Mom, Don't Cry! Here comes a new Daddy! novel Chapter 116

Chapter 106

before Monday.

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I’m now Ethan’s Creative Director at Hale Global, which is a reality I still find surreal, and Sarah is thorough to the point of being relentless.

I leave the phone in my pocket.

Jake is now coaching Ethan on the correct way to pour batter. He is very specific about the size of the circle. Ethan listens with complete seriousness, nodding at the right intervals, and something about the image – this man who runs a billion-dollar company being corrected on pancake diameter by a six-year-old in an apron – makes me want to laugh.

I watch them from the doorway because I don’t want to go in yet. I want to keep looking at this for another minute. Just this – the ordinary Sunday morning mess of it, Ethan’s shoulders relaxed in a way I’ve never once seen at a board meeting, Jaké talking with one of hand on his waist, the other waving the spatula at Ethan like a school headmaster scolding an unteachable student. Batter is splattering everywhere, but neither of the two notice.

“Mom!” Jake turns to me and immediately redirects his coaching. “Tell him the first one is always a sacrifice. You always throw away the first one.”

“The first one is always a sacrifice,” I confirm.

Ethan looks at me over Jake’s head. “Is that actually a rule or are you two just pulling my leg?”

“It’s the only rule that matters.”

He holds my gaze for a moment, amusement flickering in his eyes, and then Jake is pulling at his arm again and the moment passes and we all go back to the pancakes.

The morning eats itself up the way good mornings do too fast, without you noticing until it’s already afternoon and the dishes are done. Jake has migrated to the living room floor with his sketchbook and his headphones, completely absorbed in his drawing, his feet swaying in the air behind him.

Ethan is at the kitchen table with his laptop. And I’m on the couch with the Hartwell brief I finally retrieved from my sss, making notes in the margins. The house is quiet, everyone doing their own thing, and yet the silence is comfortable enough not to need conversation to

fill it.

At some point Ethan looks up and says, “You marked page six.”

“Page six has a problem.”

“What problem?”

Chapter 109

“The brand voice is inconsistent from the third paragraph. Reads like two different people wrote it and didn’t talk to each other.”

He looks at his own copy. Reads it. Nods once, the precise nod of someone who has just had a thing confirmed rather than discovered. “Fix it.”

“I was going to.”

“I know.” He goes back to his screen.

I go back to my notes.

Jake goes to bed at nine, which takes forty-five minutes of negotiation and two separate promises about tomorrow. When I come back downstairs, Ethan is by the window with his jacket on.

“Come up to the roof,” he says.

“But it’s windy,” I frown.

“I know.”

“It’s cold.”

“Bring a jacket.”

Fine then. I guess I’ll just get a jacket.

The roof is not romantic in the conventional sense. There are no candles, no flowers, no carefully arranged anything. There’s a low concrete wall around the edge, a couple of cans someone must’ve tossed over from the building next door and the city spread out below us in every direction – all light and noise and the specific energy of a Sunday night winding down.

Ethan has his hands in his pockets and he’s looking at the skyline, and I know him well enough now to recognize when he’s about to surprise me.

So I wait.

Below us, a taxi horn goes off. Someone laughing on the street reaching our ears.

Then Ethan turns to look at me, and I see it immediately: he’s nervous.

He doesn’t show, and tries to maintain his cold and serious CEO image. But I know how to read every shift in his expression. And now, his emotions are an open book for me.

He reaches into his jacket pocket.

Chapter 105

My heart does a leap.

The box is small. Dark blue. He doesn’t open it with any ceremony – just holds it in his palm and opens the lid the way you’d open an ordinary box. Inside it lays a ring. Simple. Clean. The kind of thing chosen by someone who was paying attention.

“I had a speech,” Ethan says.

I wait.

“I’ve been over it a number of times.” A pause. “It was a good speech.”

“What happened to it?”

“You’re looking at me like that, and now I can’t remember any of it.”

