Babies. Wives. His wife carrying his baby. Michael still can't wrap his mind around that. Obviously, he knows you're pregnant; it becomes more obvious each month with the increase of your stomach. Yet he still can't quite believe it.

He's always cherished the idea of family since his own was messed up and complicated, so why shouldn't he want children? A happy family is everything he's ever dreamed of having. Except it's now scaring him to death.

With each dreaded month that passes by, the worse his fear becomes. Nightmares haunt him, envisioning himself becoming like his father—insane, abusive, emotionally, and mentally absent from his wife and children.

And the worst part is that he still hasn’t come to you when his anxiety and doubt about becoming a father continues to grow stronger with each passing day—especially when he thinks about the dreaded day when the baby is born.

One night, he didn’t come to bed, knowing that he wasn't able to sleep. Instead, he was in the kitchen with a cup of half-warm coffee on the counter. His hands gripped the table with a frown adorning his lips, brows furrowed together.

His mind wandered off to many of his anxious thoughts, knowing that thinking about the baby made him worried about becoming a horrible father. He knew that he shouldn’t be thinking about this now, especially when the due date was inevitably around the corner.

Though, the most important thought that clung onto him the moment you told him that you were pregnant was that he didn’t want to be like his father.

Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice you wandering into the kitchen in a sleepy haze. But when you softly called his name, he jerked his head around, his eyes filled with a sudden rush of guilt.

He should’ve known that you were going to notice that he wasn’t in bed when he promised that he would be soon—and that was hours ago, and he continued to feel both restless and drained.

"Babe," he whispered, offering a halfhearted smile. "What are you doing up? It's late. Go back to sleep."