Are You Going To Push Me

Chapter 11

I felt like this was a glimpse of what my future could look like. Showing Dimitri around my family home, introducing him to my family – even though he met them before could do that. Dimitri had said so many times that he had wished he could have met me earlier in life. This was the best I could give him.

Dimitri walked through the house with amusement, looking at every picture on the wall and asking questions as he went. He had been here for a week but hadn't really looked at much.

"How old were you here?" Dimitri asked, pointing at a picture of me. I came closer and found which one he was looking at.

"I think I was five. Maybe four?" I said. It was me and my mom out on the trail behind the house, me on her shoulders.

"I was five," I corrected, "Because I had fallen and knocked my two front teeth out a few days after my birthday," I said pointing to the missing teeth in the picture. I had done what my mother told me not to and climbed the tree. I slipped off the branch and smoked my mouth off it as we crashed down.

Dimitri chuckled and moved further down the row of pictures. He stopped at one of my baby photos and reached out, running his finger softly over the photo.

"You okay?"

Dimitri looked away and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said but his eyes still lingered over the photo. I came up and rested my hand on his shoulder.

"She looked just like that," I said quietly.

"She?"

"The baby. It was a girl. Because of how far along I was, I had to give birth to her. She had your nose and your lips though," I explained.

"You had to go through that alone?"

I shrugged. "I wasn't alone. Adrian was there."

Dimitri nodded but I knew that it upset him. "I'm sorry. I should have told you earlier."

Dimitri turned and slipped his arms around my waist, tucking me into him. "Don't be. It's hard to talk about either way. Thank you for telling me."

I nodded and kissed his shoulder. "I named her Grace. Just like you wanted," I whispered, hugging him tighter to me. I could hear his breath catch in his throat and he nodded again, let his breath stagger out. I hadn't told anyone her name. Not Adrian, not Lissa, nobody. I didn't breathe her name to anyone, and I hadn't wanted to because it would make everything real.

"Lissa said that you had a box at her house with things about the baby. She said she packed it," Dimitri said into my hair. I nodded and pulled back, cupping his cheeks.

"Yeah. Pictures and stuff like that. We can through it together," I whispered, stroking his cheeks with my thumbs. Dimitri gave me a soft look and squeezed my wrists. I gave him a small smiled and stretched up on my toes to press my lips to his, squealing lightly against his lips when his hands slipped from my and latched onto my waist, pulling me flushed against him.

"You have no idea how happy I am that you're back," Dimitri said against my lips, fisting my shirt in his hands. I hummed in agreeance as he carefully walked me back into the wall, hands now slipped under the bottom of my shirt.

"You know, I don't think I agree with this much public display."

Dimitri and I tore our lips away from each other, both turning to find my mother standing at top of the stairs.

"Sorry, Mom," I said with a blush, glancing up at Dimitri with a smirk.

"It's fine, just don't need to see it," she said turning and heading down the stairs, "Lissa and Christian are here."