Chapter Fourteen
~ Decker ~
I drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, the mountain shrinking in my rearview mirror as the foothills opened up toward town. The truck ate up the gravel road with a familiar rhythm—washboard sections, smooth patches, the occasional pothole that made the shocks squeak.
Beside me, Jasper sat with his window cracked, one hand on the dash, the other loose in his lap. Neither of us had said much since we’d pulled away from the ranch house, but the quiet between us had changed—not the careful watchfulness of the early days, but something with more room to breathe.
The courthouse idea had been mine. I’d said it the morning Jasper stood pale in the bedroom with the test in his hand—said it before I’d fully thought it through, before I’d given myself time to calculate what it would mean.
“I think we should get married,” I’d said, the words out of my mouth before my brain had fully processed what I was offering.
And I’d meant it. I still did. I wanted this—wanted Jasper, wanted the baby, wanted the life we were building together piece by piece.
But meaning something and being easy about it weren’t the same thing, and I’d spent the two days since the proposal working to reconcile the two—the rightness of what we were doing and the voice in the back of my head that kept asking if I was ready, if I knew what I was signing up for, if marriage was really what either of us needed right now.
I didn’t say any of that out loud. Jasper had enough to carry without me adding my uncertainty to the load.
Instead, I kept both hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road, stealing glances at Jasper when I thought he wouldn’t notice.
He looked different than he had a week ago—his posture looser, his body angled toward the window rather than braced for whatever came next.
He still had the dark circles under his eyes, the pallor that came with morning nausea, the careful way of holding himself that spoke of a body that wasn’t fully his own yet.
But he’d made a decision, and it showed—in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hand came to rest on my knee when we hit a rough patch of road, his silence that felt like choice rather than caution.
The two stops sat in the cab between us the whole drive—courthouse, then clinic—not spoken about but present nonetheless.
A marriage certificate. A pregnancy confirmation.
Two pieces of paper that would make official what was already true: we belonged to each other now, in ways that couldn’t be undone with words or distance or what had happened in Nebraska.
Black Butte’s main street came into view as we rounded the final curve—a four-block stretch of weathered buildings with false fronts and covered wooden sidewalks.
The bakery was open, the smell of fresh bread working its way through the truck’s vents.
A red pickup idled outside Harmon’s General Store, the owner leaning against the hood with a coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
The morning light caught the wooden planks of the sidewalk, turning them gold at the edges.
The town was waking up—the kind of gradual, unhurried awakening that happened when most people had been up with the sun anyway, had done their morning chores, had already put in the first hours of a day that would stretch well past dark.
I parked directly in front of the courthouse, not bothering with the side street or the alley behind Miller’s Feed & Supply.
The building was plain—brick facade, white columns, a small patch of lawn with a flagpole—but it carried the presence of official business, of paperwork that couldn’t be undone, of lines being crossed that couldn’t be uncrossed.
I put the truck in park and killed the engine, then sat for a beat with my hands still on the wheel. Jasper’s hand came to rest on my knee—brief and warm and gone before I could decide whether to acknowledge it.
“I’m good,” he said. “If you’re having second thoughts, we can—“
“I’m not,” I cut in, the words coming out with more force than I’d intended. “Just... making sure.”
Jasper nodded, accepting what I’d offered without pushing for more reassurance than I could give. Then he was opening his door and stepping out onto the sidewalk, moving like a man who’d made a decision and was sticking to it.
By the time I’d made it around the front of the truck, Jasper was already on the sidewalk, waiting with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on mine.
The difference registered—two weeks ago, he would have waited for me to come around, would have let me open his door, would have made sure I was ready before he moved.
I came to stand beside him, not crowding but not keeping my distance either. “Ready?” I asked, the single word carrying more weight than it should have been able to.
Jasper nodded once, tight and definitive. “Ready.”
We went in together.
The courthouse interior was exactly what the outside promised—fluorescent lights, scuffed linoleum, the stale smell of bureaucracy that was the same in government buildings everywhere.
