The weeks started to roll by for April as she neared six months into her pregnancy. She was so happy and blossoming with this baby, who was her rainbow after the storm. After the devastating loss of her son, she had gone down a very dark path and hadn't known how to pull herself out of it or ask for help. The only thing she had known to do was run away and throw everything she had into something that was doing good, so she had run to Jordan. It had healed a part of her, but there had been another part that never healed because she hadn't healed with Jackson. Even though she had said, in one of their many arguments, that the thing she had needed wasn't him…that had been a lie. She had needed him. But didn't know then how to ask for the help she needed because she didn't know what she needed from him.

She had been twenty-four weeks when she delivered Samuel, so as she approached that milestone in this pregnancy, her anxiety crept up on her and caused her to have some small setbacks to the recovery she had fought so hard for. Nightmares that she had not had in a while started to recur and she woke up in the middle of the night, screaming for her son. That had prompted her to reach out to Jackson and ask him to stay with her for a couple of nights…something she had not done since she signed the papers for their divorce four months ago. But he didn't say no.

Initially, he had slept on the couch and she had stayed in her bed, but when she woke him in the middle of the night with a nightmare, he had moved to the bed with her. She knew that she shouldn't let him, but it was comforting to have him there. Even if they weren't married, he had been her best friend and her husband at one point, so she had missed his embrace and the comfort it brought. And when he held her, the nightmares stopped.

"Jackson, I'm making some dinner…are you hungry?" she called from the kitchen.

"Yeah, need any help?" he asked as he came in from the living room.

She smiled a little. "Only if you want to help, then I don't mind at all. I'm making grilled chicken and vegetables…maybe some mashed potatoes since baby wants them."

Her cravings had been mostly vegetables and some starches lately, but that wasn't so bad since they were good for the baby's growth and development. She also craved whipped cream with strawberries, but that was something else entirely.

"I can make the potatoes…you still like them with butter and a little sea salt?"

"You remembered…" she said, looking over at him with a smile.

Jackson smiled and went to get the potatoes that were already peeled and cut. He started a pot of boiling water before adding them in to cook. While he was doing that, April prepared the chicken to go into the oven and added the vegetables to the foil packets with the chicken so they would cook together. She had put in zucchini and squash as well as some onions and bell peppers for Jackson. Cooking in the kitchen with Jackson felt so natural to April and she forgot momentarily that they were divorced as she hummed softly and swayed to the music from her phone. The baby was kicking rhythmically with the music, making her smile.

The first kicks she felt with this baby were around eighteen weeks, which scared the living hell out of her because Samuel…he hadn't kicked. Not like that. And she began to panic that something was wrong with her unborn child until Arizona was able to calm her fears with an ultrasound that confirmed her baby was healthy and normal. Now she welcomed that feeling with joy and loved Jackson's reactions to their baby kicking and rolling around in her belly.

Dinner took another forty minutes to finish, but when they were done cooking, she and Jackson sat down to a meal together. This had become almost a nightly routine for them in the last few days since Jackson had come to stay with her. And she had missed it.

"How was your day?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"Pretty good, but we did have a rough day on the burn unit," Jackson explained. "We had a patient come in with severe acid burns...a high school chemistry accident."

"I remember that case from the emergency room," she replied, knowing that it had been awful. She had to excuse herself because of the smell alone, running to the bathroom to throw up for the first time since the end of her first trimester.

"Poor kid…there's going to be some scarring, but I'm hoping to do skin grafts to help with that and prevent further damage," he added.

"You're really good at those though…you do amazing work with grafts and repair," she said, smiling at him.

Jackson was an amazing doctor and she admired the skill that he had. He had calm and steady hands in the operating room, just as he had calm and steady hands with her. When they were just friends, he was the one who calmed her and was able to remind her that she was a good person. And the night she gave him her virginity, he was gentle and always made sure she was comfortable with what they were doing. There was no one else in the world that April had felt safer with than Jackson, even if they were now divorced and trying to remain as civil as possible.

Later that night, April was in the bathroom brushing her teeth for bed. Jackson was already in the room, laying down in bed reading some article he had brought up about new techniques for grafting skin. She rinsed out her mouth and put away her toothbrush before coming in and settling in on her side of the bed. The baby began to wiggle around and kick, making her smile.

