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Annie lay on her back, watching the ceiling fan spin round and round, listening to DB croon and burble on his perch in the corner when Finnick came back to bed. Maggie had awakened them in the middle of the night, crying, and he had pushed Annie back down when she’d started to go to her. “I’ve got her,” he’d whispered. “You need your rest.”
The mattress dipped under his weight and Annie’s body canted toward him, just a little. The bed frame creaked as he shifted beside her, sliding toward the foot of the bed, pulling the sheets taut. Lifting her head from the pillow, she was just about to ask him what he was doing when he slipped one hand under her thin t-shirt, splaying it over her stomach; his palm was warm against her bare skin.
He kissed her enormous belly and whispered, “How you doin’ in there, little man? You’re not keepin’ mama awake, are you?”
Annie laughed, dragging her fingers through his tangled curls. “How do you know it’s a boy?”
“I don’t.” Moving his hand out from under her shirt, he pulled her a little closer but still didn’t move back up the bed to his pillow. “Maggie thinks he is, though.”
“Maggie’s barely two. What does she know?”
Finnick blew lightly on her stomach, making her shiver before resting his cheek there. “Pretty much everything, if you ask her.” He blew on her stomach again, this time with his lips against her skin. tickling, the sound loud enough it should have awakened their daughter again. “You just take whatever your big sister tells you with a grain of salt, little man. She likes to tell stories.”
“Maggie the Magnificent,” DB added from his perch.
Laughing again, Annie told the bird, “Don’t wake the baby.” Her husband, she asked, “Who taught him that?”
“Your daughter.” He blew on her stomach again. The baby kicked and Annie gasped even as she giggled at the thought of her little girl teaching the Macaw to call her “Maggie the Magnificent.”
Finnick stroked her belly, right where the baby had kicked her and, by extension, his father, whose head had been resting there. “Watch it, boy. Kicking your parents will not be tolerated in this house.”
As if to make a point, the baby kicked her again. “Ow. I don’t know, Finnick,” she began as he finally pushed himself back up so that their heads were together on the pillows. “I think this baby is another girl and we’re going to have to call her Johanna.”