A woman sat behind a desk in the corner, typing something with two fingers, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
She looked up when we came in, did a quick assessment of our faces, and then pointed toward a door at the end of the hall with the confidence of someone who’d given these directions a hundred times before.
“Patsy’s in there,” she said. “She’s finishing up a birth certificate. Just give her a minute.”
We found Patsy in the county clerk’s office—a small room with a counter that divided the public space from the working area.
She was a compact woman in her fifties with short gray hair and the unhurried competence of someone who’d been doing this job since before we were born.
She looked up when we came in, glanced at the clock on the wall, and then nodded once.
“You’re the Reynolds-Arnold,” she said, making it not quite a question. “I’ve got your paperwork right here.”
She pulled a file from a stack on her desk and opened it with a practiced motion. The papers inside were official-looking—cream-colored card stock with the county seal at the top, lines for signatures, spaces for dates and witnesses.
“Now,” Patsy said, settling her reading glasses on her nose, “we’ll need to confirm a few details before we proceed.”
What followed was the least dramatic ceremony I’d ever witnessed—Patsy reading questions from a laminated card in the same tone she’d use to notarize a deed or renew a vehicle registration, no flourish, no fuss.
She asked if we were here of our own free will. She asked if we understood the legal implications of marriage. She asked if either of us had been married before.
We answered yes to the first two, no to the last one. Patsy nodded, made a check mark on her form, and then pushed two copies of the certificate across the counter.
“Sign at the bottom,” she said, pointing to the line with a pen that had probably witnessed a thousand life-changing moments. “Both of you.”
I signed where she indicated—my name in my careful block printing, the date beneath it. Jasper did the same beside me, his handwriting quicker and looser than mine, with a small flourish at the end of his name that I’d never noticed before.
Patsy collected both copies, added her signature with a practiced motion, and then stamped them with the county seal—a heavy thunk of metal on paper that seemed to echo in the small room.
“There you go,” she said, sliding one copy back across the counter. “You’re married.”
Just like that—no music, no audience, no moment where the air changed or the ground shifted. Just Patsy with her reading glasses and her official stamp, and the two of us standing at the counter with our signatures still wet on the page.
I picked up the certificate and looked at it for a beat—the plain paper, the official seal, my own signature in the corner.
Something settled behind my sternum—not quite relief, not quite pride, but adjacent to both.
A weight lifting, a door opening, and something that I didn’t have a clean name for.
I folded it once along the crease Patsy had indicated and put it in my jacket pocket. Jasper watched me do this with an expression that was trying not to be amused and losing.
“Really?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “That’s where it’s going? Jacket pocket?”
I shrugged, feeling the warmth of his attention like a physical thing. “Safe there,” I said as I patted my pocket, keeping it simple.
Jasper shook his head, but he was smiling—the particular smile that made something in my chest loosen without permission.
We said thank you to Patsy, who had already moved on to whatever came next in her day—no congratulations, no acknowledgment that what had just happened mattered to anyone beyond the paperwork it generated.
Outside, the morning had warmed slightly, the thin line of clouds to the east breaking up to reveal patches of blue.
We stood on the courthouse steps with the main street of Black Butte laid out in front of us—the bakery, the feed store, the Watering Hole Tavern with its faded sign and covered porch.
A woman passed with a grocery bag, glancing at us with the curiosity of someone in a town small enough that new faces stood out. Jasper waited until she was halfway down the block, then turned to me with a look I couldn’t quite read.
“Decker,” he said, just my name, the single syllable carrying more weight than it should have been able to.
I turned toward him, not sure what was coming next, and then Jasper stepped in and kissed me—brief and deliberate, his mouth warm against mine for just a second before he pulled back.
My hand came up to the back of his neck without me deciding to do it—palm flat against his skin, fingers pressing into his hair, the contact landing somewhere in my chest that I filed away for later.