“What did that mean?” I asked her, moving in beside her and watching her face closely.
She took a deep breath, and I watched as her hand fluttered to her stomach and she placed it there like she was protecting something. My heart stopped, and I watched her small hand lying there. Lifting my gaze back up to hers, I waited.
“I’m pregnant,” she said softly, and then tears filled her eyes as a huge grin broke across her face. “We’re going to have a baby.”
My heart started beating again and slammed against my ribs as I let out a loud shout and pulled her into my arms. We hadn’t been trying. We hadn’t even talked about it since we visited Mase for the first time. But I’d daydreamed about it. I’d thought of ways to propose and imagined life as a husband and a dad. I just wanted to live this life with Emily and our baby.
Fuck the stupid tour.
I kissed her as I covered her hand with my own. “Mine. This is mine,” I repeated between kisses, and held her against me. “Marry me, Emmy. I want you to be my wife. I want you to have my name. I was waiting until the perfect moment, when I had the perfect ring, but I can’t think of anything more perfect than right here and right now.”
“Yes,” she said, kissing me back. “Yes, yes, yes,” she repeated.
I pressed her back on the bed and pulled her shirt up so I could caress her stomach. “I love you, Emily. I will always love you. This life and the one after and the one after that. I will always only love you.”
Her soft laughter filled the room. “We only get one life,” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. I won’t accept it. I want a million lives with you. You’re my heaven.”
“God, Kiro, you say the sweetest things.” She slipped her hands into my hair.
“Can I get in your panties now?” I teased.
She lifted her hips in response, and I jerked them down her legs and kissed my way up the inside of her thigh. This was my home.
February 1994
Kiro
She was tiny and perfect. She looked just like her mother. Which was fucking insane to say, because until this moment, I thought all babies looked alike. But this one wasn’t a squished-up creature. She was beautiful. Even her lips looked like Emily’s.
“Here’s your daddy,” Emily whispered to the pink bundle in her arms. They had taken her away right after she was born to run some tests. They were worried about her heart, which had scared the shit out of me. Emily had held my hand and reassured me that our little girl would be OK. She prayed to God, so she was banking on the big man to save our baby. I wished I trusted him that much.
“Harlow Manning, meet the most wonderful daddy in the world. Lucky for you he happens to be yours,” Emily said, as she held out the little girl we had made together for me to take her.
Emily had given me a kid. Our kid. The diamond ring on her finger sparkled under the fluorescent lights of the hospital room. Six months ago, she had walked down the aisle of a church in South Carolina and pledged to love me forever. I had thought that was the happiest day of my life. But holding the little bundle of pink in my arms while her mother stared up at me with so much love couldn’t be topped, not even by our wedding day.
“She looks like you,” I said, as I studied the baby’s small face.
“I see you in her, too.”
I thought she was imagining things, but I didn’t care. I wanted my daughter to look like her mother. I’d have two angels on this earth now.
“I’ll keep her safe. I’ll keep you both safe. My girls will always be the most important people in my life. Nothing will ever come before you two. I swear it.”
Emily chuckled. “I believe you.”
“Thank you for this. For her. For giving me this life.”
Her hand reached out and touched my waist. “I love you, Kiro Manning. Thank you for showing me the man no one else gets to see.”
I cuddled my baby against my chest and sat down on the edge of the bed. I had everything in life now. I didn’t need any more. This was all I needed. All I would ever need. My life was complete. My world was perfect. And nothing would ever take these two angels away from me.
The door opened behind us, and a doctor walked in whom I had seen earlier with Harlow.
“I’m Dr. Gavins. I’m the pediatrician on call tonight, and I did a check on Harlow earlier. We have some concerns. There was a heart murmur detected, and while this may not prove to be anything more than just that, we need to run some more tests. I’m having her moved to the NICU. She needs to be monitored by the proper equipment.”
Emily
Kiro held my hand in both of his as the latest update on Harlow was delivered. I had been released from the hospital yesterday, so Kiro had obtained a room for us to use while Harlow was still here. I couldn’t leave her. I refused to. She needed us.
“She was blue,” Kiro said slowly, as if it was just sinking in.
There was excessive blood flow from the left side to the right side of her little heart. She was having difficulty breathing. I inhaled deeply, as if I could breathe for her. I had been breathing for her for nine months now. I wanted her back inside me, where she was safe. Protected.
“She’s going to be OK,” I repeated, to calm him and remind myself. God would not give us this baby girl to love and then snatch her away like that. I just didn’t believe he was that cruel.
“Cardiac catheterization sounds scary as fuck, Emmy. Why can’t we hold her? She’s gotta be sacred.”
I didn’t know what to tell him. I was waiting patiently for my mother to get here. She had planned on coming once I brought Harlow home so she could help me. But I wanted my momma. Kiro had paid for her plane ticket and was bringing her to me.
“She knows we love her. She can feel it.” I had to believe that, too. I needed her to know I loved her.
“She’s so fucking tiny. If this doesn’t work, they want to . . . to . . . fuck, I can’t even say it.”
If this didn’t work, Harlow would have to have surgery. Possibly the first of several before she was even three years old. They had told us everything over the past few days. We got to wear scrubs and masks and go back and see her three times a day. Each time we had to leave her again, I had cried.
Kiro held me, and we waited until we could go see her again.
“She is a Manning. She’s strong. She’s stubborn. And she is loved. She’ll be fine.” I said the words out loud. I needed that to be so. I believed it. I claimed it, and I would not let it not be true.