Chapter Ten

Tell Me On A Sunday

As Scotty finished his story, Lilly found herself blinking back tears and smiling proudly. This was the Scotty Valens she knew. The guy who would drop everything and do anything to help someone he cared about, someone he loved. She knew he always ached to be able to ease other people’s pain, no matter what it cost him, and she was grateful, despite the harrowing circumstances, that he’d had that opportunity.

As she glanced at her co-workers, she saw Scotty lost in a thicket of memories, a faraway expression on his face…and then she looked over at Kat. Her colleague’s dark eyes were wide with amazement and shining with unshed tears, and Lilly could tell that she was deeply moved.

"I…never knew you stayed…" Kat said softly.

"Yeah, well," Scotty replied, his voice husky with emotion. "Like I said…I couldn’t leave."

He cleared his throat then, trying to look everywhere but at Miller, but she captured his gaze and held it fast. Lilly could only watch as the two of them just stared at one another, completely oblivious to her presence, their eyes saying everything their words couldn’t. The way they looked at each other was so tender, so intimate, that Lilly, suddenly feeling like she was intruding on something almost sacred, returned her attention to her paperwork. She’d seen enough…and it told her everything she needed to know.

Suddenly, Lilly heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Vera carrying Scotty and Kat’s daughter, whose sugar high had apparently worn off enough for her to be draped contentedly over Vera’s shoulder, her wild ebony curls contrasting sharply with his white dress shirt, her eyes closed in blissful slumber. When Vera caught Lilly grinning at him, he shot her a withering look, but she wasn’t fooled. She knew that her burly colleague, despite his outward gruffness, was absolutely thrilled at this turn of events.

Tearing her gaze from Scotty, Kat looked up at Vera, a tender, loving smile crossing her face as she rose from her desk and gently took her daughter out of his arms. The little girl stirred slightly, but didn’t wake up.

"Looks like you got the magic touch," she said softly, cradling her daughter over her shoulder.

"Your demonic little offspring seems to like me for some reason," he replied, his voice gruff, but his eyes shining, and Kat’s smile just widened.

Scotty glanced up and caressed the little girl lovingly with his gaze. "If you want me to take her to your mom’s, I can---" he offered, but Kat shook her head.

"No need…I’ve already got her," she answered softly, grabbing her purse from under her desk. "I’ll be back in a while." She glanced at Scotty again, her expression tender, almost shy, yet decidedly quizzical, then turned and headed out.

Scotty watched them depart, staring out into the hallway long after they vanished, then cleared his throat again and returned to his paperwork, hoping fervently to avoid the questions he was sure his partner was itching to ask.

"So…" she began brightly, and he instantly bristled.

"I take it things started to go a little better after that," she continued, and Scotty froze, amazed at the turn of conversation. He’d have been willing to bet any amount of money, any amount at all, that she’d interrogate him about the…the…well, whatever the hell it was that had just happened with Miller. Oh, sure, he’d seen the tears shimmering in Kat’s eyes, but he was certain she was just stung by the memory of what had happened that day. That was it. That was all it was. He was positive. And, given Lil’s tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill, her curious decision to keep the conversation firmly in the past was a surprise. A pleasant one.

And one that he intended to take full advantage of.

Mid-March, 2009

It was well after noon the next day when Scotty woke up and gingerly swung his feet over the side of the bed to take a couple tentative steps. He was pretty sure he’d be sore, what with all the furniture-lugging, but he realized, as the muscles in shoulders protested even the slightest movement with a fiery shot of pain and he found it impossible to fully straighten his arms, that he’d grossly underestimated just how sore he’d be. He was also fairly certain that a night spent lying quietly next to Kat, nearly-motionless in an effort not to disturb her or the baby, was partially to blame, but he wasn’t going to dwell on that. Not now. Not when an entire shower full of limitless hot water stood mere feet away, just waiting to ease his aches and pains.

After spending so long in the shower he thought for sure he’d become waterlogged, then using up about half the tube of muscle rub that he’d confiscated from Kat’s room (because, bed rest or not, he still wasn’t entirely sure he trusted her with a potentially lethal substance), the soreness had eased a surprising amount. Feeling rejuvenated, Scotty threw on a well-worn pair of jeans and a Phillies T-shirt, then wandered out into the hallway. He peeked into the third bedroom, Veronica’s room, but saw no sign of activity there, so, on impulse, feeling suddenly concerned about, and drawn to, the two people inside, he quietly knocked on Kat’s bedroom door.

