“I wanted to give this to you in the quiet of the recovery room.

After it was over.

After he was here, crying in your arms, and you were safe, and we were finally, actually a family.”

Erin couldn’t speak.

Her heart was hammering so wildly against her ribs she felt lightheaded.

She just stood there, watching the man she loved unravel before her eyes.

Ben looked up from the floor, his eyes completely red, tears finally spilling over his lower lashes.

He looked utterly wrecked, completely stripped of the confident, capable facade he had worn all week.

“When we went to that final ultrasound,” Ben began, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper, taking a step toward her.

“When Dr. Evans sat us down and talked about the… the minor complications.

About the risks with your blood pressure spiking, and the potential for an emergency C-section.

You were so brave, Erin.

You sat on that crinkly paper, you nodded, you asked all the right, clinical questions, and you held my hand so tightly.

You acted like it was nothing.

Like you were invincible.”

He wiped roughly at his cheek with the back of his hand, a wet, self-deprecating laugh escaping his lips.

“But I wasn’t brave.

I was terrified.

I have been absolutely terrified for weeks.

Not because I don’t think you can do this.

Because I know you can.

You are the strongest person I have ever met.

But because I looked at you in that clinic, and I realized that I am about to watch you walk into the most physically and emotionally exhausting battle of your life, and I can’t do it for you.

All I can do is hold your hand and watch you risk your body, your life, to give me a child.”

Erin let out a soft, shuddering gasp, both of her hands flying up to cover her mouth.

The sheer, overwhelming relief that it wasn’t bad news crashed into her, instantly followed by a tidal wave of profound, earth-shattering emotion.

Ben looked down at the envelope again, his thumb tracing the edges of the thick paper.

“So, I started writing.

Every night, when you went to sleep, when I said I was going downstairs to check the locks or read a book, I came in here.

I wrote down every single memory.

The night we met in the pouring rain in Chicago, when we had to share that miserable cab ride.

The day we bought this house and ate pizza on the bare floorboards.

The morning you handed me that plastic stick with the two pink lines and we just sat on the bathroom tile and cried until we couldn’t breathe.”

He slowly stood up fully, closing the distance between them, holding the envelope out to her like a sacred offering.

“But it’s not just from me,” he whispered, his eyes locking onto hers, shining with a fiercely protective love.