Chapter 267: Jake
Lobster Fest night, and our girl is out cold between us, one wrist curled above her head like she surrendered to the kind of sleep you only get after a week of early mornings on the water and too many late-night chapters. Reid and I are already dressed—black jeans, boots, the kind of sweaters that pass for respectable when the wind comes off the harbor—and we should wake her soon, but I stall, because she’s in my T-shirt and nothing else, the hem rucked up just enough to show soft skin and the faint map of freckles across her ribs and that slim, stubborn line of the scar that makes my throat go tight.
I drag my knuckles in a slow semicircle over her belly—just a whisper of pressure, the way you’d skim a fingertip across still water—and Reid mirrors me on the other side, our hands moving like a tide coming in. She’s been sick almost every morning for a week, and even she laughed yesterday that it was weird, because the nightmares are lighter now and still her stomach does somersaults at dawn; Reid’s eyes find mine over her navel, that twin-flash of the same thought, the same possibility, and for once neither of us says it out loud. Not now. Not before she gets to have a night that’s only light and salt air and lobster rolls the size of her face.
“Trouble,” I murmur, mouth brushing the curve of her temple, “wake up for us.”
She hums first, that little sound she makes when she’s halfway to surfacing, then her lashes lift and there it is—the sleepy smile that ruins me every single time. Reid kisses the other temple, I kiss the corner of her mouth, then the slope of her cheek, then the hollow under her ear; he goes for the line of her jaw and the pulse point at her throat, a matching pattern that’s half devotion and half inventory—no flinches, no pain, she’s good—and she sighs and stretches, my shirt riding higher, her fingers finding our wrists like she’s counting us. “Hi,” she whispers, voice sweet and wrecked with sleep. “What time is it?”
“Time to make the town jealous,” Reid says, smiling into her hair as she sits, and I slide an arm behind her back, steadying her until the room stops spinning.
We let her go get ready and I’m trying to decide whether I should be the reasonable one about layers when the bathroom door opens and reason dies a quick, happy death.
She steps out wearing a slouchy black sweater that slides off one shoulder like it was designed to show the delicate chain at her throat and the warm curve of skin we both kiss for luck, and beneath it a white eyelet mini with two flirty tiers that move when she does—a soft, scalloped swish of summer. Her legs look endless above knee-high black boots, the kind that make me think things I probably shouldn’t be thinking before a family-friendly festival, and she’s got a simple black tote hooked on one arm and a smug little smile like she knows exactly what she’s doing to us.
Her hair… God. Copper waves, big and glossy and touchable, falling in loose, blown-out sheets around her shoulders, the kind of sunset you don’t get twice. She’s kept her makeup easy—freckles on full display, a sweep of mascara that turns those sea-glass eyes downright radioactive, a soft, peachy mouth that makes me forget every word I know. Her nails are that barely-there pink she likes, the one that looks like shells caught in morning light.
“Holy—” I have to stop and start again because it comes out like a prayer. “You’re breathtaking, Madeline.”
Reid goes still in that way he does when something hits too deep, then steps forward and tugs the sweater a fraction lower on her shoulder, possessive as a storm. “We’re going to need ten extra pairs of eyes tonight,” he says, voice low, “one to watch the crowd, nine to keep from walking into pilings while we stare at you.”
She laughs, does a little half-turn that sends the skirt fluttering, and the boots plant with a confident click that makes my chest hurt with pride. I slide a hand to the small of her back—habit now, anchor and claim—and press a ginger candy into her palm just in case. “We promised lobster rolls,” I remind her, kissing that exposed shoulder because I can’t not, “and anything else you point at. You start to feel off, you tell us, and we sit. No arguing.”
“Bossy,” she teases, eyes bright.
“Tragically,” I say, offering my arm like we’re at a gala and not about to walk into a street lined with twinkle lights and paper bibs. “Ready to go make half the town fall in love with you?”
She threads her fingers with mine, looks up through those lashes, and the little smile turns molten. “Already did,” she says, and I know she means us, and that’s it—I’m done for. We grab jackets, kill the lights, and head out into the gold-pink evening with a girl who looks like a miracle between us.
Reid catches my eye over the slope of her bare shoulder and mouths, fuck me, and I have to bite down on a grin because yeah—Madeline always looks like sin dipped in sunlight, but right now, with that easy sway in her hips and the little white skirt flirting with the tops of her boots, tucked neatly between the two of us like she belongs here (because she does), and that quiet, dizzy-making maybe humming under my palm on her lower back—the possibility that our baby is already tucked warm inside her—my brain shorts like a wet fuse.
I slide my hand a fraction lower, guiding her through the doorway and into the salt-bright evening, and Reid falls in on her other side, the three of us moving as one long shadow across the porch boards. She laughs at something a gull does—of course she does, she loves everything—and the sound hits me center mass, softer than the sweater slipping off her shoulder, harder than a punch. I picture her a month from now at the festival bonfire, cheeks pink, fingers sticky with butter, our ring flashing on her hand; I picture her two months from now, tucked into my coat when the wind bites; I picture her next summer on this same street with a round belly and our names on her tongue. Mine. Ours.
“Don’t look at me like that or we’re not making it to lobster,” she teases without turning, and Reid huffs a laugh that’s half feral, half fond.
“No promises,” I murmur into her hair, catching a breath of sea and shampoo and something purely her. Reid’s knuckles brush mine across the small of her back—a vow, a warning, a shared prayer—and we steer our girl toward the glow of the festival lights, two wolves playing at gentlemen, already plotting how to keep every set of eyes off her and every piece of joy on her.