Then he presses his forehead against mine, and I feel something in him finally break loose.
“Dane,” I whisper.
“Give me a minute, Char.”
So I do.
The relief doesn’t stay simple for long.
It’s real. Massive enough that I can already feel it changing something inside me permanently. But it exists beside everything else that’s true too.
I’m pregnant.
On an island with no medical care.
I’ve been bleeding. Cramping. Carrying heavy things. Climbing. Working. Moving through every day exactly the way I always have because I had no idea there was any reason not to.
I don’t know how far along I am. I don’t know if the baby’s healthy. I don’t know if I am.
There’s no doctor to ask. No scan. No reassurance waiting for us anywhere.
And that’s terrifying.
But it’s still better than cancer.
This is survivable.
That’s the truth of it. Better by such a wide margin that it almost makes the comparison meaningless. But still not simple.
We sit with both realities at once—the relief and the fear—neither one strong enough to erase the other.
“When will it come?”
“I don’t know.”
His eyes lower to my stomach again. The curve is visible now, impossible to miss once you know what you’re looking at.
“The movement,” he says after a second. “That usually starts when? Four months? Five?”
“I’m not sure.” I rest my hand lightly against the curve. “But if we can both feel it, it probably has to be at least that.”
He nods slowly, like he’s filing the information away somewhere precise. I can practically see it happening in real time—thetimeline shifting in his head, the last few months rearranging themselves into something that finally makes sense.
“We avoided it for a long time,” he says.
“I thought something was wrong with me. That I couldn’t get pregnant.”
“I told you nothing was wrong with you.”
There’s no satisfaction in it. No edge. Just the same calm certainty he’s had from the beginning.
He goes quiet for a second after that, then moves suddenly—dropping down into the sand beside me, one knee and then the other. His hand settles against my stomach carefully, protective already, like some part of him instantly understands how important this is.
He glances up at me once, checking my expression.
Then he lowers his head and presses his ear gently against my stomach where his hand had been.
The sight of it hits somewhere deep inside me.
