9. Valentina #3
There are tears in his eyes, making the blue of them brighter and more open than I’ve ever seen him.
Cillian Brennan looks at me like I’ve just handed him something he didn’t know he was allowed to want.
“Are you happy?” I ask, in a small voice.
He barks out a laugh. “I’m fucking scared shitless. I have no idea how to be a father.” A beat. “But yes. God, yes, I’m happy.”
That’s when I start crying.
It’s not elegant or the composed, one-tasteful-tear version of crying that I’ve been known to deploy at appropriate moments.
This is the other kind, the kind that comes from carrying something enormous alone and someone taking half the weight without being asked.
Cillian looks vaguely alarmed that I’m crying, but he rubs soothing circles on my back and I let myself fall apart completely in a way that I haven’t done since Gabriel died.
He doesn’t say anything. He just holds me and lets me cry.
By the time I’ve gotten myself back together enough to be embarrassing rather than catastrophic, his shirt is somewhat damp and I’ve probably ruined my mascara completely.
I pull back and press the backs of my fingers under my eyes, taking a shaky breath.
“I’m not a crier,” I inform him.
“I know,” he says, with such gentle insincerity that it almost makes me laugh.
“This is hormones.”
He nods sagely. “Obviously.”
“I want it noted that I cried first and you almost cried—”
“I didn’t almost cry,” he says, with significantly less conviction.
I laugh in disbelief. “Your eyes were clearly full of tears.”
“That was the light in here,” he tells me, but there’s a small smile playing on his lips. “The light is very harsh in this kitchen, I’ve mentioned it before.”
He’s so full of shit as he’s never said that before.
We are actually having a baby, and something about the way he just lied to me about the crying with complete straight-faced sincerity tips me from tears directly into laughter.
It sounds a little hysterical around the edges, but it’s also genuine.
Cillian’s mouth curves when he hears it and he pulls me back in, his arms around me, his chin on top of my head.
“Okay?” he asks quietly, into my hair.
“I have absolutely no idea,” I tell him honestly. “But yes. I think so.”
The next few days are—strange.
The morning after I tell him, I come out of the bathroom from my ritual six a.m. morning audience with the porcelain throne and find Cillian in the kitchen already. He’s made tea instead of coffee and from my inspectory sniff, it’s ginger tea. I whirl around and gesture to my mug.
“What is this?”
“Ginger tea,” Cillian says, leaning against the counter as he reads something on his phone. “I looked it up. It’s supposed to help with nausea.”
Oh. Well, that’s thoughtful of him. I go to pick up the mug and notice some Saltine crackers sitting next to the cup. I look at him in confusion.
“Plain crackers can help settle a nauseous stomach,” he says, eyes still on his phone.
A wave of emotion moves through me so quickly that I have to take a breath and look at the ceiling before I trust my face again.
“Thank you,” I croak out, my eyes burning.
He shrugs. “It’s tea,” he says, but he refuses to look at me
I drink the tea and the crackers do help. By the end of the week it’s just part of the morning, the tea and the crackers and the careful way he’s started checking in.
But it’s not hovering. Cillian doesn’t hover after all.
He also starts researching, which I find out when I walk past his study and see him reading something that takes me a second to identify.
“Is that a…pregnancy book?” I ask.
He looks up, a flash of embarrassment on his face. “It’s research,” he says defensively.
I fight a laugh. “It’s a pregnancy book.”
“It’s research on pregnancy,” he says, with great dignity, “this is a big deal and it requires information.”
I peer at the book, smiling as I notice it’s What To Expect When You’re Expecting.
I think about how attentive he’s been to me and how gentle he’s been.
I love him so much I don’t know what to do with it sometimes.
“How far did you get?” I ask.
He looks down at the page. “Week eight,” he reports. “The embryo is apparently the size of a raspberry.”
“A raspberry,” I say, thinking about the fruit. That does sound good. Do we have raspberries in the house? I hope we do.
“A kidney bean last week. It’s growing fast.” He says this with such complete seriousness that I have to look away, biting my lip.
“Very informative,” I say to the doorframe. “Carry on.”
I hear him turn a page as I walk away and I press my hand to my mouth and smile against it in the hallway, where no one can see me doing it.
He becomes slightly unbearable about a week in. I say slightly, but I mean completely.
“You need to rest more,” he says when I come home from the gallery, scowling at me.
“I’m pregnant,” I tell him, toeing off my shoes. “Not dying.”
“You’re growing a human,” he announces. “That requires rest.”
I roll my eyes.