"Yeah," she answered, sounding a good deal more chipper than she had the night before.

Encouraged by her response, Scotty pushed the door open and went inside to find his new roommate sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows and eyeing him with suspicion, although her expression was far friendlier than he’d expected.

"Hey," he greeted her with a smile.

"You come in here to check up on me?" she asked, her eyes twinkling and a teasing grin playing at the corners of her mouth. "Make sure I’m followin’ the rules?"

"Nah," Scotty retorted mildly, thrilled that she seemed to be back to her old self. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until it wasn’t there. "Just came by to let you know you’re almost outta muscle rub."

Kat frowned. "Almost out? How the hell can I be almost out?" she demanded as she glanced around the bedside table for the tube, the trademark edge to her voice a welcome sound. "We only used a little bit."

"Yeah, but… I…mighta borrowed some…" he admitted with a sly grin, tossing the nearly-empty tube on the bed next to her. Kat picked it up and studied it in disbelief, then looked up at him.

"What the hell did you do, take a bath in it?" she asked, then wrinkled her nose as the minty aroma wafting off of him finally reached her. "Ewwww, you did," she concluded, squeezing some of the cream out onto her fingers and beginning to rub it into her overextended muscles.

Scotty was completely unapologetic. "That’s some damn good stuff, Miller," he told her, rolling his shoulders and swinging his arms in a demonstration of his newly-regained range of motion. "I could barely move when I woke up."

Kat glanced up at him and was forced to chuckle slightly. "It just smells like murder to me," she replied. "Don’t you remember that case with the opera singer?"

"See, now that’s why I’m confiscatin’ this stuff after you’re done," he informed her, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "’Cause I don’t trust you with it. You could kill me in my sleep, y’know."

Kat looked up again, arching a brow. "Don’t do anything to make me wanna do that, then," she retorted as she flipped the cap closed and placed the tube on her bedside table, but her tender smile, one that was atypical for their usual snark, softened her words considerably.

Grinning broadly, Scotty grabbed the tube, tossed it to himself a couple times, then stuck it into the pocket of his jeans. "No promises," he grinned.

Kat eyed him quizzically. "So…that all you wanted? To tell me you took a damn shower in my muscle rub?" she asked. "I don’t let just anyone in here, y’know."

Scotty hesitated. He couldn’t give her the real reason, which was that he’d been concerned about her, wanted to make sure she and the baby were still all right, and, potentially even more disturbing than that, he’d realized that…he missed her. It was ridiculous, really, and he knew she’d laugh her ass off if she knew. Hell, he was on the verge of doing exactly that himself.

"Just figured you’d be bored," he said with a nonchalant shrug as he sat down at the foot of Kat’s bed. "Bed rest and all."

"Yeah?" she asked, glancing up with guarded interest. "What would you know about it?"

"Broke my leg in high school," he answered matter-of-factly. Her eyes widened slightly, and he took that as encouragement. "Playin’ football. Some jackass missed a block and a St. Vincent’s linebacker plowed right into my shin," he explained, still a touch bitter even after the nearly two decades that had passed since the incident. "Damn lucky I didn’t tear an ACL or somethin’."

Kat snorted derisively. "You? Football?"

"Yeah," Scotty replied, arching a brow. "Football."

"Well, no wonder you broke your leg," she retorted with a chuckle. "You’re a twig. Anyone from St. Vincent’s coulda snapped you in two."

Scotty was about to point out that, in his day, St. Vincent’s was a haven for eight-foot, four-hundred-pound genetic freaks, but then noticed Kat studying him and grew instantly uncomfortable. "What?" he asked. She was beginning to remind him of Lilly.

"You were that pretty-boy quarterback in high school, weren’t you?" she asked knowingly. "Cheerleaders hangin’ all over you right and left…Homecoming King…the works. Am I right?"

"Somethin’ like that," he shrugged with a wry grin. He had been the quarterback, started Varsity for three years, in fact…but the cheerleader part? Not so much. The only girl who’d been hanging all over him in high school was Elisa. Feeling a faint shadow cross his face, he moved to dispel it quickly before Kat could see it.

No such luck.

"Awww, no Homecoming King?" she pressed with mock sympathy.

Scotty shrugged again. "No cheerleaders," he replied.

Kat arched a skeptical brow. "You? The star quarterback? Surely not," she shot back.

Scotty responded with a rueful grin. "I had a girlfriend, Miller. She came by the two days I was laid up in bed…kept me from goin’ outta my mind."

