Baby Book
by SexisFan

Chapter 13

Sonny settled on the edge of the bed and looked down at Alexis, stretched out on her side, nursing their daughter. Alexis had been up here all afternoon - napping, as far as Sonny had known. Yet it was obvious to him, as he watched her eyes flutter shut, that she hadn't gotten any sleep. Instead, she had apparently been rummaging around in an old shoebox, a box that Sonny lifted up and set on his lap before beginning an examination of the items inside.

The contents were a hodge podge of what appeared to be little more than junk - or trash. There was a stained old rag still bearing the faint scent of motor oil. And a salt shaker, missing the matching piece for pepper. Then there was a scrap of paper, an old receipt from. . .the pharmacy. Sonny read the list of items purchased. Some chips. Shampoo. A magazine. And. . .a home pregnancy test.

His mind flashed back to a day in the hallway of the Harborview Towers, when he'd come home to find Alexis outside her penthouse, struggling again to open the sticky lock on her front door. He'd offered to help her get the door opened, but she'd tried to refuse his help. Sonny remembered how it had pained him to have her so eager to get away from him. She was nervous. Jumpy. In fact, she was so jumpy that she dropped her purse. . .and her bag from the pharmacy.

The pregnancy test. That was probably the very same day she'd bought the test, the day she'd discovered that she was carrying his child.

He'd tried to help her gather her things from the floor, but she'd beaten him to it or he might have seen the test then. . .and he would have known. Instead, he believed her explanation for her dizziness and her lack of color. He bought the story that she had a bug of some kind. He hadn't even suspected a pregnancy. Of course, he's been more than a little distracted with trying to make his ill-fated relationship with Carly work.

Sonny shuddered and pushed thoughts of Carly from his mind. That chapter of his life was closed, now. It was past.

Sonny laid the pharmacy receipt back in the box and picked up a crumpled ball of paper that looked rather familiar. Spreading it out to get a good look at it, he realized that this was the letter Alexis had sent to his warehouse, informing him that she was moving out of her penthouse.

Sonny recalled the day he came back into town from a business trip. He'd spent a week in Puerto Rico trying to keep a lid on things that had threatened to get heated over there. His days had been filled with negotiations and dealings. His nights. . .his nights had been long and sleepless. He'd found that as soon as the sun started to set each day, his thoughts turned to the woman who'd been with him for his last trip to the island. Alexis. No matter where he went or what he did, she followed him in his memories. The light scent of gardenias on the breeze reminded him of her. The music floating up from the dance floor below his suite reminded him of her. The happy couples in the casino reminded him that she was back in Port Charles, when last trip she'd been at his side at the tables.

He'd come back from the trip exhausted, his mood sour. The one thing that gave him hope for lightening his heart was his plan for making some kind of excuse to go next door and see Alexis. If he made it over there around dinner time, he might even be able to wrangle a meal with her. It had been so long since they'd spent any time together, and after living with the ghosts of Puerto Rico for a week, he wanted time with Alexis more than anything else.

Then he opened that letter. Not that it was much of a letter, just a few terse lines informing him that she was vacating the penthouse immediately. Vacating immediately. The words were like a punch in the gut, taking his breath away. The events that followed were a little fuzzy in his memory. He knew that he'd summoned Benny and ordered him to find out where Alexis had moved. He knew he'd thrown back a few drinks while waiting. He knew he'd pretended to not be in when Carly called looking to see if he'd gotten back into town yet.

And then he was at Alexis' little house. He'd shown up in the doorway of the open front door, catching Alexis off guard with his presence. Kristina had been there. And Jason. It was Jason that Sonny remembered most clearly. Jason, stripped to the waist and dripping with water, coming down the stairs in Alexis' new home.

Sonny's shock had turned into a jealous anger as he began to imagine what might have been going on between Alexis and Jason since the night he'd spied them on the pier. Sonny was furious at the thought that Jason had been here with Alexis while Sonny had been thinking of her unceasingly in Puerto Rico. He had no right to be jealous, a little voice in the back of his mind told him. But that didn't chase away the green-eyed monster.

Jason and Kristina had made quick exits from the house that day, leaving Sonny and Alexis alone. Maybe that hadn't been the best thing, though. Sonny's pain and anger, fueled by his jealousy, had spewed all over Alexis. He'd been ugly and unfair, and he knew it even as his words continued to fall from his lips. He'd dropped some innuendo about her and Jason, then stormed out promising her plenty of room to 'breathe' without him to interfere.

