Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 155

Xander’s POV

The house is quiet in a way that feels almost suspicious. No small feet thundering down hallways, no Nina's endless questions or Lisa's careful counting, no chaos that usually fills every corner of our lives.

Robert and Margaret took the twins for the day—something about a children's museum and lunch at their favorite diner, the one with the oversized milkshakes Lisa pretends not to love while drinking every drop.

I'd heard Nina's excited chatter about dinosaur bones and Margaret's patient explanation about proper museum behavior while they'd loaded into Robert's truck this morning.

Now the silence presses in from all sides, and I find myself searching for Daphne.

Not in our bedroom, not in the kitchen where she's been spending mornings nursing tea she can barely keep down, not in the study where she's been waging her war with Eleanor through strategic phone calls and pointed emails.

I find her in the room we've been avoiding. The nursery.

She's standing on a drop cloth in one of my old t-shirts—the faded MIT one I wore in college, soft from a thousand washings, hanging loose on her frame.

A paintbrush dangles from her right hand, pale yellow spreading across one wall in uneven strokes that betray her lack of experience.

Her belly curves beneath the worn fabric, more pronounced than it was even a week ago. Paint speckles her bare arms like freckles, dots of sunshine against her skin.

She's reaching for a high corner, stretching up on her toes, and she doesn't hear me at first. Too focused on covering every inch with that determined yellow, like if she paints hard enough, hope will take root and grow.

I clear my throat. "What are you doing?"

She turns, and there's something defiant in her eyes when she looks at me. Something fierce and unbreakable that makes my chest ache.

"We need a nursery." Her voice carries weight, certainty, a declaration rather than an explanation.

"We're having a baby, Xander. In four and a half months, we're having a daughter. And she's going to need a place to sleep when she comes home."

When. Not if, but when.

The certainty in her voice cracks something open in my chest, something that's been locked tight since we left that doctor's office, since we heard sixty percent survival rate and saw the pity in his eyes.

I shed my jacket, let it fall to the floor beside the door. Roll up my sleeves while crossing to where the second paintbrush waits in the tray.

"You're doing it wrong," I tell her, picking up the brush. "Too much paint. You'll get drips."

"Then show me how to do it right."

So I do. We paint badly—my strokes are too heavy despite my criticism, leaving trails that run down the wall like tears.

Daphne misses spots, creates patches where the old white shows through the yellow like gaps in hope. Neither of us cares.

We're not painting for perfection. We're painting because this is what parents do—we prepare, we build, we create spaces for the children we love even when the odds say we might be building monuments to grief.

Daphne laughs when I get paint in my hair, reaching up to try wiping it away with her fingers and only making it worse. The sound of her laughter hits me like a physical thing, like oxygen after drowning.

I retaliate by dabbing her nose with the brush tip, leaving a yellow dot that makes her eyes go wide with mock outrage.

"You did not just—"

"I absolutely did." I'm grinning. When did I start grinning? When did the weight crushing my chest lift enough to let laughter in?

She swipes at me with her own brush. I dodge. Paint hits my shoulder instead.

We're both laughing now, the kind of breathless, slightly hysterical laughter that comes from spending weeks holding terror at bay and finally letting joy crack through.

At some point, painting becomes touching. My hand finds her hip, steadying her when she reaches too far.

Her fingers thread through my hair—ostensibly to remove paint, actually just because she wants to touch me.

The brushes get abandoned, set carefully in the tray while we're no longer careful about anything else.

I pull her close. She comes willingly, eagerly, her body fitting against mine like it always has, like it always will.

My hands slide beneath the t-shirt—my t-shirt on her body, something primitive and possessive loving that detail. Her skin is warm, soft, marked with paint and life.

We sink to the drop cloth together, plastic crinkling beneath us, the smell of fresh paint and possibility surrounding us like a blessing. I make love to my wife in the room we're building for our daughter, and every touch says what words can't.

She gasps my name against my mouth, I swallow the sound, give her my own in return. We move together slowly, carefully, my hands cradling her belly, protecting the life inside even as we claim this moment for ourselves.

Afterward, we lie tangled together on paint-splattered plastic, her head on my chest, my arms wrapped around her, both of us catching our breath. Yellow paint dries on the walls around us.

My phone buzzes against the hardwood floor where I dropped it with my jacket, the vibration loud in the quiet room.

Harrison's name flashes on the screen. I can see it from here, and can read the preview of his text about quarterly projections and board concerns and strategic planning sessions I'm supposed to attend.

I watch the phone buzz, watch it go to voicemail, the screen going dark.

I pull Daphne closer, my hand settling over the curve where our daughter sleeps.

Where Hope—we've started calling her Hope, even though we agreed to wait, even though naming her makes losing her more real—grows despite the odds.

This moment, this paint-streaked, imperfect, desperately hopeful moment, matters more than whatever Harrison needs. More than board politics or Eleanor's machinations or the empire I've built.

The phone buzzes again. Probably Harrison following up, probably about something he thinks is urgent.

Probably about Daphne and the concerns Eleanor's been planting, the seeds of doubt she's been watering with strategic whispers.

I don't reach for it.

"You should get that," Daphne murmurs against my chest. "Could be important."

"Nothing's more important than this." I press my lips to her hair.

She shifts, tilting her head back to look at me. Paint dots her cheek, her lips are swollen from kissing. She's never looked more beautiful, and I've thought that about her a thousand times before but it's true every single time.

"We're going to paint this whole room. And then we're going to put together the crib your mother already ordered without asking us."

Daphne tells me, her voice carrying the same defiance I saw in her eyes earlier.

"And we're going to fill it with tiny clothes and soft blankets and all the things babies need. We're going to prepare for her like she's coming home. Because she is. Do you hear me, Xander? She is."

"I hear you." My voice comes out rough. "And you're right. We are."

The phone buzzes a third time, but I ignore it. Again.

Let the world wait. Let the board have their concerns and Harrison have his emergencies and Eleanor have her subtle war.

Right now, lying on this drop cloth with my wife in the half-painted nursery for our daughter who has a sixty percent chance of survival, I'm exactly where I need to be.