Chapter 380

[ 1,018 words ]

Katia’s POV

I found Julian on the balcony of our suite that evening, Aiden already asleep down the hall, the city spread out below us in a wash of light that had started to feel less foreign with every passing day.

He heard me step out and turned, offering me the other chair without a word, the way he had settled into doing lately, with small gestures that asked nothing and simply made room.

I did not sit.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

He straightened slightly, his full attention shifting toward me in the way it always did when he sensed something mattered.

“I am pregnant,” I said.

The words left me easier than I expected, no trembling, no searching for a gentler way to say it, just the plain fact of it finally spoken out loud between us rather than carried silently in my own chest for weeks.

Julian did not move for a moment.

Then he rose from the chair and crossed the small space between us, stopping close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him in the cool evening air.

“How long have you known?” he asked quietly.

“A few weeks,” I said. “I found out right before everything happened with Jude. I did not know how to bring it up in the middle of all of that, and then it just kept not being the right moment until it felt like too much time had passed to say it simply p>

He reached up and brushed a strand of hair back from my face, his hand lingering against my cheek.

“Thank you,” he said, “for telling me p>

I studied his face, searching for the surprise I had braced myself to see, the shock, the scramble to process something enormous landing on him all at once. I did not find it. What I found instead was something quieter, steadier, a kind of readiness that did not match a man hearing this for the very first time.

“You already knew,” I said slowly.

Julian was quiet for a moment, and I watched something shift behind his eyes, the careful weighing of a man deciding whether to keep protecting a secret or finally set it down.

“I suspected,” he said. “For a while now. I noticed the mornings you disappeared in to the bathroom. The way certain smells started bothering you that never had before. I did not want to say anything until you were ready to tell me yourself p>

“How long?” I said.

“Longer than I probably should have kept it to myself,” he admitted. “I wanted this to be yours to share, in your own time, in your own way. I did not think it was my place to take that moment away from you by announcing that I had already guessed p>

I felt something complicated move through me, gratitude tangled together with a strange, unexpected sting of vulnerability, the realization that I had spent weeks guarding something Julian had already quietly known and simply chosen to let me hold for as long as I had needed to.

“You could have told me you knew,” I said.

“I could have,” he said. “But I wanted you to have this exactly the way you wanted it. Not shaped by what I already suspected. Not rushed because I had gotten there first.” He paused. “I wanted to hear the words from you, even if I already believed I knew what they would be p>

I stepped closer and rested my forehead against his chest, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing beneath my cheek.

“I was afraid to tell you,” I admitted quietly. “Not because I did not trust you. Because once I said it out loud, it would become real in a way I was not sure I was ready for yet. A baby, with everything else that has happened this year. Delia. Jude. The truth about who you actually are to me p>

Julian’s arms came around me, careful and sure.

“None of that changes what this is,” he said. “A child. Ours. Something that belongs entirely to the two of us, separate from everything else that has been pulling at us since the moment I found out you were my wife p>

I looked up at him.

“Are you happy?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment, and something broke open across his face, an expression I had rarely seen him wear, unguarded and entirely without the careful composure he carried into every other room of his life.

“I am happier than I know how to say,” he said. “I have loved being Aiden’s father since before I had any right to claim that title. The idea of doing this again, of building something with you from the very beginning this time, watching you carry our child the way I never got to watch the first time, I do not have adequate words for what that means to me p>

My eyes filled without my permission, and I let them, standing there on the balcony with the city glowing softly below us, no longer carrying this alone.

“I am glad you already knew,” I said finally. “I think some part of me needed to say it out loud anyway. For myself. Not just for you p>

“I am glad you did,” Julian said, pressing a kiss to my forehead, then lower, to my temple, then finally to my lips, slow and full of something that felt like relief settling into both of us at once. “Whenever you are ready to tell the rest of the world, I will be right there beside you p>

“Not yet,” I said. “Just us, for now. And Aiden p>

“Just us,” Julian agreed, “for as long as you want it that way p>

We stood there together for a long while, the city lights flickering below, his hand resting warm against the small of my back, and for the first time since I had found out, I let myself simply feel the joy of it without the weight of everything else pressing in around the edges.

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