And even while he said it, he knew he wouldn't be able to do it. . .at least not for long. He'd held out for a week, almost two. And then he crumbled, apologizing for his outburst with a box of gardenias delivered to her door. It had been a gesture of peace that he'd hoped Alexis would accept. He didn't know if the flowers would mean to her what they meant to him, if they would remind her of their time in Puerto Rico and the closeness that they shared back then. But he had hoped that she would.

Laying the crumpled letter aside, Sonny peered into the box, wondering if by any chance. . .

He lifted a small plastic storage container from among the items in the shoebox. Carefully, he pulled off the lid, releasing the sweet scent of gardenia into the air as he did so. Sonny smiled to himself. She had. She'd kept a single blossom as a memento of his gift. In fact. . .the receipt, the letter, the gardenia. . .the whole box must be mementos Alexis had tucked away.

His interest piqued even more, Sonny set aside the gardenia and reached back into the box to examine the contents more closely.

There was the disaster of a mangled potato peeler that had been so useless the night he'd found Alexis finishing up her first cooking lesson, a meat loaf. He'd stepped in to teach her how to make mashed potatoes. And then he'd shared the first of many quiet dinners with her at her home. A door had opened that night, a door he came to when he learned the truth about Carly and didn't have another soul to turn to.

Sonny lifted a square of wallpaper from the box. This was from that night, the night he'd shown up at her door, soaked in rain, shattered by the realization that he'd been turning himself inside out in order to create a life with Carly that had been an illusion. He'd been denying his heart, trying to do the right thing out of a sense of duty. And the whole time, she had been lying to him.

Finding out had cut him like a knife. Yet it had also set him free in a strange sort of way. Not only free from the masquerade that had been his sham of a life with Carly, but freed to a new future. That hope was offered to him that very same night.

Fingering the square of wallpaper, Sonny ran his thumb over the pastel rocking horse embossed on its surface. He'd asked to spend the night at Alexis'. She'd directed him to the guest room. He'd wanted to take a shower, but once inside the spray realized that there was no shampoo in the guest bath. Knowing there would surely be some in Alexis' bathroom, he'd wrapped a towel around his waist and set off to find her room.

Opening the door closest to the bathroom, he'd found not Alexis' bedroom but a tiny room, bare save for a white rocker, a lamp with a dim night light bulb, and a card table laden with sample books. Curious, Sonny had wandered over to the table. Each book was opened to samples of wallpaper. Children's wallpaper. Infant themes. Nursery themes. On the rocker there lay a note pad, the beginnings of a letter inscribed there in Alexis' hand.

Dear Sonny - I've tried so hard to find the best way to tell you this. I'm still not sure if this is it. . .

Alexis was having his child. With that knowledge, as quickly as his present life had been destroyed earlier in the evening, a new future was opened up to him.

Sonny slipped the scrap of wallpaper back into the box, trading it for the white envelope that held the photograph from his daughter's first ultrasound. He remembered so vividly the experience of watching the screen while the ultrasound technician scanned Alexis' abdomen. Sonny had held his breath, waiting for any sign from the technician that something might be wrong. But she'd simply gone through her task, taking measurements and clicking still photographs of the examination. Everything was normal. No problems evident either from the ultrasound or the results of the amniocentesis. He and Alexis could expect a healthy baby girl.

The verdict, and his great joy, hadn't done a thing to calm the overwhelming fear he continued to feel as well. Somewhere in the back of his mind lay the nagging thought that he was cursed. It hadn't been very long after the first ultrasound that he'd lost his son with Carly.

A curse. He couldn't possibly tell Alexis that he feared a curse would cost them their child. He'd have sounded insane. And yet, when he'd come back to Alexis' house later that night and asked if he could stay with her - if he could hold her and his child that night - she seemed to understand without explanation.

Sonny slid his gaze from the photograph to the infant suckling contentedly at her mother's breast. His daughter was here now. She was healthy, happy and more beautiful than he could have imagined. Still, there was that little voice whispering to him that it might only be a matter of time before the curse took her from him.

Swallowing back his fear, Sonny returned the photograph to the envelope and the envelope to the shoebox. His eye next caught the flat wooden form of a paint stirrer, caked in pale pink enamel. A memento of the night they'd begun painting the nursery. . .the night he'd first felt his daughter's movements. . .the night he and Alexis had joined together in complete intimacy for the first time since that night he'd discovered that she was carrying his child. . .the night that ushered in a new pattern to their lives, one which included increasingly frequent nights spent joined together.