“At least put your feet up,” he pleads with me, steering me toward the chair. “I’ll make dinner.”
I open my mouth to argue, but the truth is I’m exhausted.
It’s a bone-deep kind of tired I’ve never experienced before that hits me somewhere around four in the afternoon and doesn’t lift.
Growing a person is harder than anyone warned me about, and I’ve been pushing through it on pride and stubbornness.
Neither of those things are working as well as they usually do.
I put my feet up while he makes dinner.
It’s good. I eat almost all of it, which is the best I’ve done in two weeks according to Cillian’s face.
“Don’t say it,” I tell him, when I catch him looking at my plate.
“I didn’t say anything,” he says innocently.
“You were about to.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted more,” he says, mildly, and gets up to get it before I can answer.
He’s so completely insufferable.
He’s started opening car doors, which he never used to do, and last week he moved the heavier boxes in my office at the gallery without being asked.
I just came in one morning and they were somewhere better.
One of my colleagues at the gallery asked me how he knew where to put them.
I said he’s thorough.
They nodded like this made complete sense.
He also wakes up when I’m sick, which is every morning.
He follows me to the bathroom and holds my hair back for me.
I’ve told him he doesn’t have to do this.
He’s ignored me every time, and I’ve stopped arguing about it.
But I find I don’t entirely mind the fussing.
I especially don’t mind the foot rubbing that started three days ago, because the moment I acknowledge it he’ll probably stop.
I grew up in a family where love was present but not always expressed in ways you could point to.
My father showed it through providing and my mother showed it through teaching and nobody really just looked after you, in the small daily way.
Cillian is looking after me in that small daily way, and it means a lot to me.
About two weeks after I tell him I’m pregnant, we’re lying in bed. It’s late, the lamp’s off, with the glow of the city through the gap in the curtains.
He’s on his back and I’m on my side facing him.
His hand is resting on my stomach, palm flat against the skin.
He’s been doing this recently, usually when he thinks I’m asleep.
I’ve been pretending I am because I didn’t know what to say and I needed a moment to feel it privately first.
Tonight I don’t pretend.
“Cillian,” I say quietly.
“Hmm?” His voice is low, half-absent.
“I need to tell you something.”
His hand stills. He turns his head toward me in the dark, and I feel him look at me even though I can barely see his face. “Is everything okay?” There’s a sharpness in his voice. “Is it the baby?”
“The baby’s fine,” I tell him, covering his hand with my own. “Everything’s fine.” I take a breath. I’ve been here before, on the edge of something, and I’ve folded it back up and pretended it wasn’t there. I’m not doing that tonight. “It’s just—” I stop and start again. “I love you.”
Cillian is completely still for a moment. My heart is hammering because I’ve said the thing I can’t take back and I’m waiting to find out what it does. I hold my breath, waiting.
“I love you too,” he says roughly. “I think I’ve loved you since you threw that wine glass at my head.”
I’m so overwhelmed with relief that he feels the same way that his words don’t really register until the last moment. A wet laugh bubbles out. “That’s a weird moment to fall in love.”
“You’re a weird woman.”
I gently punch him. “Takes one to know one.”
He turns toward me and kisses me, soft and slow.
His hand is still on my stomach, and this is the most gentle he’s ever been with me. He is everything, this man who I hated on sight and who has somehow, without either of our permission, become the person I most want to be in a room with.
When he pulls back, I can just make out the lines of his face in the city glow.
The sharp jaw.
The scar.
The blue eyes looking at me with everything down.
“We’re really doing this,” I say in wonderment. “Having a baby. Being married. Actually being in love.”
“Seems like it,” he replies.
“It’s insane.”
“Completely.”
“I wouldn’t change it for anything.” I mean every single syllable.
“Me neither.” He means it too. I know because I know his voice now, the whole register of it, every frequency, and there is not a single note of anything in this except the truth.
Cillian kisses me hard, his hand moving off my stomach and his thumbs slipping beneath my waistband. “God, I want you.”
“Then take me.” I shiver when his thumb traces a gentle line along my pelvis, ringing a sensitive nerve.
Cillian’s fingers still for a moment, his breathing ragged. Even in the dim light, I can see that his eyes have turned dark with lust.
“Take off your shirt,” he orders.
Softly laughing, I do as he orders, tossing my pajama shirt onto the ground.
Cillian’s hands are immediately on my breasts, dragging his fingers to the nipples before pinching.
I moan at the sensation, my nipples already so sensitive because of pregnancy.
A bolt of pleasure shoots straight between my thighs.