9. Valentina #2
“He needs to know,” she says, firmly but not unkindly.
“Before he figures it out himself.” She fixes me with a piercing look that looks so much like Connor that I fight the urge to squirm.
“And he will figure it out. You broke within two seconds of seeing me. I’m shocked he hasn’t cornered you already and demanded to know what’s going on. ”
I’m also surprised by that, but I keep it to myself.
“I know,” I sigh.
“Tonight,” she tells me firmly.
I pick up my menu. “Tonight,” I agree and try to ignore the way my stomach drops at the word, which may or may not be the nausea.
Emma squeezes my hand once more and then lets go.
We spend the rest of lunch talking about other things—Seraphina’s frankly incredible sleeping schedule, whether Leo is going to survive fatherhood without developing an anxiety disorder—jury’s out on that one—and she doesn’t bring it up again.
I’m grateful for that.
I spend the whole car ride home rehearsing.
The rehearsals do not go well.
Cillian, I need to tell you something.
Too ominous. He’ll think someone died.
So, funny story. It’s not funny.
I know we said no complications. Also not opening with that.
I’m pregnant. Simple. Direct. The exact words I said to Emma. But Emma is my best friend and I caught her off guard before my brain could stop my mouth.
Cillian is different.
He’s already home when I get in.
He’s in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, doing something to a chicken that smells really, really good. His skill in the kitchen is one of the things about him that continues to surprise me.
He cooks better than I expected, but I refuse to tell him so because I told him on our wedding night that I didn’t learn to cook to spite my mother and I have a reputation to maintain.
He looks up when I come in. “How’s Emma?”
“Good. Seraphina is so big already and unfortunately looks like my brother.” I put my bag down and take my coat off. I am very calm. I am the picture of calm. “How was Connor?”
“Fine.” He looks at me for a second, his lips slightly pursed. “You alright?”
My heart beats loudly. “Perfectly.”
He turns back to the chicken. I go to the wine rack, reach for a bottle, and then stop.
Right. I can’t do that anymore.
My hand is wrapped on a bottle of Barolo and I think about the next thirty-threeish weeks of no wine and then however many months of breastfeeding and something about the wine rack is what finally makes it real to me.
More than the five tests or the nausea.
And definitely more than four days of carrying this secret around the apartment. The wine rack makes it real.
I’m having a baby.
I take a sparkling water instead and sit at the island and watch him cook, while feeling the words sit on my tongue, except my tongue is now fucking cement.
My stomach is a disaster.
It’s been a disaster all day but it’s worse now, the nausea sitting low and miserable, and on top of that I’m nervous.
The sparkling water is not helping, but it’s all I’ve got. I sip it and think about how to say we accidentally made a person to a man who is currently seasoning chicken.
He plates dinner and we sit down.
He starts telling me something about a meeting with Connor, something about Brooklyn, and I’m nodding at the right moments but I’m not hearing a word of it because I’m too busy trying to find the right sentence.
The food in front of me smells fine but my stomach has decided it’s offensive anyway.
I push it around. I take a bite.
I put my fork down. I pick my fork back up. I take a sip of water. I put the fork down again.
“You’ve moved that same bit of pasta around your plate for five minutes,” Cillian says.
I nearly jump in my seat. Goddammit, he was paying attention. “I’m eating,” I tell him.
Cillian raises a brow. “You’re not eating. You’re disturbing your food.” He leans back in his seat, swirling his wine. “You’ve been strange for the past few days.”
My heart is going a million miles an hour. “I’ve been completely normal,” I insist but it doesn’t sound convincing.
“You didn’t steal my coffee this morning,” my husband notes conversationally but his eyes are focused on me. It’s uncomfortable.
I open my mouth then close it. Okay, fair.
“And you’re drinking sparkling water,” he continues, nodding at my glass, “when I opened a very good Barolo specifically because you asked me to last week. Now you’re not touching it.” He studies me, his eyes narrowed. “So. What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” I say, too quickly.
His eyes narrow even further. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Nothing is going on, I’m just not particularly hungry—”
“You’re never not particularly hungry; you stole half my lunch on Tuesday.”
I flush. “That was—I was just tasting it—”
“You ate most of it,” he argues, now leaning forward. He can see me wavering and he’s going in for the kill. “So try again.”
I grip my fork. My stomach rolls. The nausea is really not helping me construct a coherent argument right now and neither is the way he’s looking at me. “Can you stop interrogating me and just eat your dinner?” I demand.