Then there was the little plastic bag of popcorn, a length of the popcorn garland salvaged from their - Alexis' - tree that Christmas. Hell, though. It had been their tree for all intents and purposes. Their lives had so gradually become one, or almost one, by that point. And Sonny had finally, in spite of his fear, admitted to himself that he loved Alexis. He knew it was true, and could no longer deny it to himself, when he found himself voluntarily planning a Thanksgiving celebration that included Ned and AJ. Alexis' influence was changing him, helping him to make choices he'd never considered before, helping him to have the courage to explore parts of himself he'd kept shut down. And there was only way she could manage that. Not with her well thought out arguments. Not with her reason. Not with charm or guile. The reason that she could exert such influence over his heart was. . .he loved her. He loved her, and he wanted to be the man that she could love in return.

Sonny raised his eyes to steal a glance at Alexis as she dozed next to their daughter. Yes, he loved her. He'd admitted it to himself. He just hadn't told her yet.

Sonny sighed and turned his attention back to the few remaining items in Alexis' collection of memories. There, at the bottom of the box, sat a smooth, cool piece of sea glass, obviously one of Alexis' finds from her walks along the strip of Puerto Rican beach they'd visited before Christmas. Their trip had been a dream, prefect in every way. And that had been the problem.

Sonny turned the sea-polished piece of glass over and over in his palm as he remembered the night he'd found Alexis alone on the beach, staring out over the moonlit sea as tears streaked down her face. Sonny had managed to do what he'd wanted to, he'd taken Alexis away from their real lives and had given her a taste of perfection. Only the view back toward Port Charles, when taken from Paradise, had driven home the enormity of the one seemingly insurmountable obstacle to them creating a family together. . .Sonny's life in the mob.

It was that reality that kept them in limbo even now. It was that reality that kept him from telling Alexis that he loved her. It was bad enough that the unavoidable reality his life might cost her a full time father for her child. It would be even worse if she knew that this reality had also cost her a man who loved her as well.

With a heavy heart, Sonny dropped the piece of sea glass back into the box and lifted out the last un-inspected item. A shoelace. He didn't need to ask whose it was. He could still recall the surprise on Johnny's face when Sonny had ordered him to surrender his shoe laces. That seemed to be the moment when Johnny had realized that he and Sonny were actually going to be delivering Alexis' baby by themselves, stranded without power in the lake house in the middle of a blizzard.

As an obstetrical team, Sonny and Johnny had started out a bit rocky, which hadn't calmed Alexis one little bit. But once the shock of their predicament had eased and the two men had come to terms with what was required of them that night, they'd been able to rise to the occasion.

Alexis had been a trooper the entire time. . .even if her vocabulary did get a bit more colorful than it usually was. She surely wasn't using her courtroom manner that night.

Sonny closed his fist around the length of shoe lace and chuckled as he recalled the chaos of that night. . .followed by the extraordinary joy and relief that followed when their daughter entered the world loud and healthy.

Sonny opened his hand and let the shoe lace fall into the box. After setting the box aside on the floor beside the bed, he stretched out opposite Alexis, their newborn daughter nestled between them.

Sonny watched in awe as the dozing infant roused momentarily to work her tiny mouth against her mother's breast. One miniature hand lay curled against the baby's own cheek, the other lay against Alexis' breast.

Sonny lowered his head to his daughter's and breathed deeply of the beautiful scent of newborn skin with a hint of baby powder. His lips brushed the soft ebony waves crowning her perfectly shaped head. She was such a miracle, and he loved her more than he ever imagined loving anyone or anything.

Lifting his eyes to gaze at the soft contours of Alexis' face, Sonny realized that the birth of his daughter had opened up parts of his heart he'd never known before. Whatever love he'd felt for anyone before in his life - and he was certain that he'd loved before, to the best of his ability - it was nothing compared to the love he was now able to feel for Alexis and the child they'd created together.

Sonny dipped his head to drop a gentle kiss on the baby's head. Then, placing his head on the pillow above where she lay, he rested his forehead against Alexis' as she slept. Reaching across their slumbering child, he slipped his arm around Alexis' waist.

There was nothing, nothing, that Sonny wanted more than to find some way to make his life safe for the woman and the child who now so completely held his heart. He did not, could not, live without them. Somehow, they had to be together, and Alexis and his daughter had to be safe.

He didn't know how he would do it, but he had to find a way. There was just no longer any other option.

chapter 14