“I’m glad we’re married,” I said, continuing the thought that had started with “I’m glad you stayed. I’m glad we’re having a baby together.”
Jasper’s face did something complicated—not quite a smile, but adjacent to it, a softening around the eyes that made my chest tighten. “Me, too,” he said again, the words landing with the weight of a man who meant exactly what he was saying.
We stayed like that for a long moment—Jasper’s body solid against my chest, my hand warm on his back, the rightness of the contact settling into my bones.
The mountain hadn’t moved—wouldn’t move—would go on sitting exactly where it was regardless of what happened in its shadow.
I understood, with Jasper’s breath warm against my neck and the marriage certificate safe in my jacket pocket, that I had stopped expecting him to leave at some point without noticing the moment it happened.
There had been no dramatic shift, no revelation, no music swelling to mark the transition. Just the gradual accumulation of small certainties—that Jasper would be in the kitchen in the morning making tea with the careful movements that spoke of his nursing training, that he would ask Rawley about the north pasture fence with the directness of a man who’d decided he had standing, that he would reach for my hand when we walked to the barn without performing the gesture for anyone’s benefit.
That he belonged here—not as a problem to be solved or a situation to be managed, but as someone who had earned his place through the simple fact of who he was.
The ultrasound image was in the drawer of the nightstand—folded once along the crease, the bean-shaped shadow that was now, officially, our baby kept safe from creasing or tearing.
Dr. Marsh had given us a due date—early November, right around the first frost—and a list of things to watch for, things to avoid, things to make sure we had ready before the snow came.
I’d already started a mental inventory—the practiced calculation of a man who’d learned that being prepared was considerably more useful than being caught off guard.
The O’Reilly place had a crib they weren’t using. Burke and Danny had boxes of Brandon’s outgrown clothes taking up space in their attic. Carter had offered to build a changing table that would fit in the corner of our room without crowding the bed.
The ranch had resources—not just the physical ones, though those mattered, but the knowledge of people who’d done this before and were willing to share what they’d learned. Rawley on night feedings. Jojo on the challenges of an alpha and omega father. Macon on the kind of supports that kept a house functioning when sleep became a memory rather than a regular occurrence.
We wouldn’t be doing this alone. The certainty of it landed somewhere in my chest that I filed away for later.
Jasper’s breathing had evened out, his weight growing heavier against me as he drifted toward sleep. His hand had come to rest on my chest, palm flat against my skin, thumb pressed to a specific spot just below my collarbone.
I didn’t move to shift him or to pull the blankets up or to reach for the light. I lay still, one hand on the small of his back, the other loose at my side, and let the quiet of the room settle around us.
The marriage certificate was still in my jacket pocket. The ultrasound image was still in the nightstand drawer. The baby was still coming in the fall, right around the first frost.
Some things changed; some things stayed. The difference was in knowing which was which, and in having the patience to wait out the things that couldn’t be forced.
I let myself have that.
Jasper made a small sound in his sleep—not quite a word, but carrying meaning anyway. I tightened my arm around him briefly, then relaxed into the man who’d decided I was worth trusting and wasn’t performing safety or obligation, just offering the thing itself.
Outside, the ranch was quiet—just the occasional creak of the barn door, the distant sound of the creek running along the property line, a place that had found its rhythm and was sticking to it.
The mountain hadn’t moved. The house hadn’t changed. The life happening inside its walls had simply expanded to include one more person, then one more after that.
I was already home.
Chapter Seventeen
~ Decker ~
I woke in the dark with no transition between unconsciousness and alertness—my eyes open, my breathing already controlled, my body completely still while my brain ran through threat assessments on automatic.
The bedroom was silent except for the soft sound of Jasper’s breathing beside me, his exhales steady and even in sleep.
I didn’t move, not even to lift my head from the pillow, as I counted the seconds and listened for whatever had pulled me from sleep with my hand already reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there.
Two full seconds, then three. Nothing moved in the farmhouse. No unfamiliar creak of the floorboards, no sound of glass breaking, no footsteps that didn’t belong. Just the quiet of a building settling into night, the occasional faint tick of the cooling heating system, the distant sound of the creek running along the property line.
My right hand was resting over the curve of Jasper’s belly—three months along, the swell of it now unmistakable under my palm. I hadn’t decided to put it there; it had just ended up there, the same way it ended up there every night—Jasper asleep on his side, my arm thrown across his waist, my palm flat against the place where our child was growing.
The specific weight of the contact registered somewhere beneath my sternum—not fear exactly, but adjacent to it. A vulnerability I hadn’t known I could still feel, had thought myself too careful for.
