Her Last Plea✨

Chapter 67

A light tapping noise on the window woke Ara up early on Valentine's Day. Squinting her eyes, she rubbed them into focus while kicking her cov ers away as Coco looked up from his curled up position on the pillow next to her, not at all amused by the little girl's antics. It took her a while before she realized that the tapping noise was coming from her window where a small bird was poking at it with it's beak.

Annoyed at the bird and still feeling exhausted, Ara tapped back into her window, effectiv ely scaring the bird into flying off. Turning around with a satisfied grin on her face, she spotted a pretty pink package on her dresser. Excitedly, she ran up to it, recognizing her sister's handwriting on the card immediately. She didn't know when the gift came, but she figured Alexis must have placed it on her dresser.

Not wanting to open Mira's gift alone, she took her bag and dragged herself towards her father's room. She was still sleepy and she knew her Dad would let her snuggle with him.

Approaching his door, she carefully turned the knob and pushed it open, hoping the hinges didn't squeak too much. She had learned that trick from Mira. If you sneak in without waking him up, he won't make you leave, Mira had said. Ara, however, didn't find her father sleeping in his room. The bed was already made. Assuming her father was already awake, she moved onto plan B – Alexis. She was always up for snuggling. Yawning again, she held her gift from Mira and proceeded further down the hall until she reached Alexis's room.

Quietly, her little hand pushed on the doorknob once again where she found Alexis asleep on her stomach, holding her pillow. But what was peculiar was the lump lying next to Alexis. At the end of the bed, Ara dropped her bag and climbed on the cushioned bench at the foot of the bed and saw her father, snoring lightly. Slightly appalled that she wasn't involved to the slumber party, Ara ungracefully crawled between the two of them, snuggling her back next to her father's chest. Yawning, she exhaled a contented sigh as her father instinctively pulled her closer.

Alexis woke up about an hour later by Marvin's chatter coming from the monitor on her nightstand. Mike moved it into her room a few days after they stared sleeping in the same bed, not really asking so much as he just put it there, as it wasn't much good in a room he wasn't sleeping in. Smiling at the incessant babble with a few real words in the mix, she stretched her arms up over her head and rolled over, startled slightly as she noticed that Ara was in the bed too, as sound asleep as her father. Alexis noticed the two had similar expressions, with their mouths barely open. Growing up, Alexis always knew that Mike resembled his mother greatly. But now, having seen pictures of his mother in her youth, she could swear that Ara was the one who was growing up to be a spitting image of Ariana Watson.

Carefully, she reached an arm over and poked Mike in the shoulder. "Mike," she whispered.

"Mmhrmp," he mumbled. /

Huffing slightly, Alexis poked him a bit harder, only to receive the same response. Finally, she just went ahead and flicked the tip of his nose with her index finger and thumb, his eyes immediately popping open. Before he could say anything, she pressed a finger to his lips and nodded in Ara's direction.

"Well...shit," Mike whispered, as Ara hugged the arm he had draped around her a little bit tighter.

Alexis stifled a laugh. "Wonderful response," she whispered.

"This is bad."

"It's not that bad."

"Until she asks nine hundred questions," Mike whispered back. "I swear she got that awful trait from her mother's side of the family."

"Doubt it," Alexis teased. Ara stirred in her sleep, exhaling as she snuggled closer to Mike, while Marvin's chants of 'Dada' and 'Le-si' were becoming more incessant through the monitor. "I'll go get Marv."

Mike looked at her, slightly horrified as she climbed out of bed. "You're just going to leave me here! What am I supposed to do if she wakes up!"

"There's no if, Michael. She will wake up," Alexis quietly replied with a snort. "And when she does....we'll deal with it."

"That sounds like an awful plan, Miller. Whoever said you were good at plans was obviously mental."

"You're the one that started these little slumber parties," she reminded him, perching her hands on her hips with her voice in a hiss. "What did you think? That you would plan to secretly sleep in here forever without any of the children noticing?"

"Not forever..." Mike honestly replied, shutting his mouth abruptly, catching the unimpressed look on her face.

Rolling her eyes, Alexis walked out of the bedroom, fixing the waistband of her pajama pants as Mike watched her disappear. Sighing, he carefully scooped Ara up with his arms and cuddled her close to his chest as he propped himself up in the bed. He noticed she was getting taller, as her lanky limbs hung on either side of his upper body. Just like the day he said goodbye to Mira when she was leaving for Francesc's, noticing how she looked just a little bit more grown up than she did at the beginning of the year. And he didn't like it at all. Having Ara had made watching Mira grow up just a little bit easier in Mike's eyes. But soon Ara wouldn't be little anymore, and the world of little girls he quickly fell in love with the moment Mira came into his life would be nothing but a distant memory.

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