She kisses me again, deeper this time. Her tongue pushes through my lips and wars aggressively with mine. I’m moved. Not just my cock, that is now hard as stone, and not just by what she’s doing now, but by everything she’s said. She’s way too forgiving. Way too open-minded. But I’m so fucking grateful that she is because now she’s mine.

Her kiss grows more frantic, and I know what she needs, but as I’m about to take the reins, she stops me. “Let me, Hudson. You told me things that were hard for you to say. Let me show you how much it doesn’t matter. How much I love you anyway.”

So I do. I wait until she asks me to touch her breasts before I cover them with my palms. I let her unbuckle my belt and release my cock. She’s the one who lifts her skirt and pushes aside her thong underwear. Then it’s her who positions herself over me and slides down on me. She’s tight, but she pushes her hands against my chest and leans back until she’s seated comfortably. I fill her so perfectly like this, her pussy pulsing around me as she moves up and down.

I lean in and tug at her nipples through her shirt and bra with my mouth. Alayna tilts her hips forward, and I can tell she’s found the right angle when she starts to moan. She speeds up, talking in breathy gasps as she rides. “I love you, Hudson Pierce. Every part of you. Every flaw, every scar. Just like you love me.”

She tightens, and I can feel she’s close. “I love the way you take care of me.” Her words are a struggle now. “And the way you accept my jealousies and insecurities. I love your cock and the way you fuck me. And the way you make love.”

She’s bouncing up and down in a frenzy now, and we’re both on the edge. Just as she clenches around me, she says, “Did you say that I can’t come when I’m in control? Because I’m coming.”

I start to laugh, but then I’m coming too, the dark disappearing in a flash of white as my orgasm steals my vision. We soar together like this, riding the wave of our simultaneous climax, climbing higher and higher as we fall deeper and deeper into each other. I’m lost in her and found in her all at once.

And as I am every time we touch, every time we speak to each other, every time our eyes meet—I’m made new. There’s a past that led me to this moment, but it’s not holding me back anymore. Even in the dark of this New York City night, the only thing before me is sun.

Three years later

Click. Click.

The camera sounds each time I take another shot. It’s the only noise in the quiet hospital room. Click. I look at the photo counter—eighty-seven. The memory card had been empty before we arrived. I’ve taken eighty-seven pictures. What can I say? I’m a proud father.

I move the camera’s focus from the bundle to Alayna and take another. Click. I lower the camera then and study Alayna. Her eyes are closed, but her breathing is irregular so I know she’s only resting. She looks wiped, and rightly so. It’s been a long road to this moment. Though we’d wanted to try for a baby as soon as we got married, she’d just had a birth control injection, which lasted three months. Then it was more than a year of trying before we could conceive. Her doctor said it was common to have trouble after injections. Common or not, it wore on her. And me. Alayna obsessed about the reasons she wasn’t pregnant. I wondered if it was a consequence of my past. Or karma, even. It felt like a miracle when Alayna finally walked out of the bathroom and showed me the stick with the faint plus sign in its display window. It had been her birthday. There wasn’t any gift I could give her that could compete with the one we’d made together.

The pregnancy itself went well. She had the typical issues—morning sickness, sore breasts, moodiness. I’d wanted her to quit working at the club and leave Gwen in charge. Alayna had wanted to stay managing until she delivered. We compromised on part-time, and Alayna’s last day was a month before her due date. It gave us time to finish the nursery, which we’d decided to decorate in a children’s literature theme. Dorothy and the Tin Man make their way down the yellow brick road on one wall. Peter Rabbit scavenges Mr. McGregor’s garden on another. And the baby bedding features Alice in Wonderland characters.

Despite the last few weeks off, the whole thing has been tiring for Alayna, as to be expected. She’d barely gotten any sleep the last few nights. Then her contractions started just after midnight yesterday, which meant no more sleep for either of us. She labored through the day, and the baby wasn’t born until two-thirty this morning. I wish she would let the nursery have the baby so she could get some real sleep, but Alayna’s insistent on keeping her here. Not just in the room, but in her arms. She won’t let go of the sleeping bundle, which is understandable—and adorable—but every time the little creature stirs, so does Alayna.

I shift the camera back to our baby—my baby. Her face scrunches up and relaxes as if still getting used to the feel of air on her skin. I take another dozen or so rapid shots, attempting to capture each and every twist of her features. She’s amazing and beautiful, and there’s nothing like this bubble bursting inside my chest at the wonder of her.

Then why am I still holding this camera and not her?

Quietly, so as not to disturb my wife, I set my camera on the table and reach for my child instead. Alayna moves slightly at the sudden absence from her arms, but her eyes don’t open. Hopefully she’s finally drifting off.

Good. Daddy and daughter bonding moment to commence.

I smile down at my sweet girl, pushing away the blanket to better see her face. Her color has paled since she was bright red and squalling in the nursery during her bath. I’d studied each and every part of the tiny creature then—counted her toes and fingers, discovered the dark birthmark at the small of her back. Then had been the examining. Now, I’m simply swept away with infatuation.

I stroke her impossibly soft cheek and trace the curve of her small puckered lips. Instinctively, my body begins to sway to a melody I hear only in my head. I hum a bit. The words dance in my head, and a few lines slip out in my awkward tenor voice, “All of me loves all of you.”

There couldn’t be a more fitting motif for the moment. I’m completely and totally in love.

“Keep singing,” Alayna says from her bed, surprising me.

I feel my neck warm. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. And you should be sleeping.”

“But I’m not sleeping. And I did hear that. So keep singing.”

It’s near impossible to deny any request of hers, but this one I do. “Maybe later. Right now, since the easy part of all of this is over,” I meet her glance, “we should get to the hard work. It’s time to pick a name.”

We’d thought of many over the course of the pregnancy, and when we’d learned we were likely having a girl, I thought we’d finally settle on something. Alayna wanted to use her mother’s name—Louise—for a middle name, but she could never agree on a suitable first name. “I need to see her first,” she’d say. “I want her to have a name that fits her.”

And so here we are with a perfect, beautiful, nameless child.

Alayna’s tired eyes narrow at my remark. “You think all this was easy?”

I gesture for her to scoot over so I can join her on the bed. “I meant for you. It was extremely hard for me to hear you call me those things that you did—especially near the end. But I was trying to not make a deal of it.”

“Hudson!”

I really don’t think it was easy. The doctor had used that term, supposedly in comparison to other births she had attended, but as far as I am concerned, labor at all is hell. I’ve always known my wife is strong and capable of anything, yet I’d never imagined the exertion and endurance that would be required to push a seven-pound, three-ounce human being into the world. I’d also never felt so helpless. Of all the things I can do for Alayna, this thing she had to do primarily on her own.