Page 59 of Unbreak Me

"I want to hold one in my arms again, Jan. So much. My own! I want to be a dad!"

I opened my eyes to see his expression, and our gazes locked. His golden irises glowed with warmth.

"I know it, Day. And I’d love that too. We’ll try for a baby during your first heat here. Okay?"

A loud, desperate exhale tore from my lungs. It felt like another burden had lifted from my shoulders. Jan was on board!

Spontaneously, I put my hands on his glands, instinctively touching them, making small strokes over.

"I’ll… I’ll stop smoking, Jan! I want to be healthy for the baby," I blurted out, feeling a surge of powerful emotions—hope and optimism among them.

Jan smiled gently, his hands still cradling my face. "I trust you. You’ve got so much experience, and I know you’ll take good care of yourself and the baby."

"I will! I’ll never smoke again. I only did it because of the stress—I had so much of it…"

"I can imagine. But now, I’ll do everything I can to take that burden off you. You deserve to relax and feel at peace. Just focus on fulfilling your dream."

I opened my mouth to respond, but a sudden knock at the door made Jan flinch slightly.

With a furrowed brow, he stood up and headed to the door. The lack of his touch, his hands on my face, felt wrong. I missed it the moment he stepped back.

Before opening the door, Jan peeked through the small glass pane near the top to see who was standing on the front porch. It was Uncle Frank.

Even though I hadn’t warmed up to him initially, he’d turned out to be a lot more decent than I first thought.

Though, he kinda shortened our emotional moment here, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see him. I would’ve preferred Jan back at my side, gently touching me, continuing to thaw my soul.

"Hey, hey, how’s it going?" he called from the doorway.

Max and Buddy jumped happily around him as he stepped inside, shook hands with Jan, and then walked toward me.

Thankfully, he only offered his hand for a shake—no awkward bear hugs, which I wasn’t ready for with strangers.

His eyes lingered on my face for a moment. I must’ve looked a bit swollen from crying.

"How are you feeling?"

"I’m good, thanks…" I said quickly, avoiding his gaze as I went back to my seat.

Frank glanced at Jan. "So, any updates on that thing we talked about?"

Jan sighed and rolled his eyes just enough for me to catch it.

"Yeah, you could say things moved along," he said. "I sent some emails with the footage attached, and a few hours later—Day’s account got a nice little deposit."

Frank’s eyes flicked to me. "Jan didn’t share the details, Day, and I didn’t pry. He just mentioned there was something important on that footage that needed to be secured. I made sure the file was accessed quietly."

"Thank you," I said with a small smile. "I really appreciate your help."

Jan jumped in. "Actually, Uncle, I’ve been meaning to ask—how did you even get your hands on that disk in the first place? Was it safe?"

Frank chuckled. "Oh, it wasn’t some covert operation, if that’s what you’re thinking. A couple of years ago, during some server room expansion, a batch of backup disks got shuffled over to IT. They were supposed to wipe them, but things got chaotic, and one of the guards stashed the extras in the IT closet. They just forgot about them! A small miracle, really."

Jan raised an eyebrow. "Could it come back to bite you or the office?"

Frank waved it off. "Nah, nothing to worry about. Most of the footage was from public areas—hallways, entrances, that kind of thing. Heck, some of those cameras stream live on the city website anyway. No sensitive info there."

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

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