Chapter 273: Reid
I wake to the hollow of the mattress cooling under my arm and the wrong kind of quiet. I rub the grit from my eyes, reach across to drag Madeline into my chest—only to get a handful of empty sheet and Jake’s shoulder on the far side, heavy, breathing slow, out cold. The bathroom door is closed, so I listen for the usual—water, retching, the tap—nothing. The quiet turns sharp.
I nudge Jake’s calf with my foot. “You hear her get up?”
He groans into the pillow. “No. She’s usually in there a while.” He squints at the door. “You don’t hear anything?”
“No.” That lands like a stone. I’m out of bed, pulling on joggers, knocking once, twice. “Trouble?” I ease the door open. Empty. Light off. Toothbrush dry.
Jake’s awake now, already moving, dragging on sweats, the two of us taking the stairs fast and careful, and then—music. Not loud, just a soft old song we never would’ve heard from upstairs, a woman’s voice like smoke, and the low, warm hiss of a skillet.
She’s in the kitchen, bare feet on tile, swaying like the music is a tide and she’s letting it move through her. When she turns and sees us—two large, unshaven men frowning like idiots—she startles, hand to her heart, then smiles. Not her usual sunburst, not the giggle she gives Finn when he drops a stack of mugs, but a quiet thing, soft and certain, like the smile knew before the rest of her did.
Jake drifts to the stove and, without a word, takes over the bacon, because I think he needs his hands on something that crackles and behaves. I go straight to her, hook a finger under her jaw, and kiss her good morning, slow enough to ask all the questions I’m not ready to put into air. She tastes like toothpaste and oranges. She kisses back like she’s been waiting.
We eat at the island, plates warm, her knee pressed against my thigh, Jake passing her the syrup she didn’t ask for because he knows she’ll want it after the first bite. When the quiet stretches, I tip my head. “You were up early.”
She shrugs, eyes too bright. “Felt like it.”
Jake and I share a look. One brow of mine; one of his. She huffs out a laugh, busted. “Okay, okay. You two are too good at knowing when I’m lying.”
The playfulness drains out of her like a tide and she looks suddenly shy—shy like the first day, shy like I could see the exact second she decided to be brave anyway. She slips off the stool and crosses to the sofa, bends to pick up something we can’t see, tucks it behind her back and comes back to us, heart in her throat if the pulse at that pretty neck is anything to go by.
“So,” she starts, words tumbling over each other, “I—maybe I had doubts before, maybe I told myself it was stress, or the nightmares, or a bug, but yesterday—” she bites her lip and color climbs her cheeks— “yesterday kind of confirmed it and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it and you know how I get when I can’t stop thinking and then I woke up early and I thought maybe, maybe—”
“Trouble,” I say, my voice not as steady as I want it to be. “Just tell us what’s behind your back.”
She sucks in a breath, blushes deeper, and brings it out between both hands like it’s a bird she’s scared to crush—a slim white stick, two perfect pink lines singing back at us.
Everything in me goes very, very still, then rushes at once. My vision pricks. Jake’s chair scrapes back; he’s on his feet beside me, eyes blown wide, wet at the edges. She’s talking—“I went out early to get it, the pharmacy on First opens at six and I wore a jacket and I was fine, I promise, no alleys”—and for a sliver of a second something possessive and furious rears up in both of us at the thought of her out there alone, but it’s gone just as fast, drowned under the surge of what this is.
I take the test from her, because my hands need proof, need the weight of the thing, need the pink to be real. Jake leans in, shoulder to shoulder with me, breathing like a man who just reached shore. Two lines. Clear as a lighthouse. Sure as a vow.
“So it’s true,” I hear myself say, rough and reverent. “You’re pregnant.”
She nods, eyes shining, teeth catching her bottom lip like she might float away if she smiles too hard. “Is it… is it okay? Are you—happy?”
“Happy?” Jake laughs, this broken, beautiful sound, and drags a hand over his face like he’s trying to catch the moment and keep it. I put the test down safe on the counter because my hands suddenly want to hold only her.
“This is the best day of my life,” I tell her, and my voice doesn’t shake on life because I mean it with every inch of me. “Of our lives.” I hook an arm under her knees and the other around her back and lift her high, and Jake’s already there, one palm splayed warm over her spine, the other cradling the back of her head, both of us kissing her everywhere we can reach—her temple, her cheek, the corner of her smiling mouth.
She laughs into my kiss, that light, breathless laugh we almost lost, and I set her down on the island so she’s perched between us, tiny and ours and glowing. Jake drops to his knees, presses a kiss to the soft place just below her navel, then another, then rests his forehead there like he’s praying. I slide my hand over his, over her, big palms spread gentle, feeling nothing but heat and the promise of what’s coming.
“Our baby,” Jake says, voice hushed and wrecked.
“Yeah,” I say, and I don’t care that my eyes are wet, don’t care that my chest hurts from how hard it’s beating. I kiss her again and again until her fingers are in my hair and her giggle turns trembly. “Our baby. You did perfect, trouble.”
She exhales, a shaky, relieved sound, and cups our faces like she can’t decide who to look at first. “Okay,” she whispers, wonder and mischief and everything I love about her braided into one word. “Okay.”
“Ground rules,” I manage, because the protector in me is already howling. “No more early pharmacy runs alone. Ever. You wake us. We go with you. We go with you everywhere.”
She rolls her eyes, smiling, like she expected nothing less. “Fine. But only if you keep feeding me bacon.”
“Done,” Jake says instantly, standing to steal a kiss, already reaching for the pan like a man with a mission. “The world, too. Whatever you want.”
I slide in behind her, wrap her up from the back, palm wide and firm over her lower belly, and let my forehead rest against her shoulder, breathing her in, letting the music and the sizzle and the soft morning light stitch this into me, permanent. I didn’t think a heart like mine could stretch this far without breaking. Turns out it doesn’t break.
It just makes room.