We were married now. We were having a baby. We were building something that existed beyond the next day or the next week or the problem of Gerald and what to do about him.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start. And for now, for this moment with Jasper’s hand warm at the small of my back and the mountain filling the window and the sound of that heartbeat still in my ears, it was enough.
Chapter Fifteen
~ Jasper ~
I sat on the east porch of the farmhouse with both hands wrapped around a mug of chamomile tea, the steam rising in a thin curl that disappeared before it reached my face.
I’d switched from coffee three weeks ago—the smell alone was enough to turn my stomach now—and had discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that I didn’t miss it.
The summer heat pressed against my skin, the kind that built up in the afternoon and broke just before sunset, leaving the air clean and cool enough to draw a breath.
The Black Butte mountain filled the horizon exactly as it had the first time I’d seen it—dark and solid and indifferent to what happened in its shadow. I’d developed a habit of watching it in the late afternoons, though I couldn’t have told you when I’d started doing it or why it mattered.
There was just something about the consistency of it—the same mountain today as yesterday, tomorrow as today—that landed differently than it would have two months ago.
The farmhouse door opened with a familiar creak, but no one came out. I could hear voices from inside—Jojo’s cheerful questioning, the lower rumble that was probably Rawley—the noise of people who’d stopped watching what they said because they’d stopped worrying about whether they belonged.
Decker’s jacket hung on the hook by the door, visible from where I sat—dark denim with a tear at the shoulder that had been mended with careful, invisible stitches.
The marriage certificate was folded once and kept in the inside pocket—not a drawer, not a file, not the glove compartment of the truck, but the inside pocket, where he could reach it without looking, where it was never more than a moment’s thought away.
I’d noticed this two days after the courthouse—had watched Decker transfer the paper from one jacket to another without comment, without making a show of it. It was exactly the kind of thing he did—a choice so straightforward it almost disguised the power behind it. Not obligation, just quietly making sure the thing that mattered was exactly where he could reach it.
I counted back in my head, methodically, the way I used to count respirations on the NICU monitors. Eleven days since I’d checked over my shoulder without meaning to. Eleven days of walking from the house to the barn without cataloging threats, of sitting with my back to a window without calculating exit routes, of going to sleep without making a plan for the morning.
Eleven days was the longest stretch since before Nebraska. Since before Gerald. Since before I’d understood what it meant when a man with money and connections decided you belonged to him and refused to hear otherwise.
“Jasper?” Jojo’s voice carried through the screen door, bright and matter-of-fact. “You want vegetable prep or herb sorting?”
The same offer he’d made for two weeks now—the same way he left Burke the heavy lifting and Rawley the coffee without comment or elaboration. Not a transaction, not an accommodation, just the acknowledgment that people had different ways of belonging and different ways of showing it.
“Herbs,” I called back, already setting my mug on the porch rail. “Be right in.”
The farmhouse kitchen was exactly what it had been when I’d arrived—wood counters worn smooth at the edges, a cast-iron stove that probably weighed more than I did, mismatched dishes in a glass-front cabinet. But something had changed—not the room itself, but my relationship to it.
The cutting board Jojo used was positioned at my usual spot at the counter—not the place I’d been assigned, but the one I’d picked on the third day without knowing I was choosing. Thejars of dried herbs were arranged with the labels facing out, the knife block angled so the handles pointed right rather than left, the attention to detail that meant Jojo had noticed how I moved through the space and adjusted accordingly.
He was at the sink when I came in, already elbow-deep in vegetable prep, hair falling across his forehead as he worked. He looked up when the screen door clicked, flashed a quick smile, and then went back to his task—a parsnip becoming neat, identical slices under his careful hands.
“Herbs are on the back porch,” he said, not turning. “I thought we’d do that rosemary-thyme thing for the pork. Rawley brought home a whole rack from town.”
I nodded, accepting what he’d offered, and went to the back porch where the herb garden grew in mismatched pots and an old wooden trough. The plants were Jojo’s domain—he’d planted them the week after I arrived, had explained the properties of each one with the enthusiasm of a man sharing something he loved.
“O’Reilly’s found the starters for me,” he’d said. “His mother grew them for forty years.”
O’Reilly—Macon—had started saying my name from the workshop without looking up, which I’d decoded as the O’Reilly equivalent of a warm welcome. The first time it happened, I’d been so startled I’d dropped the wrench I was holding.
“Jasper,” Macon had said, voice coming from somewhere behind the tool rack, “pass me the Phillips.”
No preamble, no softening, just the matter-of-fact assumption that I would understand what he wanted and where to find it. I’d stood frozen for a beat, then located the screwdriver he was asking for and passed it over the counter with hands that weren’t quite steady.
“Thanks,” he’d said, the single syllable carrying more weight than it should have been able to.
It had happened three more times since—Macon’s voice from some corner of the workshop, my name without context, a request that expected immediate compliance. Each time, I’d answered without hesitation, had found what he needed, had passed it over with hands that had stopped shaking.
I gathered the herbs now with the same carefulness I brought to my nursing work—rosemary and thyme and a small handful of the sage Jojo had told me was particularly good with pork. My hands moved without requiring thought, my body relaxed in a way it hadn’t been two months ago.
