by Bethany-Kris
It’s right where he wanted to stay, too.
Forever.
Alessio didn’t bother to round the couch to sit down. That wasn’t really his style, anyway. No, he simply jumped over the back and landed right in the middle between Corrado and Ginevra. Their loud—but fake—complaints settled once he was seated. One of his arms snaked over the back of the couch behind Ginevra, so he could play with the softness of her hair while his other landed tight to Corrado’s thigh.
All over again, he felt good.
Happy.
Right again.
There was something about coming home that filled a void in Alessio’s chest. Maybe it was because he’d never really had what one might consider a traditional or proper home. Even the penthouse in Vegas he shared with Corrado had been more like a hideaway for the two of them than a home.
Now that he had been away from the place he called home more often than he was here, he tended to notice the long stretches of time far more. He didn’t want to be gone.
He wanted to be home.
“Someone is getting their ass beat again, yeah?” he asked.
“Fuck off,” Corrado muttered. “How is she this good?”
Ginevra only grinned.
“How was the flight?”
Les shrugged in answer to Corrado. “Decent. Same as it usually is.”
“So, cramped, long, and loud.”
“Basically.”
Ginevra waved at the television. “Are we beating Corrado’s ass again, or what?”
Laughter filled up the living room. The game started quickly, and while he watched the split screen on the television and the blocks coming down one after the other for the two people on either side of him to make lines with, Alessio had another thought.
“So, if the entryway is all decorated, does that mean the reading nook is also finished?”
“Oh, no,” Ginevra said, never once looking away from the game, “that’s a surprise.”
Alessio tipped his head to the side, giving Corrado a look. His lover only shrugged back clearly not having an answer to his unspoken question.
That was fine.
Les liked surprises.
Mostly.
8.
Corrado
“HAVE you ever thought that maybe Ginny would want to have her stuff in here with ours?” Alessio asked.
Turning away from the hanging bag where he put his suits that needed to be dry-cleaned, Corrado nodded. “I have.”
“And yet, it’s only our things in this walk-in closet.”
“Because this is what we do, Les. Every morning. Every night.”
Corrado almost smiled at the way Alessio had to take a second to consider what he said. He wasn’t lying. He and Les always got ready for their day or night together. Ginevra preferred to do those things separately, and alone in her own space.
Then, Corrado tipped his chin toward the doorway. “Besides, the door’s always open. She knows that.”
“Right. Did Dare call?”
“Gave me the okay on the time off, actually.”
“Good,” Les murmured. “He owes us both.”
“That was not how he put it to me.”
Alessio’s dark chuckles came close to the back of Corrado’s neck when he turned to finish zipping up the garment bag. Just as fast, he felt Les’s hot mouth find the skin of his bare shoulder blade while the side of his hand brushed along Corrado’s.
Soft touches.
Quiet moments.
Amid everything else that had changed in their life, and after all Corrado had done to them that could have ruined what he and Alessio shared together ... well, at the end of the day, they were still the same.
And he liked that just fine.
“Missed you,” Les murmured against Corrado’s shoulder.
“More than you know.”
“Turn the heat up for Ginny, yeah?”
Corrado chuckled as he turned around, cocking a brow all the while. “She still won’t sleep under blankets.”
“Yeah, well ... I think she’s warm enough between the two of us, that’s all.”
“Stop talking about me in there, I hear you!”
Ginevra’s teasing yell from outside the walk-in closet had Alessio winking at Corrado. The asshole looked so pleased with himself—or maybe it was just because he was finally home—that Corrado couldn’t help but kiss him.
He didn’t linger.
Couldn’t.
Not if he wanted to leave this closet because as soon as he got a taste of Les, well, he’d be fucked. A lot like he was whenever he got his mouth on Ginevra and had five minutes on his hands to waste.
“Setting this up to be a good night, yeah?” Corrado asked over his shoulder as he headed for the door leading back to the bedroom.
Alessio grinned, flashing his teeth and everything. He went from playful to sinful in a fucking blink. “You know it.”
“Know what?” Ginevra, already in the middle of the bed with a binder in her hands, glanced up with a curious glint. “Hmm?”
“Just Les and his incessant need to test my self-control every chance he gets.”
“I don’t need to test anything. We all know what your self-control is like, thank you.”
Ginevra glanced up, staring at the ceiling before she just as quickly went back to whatever was in that binder with a nod. “He’s not wrong.”
“See,” Alessio said.
Smug as fuck.
Corrado smirked. “Yeah, well ...”
“Nobody’s complaining,” Ginevra added.
“Exactly.”
Alessio gave Corrado another one of those winks as he headed for the small attached enclave of their master bedroom that was supposed to be for the reading nook he’d wanted. Really, it was the only thing he asked to be done in the entire house. He knew there would be a gym—Corrado was the one who demanded that. The office would also double as a library because they all liked that idea.
The reading nook, though ...
