Page 99 of Three Months Yesterday

A feeling of rightness washes over me. We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. Everything is going to be okay.

For now, that’s enough.

The flannel shirt smells like him, woodsmoke and cedar and something darker underneath that I can’t name but would know blindfolded. I pull the collar up over my nose and breathe deep, the pregnancy book on my lap forgotten, pages unturned for twenty minutes.

Beckett’s fingers move over the piano keys in nothing but his underwear, his notebook—the pages crowded with scribbles and crossed-out lines—propped against the music rack. He’s been stuck on the same verse for an hour, playing four notes, stopping, playing them again with a slight variation—humming under his breath, staring over.

The melody hooks in my chest. It’s the one from the first night I heard him sing. The night he picked me up for Jackson’s birthday dinner and I stood in the hallway like an idiot, somehow dumbfounded by just how good he was.

He sings to himself, the words barely reaching me on the couch.

Rain’s falling, tin roof says

Fire’s warm, it will last

Rain’s falling, that I’m sure

Together we notice, not afraid of more

Snow drifts past the window behind him. He doesn’t seem to notice, his focus on the keys, on the problem he hasn’t solved yet. His body sways slightly with the rhythm he’s building, and I watch the firelight move across his bare shoulders. I look at the scar on his left shoulder blade that he got falling out of a tree at eleven, at the way his spine curves when he leans into a chord, then straightens when he pulls back, dissatisfied.

His voice is rough, unpolished, and it does something to my chest.

This. Right here. Snow falling outside, a fire warming the room, Beckett at the piano.

I wouldn’t trade any of it. Not even the hard moments.

The horseback riding accident that could have been so much worse. The stalker who’s been terrorizing Beckett. The fear over this pregnancy.

Not a single piece. Because every moment, the good and the bad, led us here. To this couch, this fire, this man.

I shift, the sound catching Beckett’s attention. He catches me watching him and his hand still on the keys.

“Sorry,” he says, turning on the bench to face me. “I didn’t mean to ignore you. I lost track of⁠—”

“I love this,” I interrupt, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table. The movement gives me an excuse to look at him again, at the defined lines of his stomach, the way his underwear sits low on his hips. “Watching you work…hearing you play.” I meet his eyes. “It’s sexy as hell.”

Something in his being shifts, becomes predatory and pleased. He closes the notebook and stands, moving toward me with the grace of a man who knows exactly what he wants and has every intention of taking it.

My pulse kicks up, heat pooling low in my belly before he’s even touched me.

He sinks to his knees at my feet, his hands sliding up my calves, my thighs, stopping to toy with the edge of my panties beneath his shirt. His thumbs trace lazy circles on my skin, inching higher.

“You’re the sexy one,” he murmurs, his voice dropping to that register that does dangerous things to me. “Lounging on your couch in my shirt like you own me.”

“Maybe I do.” I smirk, swallowing hard.

His smile is slow—wicked. “Maybe you do.”

He leans in, pressing a kiss to the inside of my knee. To the inside of my thigh. His fingers slip under the edge of my underwear, sliding down to find me already wet and ready. I hiss at the contact, my hips bucking involuntarily toward his hand.

“Movie day?” he asks, his breath hot against my thigh, though his fingers are already working me in slow teasing circles.

I shake my head, my voice barely a whisper. “Not yet.”

He doesn’t need more encouragement. He hooks his fingers in my panties and pulls them down, tossing them aside. His fingers work the buttons of his flannel, pushing it open and exposing me to him. I feel the weight of his gaze like a physical touch.

“Beautiful,” he breathes, and then his mouth is on me.