Page 86 of Wild Card
Lord.
“Can I hold him?” I whimper.
Gio lets out a string of Italian endearments and kisses me. “I’ll have the nurses bring him.”
It feels like hours, but my son is on my chest in just a few minutes. He latches easily, and that seems like a miracle. Nothing about this pregnancy has been easy.
The nurses are kind and helpful, offering a dizzying array of advice, which they repeat as many times as I need them to.
“We should do a picture,” I sigh. “Let everyone know we’re okay.”
“And thank God for that,” Gio says. “I was terrified. You fought so hard and were so exhausted.”
“If we have another baby, I’m aiming for seven pounds, maybe, or eight. Not nine.”
“I don’t know if I can survive watching you suffer like that again.”
He sounds scared. I imagine that wasn’t easy to witness.
I stroke the thick black hair on the baby’s head.
“No wonder I had such bad heartburn toward the end,” I murmur. “Look at all this hair.”
The nurse takes a family picture for us, and Gio posts it under the Sugar and Spice account:
Marcello Dante DeLuca
Born at 3:54 a.m.
9 lbs 9 oz
Tough labor but Mamma is a trooper and she and baby are well.
We’d named him after my brother and Gio’s father. Marcello means warrior in Italian, and Callan has a similar meaning in Celtic. I’d never met Gio’s father, but he’d told me enough about him to know that we were blessing our child with a strong name.
“Look at our family,” Gio says, his voice thick with emotion.
A comment appears under the picture.
Jesus Christ that’s a big fucking baby. Good thing it wasn’t twins. Congratulations!
Finn. Ever the charmer. His wife did have twins.
I flush at the image of carrying two nine-pound kids. I know that’s not how twins work, generally, but I wouldn’t put it past Gio’s virility.
“Your brother,” Gio mutters.
Gio and my brothers get along so well it’s almost scary, but it’s a natural reaction to want to smack Finn every once in a while. I hope his kids give him hell.
I stroke Marcello’s perfect little head, and a rush of warmth surges through me. I’d do anything for this child and we’ve barely met. I look up at Gio, tears filling my eyes.
“I don’t know,” he says. He’s reading my mind. “I’d kill anyone who touched our son. I don’t know how your parents could do what they did to you.”
It’s a relief to hear Gio say that. And it’s a relief to feel a bond already with this baby. I was afraid after what I’d been through that I wouldn’t know how to love my own child.
“I want to raise him to be a kind, strong, wonderful man just like you,” I whisper, kissing his head.
Gio laughs quietly, his arm around my shoulders. “You’re the strongest person I know. Strong, kind, and beautiful.”