I press my lips together, suppressing the urge to laugh.

He exhales. Looks at the ring, then at me, and says: “Marry me, Sabrina.”

Violet Moon

**

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Chapter 106

Chapter 106

(Sabrina’s POV)

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Three words. No preamble. No carefully constructed sentence. Just that, delivered in a straightforward manner.

I say yes, before he can get another syllable out.

I had no reason to say no. And to be honest, I’ve been waiting for this day from the time he proposed to me at that dinner months ago.

The tension leaves his shoulders all at once. He slides the ring onto my finger and it fits, which shouldn’t surprise me but somehow does, and I look at it on my hand against the city

lights.

“I rehearsed more,” he says.

“I don’t need more.”

“I know.” But he looks almost relieved, which makes me love him a specific unbearable amount right now.

I lean into him and he folds his arm around me and we stand there looking at the city that doesn’t care about us at all, the wind sharp and cold off the water, the ring still warm from his pocket.

“When are you ready to walk down the aisle?”

“Hmm…I’ll have to consult with Soph. She’ll want to make into a livestream with Jake.”

“Jake will want to make into a livestream.” He agrees.

“We should tell him ourselves first. Tomorrow morning, before he finds out from Sophia.”

“He’s going to negotiate for a dog again.”

“He’s going to negotiate for a dog again.”

(Jake’s POV)

I know something is up.

I can tell by the quiet.

Our apartment on a normal Monday morning sounds like this: Mom’s coffee maker, the news

on low, her heels on the kitchen floor when she goes back and forth between the counter and the table. Sometimes Etheris voice on a call from the living room if he came over saty, which

he does a lot now

But that’s the normal morning noise

This morning there’s no news. No heels. No call

Just quiet, and the smell of coffee, and two people sitting very still at the kitche

I stop on the third step from the bottom and look at them through the ra

Mom has both hands around her mug, Ethan is sitting across from her with his jacket on even though we’re inside, which means he came over early and hasn’t fully settled yet.

They’re not talking. They’re just sitting there, stealing peeks at each other when they think the other isn’t looking, with these weird smiles on their faces.

I come down the last three steps and pull out my chair and sit down like I don’t notice anything. Mom pours me a glass of orange juice without being asked. Ethan slides the plate of toast toward me. I take a piece.

They look at each other.

I eat my toast.

Mom says, “Jake, we have something to tell you.”

I already know. I figured it out last night.

Here is what I observed: Ethan checked his jacket pocket eleven times between dinner and when I went to bed. I counted. The first few times I thought maybe his phone, but he kept checking the same pocket and his phone was on the counter the whole time.

And when I said goodnight, he was standing by the window looking at the city, and he had that face he gets before a big meeting – the one where he’s already decided what he’s going to do but he’s still running it in his head one more time.

Also I’m six. Not a baby. I know what checking a jacket pocket means.

But I let Mom finish.

She tells me Ethan asked her to marry him last night. On the roof. She says it like she’s not sure how I would take it, like she’s handing me something fragile and waiting to see if I drop

I put down my toast and look at Ethan. “Did you practice what you were going to say?”

* Chapter 106

He blinks once. “I had a speech prepared.”

“What happened to it?”

“I forgot it.”

“Did you at least remember the important part?”

“The important part?”

“The question.”

Something moves in his expression. “Yes. I remembered that.”

“Okay.” I turn to Mom. “Let me see the ring.”

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Til Ethan walks down the aisle to take mommy, I’m still the man of the house. I need to make sure my mommy doesn’t get cheated.

Mommy holds out her hand. I lean forward and look at it properly. It’s not big and flashy like the rings in TVs. It’s nice and pretty, looks expensive too, and it sits on her finger like it was made for it, which means the man is serious. I nod in approval. Mr. Shiny Shoe Protector is on the right track. He doesn’t do things for show. He does them because he means them.

That’s different from what bad dad used to do.

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