“I really wanted this,” Alessio said, his voice muffled from where they couldn’t see him inside the enclave. “Can’t see what would be so important that we’d change it, honestly.”
Corrado looked Ginevra’s way to find she was chewing on her bottom lip while she closed the binder in her hands and set it on her lap. “He never whines.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But ... it’s a good surprise.”
“You didn’t even tell me what the change in plans were, kitten.”
“I wanted you both here when I did it.”
Corrado laughed, and headed for the bed. Putting both his hands at the edge, he leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to Ginevra’s temple. Her pretty lips curved with the sweetest smile, and her gaze drifted to the entry of the enclave where Alessio had come back to stand.
“We’re both here,” he said.
“You are,” she murmured.
“So,” Les urged, “what happened to the reading nook?”
“I thought ...” Ginevra swallowed hard, shrugging the delicate line of her shoulders under a silk camisole as Corrado stood straight, and Alessio joined him near the side of the bed. “Well, it’s better suited for something else because it’s right in the bedroom, there’s still privacy, and we’ll hear the baby as soon as they cry for us.”
All at once, Corrado’s heart stopped.
He was sure it did.
Beside him, Alessio made a noise.
Soft and thick.
Unsure and excited.
“What baby?” Corrado heard himself ask.
Alessio’s hand found Corrado’s wrist, and he grabbed tight. Tighter than he’d ever held him before, and while someone else might have thought that action wasn’t a good thing, he could feel the other man’s joy radiating. When someone spent enough time with another person who owned a part of their soul, they learned to distinguish things like that.
“The sleeping ... getting sick,” Alessio said. “That’s because you’
re—”
Corrado made a noise that time, stopping the man beside him from saying more. He didn’t want Alessio to say it, even if they both figured it out. It was Ginevra’s news, and it should be her who told them. She waited, after all.
He understood that now.
She waited for them.
For them to be a them.
All together.
The way they should be.
“You say it,” Corrado told her. “Tell us like you wanted to, kitten.”
She grinned.
Sexy and sweet.
Alessio’s fingers tightened around Corrado’s wrist again. “Yeah, Ginny.”
Ginevra set the binder aside and moved to her knees where she rested at the side of the bed. In front of both of them. “So, that’s the thing ... I’m about ten weeks preg—”
Alessio took her down to the bed first with a shout before he pinned Ginevra down and kissed every breathless laugh that fell from her lips. Corrado was very quick to follow.
Tucked between them with her laughter muffled, one of her hands tight around Alessio’s middle while her other reached back to hook Corrado’s neck, Ginevra trembled. And then he felt Les’s lips find his forehead overtop her, the softest kiss.
“We’re gonna have a baby,” he murmured to Corrado. Then, the two of them glanced down. Ginevra stared up at both of them, her top teeth catching her bottom lip as she smiled. “We’re having a baby?”
“Yeah,” she breathed.
They were having a baby.
9.
Ginevra
Seven months later ...
“I can’t ... I-I can’t, I just—”
“Yes, you can,” Les murmured, his face clouding Ginevra’s hazy vision. She did her best to focus on him and Corrado resting behind her on the bed if only because that was easier to process than the absolute agony ripping through her lower half. “She’s right there, babe. She’s got the prettiest black curls, and she wants her mom to hold her.”
“One more,” Corrado said in her ear. “You can do one more, Ginny.”
The music she wanted played still hummed in the background of their master bedroom, but she couldn’t distinguish what song was currently echoing through the speakers. Not that it mattered because the sound of her boys talking her through the hardest experience of her life to date took every ounce of her concentration.
She was grateful for them.
Needed them for this.
It was every reason why the three of them were in the bedroom of their home with a midwife between her legs with her fingers probing against the crowning of their baby’s head because she needed them here. With her.
Her gyno had been great throughout the whole pregnancy. She was open-minded and didn’t say half of the ignorant things a lot of others who should have known better did when it came to the pregnancy, and their life. But when it came to the hospital, the policy was one support person in the room, and it didn’t matter how many times they explained both fathers had to be in the room, no one would budge.
So, they found themselves here. With a midwife who worked in her gyno’s office, in their bed where she felt most comfortable while her two boys were exactly where they wanted and needed to be, and their family filled the brownstone to wait for the birth of their daughter.
The first Guzzi child of her generation.
They had more than enough people who felt the need to voice their concerns. From everything to how far away a hospital was to whether or not a name was going to be put on the birth certificate. As though women hadn’t been giving birth since the beginning of time and which name a baby was given at birth would make or break it all despite all their love. None of it made any difference to the three of them, though.
They knew what they wanted.
This baby was theirs.
What did the rest matter?
“One more,” Alessio assured, “that’s all.”
“With the next contraction, Ginevra,” the midwife agreed, “and she’ll be right out into my arms and ready for you to meet her.”
“You ready?” Corrado asked.
