CHAPTER 104: DREAM.

Chapter 102

Jack

"Dada."

The world could explode and I would still be here — frozen with the stupidest grin on my face.

I scoop Lanny up immediately. "Yes, I am your Dada."

He pats my cheek with his little hand, proud of himself.

Sure, maybe I repeated "dada" around him ten thousand times a day until his cute little brain associated my face with the sound — irrelevant. That’s historical trivia. The only fact that matters is that he said it.

The surreal feeling of having Lanny never quite fades. Having never believed this chance would be mine, a persistent anxiety lives just beneath my joy, a haunting fear that it isn’t real.

I’m half-convinced I’ll wake one day to the crushing silence of a dream ended, the ghost of his laughter still echoing in an empty room.

But that fear is precisely what makes every single moment with my son feel so incredibly precious. Like when he looks at me, his little mouth forming the word, "Dada," and my heart just melts.

I gather him up, pulling him close to nuzzle his neck and blow raspberries into his belly.

The room fills with his delicious, bubbly laughs and helpless giggles, and I can’t help the wide, unshakable smile that takes over my entire face.

I love him.

I can’t help myself; I adore watching Jack with Lanny. It’s in these moments I find him most attractive.

Extremely so.

There’s a close second, of course: witnessing him with his camera, his entire world narrowing to the single, sacred frame behind his lens.

But the sight that truly eclipses all others is Jack as a father.

The way he instinctively knows how to soothe a fussy Lanny, or the silly voices he uses when reading him a story, is so natural and confident, it constantly makes me question if he’s really a first-time dad.

Deciding to join the father-son duo, I walk towards them. Jack glances up, and the look he gives me—so full of open, unguarded love—makes my heart stutter and skip a beat.

He has never been one for masks; he really wears his heart right there on his sleeve for us to see.

"Dada," Lanny chirps, reaching a chubby hand toward me.

Jack gives our son a gentle bounce, correcting with playful possessiveness, "No, that’s your Papa." He then taps his own chest, his voice softening into a whisper meant just for the three of us.

"I’m your Dada."

The whole exchange is so tender and cute, it steals the air from my lungs. I close the final distance and sink onto the rug beside them, the thick wool soft against my legs.

I lean my shoulder against Jack’s, a silent testament to our shared wonder. He immediately shifted his weight to lean back into me, a solid, warm presence.

Lanny, delighted by this new configuration, reached out and patted my cheek with his damp, curious hand.

"Papa," he says, more decisively this time, as if confirming it for himself.

"See? He’s a genius," I murmur, turning my head to press a kiss into Jack’s shoulder. I can feel the rumble of his quiet laugh.

"He gets it from me," Jack retorts, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

We sit like that for a few moments, a silent, contented tangle of limbs in the warm patch of sunlight.

Lanny babbles a stream of nonsensical sounds, conducting an invisible orchestra with his hands. Jack watches him with that same absorbed focus he usually reserves for his viewfinder, as if our son were the most captivating landscape he’d ever seen.

If I was petty, this is the part where I would feel jealousy.

Do you remember," Jack begins, his voice low and reflective, "that first ultrasound? That little, blurry gray bean?

I do remember. I remember the cold gel, the frantic thumping of my own heartbeats, and the way Jack’s hand had trembled in mine.

"I remember," I said softly. "You white-knuckled it through the whole thing."

"I was trying to memorize it," he confesses, his gaze still on Lanny.

"I was so sure I’d forget the sound of that heartbeat, the shape of him. I thought, if I could just focus hard enough, I could burn it into my memory forever."

He finally turns to look at me, his expression raw and vulnerable.

"But now... now it’s like he’s always been here. Like there was a Lanny-shaped space in this house, in our lives, and we were just waiting for him to fill it."

Lanny, perhaps feeling ignored, lets out a demanding squeal and launches himself from Jack’s lap towards me.

I catch him, laughing, and blew a raspberry into the soft, warm skin of his neck. His ensuing giggle was a breathless, joyous sound that filled the entire room.

Jack watches us, his smile so wide and full of light it could have powered the city.

The subtle rhythm of his thumb now on my knee was a silent language, one I had learned to understand perfectly over the months.

It speaks of a steady, unwavering love, of a presence that was as constant as the tide. In the warm, Lanny-scented chaos of our lives, that simple touch was my anchor.

