Lahat ng Kabanata ng Ruin me, Gently : Kabanata 191 - Kabanata 200

ISABELLE They placed a soft towel across my chest first.Then — carefully, gently — our daughter.She was still crying when they laid her on me. Small and warm and indignant about the world she had just entered. Another towel placed lightly over her — warm — and I brought my arms around her immediately.She was so small.My hands felt enormous around her.She cried for another moment — then stopped.Like she had recognized something.Her head turned.Slightly. Instinctively.Toward Matt.He made a sound.Something between a breath and something else entirely.“She knows your voice,” Dr. Helene said quietly. “Fathers who talk to their babies—” She left the rest unfinished.Matt leaned forward.His lips near our daughter’s ear.“Hello,” he said. Barely above a whisper.She stilled completely.And I watched Matteo Moretti — this man who had built walls and maintained them for years — come completely and quietly undone by eleven seconds of a newborn baby going still at the sound of his v

SAGEMy hand came up.Went back down.I exhaled.It’s just breakfast, I thought. You go in. You eat. You leave. That’s it.I rubbed my palms together.Looked at the door.That is clearly not all this is.My hand came up again.Went back down.“This is ridiculous,” I said quietly.I gripped my bag tighter.Turned.The door opened.I stopped.Turned back.Hugo.Standing in his doorway in just his joggers — hair rough in a way that had absolutely no right to look the way it did, eyes finding me immediately, a smile arriving on his face that did things to my chest I was not prepared for.I had seen Hugo in suits. In dinner clothes. Dressed and groomed and entirely put together.I had never seen him like this.I swallowed.“Good morning,” he said.I opened my mouth.He stretched out his hand toward me.I stared at itHe stepped slightly forward.“Come in, Sage,” he said.My hands were slightly shaking when I put mine in his.Hugo didn’t comment. He just closed his fingers around mine and d

ISABELLEMatt was beside me on the bed.His arm around my shoulders.Both of us looking at Mia in the bassinet.She was sleeping — that total committed sleep of someone who had just done something very hard and was resting accordingly.We weren’t talking.We didn’t need to.Just looking at her.A knock at the doorWe looked at each other.Matt pressed a kiss to my hair and got up.He crossed to the door and opened it.I watched his face as he stepped aside.Lucia.Both hands completely full — a large basket in one, two oversized gift bags in the other, pink and blue balloons tied to her wrist bobbing above her head. Her eyes were already full before she had fully stepped through the door.She stopped just inside.Looked at me on the bed.Then at the bassinet.She didn’t say anything.She set the basket down on the table nearby. The gift bags beside it. The balloons floating up toward the ceiling.Then she went straight to the bathroom.Matt shut the door quietly and came back to the b

ISABELLE The next knock was different.Louder.Matt looked at the door.“That’s Sammie,” he said.He wasn’t wrong.She came through the door like she had been launched — two gift bags in one hand, a balloon situation in the other that immediately became everyone’s problem.Her eyes scanned the room.Matt. Bella. Lucia. Hugo. Sage.She crossed straight to the bassinet.Looked down.The pink blanket.She spun around.“I CALLED IT—”“Sammie.” Matt’s voice was low. Sharp.She looked at him.Then at Mia in the bassinet.She lowered her voice.“I called it,” she said. In a whisper that was still somehow too loud. “The predictions board. I said girl. I called it.”“You did call it,” Lucia confirmed.“I want it documented—”“Sammie.” Matt’s voice dropped. “She’s right there.”Sammie looked down at Mia.All the noise fell away completely.She dropped the gift bags on the nearest chair. The balloon floated up to the ceiling on its own.Her face changed.“Hi,” she said softly. “I’m your Auntie

ISABELLE We got back to the bedroom, and she was asleep.I smiled before I could stop myself. Mia on her back in the bassinet, one fist curled up near her cheek, chest rising and falling. Just — there. Ours.We moved around the room without a word. Slower than usual. Quieter. I didn’t decide to do it, and I don’t think Matt did either. It was just the new thing now. There was a baby sleeping, and so you moved like that.Matt opened the closet, and I walked in.Simple. That was all I wanted. I found underwear, soft trousers, one of Matt’s oldest T-shirts that had migrated to my shelf months ago and never left. I was reaching for it when something in the top drawer of the jewelry cabinet caught my eye.The bracelet.Gold, thin, simple. Matt had given it to me the same day as the car — the small engraved date on the inside of the band, Mia’s due date. I remembered the moment he fastened it. I hadn’t taken it off for weeks. Then one morning near the end of the pregnancy, my wrists had sw