his chest. “Daddy loves you.”
My legs move of their own accord and carry me further into the room. Beckett doesn’t look up, or notice my presence at all, but tears spring to my eyes as I round him and lay eyes on a baby that is the perfect mix of Beckett and me. His bright green eyes are staring up at his dad as if he is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen, and his tiny chubby hand is wrapped around Beckett’s index finger.
“You and your mumma, little man,” he continues, with the most beautiful smile on his face. “You’re all that matters.”
“Penny,” Beckett whispers against my ear as I linger in the space between sleep and consciousness. “Wake up, beautiful,” he continues. “I have something to show you.”
“Mmmmm,” I hum, nuzzling into my pillow, inhaling the smell of him still lingering on the fabric of the pillowcase. “Sleepy.”
“I have coffee.” His voice has lost the rawness it normally holds when he first wakes, so I know he’s been up for a while.
I wrinkle my nose. “Mmmm.”
“Real coffee,” he teases. “No decaf in sight.”
That has my eyes opening.
I squint against the morning light filtering through the curtains of his bedroom to find him smiling down at me, and I can’t help but smile back.
“Morning,” I croak, stretching out my neck. “Why are you dressed?” I ask, realising he’s no longer naked.
“C’mon,” he says, tossing the covers off me, practically vibrating with excitement. “Up you go.”
“Okay, okay,” I groan, allowing him to help me sit up on the edge of the bed. “Jesus, since when are you a morning person?”
“I haven’t been to sleep. So, technically, it’s not morning for me.”
“What?” I ask, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, confused by the statement.
“Not important,” he says as he holds out his hand.
I take it and let him help me up before slipping the green robe he’s holding in the other over my shoulders. Then, like a kid at Christmas, he grins, and he tugs me over to the closed wooden door of the room directly across from his.
Currently, he uses it to store his gym equipment, but we’ve been talking about turning it into the baby’s room, so when he opens the door and leads me inside, I figure he’s probably cleared it out so we can better visualise how to set everything up.
What I’m not prepared for is to walk into a nursery soaked in natural sunlight that’s streaming through the sheer floor-to-ceiling curtains hung in front of the previously bare window. The freshly painted walls are a deep forest green, and there’s an incredibly detailed watercolour mural of my duck pond on the wall to my left.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, taking it all in, my knees feeling weak and my eyes blurring with unshed tears. “It’s…”
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Every item I’d imagined in this room, is somehow laid out in the perfect position. The change table, made of dark, solid wood, the matching bookcase sitting alongside it, the books I’d imagined reading to our baby perfectly stacked along each level, the plush, maroon rocking chair I’d be too hesitant to order because of the price, and the crib …
The brass crib of my dreams is sitting perfectly centred on the opposite wall. Beckett’s mural practically frames it, and a small wooden mobile hangs above one side, with tiny, hand carved ducks dangling from six cream-coloured strings.
How on earth…
“You…”
“I ordered everything sitting in your Amazon cart,” he says, finishing my sentence as I raise my fingers to my trembling bottom lip. “Do you like it? Jesus, please tell me you like it. I figured, this is your happy place, you know?” he says, stepping further into the room and gesturing to the painting on the wall with his hands. “The place you go to find peace, and I wanted you to have that here, too, so I kind of centred the room around it and just finessed the rest until it felt right. I figured if I just ordered everything you were considering, then I had the best chance of getting it right. If there’s anything in here that you don’t like, though, we can just donate it to the women’s shelter down the road. You know, the one that takes in families, and then-”
I can’t help myself. Every emotion coursing through my body has me crossing the room and throwing myself against his wide chest. Immediately, his arms fold around me, holding me to him; one hand firmly pressed into my upper back, and the other entangled in my hair.
“I love it,” I whisper against his light grey t-shirt, my tears soaking into the fabric and leaving tiny water marks behind as I raise my head to look up at him. “I love it. I can’t believe you did this…”
His sparkling green eyes meet mine and one side of his mouth ticks up as he says, “Do anything for you, Pen. You know that…”