It's four in the morning, and I'm standing in the kitchen of our cabin making a bottle one-handed because Lydia pumped before bed so I could take the night feed.Kai is propped against my shoulder, his fist curled in the collar of my T-shirt, making the small grunting sounds that mean he's approximately ninety seconds from a full-volume meltdown if food doesn't arrive.
"Hang on, buddy.Almost there."
He responds by shoving his entire fist into his mouth and sucking on it with the desperate urgency of a man who hasn't eaten in three hours, which from his perspective is essentially a famine.
Duke watches from his bed by the fireplace.Seven years old now, gray around the muzzle, retired from active deployment six months ago when his hips started telling him what his heart wouldn't.He spends his days on the porch supervising the training field with the benevolent authority of a general who's earned his pension.
I test the bottle on my wrist.Warm.I settle into the rocking chair that Logan and Erica gave us when Kai was born and ease the nipple into his mouth.The grunting stops immediately, replaced by the rhythmic pull-swallow-breathe of a baby who has exactly one priority in this world and is pursuing it with total commitment.
I look down at his face.His eyes are open, fixed on mine with that unfocused newborn gaze that somehow sees everything.The blue-gray of his irises shifts in the low kitchen light.Ocean eyes.Lydia chose his name three months before he was born, sitting on our porch with her hand on her belly and the mountains turning gold.
"Kai," she'd said."Hawaiian for sea.Because the ocean isn't something you should run from.It's something you should carry with you."
I couldn't speak for a full minute after that.She let me have the silence.She always lets me have the silence.
The past fourteen months live in my body like a second skeleton.Lydia's deposition in New Hampshire, where I sat in the front row and watched her testify against her parents with a voice that never cracked and hands that shook beneath the witness stand where only I could see them.The verdict, six weeks later.Her father's breeding license revoked.Thirty-seven dogs seized and placed in rescue organizations across three states.Her mother's voicemail, the last contact from either parent: "I hope you're happy.You've destroyed this family."
Lydia played it once.Deleted it.Turned to me and said, "I saved thirty-seven dogs.I'll sleep fine."
She sleeps fine because she sleeps next to me, in our bed, in the cabin that smells like pine and dog and the lavender lotion she rubs on her belly to fade the stretch marks she won't let me call flaws.
We married three weeks after we got back from New Hampshire.October.On the ridge behind the property where the aspens were turning gold.Sawyer McKenna officiated.Ryan stood beside me.Logan came with Erica and the kids.Drew and Brianne brought the entire Second Chance Sanctuary youth group, who made a hand-painted banner that read CONGRATULATIONS MR.AND MRS.NELSON in colors that Marcus picked and Jaylen hung crooked on purpose.
Maggie catered.Hilda brought champagne and opinions about my tie.Clara cried through the ceremony and denied it for three weeks.
Lydia walked down the aisle with Scout at her heel because she doesn't have a father who deserves to give her away, and the dog she rescued from a concrete kennel in Virginia is more family than the people who share her blood.She wore a simple white dress.Bare feet.Wildflowers in her hair that I picked from the meadow at dawn.
When she reached me, she took my hands and whispered, "You're shaking."
"I know."
"It's okay.I've got you."
I married her with shaking hands and a steady heart.
Kai finishes the bottle.I lift him to my shoulder, pat his back, and receive in return a burp so disproportionate to his size that Duke lifts his head from the other room and stares.
"That's my boy."
I change him, swaddle him with the efficiency of a man who has performed this operation approximately one hundred and twelve times in six weeks, and lay him back in the bassinet beside our bed.He's asleep before his head touches the mattress.Scout, curled on the floor beside the bassinet, lifts her head, checks the baby, checks me, and settles.
Lydia is on her side, one arm stretched across my empty half of the bed.Her honey-brown hair fans across the pillow.The moonlight coming through the window traces the curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, the swell of her hip beneath the thin sheet.She's wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else.I know this because I watched her undress before bed and filed the image in the part of my brain that has become a dedicated archive of every time Lydia takes her clothes off in my presence.
I slide into bed behind her.My chest against her back.My arm around her waist, pulling her close.She makes a soft sound and pushes back into me, her body fitting against mine with the precision of two things designed to occupy the same space.
"Is he down?"she murmurs.
"Out cold.Ate four ounces."
"Overachiever.Gets it from you."
I press my mouth to the back of her neck.Her skin is warm and sleep-soft and she smells like lavender and milk and mine.The word moves through me every time I touch her.Mine.This woman.This life.This mountain.Mine.
"Lydia."
"Mm."
"How tired are you?"
