Chapter 279: Jake
I’m halfway through arguing the merits of a sea-glass buttercream versus a tidepool ombré when the softest little complaint floats down from upstairs—just a kitten-breath whine—and Reid and I shoulder each other like idiots at the starting line.
“Move,” he says, already grinning.
“Make me,” I mutter, already losing.
We take the steps two at a time and ease into our room, and for a beat I just stand there because I never get tired of this sight: Maddie dead asleep in the middle of our obnoxiously huge, custom-built bed, one hand splayed over the duvet like she’d been reaching for one of us even in dreams; two tiny, wriggling bundles tucked up against her side, making those newborn goldfish faces that knock the air clean out of a man.
“I’ve got Maya,” Reid says, voice gone reverent as he slides an arm under our girl, palm covering half her back.
“I’ll take Theo,” I answer, and our boy makes that serious little grunt he does, like he has thoughts about quarterly earnings.
We lift them in sync and back out like thieves, pausing so I can look one more time. She’s barefaced and breathtaking—freckles soft as sugar dust across her nose, hair a copper spill over the pillow, my T-shirt collar drooping off one shoulder. She was obscene in her beauty pregnant, all curve and glow and that slow, careful waddle that made me want to carry her everywhere.
Downstairs, the house smells like coffee and clean wood and new paint, this halfway place we bought because it lets us bend the map in our favor—close enough to Northhaven that the water still calls, close enough to the city that stakeholders can be handled without putting Maddie under those old shadows. She said she could go back now that he’s locked up, but when we packed the truck at the end of season she cried so hard her nose went pink and I carried her out to the porch just to hold her until it passed. She hasn’t stopped talking about summer since.
We lay the babies on the console by the big mirror in the living room and get to work. Diapers off, wipes out, a choreography we learned with the speed of men who refused to fumble; Reid narrates under his breath like a sports caster—“and Anderson with the clean fast swap, look at that form”—while Maya yawns so wide her tongue curls like a petal. Theo’s heavier—our chunk—thighs already working on those rolls that annihilate me, eyes the exact wrecking-ball blue they were the first time he looked up and knew me. Maya is long and delicate, little starfish fingers splayed, so tiny she barely spans Reid’s forearms. For Maddie, they were huge—god, they were huge—shoulders broad like they were auditioning for the family, and she pushed like a fighter and then like a queen, and I’m never going to stop being in awe of her.
We pass the mirror and both of us stop because it hits different every time: two big men, sleep-creased and unshaven, each cradling something so small it might as well be made of light. Reid tips his chin at our reflections. “We did that,” he says, like he can’t help himself.
“Yeah,” I answer, kissing Theo’s soft temple, stunned for the thousandth time that the word we means all four of us now, five if you count the woman upstairs who remade our lives with a clipboard and a smile.
The twins wear matching onesies with tiny whales on them—because of course—and the whole room smells like warm milk and baby shampoo, that sweet-salty newborn thing that rewires a man’s brain. I pull Theo closer and he quiets immediately, a content little huff against my collarbone.
“Hey, big guy,” I murmur, keeping my voice low like I’m reading tide charts to him. “We’re picking cake flavors that you’re not going to care about because you’ll be drinking milk at the wedding, but your mom wants lemon on the bottom and vanilla-almond up top, and your Daddy Reid here is trying to convince me sea-salt caramel isn’t too on the nose.”
Reid rolls his eyes and kisses Maya’s hair. “Your dad has no taste,” he tells her gravely. “Also, you’re not allowed to date until you’re forty.”
Maya blinks, unimpressed, and smacks a fist into his shirt like a tiny judge hammering a gavel.
I tuck Theo against my chest and sway because that’s what my body does now when there’s a baby in my arms—I move like water. “We’re getting married in Northhaven,” I tell him quietly, like it’s a secret we’re letting the babies keep for us. “On the docks if your mom lets me get away with it. Uncle Finn will cry, Uncle Liam will pretend he’s not, and Aunt Charlie will heckle us for being saps. Your mom wants to dance barefoot and eat a lobster roll in her dress. And we’re going to say yes to whatever she wants, because that’s just how this works.”
Reid hums, the low sound he uses to settle them—same note he used to steady Maddie after nightmares until the nightmares got fewer and farther between. “You’re going to see whales first,” he tells Maya, like a promise. “Porpoises next. You’re going to know the difference between a spout and a splash before you know your alphabet. And you’re never going to walk past an alley alone, because your dad and I are nuts and we like it that way.”
Theo’s fingers curl around mine, impossibly strong, and something in my chest answers, that same quiet vow that’s lived there since I saw Maddie bleed on the dock and decided I would never let the world lay a hand on her again if I could help it. We aren’t done healing; some nights she still shivers and I put my palm on her back and talk about tides until her breathing evens out. But mornings like this, with the house golden and the babies fed and the coffee machine hissing like a friendly beast, the future feels simple: keep them loved, keep them fed, get us back to the water when the season turns.
“Think she’ll go for the sea-glass cake?” I ask, because I can’t help picturing her smile when the light hits it.
“She’ll go for whatever we pick,” Reid says, then snorts. “And then pretend it was her idea.”
We both grin because he’s right, and because we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Upstairs, the floorboard creaks—the soft, familiar sound of our girl waking. Both babies make that little eh noise they do when they smell her, like a compass clicking due north.
“C’mon,” I say, kissing Theo’s forehead and then Maya’s when Reid leans in. “Let’s take Mom her whole world.”
We head for the stairs, two massive idiots moving slow, careful, reverent, our arms full of everything that matters, and the wedding tabs still open on the laptop downstairs, the lemon-almond decision waiting, the whole messy, gorgeous life of it all ready to keep happening.