“I am eating my dinner,” he says, taking a pointed bite. “You’re not. Hence my concern.”
I scowl at him. “I don’t need your concern—”
He matches my scowl. “Clearly something is wrong.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I said you’re not, and one of us is right and it isn’t you.” He sets his fork down and the air goes electric between us. “Is it the gallery? Your mother? Is it something I—”
“It’s not you,” I say, too fast again.
He catches that too, which is deeply inconvenient.
He leans back in his chair and looks at me with those eyes and says nothing, which makes me feel anxious.
I have a secret that is getting heavier by the minute and my stomach is staging a revolt and I cannot find the words and I’ve been trying to find them for four days—
“You know,” he says conversationally, picking his fork back up, “whatever it is can’t be that bad. Unless you’ve done something catastrophic.” His eyes cut to mine. “Have you done something catastrophic?”
“No,” I say, although I’m not sure if getting pregnant falls under the catastrophic territory.
“Burned down the gallery?”
“Obviously not.”
“Told my uncle what you actually think of him?”
“Tempting but no.”
“Hmm.” He chews thoughtfully. “Secret second husband? Because I have to say, the scheduling alone would be—”
My spine stiffens. “There’s no second husband,” I hiss in irritation.
“Or maybe it’s simpler than that.” His eyes gleam. “Maybe the Santoro princess just doesn’t know how to say the thing and is sitting there rearranging her pasta waiting for someone to come along and make it easy for her.” He picks up his wine. “As usual.”
I stiffen.
“Because that’s what happens, isn’t it,” he continues conversationally.
“When something is hard. You wait for someone else to either guess it or make it easier and in the meantime you just—perform. Do the face. Move the pasta around.” He gestures at my plate.
“God forbid Valentina Santoro actually just say the thing.”
My jaw is so tight I can feel it in my back teeth.
“I’m not—” I start.
“Four days,” he cuts in. “Whatever this is has been sitting on your face for four days and you’ve had approximately forty opportunities to say it and instead you’ve been”—he does the gesture again— “this. Very polished. Very—”
“I’m pregnant.”
The word flies out of me. I’m so fucking pissed that my hands are shaking slightly and my face is hot.
The nausea has spiked from the adrenaline and this is…this is not how I wanted to do this.
I wanted to be calm, and instead I’ve just detonated it across the dinner table because he fucking pissed me off and found the nerve that always gets me.
“There,” I snap. “I said it. Happy?”
He’s staring at me, eyes wide, fork still clenched in his fist.
“I’ve been trying to tell you for four days,” I continue, because I’m too rattled to stop now and the words are just falling out of me.
“Four days, Cillian. I’ve had this—I found out and I’ve been trying to find the right way to say it and you just”—I gesture at him furiously—“you and your—you always do that, you find the exact thing and you push it until I—” I press my lips together.
My eyes are stinging and I’m furious about that too.
“So yes, the thing I wasn’t telling you is I’m pregnant.
And I’m definitely pregnant because I took five tests and they were all really fucking positive.
So.” I sit back and cross my arms. My heart is slamming against my ribs. “Now you know.”
Silence.
He’s still staring at me with that wild-eyed look, and he hasn’t moved a muscle.
Meanwhile, my face is hot and tears are brimming behind my eyes.
I am so mad at him for making me blurt it out like that and so terrified of what he’s going to say and so nauseous that the room has a slight shimmer to it.
“Cillian.” My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to. “Say something. You’re actually scaring me.”
The fork drops. It hits the edge of his plate with a sharp sound and bounces onto the table, but he’s still staring at me.
“You’re…” he breathes but unable to finish his sentence.
“Pregnant,” I nod, my lips trembling and my throat hurting from the force of keeping back tears. “Yes.”
He pushes back from the table.
I flinch. I don’t mean to. It’s just—he moves so damn fast.
I’ve spent my whole life in rooms where fast movements mean something and my body doesn’t always distinguish.
He sees the flinch and a look crosses his face.
It’s not shock, but it’s something softer. He crosses to me in three strides and he pulls me up out of my chair.
My mouth opens to say something, but then I’m folded into his arms so abruptly that I make a small, undignified sound against his shoulder.
He holds me so tight I can barely breathe.
“We’re going to have a baby,” he says, and his voice is rough and completely unguarded. I’ve never heard it like that before. His hand comes up to the back of my head. “Valentina. We’re going to have a baby.”
I pull back enough to see his face. And I see—oh.