Kat chuckled at that. "Girlfriend, huh?" she asked.

"Elisa…yeah," Scotty answered, beginning to drift into the ocean of memories that constantly lurked just beneath the surface, sometimes still overwhelming him at the most random of moments.

"She was your girlfriend even back then?" Kat asked incredulously, and Scotty sighed and got up from where he’d been perched at the foot of her bed and moved toward the bathroom, suddenly filled with the urge to do something. He usually sidestepped any mention of Elisa, hadn’t uttered her name aloud to anyone in years, but for some inexplicable reason, he felt almost compelled to talk about her now. He wasn’t quite sure why, though he had a sneaking suspicion the newly-regained camaraderie with Kat had something to do with it. One thing he did know, however, was that if he was going to dive back into that ocean and actually share his memories, out loud, with Miller…he couldn’t just be sitting there on the bed, trying to avoid her eyes. No, he needed to be doing something.

"Mind if I---?" he asked, glancing at the stack of boxes in the corner, and Kat shrugged her acceptance.

Scotty hoisted a box from the top of the stack and plopped it on the bathroom counter. "We were just kids when we met. Fourteen years old," he began, his words punctuated by the sound of the tape ripping from the top of the box. "I was playin’ stickball on my block with the neighbor kids, and I looked up and…there she was. Love at first sight." The tape off, he tossed it into the plastic bag they were using as a temporary trash can and began to rummage through the box’s contents.

"That actually happens, huh?" Kat asked, and Scotty could’ve sworn, even through the intentionally noisy din of his unpacking, he heard the tiniest hint of wistfulness in her voice.

He paused for a second, staring into the box as though it contained the answers to all the questions that still haunted him. "Guess it does," he replied thoughtfully. "Sometimes, anyway."

"So you two were together…from high school until she…?" Kat trailed off, sounding suddenly unsure how to proceed.

"Few months before, actually," he said, feeling that old familiar guilt rising up in his chest as he returned to his task, beginning to sort through the various items and toss them, almost at random, into Kat’s bathroom drawers.

"She was schizophrenic," he explained, pausing instinctively to allow Kat to make the sympathetic noises he’d come to expect whenever he revealed Elisa’s diagnosis, and was taken aback slightly when none came. "Anyway, the meds’d work for a while, and she’d be back to her old self, and we’d start plannin’ and dreamin’ again…but then they’d quit workin’, and she’d start hearin’ voices…" Elisa’s terrified screams echoing once more around the chamber of his mind, he hesitated for a second, then willed them into silence and pressed on. "So we’d go back to the doctor and get stronger meds…round and round until I just couldn’t ride the roller coaster with her anymore. So I broke it off…and then…" he trailed off, the ocean mere moments from claiming him.

"And you think it’s your fault," Kat realized softly.

Scotty shrugged, wordlessly conceding the point. He really, really didn’t want to go into that. Not now.

"So that’s why you’re so damn protective…why you won’t leave well enough alone," she continued thoughtfully, almost to herself, and Scotty’s only reply was to continue tossing stuff into the bathroom drawers. He wasn’t sure where Kat wanted it all, and he was positive she’d rearrange it later, but he needed something to do, something physical to take his mind off the emotional stuff that was just---

"Well, whatever works for you," he heard her say, and he stopped dead in his tracks. That had been about the last thing he’d expected from her.

Even though he didn’t turn to look at her, she must have sensed the questions radiating from him, because she sighed softly and continued. "Look, do I think it was your fault? Hell, no. Do I wish you didn’t? Yeah, I do." She sighed again, sounding almost weary. "But if that’s what keeps you goin’, if that’s who makes you who you are…" she shrugged. "Then who the hell am I to tell you anything different?"

Scotty blinked in surprise as he slowly shut the top drawer of the bathroom cabinet and mulled over what Kat had just told him. On those rare occasions when he actually talked about Elisa, whoever he was talking to invariably tried to convince him not to blame himself, but Kat…his friend, his roommate, the mother of his child…she was accepting him. As he was. She wasn’t trying to fix him, she wasn’t trying to change his mind…but she was making it perfectly clear that she didn’t hold him responsible for Elisa’s death, which, to his surprise, actually helped. It was, he realized, the most refreshing thing anyone had ever said to him on the subject.

"Thanks," he replied, a little thickly, then decided that he’d had enough of the past. His past, anyway. He wasn’t a top-notch detective for nothing…and it was Kat’s turn to squirm a little.

