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Sonny’s perched on the edge of his bed, hands rubbing at the back of his neck as his wife paces in front of him. “Amanda, please just come sit down.”
He can’t even tell if Amanda hears the words—her footsteps don’t even falter before the next words fall out of her mouth, tension still laced through them. “Why hasn’t he called yet, Dominick? She’s been there for three hours.”
“Not hearing is probably a good thing, hon,” he says, “You know Al would call the first minute something was wrong.”
“But I texted him—” she glances at the phone she’s had her knuckles tight around for the last hour—“thirty minutes ago and he hasn’t said anything yet.”
“They probably just put on a movie or something, which is what we can do if you come sit down.”
“Yeah, but Liv texted me about Jesse right away,” she counters, biting her lip as she looks at him.
“No one’s gonna beat Liv in the babysitter department, Amanda. I’m sure she’s fine. Just come sit down.”
“I’m sorry, Dominick,” she says, carding a shaky hand through her hair. “This is our first night alone since the wedding and I’m being—”
“A worried mom,” he says gently, and the tension falls out of her face as she walks toward him. “You know I love that about you.”
She smiles slightly before sitting next to him, arms wrapping around his torso and head dropping to his shoulder. “It’s just—it’s been six months since she’s seen him, I thought we might finally be over him pretending to be a father.”
“I know,” he murmurs, gently resting his chin on top of her head. There’s so much he could say—how the sight of Billie trailing behind Al, doubtful look on her face and tiny backpack slung over her shoulder, twisted something deep inside him, how there’s a weight in his chest that’s making his breathing harder too—but he can feel the guilt coursing through her in through the tension of her muscles leaned against him, and he settles for lightly tracing patterns on her arm.
“You want to talk to Langan about getting his rights terminated?”
“I don’t want her to suffer through a long legal battle. Lord knows we can’t afford the lawyers Al can,” she sighs, and he’d fight her on it—tell her all about the research he started doing when her panic-laced voice first told him that Al was asking for an overnight visit, the phone call to a law school buddy he already has in—but her breathing is still coming too fast, and there’s hot tears collecting on his shirt, so he just focuses on holding her steady, pressing light kisses to her hair and telling her it’s going to be okay.
“I just wish she was—” and she tenses even more below him, the rest of the words dying in the air between them.
He knows what they were going to be, can hear them as plainly as if she yelled them in his ear, because they’ve raced through his mind countless times, never quite tearing through his heart as sharply as they did the day he met his youngest goddaughter for the first time.
“I know,” he whispers, at the same time her voice finds itself again with a soft “That’s not fair to you, I’m sorry.”
“I do too,” he whispers as he runs a hand gently over her hair, “But if she was, she wouldn’t be her. And I love her how she is.”
***
They’ve fallen into an uneasy sleep—her hands tightly gripping his shirt, his arm resting against the small of her back, both of them jolting back awake every time Frannie adjusts in her sleep—when her phone starts buzzing, the panic that flashes in her eyes as she picks it up telling him exactly who’s on the other end.
Amanda’s pinching the bridge of her nose before she even starts talking, and the knot in Sonny’s stomach grows when he hears the edge in her voice. “Al, I told you this would happen—”
“There’s nothing you can do, you just have to wait it—” Her face creases, lips folding into a straight line.
“Yeah, fine. See you in twenty.” She curses as she presses the end call button, dropping the phone on the bed between them. “He’s bringing her back.”
“What? It’s—” Sonny glances at his own phone “—two in the morning. Did she—”
“Another night terror, yeah,” she sighs, throwing the blankets off and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “I told him, Dominick. I told him this would happen and there was nothing he could do about it and he’s still bringing her back because ‘Bethany can’t sleep.’”
The knot in Sonny’s stomach turns to unbridled rage then, heat flushing through him at the thought that any father could put his twenty-five year old girlfriend above his two-year-old—rage he tries to swallow as he wraps a gentle arm around Amanda’s back, but that comes out a little anyway. “Bastard.”
“Yeah, he is.”
