Chapter 249: I think maybe..
And the worst part, the part that sat uncomfortably in his chest, was that he didn’t know what to say. Not because it wasn’t true that he had gone to Josh first. But the reason she was thinking what she was thinking was more complicated than she knew.
And he wasn’t ready. Not here, not now, not standing in the middle of the nursery with both babies awake and the thing between them still so fragile.
The silence held. Then the door opened.
Both nannies appeared in the doorway at the same time, slightly out of breath, reading the room immediately and going visibly still.
"I’m so sorry." The first one stepped forward, holding two small bottles. Her voice was careful. "I just. I went to prepare their bottles. I would have been back sooner..."
"And I stepped out briefly," the second one added quickly, her eyes moving between Amara and Julian with barely concealed anxiety. "Just to the washroom, I..."
Neither Amara nor Julian responded right away.
The tension in the room was not loud. It wasn’t raised voices or sharp words. It was the quieter kind, the kind that lived in the space between two people who knew each other too well to pretend, and knew better than to speak in front of others about the things that actually mattered.
Julian looked down at Josh. Amara looked down at Divina. The nannies stood at the door, waiting.
"Here, feed him; he must be hungry." Julian broke the silence, handing baby Josh to the nanny. Meanwhile, Amara gave baby Divina to the other nanny and walked out. Julian could feel her anger.
Julian was right behind her.
"Amara." His voice came down the hallway, low and urgent. "Amara, wait. Baby, just stop for a second."
She didn’t stop.
She pushed the bedroom door open and walked in, and the moment it shut behind her, something cracked loose in her chest that she had been pressing down for weeks. She stood in the middle of the room with her hands at her sides and her eyes burning, and she breathed in, out, in, trying to hold it together.
She couldn’t. The door opened again.
Julian stepped in quietly. He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at her, the tight set of her shoulders, the way she was standing like she was bracing for something.
"Amara." Softer now. "I don’t know why you’re..."
"You left her." Her voice came out sharper than she intended. She turned to face him. "You were standing right there, Julian. You were right there, and she was crying, and you just... You stood there holding Josh."
"Amara, I..."
"I know you were changing him." She pressed her fingers to her forehead briefly. "I know that. I know that is what happened. But that is not what I saw, and you know exactly what I saw because I could see it in your face when you looked at her."
Julian opened his mouth. Then he closed it. She watched him and hated that she was right and hated even more that he knew she was right.
"Listen," he said, taking a step closer, his voice careful and measured. "There is something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you already and I..."
"WHAT?"
He stopped.
Amara looked at him. Her eyes were bright, not quite tears, but close. She had been carrying this thought for long enough that saying it out loud felt like setting down something very heavy in the middle of the floor between them.
"Tell me I’m wrong," she said. "Please, Julian. Tell me I’m wrong."
He didn’t say anything. And that was its own kind of answer.
"Every time you look at Divina," Amara said, her voice dropping, each word coming out slower now, "you see Seb. That’s what it is. She has his face, or something in her reminds you, or you look at her, and you think about everything, and I understand that, Julian. I do. I understand it is complicated, and I understand it is not straightforward, and I am not standing here asking you to be a machine about it." She stopped. Drew a breath.
"But they are twins. They are my babies. Both of them. I don’t care what the world says. I don’t care what any DNA test says or ever will say. Those two babies came into this world together, and they are twins, and they are mine, and they deserve the same love. The exact same love."
Her voice broke on the last word. Just slightly. She pushed forward anyway.
"I grew up in that house, Julian. You know that. You know what it was like between Amira and me, how my father could never quite make it equal, could never quite hide which one he poured more of himself into, and Amira felt it. She felt it every single day, and it broke something between us that we could never fix." She shook her head.
"I will not do that to my children. I refuse. I will not let one of them grow up in a home where they can feel, even for a second, even in something small, that they are less. That their father looks at them differently."
Julian stood very still.
"I’m sorry," Amara said, and her voice was quieter now, the sharpness giving way to something more raw underneath. "I am so sorry because I know how complicated this is. I know this is messy, and I know I put us all in this situation, and I am not standing here pretending otherwise." She pressed her hand flat against her chest.
"But I have been thinking. I have been lying awake thinking about this and I..." She stopped. The sentence hung there unfinished.
Julian took a slow step toward her. "Tell me," he said quietly. "Finish it." Amara looked at him. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes were full.
"I think..." She stopped again. Started again. "I think maybe.. maybe we should..."
The words wouldn’t come. Not the right ones. Because every version of what she was trying to say felt like the end of something, and she wasn’t ready to name it out loud, and maybe.. maybe she was hoping he would stop her before she had to.
She looked at him.
Waiting.