"So…who were you in high school?" Scotty asked with a grin, and he took a perverse sense of pleasure in watching the way her eyes sparked with just a hint of warning.

"I bet you were a cheerleader," he continued brightly, knowing full well that there was no way in hell that was true. "One of them perky girls with the ponytail?" Her glare sharpened all the more, and Scotty couldn’t even begin to describe how wonderful that made him feel. This…this snark, the conversation, the simple togetherness…it filled his heart with a happiness and a contentment he hadn’t had in years…decades, even. It was great, he thought, almost giddy with the realization that this arrangement…this odd living situation…just might work out after all.

"Do I look like I was a cheerleader to you, jock strap?" she demanded, folding her arms across her chest as he blinked in surprise. Glaring at him, she issued another derisive snort. "I ate cheerleaders for breakfast."

"You?" he echoed, raking his eyes from her head to her toes and back again. "No way. You’re a half-pint. It’d take you a week and a half to finish a whole cheerleader…and she’d probably go bad before then."

Kat hesitated for a moment, trying to glare at him, but she simply couldn’t hold back the peals of merry laughter that finally burst forth. Scotty joined in, reveling in the fact that, after all that had happened the day before, the fight and the scare and all the rest…he was still able to make her laugh. Gradually, her giggles quieted, and then she sighed in defeat, glanced up at him almost sheepishly and seemed to brace herself for what she was about to say.

"I was a band nerd," she admitted quietly, suddenly deeply absorbed in picking the pills off the fuzzy blue blanket covering her lap. "Played the damn clarinet."

Scotty burst out laughing anew at this. "You? The Badass of Homicide? You played the clarinet?"

"Yes," she retorted mildly, with as fierce a glare as she could muster, which wasn’t all that fierce, considering that she was once again struggling mightily not to laugh herself, "and if you tell anyone else, so help me, I’ll pop you in the mouth."

Scotty sobered instantly, disguising his few remaining chuckles as a cough. Band nerd twenty years ago or not, she wasn’t kidding about her popping abilities. He still remembered that punch she’d delivered in the car that fateful October night.

His laughter under control, he eyed her slyly. "So…if you were a band nerd… then where’d you get the mean right hook?" he asked.

"I got brothers, Valens," she informed him. "I was the runt of the litter, and a tomboy to boot."

Scotty choked back another laugh, and Kat leveled him with one of her most withering glares. He knew he was baiting her, but he simply couldn’t get enough. It was just so damn much fun.

"Hey, don’t let the band uniform deceive you," she ordered. "I’da kicked your scrawny little pretty-boy ass to the moon."

Scotty arched his eyebrows at her. "Scrawny?" he retorted, slightly taken aback. "Scrawny? Hey, who d’you think carried all your furniture up the stairs yesterday?"

Kat smiled cryptically, and he could have sworn he saw her looking him up and down, but she hid it so well that he couldn’t be sure. She seemed about to say something, but then he saw eyes widen as her hand flew to her belly, and he froze in alarm.

"Y’okay?" he asked softly, trying desperately to conceal the sudden icy panic that was racing throughout his body. He didn’t want her to know he was worrying about her again…not after the fight they’d had, not when things were going so well.

Kat looked up at him, and he knew, to his chagrin, that she could tell he was concerned, but rather than snipe at him as he’d expected, she merely gave him a tender, reassuring smile. "Everything’s fine," she said. "Little princess here is just sayin’ hello."

Scotty stood still, eyes wide in amazement as all the overwhelming, awestruck feelings from the night before came rushing back in a flood that he was absolutely powerless to stop.

"You…wanna come feel?" she asked softly, almost shyly, all traces of snark and sarcasm gone, and Scotty was dumbfounded, both at her invitation and at the fact that she could turn her Badass of Homicide routine on and off at the flip of a switch. It was one of the most fascinating things he’d ever seen.

Quickly, before Kat could switch back again, he crossed the room, lowered himself to sit next to her, and let her gently guide his hand to the spot where she’d felt the kicking, but her belly was suddenly motionless.

"You playin’ hard to get, little one?" she asked softly, glancing down at her abdomen, and Scotty grinned. Kat looked up at him then and met his eyes. "V was like that, too," she said. "Anyone else put their hand on my belly, she’d freeze…but as soon as it was just me, she’d kick like there was no tomorrow."