Ginevra took a moment. Just one single second to take in her surroundings and everything else. Her men. The one with his arms wrapped around her chest where he sat behind her. And the other on the edge of the bed with both her hands in his. They never forgot each other; she knew it. Even when it seemed like Corrado and Alessio were in entirely different worlds, all it took was a single look between them for everything to settle.
Right now, though, it was all about her.
And their baby.
She was sweaty.
Aching all over.
Was she ready to be a mom?
Was she ready for everything to change?
“Yeah, I’m ready,” she replied, voice quaking with every word. “Let’s have this baby.”
Coraline Sorrento Guzzi came into the world at six-oh-two in the evening with matted black curls stuck to her little head which they quickly covered with a knitted pink cap to keep her warm. She had ten fingers, ten toes, and two hazy blue eyes that found Ginevra’s the moment she was put to her mother’s breast. Her daddies cried. It was too much; she didn’t realize how instantaneous the overwhelming love would be for her baby until she was put in her arms.
They already had a life. Too much love to go around, really. In that moment, though, with her first breath, their daughter made them into something else.
A family.
CHRISTOPHER & VALERIA: PART 2
10.
Chris
“I can’t be late!”
“You’re not going to be late,” Chris assured Maria as he set her up on the kitchen island. She shoved a quarter of a piece of jam toast into her mouth like it was the last thing she was going to eat for the rest of her life. Really, she was just rushing unnecessarily. Like her mother, however, he found that he couldn’t tell the girl her anxieties were for nothing without causing a bigger issue. So, he opted to just do his duties and get her out the door and into his car for school. “We’re not running late, Maria.”
“Ten minutes later than yesterday!”
She had a point.
Frankly, Chris needed the extra ten minutes of snooze time that morning and still didn’t regret hitting that button earlier. Would he need to go ten over the limit the whole way to Maria’s private Catholic school?
Likely.
Still worth it.
Rounding the island so that he came behind Maria on the other side, Chris already had a brush and elastic ready. She finished destroying her toast while he pulled her long, dark black hair into the high pony she liked. A few sweeps of the brush to smooth everything down, and he easily slipped the elastic down the tail of her hair to keep it in place.
Chris checked the clock.
Two minutes.
Not bad at all.
“Come on, Daddy,” Maria muttered, not even bothering to wait for Chris to come around the counter to help her down before she jumped all on her own. “We gotta go now.”
“Maria,” he murmured, coming around the island again to stand in front of her. Well, he kneeled to be mostly eye-level with his daughter. He still thought it was ignorant and arrogant of adults to talk over kids when they would get far better results talking with them. “We’re not going to be late, baby. I promise.”
She let out a sigh, put one hand to her little hip, and those dark eyes of hers nailed right into his. It was only the browns of her eyes that sometimes made people pause when he introduced her as his daughter. Even those who didn’t know them, or the situation of how he had come to be with Valeria and in the process, adopted her daughter as his own—unofficially, at first, and then properly on paper later.
The browns of their eyes made people wonder—was she his? They looked so much alike that even the gold flakes in her gaze matched his own.
Not that it mattered.
Blood didn’t always make a family.
But like this, with her littl
e hand on her hip while she stared at him as though he was being entirely ridiculous and she just couldn’t believe it, Maria looked the most like her mother. Chris kind of loved that, too.
“Okay,” Maria said, “but listen, Daddy, I finally learned how to sing the Canadian anthem in French, and I don’t want to miss singing it with the rest of my class when they do morning notes on the speakers. So, we have to leave. Right now.”
“You won’t miss it.”
She gave him another look, and pursed her pink lips. “Promise?”
Chris held out his pinky for her to take with his own because it was still the very best way for Maria to trust any promise he made her. “Pinky promise.”
Maria hooked their fingers and shook on it. “I gotta go get my book bag.”
“I’ll meet you at the front door.”
“Got it!”
She yelled that over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen entryway, passing her oncoming mother on the way. The sparkly pink running shoes were a stark contrast to the pleated skirt, high black socks that reached her little knees, and the white shirt with a bow at the collar the school used as a uniform.
But, the kids were allowed to wear whatever shoes they wanted, and Maria always had to have something that stood out from the rest. Even if they didn’t match her outfit.
“What was that all about?” Val asked, grinning as she crossed the kitchen.
Standing, Chris met his wife of almost five months—two weeks before they hit that milestone—with a smile that matched her own. Before answering her question, he dragged her close for a quick, burning kiss that he hadn’t been able to get from her that morning because she’d been too busy running for the shower while he attempted to get Maria ready for school.
Life with a kid was chaotic.
Chris wouldn’t change it.
Not for anything.
Slowing his kiss so that he could just enjoy the way Valeria’s lips moved in tandem with his own, he pressed his forehead to hers and took a moment to have her there with him. Present. Safe. And entirely happy.
Also, his.
“Nothing,” he assured her. “She just wants to get to school. I think the French tutor has helped to make her ... more comfortable, you know? So many kids in that school are bilingual, and she knows it makes her different that she can’t talk like they do.”
