Chapter 47
Micah
Gray and Ivy are going to have a baby.
Marcus and Olivia are already on their feet before I lift my head from prayer, and Ivy has both hands pressed over her face, completely undone, and Gray is standing there with the smile of a man who has been carrying something beautiful for weeks and has finally gotten to set it down in front of the people he loves most.
Harper and I stay on the couch.
She is tucked against my side with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her, and I am aware of every small point of contact.
The way she fits there. I have imagined this specific thing more times than I will ever admit to anyone, Harper Mitchell simply leaning against me like that’s just where she goes.
We watch the room love our friends well.
“Is it bad that I’m a little jealous?” I say. Low, just for her.
She tilts her head up to look at me, and I can already see the thing happening at the corner of her mouth, the tell she has when something is coming that she finds funnier than she wants to let on.
“That they get to do the act that makes babies,” she says, entirely composed, “or that they’re going to have a baby?”
I laugh before I can stop it, and I duck my head and press my lips to the side of her neck without thinking, just a brief warm press against her skin, and I feel her breath catch, just slightly.
“Both, for sure,” I whisper against her ear. “But my mind was actually going more toward the fact that Gray gets to be a dad.”
Which is true. Both things are true simultaneously.
She settles back against my shoulder, and I feel her look across the room toward Gray, who has one arm around Ivy and is shaking someone’s hand with the other, his face doing that thing, the enormous uncomplicated joy I have watched him grow into over the last several years.
“He’s going to be so good at it,” she says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “He really is.”
Gray catches my eye over the top of Ivy’s head.
He looks at Harper, tucked against me. Looks back at me.
He nods once. The specific nod that covers everything we would need fifteen minutes to say out loud.
I nod back.
Harper stirs beside me, lifting her head. “We should go congratulate them.”
“Yeah, we should.”
She untangles herself and stands, holding out her hand, and I take it. We cross the room together, and I watch her make it about three steps from Ivy before something in her face gives, and Ivy sees it and opens her arms, and Harper walks straight into them and holds on.
I stop a few feet back and let her have it.
“Harper,” Ivy says her name like she is gathering it up carefully.
“You’re going to be the best mom.”
“Stop.”
“I mean it. That baby is so lucky.”
Ivy pulls back and cups Harper’s face in both hands, and Harper is crying in that way she would absolutely deny if asked about it later, and Ivy is looking at her with twenty-something years of friendship in her eyes.
“You’re going to be the best auntie,” Ivy tells her.
Gray appears at my shoulder.
I put my arm around him without looking, and he grabs the back of my neck, and we stand there like that watching our girls fall apart in the best possible way, and neither of us says a word, because some moments are not improved by commentary.
After a while I pull back and look at him.
“A dad,” I say.
He exhales, slowly, the biggest smile on his face. “Yeah.”
I shake my head once, not because I’m surprised, but because some things deserve a moment before you move past them.
Gray Bennett is going to be a father. I have watched this man pray over strangers, lead rooms full of people, sit with people in the hardest seasons of their lives and not flinch.
I have watched him love Ivy with a steadiness that made the rest of us quietly recalibrate what we thought we were capable of.
“You’re going to be incredible,” I tell him.
He looks at me. Nods once, the way he does when something lands and he doesn’t want to make a production of it.
We turn, almost at the same time, and find them.
Harper has both arms around Ivy and she is crying, and Ivy is holding her like she’s been waiting to tell her for weeks, which she probably has. They are talking in that fast, overlapping way they do, half sentences finishing each other’s thoughts.
Gray watches Ivy the way he always watches Ivy. Like she is something he has been given and has never once taken for granted.
I watch Harper.
She pulls back and Ivy cups her face in both hands and says something that makes Harper laugh again, messier this time, and I feel the full weight of the last several months settle into something quiet and certain in my chest.
I spent a long time being careful about this. Afraid that I had read it wrong. That what I felt was mine alone. That the right thing to do was to keep it contained and managed.
Gray shifts beside me. “You’re staring.”
“I’m aware.”
He smiles, slow, and says nothing else, which is one of the things I have always appreciated about Gray Bennett. He knows when the point has been made.
The hallway is quiet and the light is low and Harper Mitchell is pressed against her front door with my hand on her cheek and my fingers in her hair and I am kissing her the way I have wanted to kiss her for two years.
She is not complaining.
When I finally pull back, we are both a little unsteady, which I find deeply satisfying, and her eyes take a second to open.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say.
It comes out more honest than I intend it to, which seems to be a recurring condition around her.
She laughs softly, her hands still in my jacket. “I never understood why Ivy struggled so much.” A pause. “Now I know.” She tilts her head, something mischievous moving across her face. “Are you sure you don’t want to just go to the courthouse tomorrow morning?”
“Who says I wanna marry you?”
She swats my arm.
I look at her for a moment. “Harper.”
“I’m just saying. It’s efficient.”
“You deserve a proper proposal,” I say. “And a beautiful wedding with your friends and your family and probably a color-coded seating chart that takes you three weeks to finalize.”
“Four weeks minimum, actually.”
“And we are not going to rush it.”
She sighs. Dramatically. Rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. “Fine.”
“Fine,” I agree.
“You’re very annoying.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“Deeply, profoundly annoying.”
“And yet you love me.”
“I do,” she repeats, quieter, looking back at me.
I lean down and kiss her once more, slower this time, and she makes a small sound against my mouth that I am going to be thinking about for the rest of the night, and when I pull back I rest my forehead against hers for just a moment.
“Inside,” I say.
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Harper.”
She sighs again, less dramatic this time, and turns and opens the door. She steps inside and leans against the frame looking up at me.
“Lock it,” I say.
“I always lock it.”
“Lock it while I’m standing here.”
She gives me a look that is somehow both exasperated and fond, which is essentially her natural resting expression around me, and reaches back and turns the deadbolt. I hear it click.
“Satisfied?” she says through the door.
“Very much, thank you.”
“Good night, Dimples.”
“Good night, Freckles.”