5. Nina
FIVE
Nina
"You really scheduled this?" I asked, standing in his kitchen with my hands jammed into the pockets of his robe like it was armor.
Vittorio looked up from the towel stack, one brow lifting. "Yes. I scheduled it," he said. His voice was flat with that private amusement he reserves for me. "Dinner is in ten. Bubble bath after. Pajamas are clean."
My pulse thudded in my throat. "That's terrifying and kind of… amazing."
He crossed the room in two strides and took my hand, thumb tracing the inside of my wrist the way a pulse-point check turns into something softer. "You told me you wanted a night where you could be small and not apologize."
"I said that," I admitted. "Doesn't mean I'm good at doing it."
"You practiced signing the rules," he said. "You asked for this. I'm not going to make you do anything you didn't agree to."
The certainty in his tone settled somewhere behind my sternum.
He smelled like soap and peppermints—his aftershave paired with the citrus cleaner he used on the counter—and the scent threaded through me like a promise.
I found myself counting his ribs under the robe the way you measure safety: wide, steady.
His shoulders filled the fabric; the shirt underneath clung to the slope of his back in a way that made the part of my brain that wasn't little-space or weary from work insistently aware of him as a man.
"I turned the pager off," I said, surprising myself by the way it sounded like a declaration. "It's face-down on the table."
His mouth softened. "Good. No interruptions."
He moved with those quiet, efficient hands I knew from the way he'd fixed the bedside lamp the night he first stayed.
He set a small tray on the low coffee table: a bowl of mac and cheese, cut into manageable spoonfuls, a mug with a lid that wasn't childish but promised warmth, and a little plastic cup with dots of jam for pretend tea.
He'd even put Ollie in the armchair, propped with Muff and Patch.
My throat clenched. "You did all that."
"Because you said you liked mac and cheese." He tapped my nose with the pad of his finger. "And because you like your things in reach."
I laughed, a small, nervous sound that collapsed into something softer when he sat beside me and brushed a curl away from my ear. "Are we… official little night? Or is this a test?"
"Official," he said. He said it like a verdict and an invitation. "If you want to be small, be small. If you don't, we stop. Open your eyes if you need to break."
I swallowed and nodded. "Okay."
The first surrender felt ridiculous and relieving at the same time.
I let him help me to the tub. He had put a small stool beside it, a washed wooden brush, and bubbles that smelled like lavender and something clean.
When he eased my foot into the water I closed my eyes.
The warmth filled me at the places work had hollowed out: the base of my skull, the hollows beneath my ribs.
"Do you want me to wash your hair?" he asked.
"Yes," I whispered, and the adult in me thought of salon appointments and procedures and sterile scrub sinks. The little in me wanted a hand that knew how not to hurry.
His fingers were methodical, massaging the scalp with a care that made the space inside my chest quiet.
He talked about nothing—football scores, a joke about Lorenzo's stoic face when someone brings a bright cake.
The rhythm of his words, the squeeze of his palms at the base of my skull made my shoulders lower as if someone had loosened straps that had been cinched too tight for years.
When he rinsed the shampoo, I opened my eyes. Up close, the white at his temples was a soft constellation. His hazel eyes were patient and warm. "You can be small," he said. "I'll handle the big things."
I almost laughed. Instead, I said, "Daddy?"
The word felt like stepping off a curb. He didn't flinch. He hummed approval, low and pleased. "Yes, baby girl."
My face burned with adult embarrassment and a childish fizz of glee.
He helped me out of the tub and wrapped the reading shawl around my shoulders—my shawl, somehow smelling faintly of him now—and I let myself sink into the safe, ridiculous pleasure of being tended to.
He put the footie pajamas on me with an exaggerated care, tucking toes in, zipping me up while I giggled at being fussed over.
We sat on the floor like that, him across from me with the coloring book and a pile of stickers. He'd drawn a behavior chart on a small notepad and placed a tin of smiley-face stickers beside it. "Three good things tonight gets an extra bedtime story," he said. "Green checkmarks only."
The little checklist in me thrilled. The adult checklist—the one that keeps diagnoses straight and accounts for on-call deadlines—shivered. "What if I want to be professional tomorrow?" I asked. My voice shrank around that worry. "What if someone finds out and thinks?—"
"—that you can't do both?" he finished softly. "You can. Being little doesn't erase your competence. It gives you permission to rest so you can be better at the rest."
"You don't—" I stopped because his eyes were so steady, because he didn't try to fix me into words I hadn't given him. He just offered the sticker tin.
"Tell me three things you want from tonight," he said. "Small things."
I put my chin in my hands like a defiant child. "Ollie on my lap. Tea that isn't real tea but tastes like pretend. You read the journal with voices."
He rolled his shoulders, a smile teasing the corner of his mouth. "Nothing difficult."
"Ollie too." I added it like an afterthought.