***
Sonny hears Billie, her light whimpers floating down the apartment complex hallway, before Al even makes it to the door, and he rises from his spot next to Amanda, heading for the hallway as they agreed—“He’s just going to try to pick a fight with you and Billie doesn’t need that”—with a soft smile and an “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
But his heart’s racing too loudly, anxiety dancing through him too quickly, to make it back to their bedroom, and so he settles for half-leaning against the wall just out of sight, hands running through his hair as he tries to make out the faint voices in the living room.
“—didn’t stop the whole way here—” Al is grumbling, voice thick.
“I told you it wouldn’t, Al,” he can hear his wife hiss, a half second passing between that and the light “Hey baby," that follows.
There’s a shuffling he assumes is Al passing over her bags, a thump and a giggle he recognizes as Frannie greeting his youngest goddaughter, and he’s breathing easier because it’s almost over, when Billie’s voice, quiet and exhausted, breaks through.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“I’m right here, Billie,” Al says, “Daddy has to go bye-bye.”
Sonny’s biting his lip, trying to stifle the retort that’s rising in his throat, when Billie’s next words cut across, the air leaving his chest entirely.
“No, Daddy Sonny.” There’s no extra emotion in the way she says it, just the matter-of-fact bluntness of a toddler, but it’s still shaking the entire foundation around him, and his knees nearly give out against the wall.
His blood is rushing so loudly in his ears that he nearly misses Al’s “Oh, so that’s how it is, huh?” but is brought back by the edge in Amanda’s voice, the curt way she says “not in front of her, Al.”
“No, I think we should—”
“Dominick,” Amanda’s voice is sharp with barely concealed anger, “Can you come get Billie and put her to bed?”
It’s the panic in the way she says it that makes Sonny’s legs regain feeling, getting him to the living room, where the sight of Billie’s tear-stained face peeking out from where her arms are wrapped around Amanda’s knees makes his heart twist even further.
“Daddy!” she says, smile breaking as she releases her mother and makes her way to him.
Sonny knows Al’s still there, can feel the heat radiating from him as he lifts Billie in his arms, but none of that matters, because the lightness that’s floating through him as he does, equilibrium restored to his world, doesn’t leave room for anything but the small hands clutching his shirt, the head that’s burying itself in his neck with a soft “I missed you, Daddy” that makes his heart fuller than he ever thought possible.
“Hey baby,” he whispers in her ear, “welcome home.”
***
It’s twenty minutes before he sees Amanda again, after he’s tucked Billie in with forehead kisses and a promise that he’ll be right down the hallway if she needs anything, walking out of her room with slightly shaky legs.
She’s walking back in the front door, face pink as she leans against it. “I hate him,” she whispers, eyes locking on his, the despondent way she says it like a knife to his heart.
Neither of them bring it up at first, Sonny too focused on wrapping his arms around Amanda until her breathing evens against him and both of them too focused on watching Billie sleep when they pause at the entrance to her door, but when they make it back to bed, exhausted but too awake to sleep, he tentatively broaches it.
“You know I didn’t tell her to say that, right? I’m sorry if I—”
The weight of her hand wrapping around his, the earnestness written in her face as her eyes lock on his, stops him. “Please don’t apologize for being better than him.”
“But I didn’t mean to make him angry—”
“She called you Daddy because that’s who you are.” Every objection he can think of dies in his throat at the gentle way she says it as she runs a thumb along the back of his palm. “She knows who’s there for her, and it’s not the man who couldn’t even handle one night with her.”
There’s more to talk about—the call they need to make to Langan made more urgent by the I don’t think I can do this anymore text Al sends, what they’ll say to Jesse—but for now, the weight of Amanda’s hand in his and the gentle kiss she presses on his lips, her “thank you for loving her” like honey in his ears, is enough to lull them back to sleep.
Even when that sleep’s broken far too early the next morning, the scene that greets Sonny Carisi—Billie’s cheeks mere inches from his own, a whispered “pancakes?” ending the last hopes he had to return to his dream—the light that’s dancing in Amanda’s eyes when he lifts Billie up with an “I think we can do that” and kisses to her stomach that make her burst into giggles makes every second worth it.
“Stay home today, Daddy?” Billie asks, smile wide as he sits her on the bed.
“Yeah, baby, I think you can.”