When Constellations Form (Light in the Dark 4)

“You’re not going to go away, are you?” I ask.

“Nope.” She bounces on the bed.

I roll back over to face her. “All right. I’m showering first, though. Can you start some coffee for me?”

“You got it.” She hops up and dashes out the door. She moves pretty quickly for someone so heavily pregnant. I’m impressed.

I roll out of bed and head across the room into the bathroom, starting the shower. It isn’t long until the room is steamy. I shower, taking longer than normal, but it helps to wake me up.

Only my wife would be psychotic enough to wake me up at five-thirty on Christmas. I should be used to it. She does it every year. Something tells me next year she’ll be even worse since it’ll be the baby’s first Christmas.

I finish in the shower and change into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, since we’re han

ging out at the house today.

I start down the stairs, inhaling the scent of coffee.

I round the corner into the kitchen and Thea hands me a cup of coffee. In her other hand she holds a glass of lemon water. Shocker.

“Can we open presents now?” She dances on the tips of her toes.

I sweep my hand toward the tree. “Knock yourself out.”

Our tree is decorated with white lights and pink, silver, and purple ornaments. It’s a pretty girly tree, but seeing as I now have a wife and daughter, I figure I need to get used to it. My life is going to be surrounded by all things girl for a while. Though, our daughter could grow up to be a tomboy, which would be fine too. I want her to do and be whatever it is she wants to be. I’m looking forward to teaching her to play football and punch guys the right way—because my little girl is going to know how to defend herself if she needs to.

I sit down on the floor beside Thea, and she’s already tearing through her stocking. It’s filled mostly with bath products, like those bath bombs she loves and body wash and bubble bath. I take a long sip of coffee and then grab my stocking. It’s filled with shaving stuff, a watch, socks, cologne, a portable phone charger, and other random items.

Thea sets her empty stocking aside and starts tearing through her gifts.

I’m not going to lie, shopping for her is hard. She’s picky and she’s not afraid to tell you if she hates something. Plus, the girl has a shopping addiction so sometimes she buys something before I have the chance to get it.

She opens her first gift and gasps. “I love it. This is beautiful.” She holds up the new ivory leather purse I picked out for her.

“You really like it?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, it’s perfect. I can get so much stuff in this.”

I open my first gift and bust out laughing. It’s a boxed set of all the Jaws movies. “Can’t have too many copies of these,” I tell her, setting it aside.

She opens another gift, and then me, both of us alternating until there’s nothing left.

“I have one last thing to give you, but it’s actually for the baby,” I explain.

“Oh?” She raises a brow and waits.

I hop up and grab the wrapped gift from the closet.

I’m nervous about the gift. I got it for the baby’s room, but she might hate it. When I saw it, I couldn’t resist having it made. I thought it was beautiful and different, like us.

I hand her the wrapped gift. It’s thin and kind of long, maybe four feet.

She unwraps it, revealing the white box beneath and lifts the lid off. She pushes the tissue paper aside and gasps.

“Oh, my God. Xander …” she breathes, pressing a shaking hand to her lips. “This is stunning.”

I help her lift it out of the box.

“Do you think it’ll go in her room?” I ask worriedly. “I had to get it, but I thought you might not like how it looks with everything else.”