"I didn't know you could—" Another wave of relief. "Where did you learn this."
"Told you. Ranch."
"You are never going to let that go."
"Not while it keeps working." His thumbs moved, pressing in, and I felt another letdown and gasped at the sudden sharp release of it. He held me through it, steady, one arm banding across my ribs. "Easy. Let it happen."
"I am letting it happen," I said, a little breathlessly. "You try letting it happen."
He made a low sound against my neck that might have been a laugh.
His hands gentled as the pressure eased—less therapeutic now, more just warm, cupping and holding rather than working. I was boneless against his chest, every muscle I'd been holding tight for a week finally unknotted, the specific relief of a body doing what it was supposed to do after days of fighting it.
"Better?" he said.
"So much better." I turned my face into his jaw. "I could cry."
"You said you weren't going to."
"That was an hour ago. Circumstances have changed." I pressed my mouth to the side of his throat. “Gage?”
“Mm.”
“That was great, but I’m covered in milk now.”
He laughed against my throat. “Sorry.”
“You gonna run me a bath and watch the baby while I clean up?”
He kissed me again. “Anything, darlin’.”
The bath helped.
I sank into it and stayed until the water went lukewarm, which was the longest I'd been alone in a week, and I could hear Gage through the door talking to Bea in that low, unhurried voice he used with her—the same voice he used with the horses, I'd noticed, and had chosen not to mention because he'd give me the ranch instincts line and I didn't have the energy.
I got out. Dried off. Pulled on a clean sleep shirt and padded back into the bedroom.
Gage was in the rocking chair by the window with Bea against his chest, one big hand spanning her entire back. He was looking out at the dark ranch, not at me, just—sitting with her. Holding her the way he held everything he intended to keep.
I stood in the doorway and watched them for a moment.
He looked up. Found me. Something moved across his face that I didn't have a word for and didn't need one.
"She wake up?" I said quietly.
"Fussed a little. Settled." He looked back down at her. "She's good."
I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed and watched him watch her. The October dark outside the window. The creek somewhere below. The ranch sitting quiet around us, three generations of limestone and cedar and stubbornness, and now a fourth—asleep against her father's chest, one tiny fist curled against his collarbone.
"Hey," I said.
He looked up.
"I love you," I said. "I know I say it now. I know it's not—I know it took me a while to?—"
"Millie."
"I just want you to know I mean it every time." I pressed my lips together. "I'm not saying it because of the baby or the ranch or the?—"
