Page 120 of Dissonance

I look up at him. He looks wrecked. Changed. One finger brushes her cheek with a gentleness I feel in my chest.

“Hey,” he murmurs, so softly I almost miss it. “Hey, baby girl.”

“Do you want to hold her?” I ask after a while.

He looks at me, then at our child, before nodding. The nurse steps in, helping us guide her from my chest into Lockie’s arms, adjusting his hold until she’s settled. The second she is, something in him shifts. I watch it happen, the subtle click, like all the tension that’s lived in his shoulders for as long as I’ve known him, eases.

I lie there and watch them together. This strong giant of a man still in his kilt, cradling our baby. Our daughter. His thumb moves over her cheek, her tiny fist, the back of her hand, with the kind of care that makes it hard to breathe.

Then he looks up at me and smiles. A real, full one.

And it’s beautiful.

They move us to the recovery room a while later. Callie sleeps in the clear bassinet beside me, her chest rising and falling so soundly it’s impossible to look away. Lockie’s phone hasn’t stopped buzzing since before we left the delivery room, each notification ignored.

“You can go call them,” I say, not taking my eyes off our daughter.

“In a minute.”

Another buzz, and he still doesn’t move.

“Lockie, you know Cooper will show up here if you don’t answer him.” I smile, turning my head to look at him. “Go. We’ll be right here.”

He leans in, lips pressing to the top of my head, lingering. When he straightens, he looks at Callie one more time, his hand resting on the edge of the bassinet.

“Mo Chridhe,” he murmurs to her, before stepping back and disappearing into the hallway.

“That was sweet,” the nurse says, tidying up nearby.

“Hmm?” I blink, all my attention on my baby.

“What he called her, Mo Chridhe,” she repeats, her accent rounding the edges of it differently to how he says it. “My grandmother used to say it all the time.”

I look up, frowning. “What does it mean?”

She touches her hand to her chest. “My heart.”

My heart. For years, he’s been calling me his heart.

“I’ll let you two get some rest,” she says, reading my silence as exhaustion.

Nodding, I watch her go, my throat still tight as I look down at the small sleeping face, one hand curled beneath her chin.

“Your dad is a lot, you know that?” I say, lips trembling.

She makes a small sound in response, like she already knows, and I huff out a breath that’s almost a laugh, my chest full in a way it has never been before.

Full, aching, and it feels so damn good.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Lockie

“Alright, wee lass,” I murmur, shifting in the chair as Callie’s fingers wrap around the bottle, her small hand helping to hold it the way she’s been doing recently. “You planning on giving Mum a break tonight, or are we keeping her on her toes?”

She doesn’t answer, her big dark eyes peering up at me as she makes a snuffling sound, nudging her head against my chest when she finishes drinking.

Aye. Thought so.