Giving her belly an affectionate, if a bit awkward, pat, Scotty chuckled, rose from the bed, and returned to the corner of the bedroom where the boxes were still piled high. "So…what was it like?" he inquired. "Bein’ pregnant with V?"

Kat was silent for a long moment, and he could tell without even looking at her that she was deep in thought, lost in a thicket of memories, so he continued unpacking, enjoying the companionable silence and letting Kat have some time alone with her recollections.

"Scary as hell," she finally confessed, and her words were punctuated by a sudden dull thwack as Scotty dropped a large bottle of body wash on the bathroom floor, so surprised was he that she was admitting…fear. To him, of all people. Guess you never really know someone ‘til you live with ‘em, he mused.

"How’s that?" he asked lightly as he bent to pick up the bottle, not wanting to intrude on her thoughts or push her too hard.

"I was young, black, and single, Scotty," she informed him matter-of-factly. "Damn near broke, livin’ in a crappy-ass apartment…got stuck on desk duty for the duration…and I was lucky I even got that." Smiling somewhat ruefully, she sighed and shook her head slowly, hesitating for a few long moments before seeming to sweep that particular set of memories aside. "Anyway…ended up movin’ in with my mom for a couple years until I could save enough money to get someplace in a better neighborhood."

Scotty maintained a helpless silence while he retrieved a stack of towels from a box and stashed them in the bathroom closet. The only thing he could think of to say to her was that he was sorry, but he knew that sympathy wouldn’t be well-received. Not by her. And definitely not today.

Chasing all thoughts of sympathy from his mind, he switched gears, deciding to repay the favor she’d done for him moments before when he was the one lost in his painful memories. "Sounds like you made it work," he replied matter-of-factly, and he could sense her surprise even from all the way across the room. Point for you, Valens, he congratulated himself.

"Yeah," she agreed, with just a touch of quiet pride mixed in with the wistfulness. "Wasn’t ideal…but we made it work." She chuckled then. "My water broke in the middle of an interrogation, if you can believe that," she told him, almost sheepishly. "I wasn’t due for another four weeks, and I wasn’t that big…"

"Guess Veronica just decided she couldn’t wait to meet her mama," he said with a grin.

"Guess so," she replied, her voice tender and reflective.

After a few seconds of thoughtful silence, Scotty cleared his throat, hating to disturb the moment, but so indescribably fascinated with all he was learning about Kat that he was desperate to keep her talking.

"So…you make it to the hospital in time?" he asked, kicking himself for asking what was, no doubt, a stupid, lame-ass question.

Kat laughed outright at this. "Hell, yeah," she replied. "I was in labor for nineteen and a half hours with her."

Scotty’s eyes widened. Nineteen and a half hours? "That…sounds like a lot…" he managed.

"It’s about average, I think," she shrugged. "For first babies, anyway. Second one’s supposed to be shorter."

Scotty smiled with just a hint of relief. At least they had that going for them. As he tried to wrap his mind around the concept of nineteen hours of labor, he was suddenly overcome with curiosity as to just what, exactly, they’d be getting into on the day of their daughter’s birth.

"Do you remember much of it?" he asked tentatively. "Inquirin’ minds wanna know…"

With a slight smile, Kat returned her attention to the blanket over her lap. "Everyone tells you it hurts like hell, so I was kinda expectin’ that part…but to be honest? That wasn’t what fazed me. Wasn’t half as bad as everyone said." She chuckled and shrugged nonchalantly. "Hell, bein’ shot hurt worse."

Scotty grinned slightly as he shoved another pile of towels into the bathroom closet. Hearing that childbirth didn’t hurt as much as getting shot didn’t make him relish the prospect of taking a bullet any more than he had previously, but he was relieved for Kat that it hadn’t been as bad as she’d been expecting, and quite frankly, he wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t expecting anything physical to faze her.

But there was still something, a shimmering, unspoken something hovering in the air, something else, something more she wasn’t telling him…and he was suddenly dying to know what it was. He bided his time, though, straightening towels, tossing the rug onto the floor, and hanging up the shower curtain. She’d tell him, he was almost sure of it. That vibe in the air, that was the same vibe he got in the interview room when someone was about to confess, and all he needed to do was sit tight and wait. So he did.

Sure enough, after a few moments, Kat spoke. "What nobody told me was …" she trailed off, seemingly gathering her courage, and then she sighed, almost in defeat, and continued, her voice suddenly thickened slightly, "…how lonely it’d be."

