startled us both was Giuliana, who began to babble and reach for Javi, leaning precariously in my arms to get to him. Without thinking, I handed her over, and Javi took her without question. Like he always did. And he smiled at her like holding her was the best part of his day.
“I missed you, Little Miss G,” he crooned. She grabbed his nose.
“I missed you, Javi,” I said, not trying to hide the remorse I was feeling. “I’ve been a complete ass, and I’m sorry, and I miss you. I know it won’t always be easy for us. There are so many hurdles we’ll cross. But I feel like what we’re building between us is strong—it has good bones, and it’s being built to last. I just… let me prove to you that you’re worth it. You’re worth it, and I will give everything I have to make sure you know it.” I paused and bit my lip. “Can I kiss you?”
Javi sighed, his shoulders sagging. He pressed his forehead to Giuliana’s, but I saw the corners of his mouth quirk up. When he raised his heated stare to meet mine, I almost groaned in anticipation.
“Please,” he said as he reached with his free hand to pull me to him.
It was hard not to move as Javi’s marker moved along the delicate skin of my back. Giuliana had gone to sleep hours ago, and the doctor was right—eating a bit of cereal before her bedtime bottle was helping her get five- to seven-hour stretches of sleep at night.
I should have been sleeping, but Javi was a welcome excuse to stay awake.
“Stop moving,” he said before lightly swatting my buttocks.
“It tickles,” I replied. We were in my bed, naked except for underwear. It felt so good to be touching him again, skin against skin, and to hear his voice in my ear. He was straddling me, the weight of him a welcome comfort, and he was drawing a tattoo on my back for fun. It was, aside from the occasional tickle, incredibly relaxing and intimate.
“Don’t be a baby. Andrew sits better than you for marker tattoos.”
“Tell me more about Andrew,” I said. Javi’s voice was rough, both from the heavy petting we’d done earlier, as well as his natural gravel timbre. I loved listening to it, the way the sounds felt like fingers stroking me. “You really seem to care about him.”
“Andrew’s a lot like me. We struggle to c-communicate and we’ve b-both been made fun of for it.” His thighs squeezed my sides for a moment, like he was tensing against memories. But then they released, and the marker kept making its path across my skin. “Andrew at least has his mom. She tries hard for him, but he needs resources that are hard to get.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t have any resources,” I said, thinking more about his parents, and what he’d told me in the kitchen the night of our fight. “That must have been hard… Tell me about you at his age.”
Javi paused, sitting heavily on my ass as he thought about it. “I was in and out of foster homes a lot. S-some of them were k-kind, but maybe not prepared for the b-b-baggage I b-brought. A lot of them just wanted live-in childcare. None of them b-bothered to get me help with the s-s-stutter. It made me angry and I c-couldn’t even t-talk about it easily.”
I was glad my face was pressed into a pillow so Javi couldn’t see the flare of hurt and anger I felt for him. When Kyle and I had begun to investigate adoption and surrogacy, the amount of work and time it took to become a foster or adoptive parent had been overwhelming. It had been one of the reasons we’d chosen surrogacy. To hear that people had undergone the tough process only to treat a foster child like live-in help infuriated me until my fists clenched hard to keep my rage in check.
“That must have been hard,” I managed to say. “I imagine it felt like you were trapped, not only by the system, but by not feeling like you could talk to anyone.”
Javi shifted on me, before leaning down and beginning to draw again. “Yeah. And like I was b-being rejected because of how I s-spoke. I guess I attributed being passed along t-to my parents. Like, not just being raised by d-drug addicts. My mom still used when s...s-she was pregnant. So I was b-born with it