Zayden's POV
I’m home by eight. Mia at Helena's for the night—a planned sleepover that gives us something we haven't had in weeks: an evening without an audience.
The apartment feels different since the home office went in. Smaller but more intentional, like every square foot has been assigned a purpose. The standing desk is visible through the bedroom doorway.
Mia's drawings on the fridge. The blood pressure monitor on the kitchen counter, normalized now instead of hidden.
Jocelyn's at the stove making her grandmother's marinara—the recipe that requires precise timing and attention I don't possess. She's barefoot, hair pulled back, wearing my old Columbia t-shirt that's getting tight across her stomach.
The bump is visible now, just barely—a gentle curve that wasn't there a month ago. She keeps tugging the shirt down like she's not ready for it to be seen, even by me.
"Stop staring," she says without turning around.
"Can't help it."
"Are you staring at my sauce or at me?"
"Both. You're equally intimidating when you're concentrating."
She laughs—real, unguarded, the kind that's been absent from this apartment for too long. "Grab the basil. And don't you dare touch the garlic, you burned it last time."
"That was one time."
"Twice. Mia keeps a running count."
I retrieve the basil from the windowsill herb garden she started last spring. Hand it to her and our fingers brush, and the casual contact sends a current through my chest that has nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with normalcy.
This, right here. Standing in our kitchen on a Wednesday night, arguing about garlic while sauce simmers.
This is what they tried to take from us—not the foundation or the funding or the public reputation. This—the ordinary moments that make a life worth defending.
"I'm sorry," she says, stirring the sauce with one hand and reaching for basil with the other.
"For what?"
"For doubting you. During the Vivienne interview, the timeline release, all of it." She tears basil leaves into the pot. "You've been fighting on every front and I added another one by questioning your honesty instead of trusting you."
"You apologised already, remember?"
"I know." She turns to face me, wooden spoon in hand like a scepter. "But I’ve let others mislead me. I've known who you are since the night you built a dollhouse with our daughter and lost spectacularly to a six-year-old's engineering skills."
"I didn't lose, I was strategically outmatched."
"You were defeated by a pink balcony." Her smile softens into something more vulnerable. "I've missed you, Zay. The way we used to be before everything became warfare."
"I'm right here."
"I know." She sets down the spoon. "That's what I'm apologizing for acting like you weren't."
I take the basil from her hand, set it on the counter. Pull her toward me by the hem of my own shirt, which looks better on her than it ever did on me.
"The sauce is going to burn," she protests.
"The sauce is fine."
"There's no music."
"There's always music." I start humming something off-key that might be a melody or might be my interpretation of what music sounds like if music had been through the month we just survived.
She laughs against my chest. "That's terrible."
"You love my terrible humming."
"I tolerate your terrible humming."
I start swaying. Slow, pointless movement in our too-small kitchen that smells like garlic and tomatoes and the basil she tore with her bare hands. She resists for approximately three seconds before giving in, her head settling under my chin like it was designed to fit there.
We dance. No music, no rhythm, no reason except that we're alive and together and the sauce isn't burning and our daughter is safe at Helena's and our baby is growing in a body we're both finally taking care of.
"Your heart's beating fast," she murmurs against my chest.
"You do that to me."
"After three years?"
"After three years, thirty, after everything." I tighten my arms around her, feeling the slight swell of her stomach between us—our future literally taking shape. "You will always do that to me."
She tilts her head back, looks at me with those eyes that have seen too much pain and too much joy and somehow still choose to stay open. Then she kisses me—slow and sweet, tasting like the wine she let me have while she drinks sparkling water.
"I want you," she says quietly.
"You have me."
"No." Her hands find my chest, fingers pressing through the fabric. "I want you. I want to feel like us again."
The want in her voice undoes something I've been holding together for weeks. Not just desire—the need to be close to someone after being kept apart by forces that had nothing to do with us and everything to do with people who wanted us destroyed.
I kiss her back, deeper this time, my hands sliding from her waist to her hips, pulling her against me until there's no space left between our bodies.
"The sauce," she breathes against my mouth.
I reach behind her, turn off the burner without looking. "Taken care of."
"Very smooth."
"I have my moments."
We make it to the bedroom in a trail of discarded clothing that would mortify Mia if she were here—my shirt on the hallway floor, her borrowed t-shirt draped over the doorknob, the rest abandoned between the kitchen and the bed.
I lay her down on sheets that still smell like us—like home, like the life we keep choosing despite everyone's efforts to make us choose differently. My hand spreads across her stomach, feeling the slight curve beneath warm skin.
"Beautiful," I say.
"I'm barely showing."
"You're building a human. That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
She pulls me down to her. "Less talking and more showing."
I show her: slowly, thoroughly, with the focused attention of a man who almost lost this and knows exactly how much it costs to get it back. Her body is different now—more sensitive, more responsive, sounds escaping her at touches that used to be warmup and now seem to be main event.
"Pregnancy thing," she gasps when I find a spot that makes her arch off the bed.
"I'll remember that."
"You better."
Afterward, we lie tangled together in our bed—not the guest room, not separate couches, not different floors connected by the sound of crying. Our bed. Together.
Her head rests on my chest, my hand traces idle patterns on her back. The sauce waits patiently in the kitchen for a dinner we'll get to eventually.
"We should eat," she says.
"We should."
Neither of us moves.
"Zay?"
"Hmm?"
"The home office is perfect. The photos on the wall, the standing desk, all of it." She traces a circle on my chest. "You built me a space that says I'm still me. That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done."
"More romantic than spaghetti sauce?"
"Much more. Though the sauce is a close second."
I pull her tighter, kiss the top of her head.
"We're going to be okay," she says. Not a question this time, a statement.
"We're going to be more than okay."
"Promise?"
"I built you an office with framed photos of your career because I'd rather die than let you think pregnancy erases who you are. Yeah. I promise."
She smiles against my skin.
We stay in bed another twenty minutes before hunger wins. Reheat the sauce, boil pasta, eat standing at the kitchen counter because sitting at the table feels too formal for a night that's about bare feet and borrowed t-shirts and the radical act of being ordinary.
The blood pressure monitor sits on the counter beside our plates. Jocelyn checks after dinner without being asked.
132/84.
Lower than it's been in weeks.
"Look at that," she says, showing me the numbers.
I look. Then I look at her—barefoot, sauce-stained, bump barely visible, alive and present and here.
"Amazing what happens when you stop carrying everything alone," I say.
"Amazing what happens when your husband builds you an office and dances badly in the kitchen."
"My dancing is exceptional."
"Your dancing is a federal crime."
"And yet you danced with me anyway."
"And yet," she agrees, smiling, "I danced with you anyway."