Something bloomed in Daphne's chest when she saw that sparkle return to Jamie's eyes. That fragile light that she had come to recognize as hers, something she had never seen him offer anyone else. Even now, even after everything the day had dragged them through, it was there. And it undid her completely. She looked down at their intertwined hands for a long moment, his fingers wrapped around hers, and she thought about how strange it was that hands could hold so much history. Every lie, every apology, every night they'd fallen asleep tangled together; all of it lived somewhere in the simple weight of his hand against hers. When he said he didn't want her to cut ties with her family because of him, she looked up sharply, her eyes searching his face. The sincerity there made her breath catch. "You don't have to earn my family," she said softly. "You just have to be honest with them. Eventually." She paused, letting that land gently rather than as a demand. "My father is... complicated. He loves me in the only way he knows how, which is sometimes more like ownership than love. But my mother... she just wants me to be happy. Genuinely happy. And she's perceptive enough to see it when I am." She squeezed his hand once, reassuring. "You're not taking my family from me. You couldn't, even if you tried. But you could become part of it. If you want that."
Then Jamie started to speak about family, and Daphne watched his face carefully, the way his jaw worked against the emotion building behind his eyes. She had seen Jamie fight tears before. She had seen him push them back with anger, with deflection. But right now there was none of that armor. Just him, raw and overwhelmed, standing at the edge of something he'd never let himself want before. Daphne reached up with her free hand and touched his face, her palm cradling his jaw the way she always did when she needed him to understand that she was saying something that mattered. "You have spent your entire life believing you weren't built for this. That it wasn't available to you. But you were wrong. You were just waiting for the right place to land." Her thumb brushed gently along the curve of his cheekbone. For a moment she just looked at him, drinking in the sight of his face. That undeniable beauty that had caught her off guard from the very first night she'd seen him walk through the door of Enzo's. "I picture it too," she admitted quietly, her voice gaining a warmth she didn't try to contain. "A family with you. Something loving and imperfect and completely ours." Her gaze drifted briefly, almost involuntarily, downward toward her own stomach, then back up to his face. Daphne laughed softly, a sound threaded through with tears and affection in equal measure. "You said it's an insane thought," she murmured, "and maybe it is. But insane things have a way of happening to us, don't they?" Her fingers tightened around his. "We're going to fight for clearing your name, for whatever version of a future we can actually build together. And it's going to be hard and messy and probably terrifying most of the time." A small, luminous smile broke through the tears. "But it's going to be ours."
For a long moment, everything else faded, and Daphne melted into him, kissing him back with trembling desperation, her hands fisting in his shirt as if he were the only solid thing left in her world. When Jamie pulled back, gently stroking her cheek, she let out a shaky laugh that quickly dissolved into a quiet sob. "ProposeâŚ?" She searched his face, her doe eyes wide and glistening, a fragile smile tugging at her trembling lips. "Jamie⌠you canât even say that without grinning like an idiot right now." Her heart was swelling and breaking at the same time; pure love tangled with the sharp ache of everything they were still facing. "Youâre really standing here talking about proposing while weâre drowning in all this mess," she murmured, half-teasing, half-wondering. "God, I love you." Daphne had slipped into the quiet rhythm of keeping her hands busy the moment Jamie disappeared behind the bathroom door, because if her hands were busy, her mind might follow. Maybe. She moved to the kitchen first, wiping down the already-clean counter just to stay busy. Then she drifted back into the living room, straightening the pillows on the couch that didn't need straightening. Ordinary, mindless things. The kind that kept a person tethered when the ground beneath them felt uncertain. Slowly, she padded toward the bedroom, her socked feet quiet against the floorboards. She was thinking about what she would say to Jamie about the trip, about Ollie... and then she heard it. His voice, startled. The tone of it sent a shiver down her spine. It wasn't hurt. It wasn't angry. It was shock, plain and simple, and it came with a particular quality that moved through her like cold water. She was already moving before she'd consciously decided to, her heart picking up pace, her hand finding the bathroom door and pushing it open without knocking.
Jamie stood at the sink, the faucet still running, still in his running clothes, water dripping from his jaw. And in his hand, turned face-up, was the pregnancy test. Daphne's eyes went straight to it. The air left her body all at once, like someone had pressed a hand to her sternum and pushed. She stood in the doorway and stared at that test. Negative. She didn't move. She couldn't. Her hand had gone to the doorframe without her realizing it, fingers pressing into the wood like she needed something solid to hold onto. Her eyes burned fiercely, and she blinked hard against the sting of it, which was absurd because hadn't she been terrified? Hadn't she spent days dreading this, carrying the test around like a weight she couldn't put down? Hadn't she told herself she wasn't ready, that the timing was horrible? And yet... The grief that hit her was so sudden and so specific that it knocked the breath out of her all over again. It wasn't the grief of relief. It was the kind that rose up out of a place you didn't know existed until something reached in and found it. She thought of Jamie's face when he'd talked about family. She thought of his voice saying I want to be a good father, trembling with a conviction that had clearly surprised even him. She thought of how real it had already felt. Her chin trembled. Speechless, she pressed her lips together hard, fighting it, standing there in the doorway staring at Jamie with wide, stunned eyes. The water still ran in the sink between them, and the apartment was almost cruelly quiet around its sound. "I..." she started, then stopped. There was nothing to say yet. She just stood there, taking the blow, letting it move through her, eyes bright and full and blinking too fast.