He obliged without theatrics, fishing Ollie from the armchair and setting the owl on my knees. I hugged him, the plush warm and familiar against my chest. My breaths shortened. "Daddy," I mumbled around the fabric, the syllables soft like a secret.
"Yes, princess?"
The tea party was absurd and perfect. He pretended to pour, balancing the plastic cup to my lips and calling it "tea" in a silly, formal voice that made me snort.
We fed Muff a piece of mac and cheese and gave Patch a sticker for being an obedient bear.
The silliness choked something loose in me.
Tears pricked unexpectedly; I blinked them away before they could embarrass me.
"Why are you crying?" he asked, though he already knew.
"I'm tired," I said. "And it feels good to not be tired and to admit I'm tired without fixing it."
He put a warm hand at the back of my neck and thumbed small circles that steadied more than the motion suggested. "You're allowed to be tired."
We moved to the little corner for storytime.
He had pulled the vintage journal from the low shelf—the one I'd tucked pressed flowers into and doodled in on nights I couldn't sleep.
He opened to a page with a crudely drawn boat and began in a voice too grave for the picture.
"Once upon a time, a very brave little captain?—"
I fell into giggles and then into the rhythm of the story.
He read the entries I'd written in the margins aloud, exaggerating the parts where I'd scrawled childish complaints about broccoli and praises for my mother's spaghetti.
At one point he made a ridiculous squeaky-voice for the owl in my drawing and I laughed until my chest hurt.
The layers of me shifted: doctor, adult, exhausted human, and the small headspace that loved voices and simple narratives. Being little wasn't erasing; it was turning down the noise so I could hear myself again.
Halfway through a made-up page where the little captain found a garden of glowing stickers, my eyelids fluttered.
The story hummed like a lullaby. I felt his hand close over mine and then his fingers laced through mine—the gesture both possessive and protective.
The contact sent heat up my arm. I traced the tendons in his hand with my thumb without thinking and felt the electricity of being near him as a man, not just a caregiver.
"You're drifting," he murmured.
"Mm," I said. My words shortened. "Stay."
He didn't hesitate. He switched the lamp to low and draped Patch beside me, tucking the shawl further around my shoulders. He kissed the crown of my head—longer than a comfort kiss, reverent but not lewd—and then rested his forehead against mine for a second that felt like a contract. "I'm here."
I worried earlier about whether being small would undo the professional persona I worked so hard to build.
Lying there, small, shawl heavy on my shoulders and Ollie tucked beside my cheek, I felt something else: being small didn't subtract from the part of me that saved lives.
It refueled it. The structure of ritual, the predictability of a chart, the safety of boundaries—those were tools.
Tools didn't define competence; they protected it.
"You're very brave to let yourself rest," he said, voice softer. "You did your big, hard work tonight. Now let your small work be resting."
I hummed. "Do we—do we still have the rule about bedtime at nine?" I asked, slipping into small, testing voice.
"Rule three," he corrected, mock stern. "Bedtime at nine when little. No screens. One story extra if you finish your mac and cheese."
"Green check," I said solemnly and awarded myself a sticker, pressing it onto the chart with theatrical ceremony. He applauded like I'd saved the world.
He stayed until my breathing eased; his fingers never stopped tracing the outline of my hand.
At one point his palm brushed the hollow at the base of my neck and I felt more than cared for—I felt claimed in a way that didn't smother.
It was precise and private, an intimacy that hummed along the seam between comfort and desire.
"Promise you'll stay," I mumbled as sleep dimmed the edges of my thoughts.
He hummed, a small sound that folded around me. "I promise, baby girl."
The light clicked off. The room shifted into shadows softened by the glow of the city squeezed through the curtains. His silhouette was a steady presence at the edge of my vision. I slid deeper into the shawl, into the rhythm of our invented rules, and let the little work of sleeping begin.
A thrill of something like fear crossed me before sleep took me fully—the old fear that giving my needs over would be taken as weakness.
I squeezed Ollie and thought about tomorrow: rounds and charts, triage calls, and colleagues who prized competence above complication.
But under that worry, a softer truth had settled in my chest: I could be both.
I could perform the things the world asked of me and still hold this smallness in a safe drawer he helped me lock.
My last coherent thought before sleep was smaller than the rest: that the structure we'd written was not a cage. It was scaffolding.
I woke briefly in the dark, Ollie clutched to my mouth, my cheek damp. He was still there, the steady shape at my shoulder, the shawl warm around both of us. Street noise filtered through. My breath hitched.
"Stay, Daddy," I whispered before the words could be argued with by logic or shame.
He answered in the dark with motion and sound: a soft hum, his hand smoothing my hair, the faint scrape of his finger against the journal on the bedside table. "I'm here," he said, and his voice was close, an anchor I could feel more than hear.
The city sighed outside. For the first time in months, maybe years, I didn't reach for the pager in panic. I let the rhythm of his breathing stitch me into sleep. The promise hung in the dark—warm, unbroken, and fragile as newly spun glass.