The quiet between us

The sun had risen, but the world still felt hushed. After our early morning, Doc and I had dozed again, limbs tangled, the kind of sleep that only comes when your soul feels seen. I woke to his fingers tracing gentle patterns along my spine, the backs of his knuckles brushing up and down like he was memorizing me in silence.

“You’re staring,” I murmured without opening my eyes.

“I am,” he said softly. “Can’t help it.”

I lifted my head to find him watching me—eyes darker than usual, unreadable but not cold. There was something else there. A pull, hesitation, a quiet storm waiting to break.

“You okay?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Just kept touching me, his hand now drifting to my hip, then sliding up the curve of my side. Finally, he met my gaze.

“I thought I lost you,” he said quietly.

The words hung in the space between us, heavy and honest.

“You didn’t,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to his chest. “I came back.”

He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as he looked away. “Yeah, but there was a moment… back when you were in the hospital… you were hooked up to all those machines, and I—” His voice cracked. “I’d never felt so fucking helpless.”

I cupped his face, forcing him to look at me. His eyes were wet. Doc—the strong one, the unshakeable—was breaking open in front of me.

“I was angry,” he admitted, voice hoarse. “At you, at Tio, at the world. You chose someone else. You let him close enough to break you. And then you came back to me in pieces, and I didn’t know how to hold them all.”

I kissed him. Slow. Deep. Not to silence him, but to thank him—for telling me the truth, for letting me see the man underneath the mask he wore so well.

“You don’t have to hold all my pieces,” I said. “Just stay with me while I learn how to hold them myself.”

His hands tightened on my waist. “I don’t want to just stay. I want to be inside every part of your life. Your healing. Your joy. Your pain. Your body.”

“Then take me,” I whispered, brushing my lips over his jaw. “Not just my body. Take me.”

The shift was subtle, but electric. He rolled us, hovering above me, his mouth trailing kisses from my shoulder to my collarbone. His hands weren’t rushed, they worshipped. They mapped the new curves of my pregnant body like he was learning a terrain that belonged to him now, too.

He kissed the underside of my breast, his breath warm. “You’re changing,” he murmured, reverent.

“I know,” I breathed. “Does it scare you?”

He shook his head. “No. But it humbles me. The fact that you’re carrying something that’s part of us… I don’t even know how to touch you without wanting to fall to my knees.”

And then he did. Slid down the bed and kissed my belly. Whispered something I couldn’t quite hear, like a prayer meant only for the child inside me. Then he kissed lower, and lower, until I gasped and arched off the bed.

“Let me show you,” he murmured, voice rough. “That this body—this life—we’re building—it’s beautiful. Even the broken pieces.”

And he did. With his mouth, his hands, his body. He made love to me with a kind of devotion that had nothing to prove. The kind that says I see you. The kind that unravels you and stitches you back together all at once.

Afterward, we laid wrapped in each other again, our fingers laced.

“You scare the shit out of me sometimes,” he admitted against my hair. “Because I’ve never wanted something this badly.”

“You don’t have to want it alone,” I whispered. “I’m here now. For real.”

He kissed my temple. “Then let’s keep choosing each other. Every day. Even when it’s hard.”

“Especially when it’s hard,” I said, and kissed him back.