Another Life

21

I wake up to a sound of talking coming from the baby monitor, which was placed firmly on my bedside table, like it always was. It makes me smile at first, thinking Macie was just talking to herself whilst waiting for somebody to go down and collect her, it was a usual thing I woke up to at the moment, her keeping herself occupied through whatever means possible, but then I hear a cry - Macie's cry - and the voice again. My eyes burst open and as I spin around I see Jay asleep beside me, so I waste no time as I pounce up out of bed - well, as "pounce" as it can get at twenty-seven weeks pregnant that is - and grab my gun that I kept hidden away in my drawers, leaving the room before I could see if my loud commotion had woken Jay up.

I take off down the stairs, almost tripping as I ran down the steps to the middle floor of the house. This is when I curse having put her on the middle floor of the house. She had picked the bedroom she wanted, one with the backyard in view and one that wasn't on the top floor because she didn't want the height that came with the backyard view bedroom on the top floor. I race into her room, the door was already open, gun drawn and there's a figure stood in the middle of the room, their back turned from the door and I'm a second away from pulling the trigger when I have a thought rush through my head that stops me.

And I've never been so grateful for a thought like that in my life; my eyes take a second to adjust to the minimal light in the room but when they do I realize who was stood there.

"Jay?" I ask, making him turn around and respond to his name, his eyes widening when he catches sight of the gun still pointed to him.

"Woah, what's with the gun?" He asks, pulling his free hand into a surrender, the other was holding Macie tightly against his chest.

I lower it down, putting the safety on and just stare to him in disbelief. "I saw you, you were in bed."

His eyebrows furrow and he takes a slow step forward toward me. "I've been out of bed for like an hour," he says, trying to take the gun out of my hand but I pull my hand away quickly, putting the gun down on Mae's bookshelf that was beside the door instead. "Are you okay?" He then asks, and I notice the lost look that had been on my face for a beat.

I shake my head. "I almost shot you," I say and it catches him by surprise, despite the fact he had seen me pointing my gun at him seconds before. "I had my finger on the trigger, I was a literal half a second away from pulling it, and the only thing that stopped me wasn't me noticing it was you, it was me thinking about that time you shot someone and it went through them and hit that little girl. What if I had done that and it had gone through you and hit Macie? That was the only thing that stopped me."

He puts his hand out again, resting it on my shoulder and he looks to Macie. I ask what was going on with her, why she was so upset and Jay shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, she just woke up like this."

Macie then reaches out from Jay's arms for me and I take her without a moment of hesitation, bringing her into my embrace and sitting her on top of my protruding belly, keeping most of her weight in my arms though so she wasn't fully sat on it. She tucks her head into the bottom of my neck and hides her face.

"What is it, baby?" I question, desperate to get an answer out of her, it wasn't like her to get clingy or not talk, usually she was the complete opposite and it was a chore to get her to stop babbling nonsense for just a second.

Luckily she pulls away from my shoulder but she doesn't respond, tucking her chin to her chest and looking to me sadly. Jay leans forward, putting a gentle kiss to the back of her head, then running his fingers through her messy hair.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I ask, receiving a quick shake of Macie's head in return.

I nod, getting the message and I decide it was probably best to change the subject, that's what worked with Jay sometimes when he wakes up from a nightmare. "How about we talk about your birthday? That's coming up soon."