Chapter 175: Telling no one (Yet)
There was sweetness in silence.
Not secrecy—not shame. But something more tenuous, more delicate. A sacred stillness neither of us yet wanted to shatter.
The home was abnormally still for a Saturday. No vibration of background music on the living room speakers. No muted murmur of Caspian on the phone with a client. Only the metronome breathing of the world outside our windows and the soft thunk of our hearts. I sat cross-legged on the couch, a blanket carelessly thrown over me, one hand resting lightly against my still-flattened belly.
No swell yet. No agitate. Barely a pull of possibility, like a flower slow-blooming in the darkness under my skin.
Caspian materialized, bare feet on the floor, two mugs clasped in his fists. Peppermint tea—my new vice—in one, and by the strong scent emanating from it, his usual black coffee in the other. He placed mine in my hands and sat down next to me, thigh pressed against my thigh.
"You've read another article, haven't you?" I accused, my eyes fixed on the cruel little grin twitching at the corners of his mouth.
He feigned innocence. "Maybe."
I sipped tea, looking at him over the edge of the mug. His hair was wet from the shower, curving slightly at the ends, and he was somehow charming in a plain T-shirt and frayed jeans. He belonged in this quiet morning with me. He felt like home.
"Something else?" I asked.
Caspian spun to look at me completely. "Cravings. And, it happens, it appears they're the body's attempt at making demands on nutrients."
I raised an eyebrow. "So my two a.m. peach gummy ring craving is a cry for help on. vitamins?"
He grinned. "Clearly."
I put my tea on the ground and leaned against him, my head against his shoulder. His arm wrapped around me, him holding onto me. We sat there awhile in silence—encircled in heat, sharing breath.
"I keep telling myself I should tell him," I whispered. "And every time I do."
Caspian's hand slid down my arm, his rich touch. "Because you're not quite ready yet?"
"Because I prefer it like this," I admitted. "The two of us, together. Alone. It feels. valued."
He nodded. "It is."
There was something in his voice, something subdued and watching. He wasn't just agreeing with me—he felt it too. It wasn't a briefing. It was a new world we were taking one step at a time, and building in darkness and quiet before opening the door to light.
Later on, when he read alongside me on the couch, I produced my journal. The smooth, leathery cover was soothing to my fingertips. I opened to a blank page and began writing.
Day 6 awake: No nausea today. Thank God. Caspian made ginger tea for me this morning—tasted awful, but he sat and watched me drink it like liquid gold. I think he is trying to be macho for me. I think I am trying to be macho for us both.
My pen slid along. I looked up at him, his eyes gently illuminated by the brightness of the windows, scanning the page of whatever parenting text he was reading currently. His concentration was almost pitiful—serious and rehearsed beyond belief, as if we were off to war instead of a nursery.
"You're really that serious about it," I chuckled.
He didn't look up even once. "Of course I am.".
I released the journal into my lap. "Are you scared?"
That caused him to raise his head, for a moment. His eyes met mine, and something eased on his face.
"Yes," he said. "But not the way you might think."
"Then how?"
"I'm scared of how much I already care about someone we haven't even met yet." His voice was low, but the words were unkind. "And I'm scared of what that is—if how out there it makes everything is a good thing." I swallowed hard. "Me too."
He set down his book and walked over to me, all the way for once. I felt his fingers brush against mine, slow and soft, then they wrapped around our fingers together and rested them on my stomach.
"We're making something real," he said to me.
I nodded, tears etching the lines of my eyes. "We are."
"And we can't share it with the world yet. It can be ours and nobody else's for a little bit longer."
There was something nice about the moment—his hand atop mine, both of them resting over the secret we'd not yet shared with anybody else. I leaned against him, let my eyes close for a moment, and when I opened them up again, there he was, looking at me.
His eyes weren't just intense. They were full of wonder.
As though I held galaxies inside me, and he could see every single one.
"Do you ever think," I gasped, "that maybe we were meant to end up here together? That all the awful, messy, hard things up until this point were just leading us here?"
His thumb drew circles on the back of my hand. "I think about it every day."
We didn't do it that morning—not in the way you're imagining, anyway. But in all the ways that mattered, we did. In the way he gazed at me as I cried, in the way I supported him when panic overwhelmed him. In the unsaid understanding that we were being something other than what we were meant to be when we were together.
I brought the journal upstairs after lunch with me, and hid it under the bed near a tiny velvet box containing yesterday's onesie we'd picked. It wasn't yet time to show it to anyone. Not Caspian's mom. Not my friends. Not the news.
But it was there.
And it was ours.
We curled up again on the couch in the afternoon light, wrapped in a shared silence that didn’t need to be filled. He rested his hand on my stomach again—like he couldn’t help it, like he needed the reassurance that something new was still growing there.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this close to you,” he murmured.
I looked up at him. “Even after everything?”
"Especially after all of this," he said. "Because I know exactly what we've been through to get here."
I sketched his face, dragged my thumb against his jaw. "We'll take care of it. This little world we're building."
He turned and kissed my palm. "With everything I have."
We cuddled up in bed in the darkness that night, my back to his chest, his arm around me. I felt the soft rise and fall of his breathing, the warmth of his body, the pounding of his heart on my back.
"I love you," I breathed into the darkness.
He didn't parrot it back to me right away. He just pulled me closer, as if the words were already etched on every inch of his skin.
Finally, he kissed my shoulder and mumbled back, "And I love the three of us."
And in that moment, silence was what we clung to.