"The baby is kicking really hard tonight," she mentioned, glancing at him.

He looked up from his article and she took his hand, placing it on her belly where their little one was squirming around. His face lit up and she couldn't help but smile. As hard as this divorce had been on her, her heart melted every time she saw him react to their unborn baby.

"Whoa…those are some pretty strong kicks there," he grinned. "Think we have a future athlete in there?"

"I don't know…or someone who really likes to dance and move their feet," she joked, biting her lip as she smiled. "Sometimes I feel so…guilty for being this happy. We never had this with Samuel. He never…"

"Samuel wouldn't want us to remember him with unhappiness…he was our son and while he was here, we loved him and he knew we loved him."

"We did love him and wanted him," she softly added.

"No matter what happens, he was our firstborn and our son, so we won't forget him. And this new baby will know about him, I promise," he vowed.

April nodded and wiped a stray tear. Samuel hadn't moved like this when she was pregnant with him because of his fragile bones. Even the smallest move could have broken a bone, so he stayed mostly still and only fluttered once in a while before he was born. But this baby was so active and moved around constantly, reminding April that she had been given a miracle. Her faith had been so shaken with her son's death that she forgot that miracles and life did happen. And this baby was a miracle in a lot of ways because it came at the exact moment April thought her life was falling apart completely. God had provided a way for her to travel through the grief of losing her marriage by giving her life. And that was a sign that things were going to be okay.

"I never apologized…for my actions," she said after a few moments of silence between them. "After Samuel, I just lost it. I couldn't figure out how to cope with losing him and in the process of all of that, I shut out the one person I should have turned to. Going to Jordan saved me…but it cost me you and our marriage in the process because I didn't take into account what you needed to grieve our son."

"April…" His voice was calm and steady, just as it always was when he was trying to protect her.

She shook her head and looked at him. "I should have stayed…after the first tour. I should have been here and worked through our grief together with you. But I ran away because the first tour had given me so much purpose that coming back here was like ripping open the wounds again. I hid behind that purpose instead of facing my grief."

"We both had problems grieving. I shut my grief out and didn't show you that because I thought I was protecting you. And I was wrong for even suggesting we have another child so soon after losing Samuel."

April nodded and looked at her hands. "My heart was so broken."

"All of the fights…I didn't like the person I was becoming. I didn't like the way I was treating you because that wasn't me. That wasn't the man who eloped with you after stealing you away from a wedding. He was your best friend. You were my best friend, April…my favorite person in the world," he said, touching her hand.

"And you were mine…" she whispered. Her eyes filled with tears and she couldn't honestly say if they were more from her pregnancy hormones or the conversation.

Jackson really was her best friend and had been for some time now. She remembered meeting him on their first day at Mercy West and how, after the shooting deaths of Reed and Percy, he became the only friend she had left at Seattle Grace Mercy West. He defended her when people made fun of her and had even punched Alex in her defense. And from that friendship grew an understanding and mutual respect of one another. He boosted her confidence when she needed it and she saw the side of him that others didn't really see. That all lead to that night in San Francisco where she gave him her virginity and she had absolutely no regrets about it now, even though she had initially freaked out about it.

Even though they bickered and didn't always agree on everything, they had always come to a mutual understanding of one another and respected each other. Jackson had even considered going to church services once Samuel was born just to be with his family, even though he didn't believe in God the way that April did. And for him, that was a huge step, so April was thankful for that. Even now, he was compromising on a lot of things and they had tentatively talked about him moving in when the baby came so they could co-parent instead of moving a baby from home to home every weekend or week. It would also give her the opportunity to breastfeed, as she'd wanted to do since she got pregnant with Samuel. Jackson had known that and brought it up when they had talked about how to co-parent this baby.

"April, there is something I have to tell you," he said.

She looked at him, scared for what he would say next. That sentence had never gone over well for them because it usually was followed with some piece of information that was life-changing or upsetting. But she had learned that they had to be open and honest with one another in order for this co-parenting to work for them and for their child.

"Okay…" she replied nervously.

"The day that we signed the divorce papers…I didn't do it," he blurted out. "I couldn't sign the papers."

April felt herself suck in a breath.