Aria's POV
I remembered the nights. With Noah it had been a small apartment in Europe, just me and him and the particular silence of a city that didn't know my name. I had learned the newborn hours alone — the feeding, the small sounds, the 3 a.m. stillness — and I had been fine, because I had no choice but to be fine and I had always been good at that.
This was different. Not the feeding, not Emma's small working noises as she nursed, not the darkness of the apartment at 3 a.m. Those were the same. But I was not in a small apartment in a city that didn't know me. I was in our bedroom, in our home, with the rest of the penthouse quiet around me, and I was somehow despite the exhaustion, despite days of broken sleep — completely at peace.
Emma's fingers flexed against my collarbone.
"You have his personality already," I murmured to her in the dark. "Relentless." and Emma's fingers flexed against my collarbone in what felt, generously, like acknowledgment.
