Page 31 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

“He’s active today.”

“He’s active every day. Especially at three in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.”

Hudson leans in and presses a kiss to the spot where the baby just moved. “He’s just making sure I know he’s ready to meet us. Aren’t you, buddy?”

The easy way he talks to our son still catches me off guard sometimes. This man who once hunted monsters for a living now spends his mornings discussing baby names and whether we should put the crib under the window or closer to the door. He already has opinions about everything. The car seat. The stroller. The exact temperature the nursery needs to stay. He treats my pregnancy like the most important mission he’s ever been given.

I reach down and run my fingers through his short blond hair. It’s a little longer than it was a year ago. Soft at the ends. He leans into the touch the way he always does.

“I was thinking about the bakery this morning,” I tell him. “About the night you walked in and said my real name like you’d been waiting to claim it.”

He looks up at me. “Yeah?”

“I was so scared. Of the people hunting me. Of the scars. Of letting anyone get close. And now look at me.” I glance down at my stomach and the simple gold band on my finger. “Married. Pregnant. Living in a house with both our names on it. I don’t even recognize that girl sometimes.”

“I do.” His voice is quiet and certain. “She’s the same woman who stood in this kitchen and showed me every scar she thought would make me walk away. She’s just not alone anymore.”

The baby kicks again, harder this time. Hudson stays right where he is, both hands spread over my stomach like he’s already protecting what’s his. I cover his hands with mine and let the quiet settle around us.

Outside, the porch swing moves gently in the breeze. Inside, the cabin feels full in a way it never did when it was just a safe house. There’s a bassinet already set up in the corner of our bedroom. Tiny clothes folded in the dresser. A life that has nothing to do with running or hiding or looking over my shoulder.

I am heavily pregnant and slow and sometimes cranky from the heartburn and the restless nights. I am also happier than I have ever been in my life.

Hudson stays crouched in front of me until the baby settles. Then he stands, leans down, and kisses me soft and slow. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine.

"I love you," he says. "Both of you."

"I love you too."

He helps me up carefully and keeps an arm around my waist as we walk toward the couch. I lean into him and feel the solid certainty of the life we've built. No more temporary names. No more borrowed time. Just this—my husband, our son, and the quiet knowledge that I stopped running the day I chose him and never looked back.

The cabin doesn't feel like a safe house anymore. It feels like home. And in a few weeks, when our son arrives, it will feel like abundance—like the kind of full that comes from choosing to stay, from building something real with someone who chose me first.

epilogue 2

Rhys

eight years after our wedding

I’m sitting on the porch steps of the cabin with a cup of coffee, watching the early light move across the trees, when the back door slams open and my oldest comes tearing around the corner of the house. Jake is seven, all scraped knees and wild energy, and he’s already yelling something about a frog he found near the dock. Behind him our daughter, Ellie, follows at a more careful pace. She’s five, quieter than her brother, with her mother’s dark curls and the same stubborn set to her mouth when she concentrates.

Willow comes out last, barefoot, one of my old flannels thrown over a soft tank top, hair still messy from sleep. She’s carrying two juice boxes and the kind of patient expression that only comes from years of wrangling small humans before breakfast. When she sees me watching, she smiles, soft and a little tired, and the same thing happens in my chest that has happened every single day since the night I put my ring on her finger.

She’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Jake skids to a stop in front of me and holds up a very unhappy frog. “Dad, look. Can we keep him?”

“No.”

“But—”

“Put him back where you found him. He’s got a family too.”

Ellie climbs into my lap without asking and leans her head against my chest like it’s the most natural seat in the world. I wrap an arm around her and press a kiss to the top of her curls. She smells like the lavender shampoo Willow insists on and the outdoors.

Willow hands out the juice boxes and then settles on the step beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushes mine. I shift Ellie so I can slide my free arm around my wife’s waist and pull her in. She comes easily, the way she always has.

“You’re up early,” she says.