Scotty whirled around at this and headed back into the bedroom, a tube of toothpaste in one hand and a couple bottles of nail polish in the other, knowing that the concern and sympathy was showing in his eyes, on his face, hell, probably even in his toes, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t stop it any more than he could’ve stopped her from trying to carry in that damn end table all by herself.

"Lonely?" he repeated blankly.

Kat sighed, almost reluctantly, before raising her eyes to his. "I was four weeks early," she began. "My mom was on a church trip to Atlantic City…she couldn’t get back in time."

"Okay," Scotty continued, hoping to probe more deeply, knowing that there was still something there…

"And I was okay with it," Kat went on. "At least for the most part. But…somewhere in the middle…I didn’t want my mom…" she trailed off, then shuddered. "I wanted…Jarrod." She sighed again and shook her head, the look in her eyes speaking of years of regret. "I hated that son of a bitch for what he did, what we did…but right then, when I was scared and alone and in pain…" she paused and looked up at Scotty, then shrugged slightly. "I wanted him there."

"Where was he?" Scotty asked, before he could stop himself.

"Jail," she replied matter-of-factly, with just the barest hint of a proud smile. "Put him there myself."

Scotty’s heart wrenched with the twin pangs of dread and sympathy for what he knew she was about to say. "So…you were completely alone?" he asked softly.

"Oh, the nurses were there…doctors, too, I think…hell, I don’t remember. I felt like I was in a damn tunnel, and I couldn’t see any light at the end of it until the doctor told me to reach down," Kat continued, smiling fondly as she finished her sentence.

"Reach down?" he echoed. He was starting to feel like a parrot.

Kat glanced up at him, her tender smile still in place. "I was crownin’, Scotty," she explained. "That’s when the baby’s head comes out. And I got to feel that. Got to put my hand on the top of her head. That was…" she trailed off and shook her head slightly, happy tears suddenly shining in her eyes. "I didn’t care about anything else after that."

"And then you weren’t alone anymore," he finished softly.

"Yeah," she replied, her voice sounding faraway, but Scotty didn’t miss the shadow that flitted across her face. It told him, though she’d never admit it with her words, that she was dreading, if not outright fearing, that feeling again, that horrifying loneliness, that dark tunnel...and, he resolved suddenly, he’d be damned if he let that happen.

"Listen," he began earnestly, discarding the toothpaste and nail polish on top of a box and reclaiming his seat at the foot of her bed. "That ain’t gonna happen to you this time around. You ain’t gonna be alone. Not if I got anything to say about it."

Kat’s dark eyes widened. "You wanna be there? In the delivery room?" she asked, and he could tell that she was simultaneously surprised…and yet somehow, on a deeper level…not. Not in the slightest.

"Yeah," he answered. "If…if you’ll let me."

"You’re her father, Scotty," Kat answered softly. "Of course I’ll let you." She sighed, then met his eyes, her gaze pure and sincere. "I…I want you there. I told you last night that I need you…and I…I meant it," she finished, a little tentatively, and Scotty was more deeply touched by this than just about anything he’d ever heard in his life.

"I’ll be there," he assured her. "I promise. Start to finish. No matter what."

"Yeah?" she asked, with that same trusting look she’d given him the night they’d gotten themselves into all this in the first place.

"Yeah," he replied with a grin, then reached a hand tentatively toward her belly. He thought to ask permission first, silently, with his eyes, and when she nodded and smiled, he rested his hand tentatively on her abdomen. "I don’t wanna miss a thing with her."

They sat there silently for a moment, Scotty hoping to feel another one of those flutters, but the belly was still motionless.

"Don’t worry," Kat reassured him. "You’ll feel ‘em more in a few weeks. They’re just gonna get stronger and stronger."

"No kiddin’?" he asked, his heart filled with anticipation.

Kat chuckled and arched a brow. "Toward the end, it’s gonna look like someone’s breakdancin’ in there," she told him.

"I can’t wait," Scotty replied eagerly as a strange realization stole his breath: he was already completely, irretrievably, head-over-heels in love with his daughter.

Kat, of course, was completely oblivious to the fact that his universe was tilting on its axis. "Course you can’t," she responded with a wry grin. "’Cause it ain’t your bladder she’ll be breakdancin’ on."

Scotty chuckled and rose from the recliner. "Aw, you know you love it," he shot back, returning to the bathroom to finish unpacking.

"Yeah," she replied softly, her voice barely above a whisper as she gave her enlarged belly another gentle rub. "I do."