I shift the now-squirming baby in my arms, turning slightly to face Jack more fully. The look in his eyes had deepened, the playful light shifting into something more intense, more ...just more.

Lanny, content in my arms, has discovered a fascination with the collar of my shirt, his little fingers tugging and exploring. He is a warm, wriggling barrier between us, but Jack’s gaze makes it feel as if there were no space at all.

"What?" I whisper, feeling a familiar, pleasant heat rise to my cheeks.

He just shook his head slowly, a look of pure wonder on his face.

"I was just thinking," he says, his voice hushed.

"That day in the hospital, when they first handed him to me. He was so small, and I was so scared I’d do everything wrong. But then I looked at you, and you were just... glowing. And I knew we’d figure it out. Together."

He reaches out, not for me, but to gently smooth a stray curl from Lanny’s forehead.

"I fall in love with you all over again every time I watch you with him."

"Jack," I say , his name like a prayer, a thank you, a promise all at once.

He understands. Leaning forward carefully, mindful of the precious bundle in my arms, he closes the small distance between us.

The world narrows to the space of our sunlit patch on the rug. The first brush of his lips against mine is soft, a ghost of a touch, tentative and sweet. It was a kiss of hello, of remembrance, a reacquainting of two souls who were never truly apart.

Then he deepens the kiss, one hand coming up to cradle my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheekbone with the same tender rhythm he’d used on my knee.

His lips are warm and familiar, yet the kiss felt brand new, charged with the profound, shared truth of our son sleeping against my chest.

This isn’t the frantic passion we usually have ; it is a slow, deep-burning fire, stoked by sleepless nights and shared smiles, by the monumental and the mundane.

A soft, sleepy sigh from Lanny breaks us apart. We pull back, just enough to rest our foreheads together, our breaths mingling.

His eyes are still closed, a smallsmile playing on his lips.

"He’s asleep," I whispers, feeling the heavy, limp weight of our son in my arms.

Jack’s smile widens.

"Out like a light." He doesn’t move away. Instead, he presses another soft, lingering kiss to my forehead.

"Let me take him."

With the practiced, silent grace I so admire in him, he carefully gathers Lanny from my arms, settling him against his own shoulder without jostling him awake.

He standa, a tall, strong silhouette against the setting sun, our son a perfect, trusting weight against him. He looks down at me, still seated on the floor, and extended his free hand.

"Come on," he says softly. "Let’s put him down. Then... I believe I was in the middle of telling you something."

I place my hand in his, his fingers closing around mine. As he leads me gently from the room, the last of the golden light clinging to our backs, I know with a certainty that settled deep in my bones that I would never, ever have to wake up from this dream.

This was my life.

*

The nursery is bathed in the deep blue twilight of evening, the only sound the soft, rhythmic whisper of Lanny’s breathing from the crib and the faint sounds of the ocean.

Jack has laid him down with a surgeon’s care, his large hands impossibly gentle as they tucked the soft blanket around our son’s tiny form.

We stand there for a long moment, side-by-side, watching the peaceful rise and fall of his chest in the dim glow of the nightlight. It is a sacred silence, a shared completion to the day’s beautiful chaos.

Jack’s hand finds the small of my back, his touch a brand through the fabric of my shirt. "Ciel," he murmured, my name a low, resonant sound in the quiet room.

I turn into his embrace, my arms finding their familiar place around his waist, my head resting against his chest.

I can hear the steady, strong beat of his heart, a rhythm that has become the soundtrack to my life. He holds me like that, just holding me, his chin resting on the top of my head.

He drew back slightly, his hands moving up to cradle my face. In the half-light, his eyes were dark pools of unwavering affection.

It’s almost overwhelming looking into his eyes sometimes.

"All day,"I whisper his thumb tracing the line of my jaw.

"All day, I’ve been watching you. The way you laugh with him, the way your voice gets so soft and sweet... It does something to me, Jack. It always has."

This time, there was no playful hesitation. The kiss he pressed to my lips was deep and claiming, yet infinitely tender. It was a kiss that spoke of years of shared history and a future yet unwritten.

It was the taste of coffee from this morning and the promise of tonight. His lips moved against mine with a slow, deliberate motion that, showcases his much he feels for me without actually saying it.