Sweet Hope

My beautiful daughter won them all over in seconds.

*****

As night hit, I stared at my sleeping wife on the hospital bed and moved to press a kiss onto her cheek. Ally stirred, her eyelids cracking open. I held my daughter in my arms, her brown eyes unable to stop watching me.

Ally lifted her hand and wrapped it in my long hair. “You okay, papa?”

I smiled and looked down at our daughter. “I’m perfect, carina. Fucking perfect,” I whispered.

I glanced at the door, feeling the need for fresh air. Ally must have seen it in my face. “Go, baby, show her the night sky.”

I tilted my head to the side, and said, “I love you, Aliyana Carillo.”

Smiling sleepily, she murmured, “I love you too, Axel Carillo. You’re all of my heart.”

Pressing a final kiss on her head, I headed to the door. Just as I was about to leave, Ally whispered, “You need to pick a name, Papa. Your daughter can’t be Baby Carillo forever… and I think I know what you want it to be. You just haven’t worked up the nerve to ask them, have you?”

I briefly closed my eyes. As always, my wife knew me too well.

Looking at my daughter swaddled in a pink blanket, I took a deep breath and headed out of the door. The hallway was quiet and I headed for the OB unit’s private garden. Walking to the nurse’s station, the older nurse who’d been looking after my little family looked up and her face melted into a grin.

I held up the band around my arm that was electronically linked to the tag on my daughter’s ankle. It told the nurses I was her father. “This ain’t gonna go off if I go into that garden just there is it?” I nudged my chin to the garden entrance.

The nurse shook her head. “No, you can go out there. It’s all fenced in and secure. So unless you can sprout wings and fly away, no alarms will go off.”

“Nah, no wings,” I said as I walked forward. Feeling all kinds of surreal as I held my child in my arms, Ally’s child and mine, I kept looking down at my daughter to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Dreaming that all of this, my life, wasn’t just one real fucking good dream that I didn’t wanna wake from.

How the hell a sinner like me deserved all of this I had no damn idea.

As I opened the door to the roof garden, the summer night wrapped around me, the warm air seeping into my skin. The small private garden was deserted at this hour, so I moved to the patch of grass and sat down leaning against a wall, holding my daughter in my arms as I stared up at the clear night sky. All the stars were out tonight and a nostalgic smile pulled on my lips.

Looking back down, my daughter's nose scrunched up in her sleep. Running a finger down her cheek, I opened my mouth and sang, “Dormi, Dormi, O Bel Bambin…” I sang the Italian lullaby softly, rocking back and forth just as I’d done all those years ago with Levi. As I sang each word, I couldn’t stop the tear that escaped the corner of my eye.

She was mine. This sleeping perfection was the best thing I’d ever done in my life.

Hearing the door to the garden open, I sat up straight, wiping my eyes, only to see Austin and Levi walking through, Dante sitting happily in Austin’s arms.

“What the hell are you two still doing here?” I asked in a graveled voice. It must have been at least two in the morning. I flicked my chin to Dante. “And how the hell is he still awake?”

“He refused to leave, kicked up a storm when Lexi tried to take him away from us. I didn’t mind, he never sleeps anyway. He’s the damn energizer bunny,” Austin joked, shaking his head, but holding his son tighter in his arms.

Dante slapped his hands on Austin’s cheeks. “En-er bun… bun-ee,” he tried to repeat, sounding too fucking cute.

Austin playfully nodded at his son. “Yeah, you are. The energizer bunny.”

Dante squealed in laughter, throwing his head back, making us all laugh too.

Austin sat beside me on the dry grass, Dante perching on his knee, staring down at my daughter in fascination. Levi dropped to my other side and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “You didn’t think we’d leave, did you?”

Feeling my chest tighten, I went to answer, when Austin said, “We’re your brothers, we leave when you do. You know that, Axe.”

Clearing the emotion from my throat, I glanced to my sleeping daughter, holding her in my arms and I asked, “How did you know I’d be out here?”

“You walked right past us, Axe. You were staring at your daughter so much that you didn’t see us sitting right in front of you.”