Chapter Nine
~ Macon ~
I woke with the false dawn, the hour when the world was only half-real and anything might be waiting at the edge of the bed. The old house breathed around me, wood creaking in the rafters, cold air drifting up through the cracks in the floorboards.
I reached for Carter without opening my eyes, hand searching the sheets for the familiar line of his shoulder, the faint heat of him in the hollow he’d left behind.
He wasn’t in the bed.
I cracked my lids, all nerves and muscle memory, and scanned the room. There he was: at the window, backlit by the pale Montana sky, arms folded in that way he had when he thought too hard about something.
His right hand cradled his belly—impossible to miss, even in silhouette—and his left rested against the cold glass, fingers splayed as if he could catch the horizon and pull it closer.
For a second I watched him, not moving, letting my brain piece together what the light was telling me.
He looked different. It wasn’t just the pregnancy or the way his hair had gotten long enough to curl at the nape.
It was how he held himself. Taller, somehow.
Like he’d learned overnight how to take up space.
I propped myself up on one elbow, slow, careful not to groan and startle him. I had a catalog in my mind of every version of Carter I’d ever seen—nervous, angry, half-drunk and spinning insults at anyone who got too close.
This Carter was none of those. He was calm, almost serene, staring out over the blank fields and the river haze as if he finally understood his place in the world.
“You ever sleep?” I rasped.
He didn’t jump. Just looked back at me, a soft smile pulling at his mouth. “I did,” he said, “but the sunrise here is better than any dream.”
He pressed his forehead to the glass for a second, then let it go.
I watched the line of his shoulders, the way he braced himself as he turned to face me. The room was cold enough that I could see his breath, a little cloud of fog as he exhaled. He padded over, bare feet slapping the floor, and sat on the edge of the mattress.
For a minute we just looked at each other.
“You okay?” I asked. My voice came out gruffer than I meant it to.
Carter shrugged, but not like he was dismissing me. “Yeah. Just thinking.” He ran a thumb along the curve of his belly, absently smoothing the fabric of his shirt. “About Jojo. About the baby. About… everything, I guess.”
I reached out, palm up, and he set his hand in mine without hesitation. His skin was cold from the window, his fingers long and elegant. I rubbed my thumb over his knuckles, grounding both of us.
He squeezed my hand, and for a second I saw all the nerves in his face. But then he blinked, and when he spoke again, there was iron in his voice. “I want to see the Hargrove property today,” he said. “If we’re going to build our home there, I need to know what we’re working with.”
The words hit me with the force of an order. I waited for the rest, but he just looked at me, clear-eyed, like he expected me to say no and wasn’t afraid to fight for it.
“Yeah,” I said. “We can do that.”
He let out a breath, and the tension in his jaw eased a notch. “Good. I want to get a real sense of it. Not just what’s on paper.”
I tugged him forward, enough to get him under the covers, and pulled his back to my chest. He fit there like he’d been made for it, and the baby—ours, mine—pressed between us, warm and alive.
We lay there for a few minutes. He shivered once, and I wrapped my arm around his middle, palm flat to his belly. I could feel the rise and fall of his breath, steady and sure.
“You hungry?” I asked, mouth pressed to the soft patch of skin behind his ear.
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Not for eggs again.”
“Toast?” I offered.
“God, yes. With butter. And honey, if Jojo didn’t hide it.”
I grinned. “You’re not supposed to have that much sugar.”
He elbowed me, gentle. “You’re not my doctor.”
“I’m your alpha,” I said, the words half a joke, half a promise.
He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.
I let myself drift for another minute, breathing him in. He smelled like the herbal soap Jojo stocked the bathrooms with, but underneath that, he just smelled like Carter. A little sharp, a little sweet, always familiar.
Eventually he sat up, swinging his legs out from under the blanket. The bump of his belly shifted his center of gravity, and he caught himself on the headboard with a little grunt.
“You good?” I asked, eyeing the way he moved.
“Just heavy,” he said. “Getting harder to stand up without assistance.”
I was already halfway out of bed, feet hitting the floorboards, before he could protest. I steadied him with one hand under his elbow, guiding him to his feet.
“Don’t coddle me,” he warned, but there was no heat in it.
I didn’t answer. Just kept my hand on his back, steering him toward the bathroom. He went in, closed the door, and I heard the faucet start. I moved around the room, pulling on jeans and a fresh t-shirt.
My own reflection in the mirror looked tired—eyes ringed in gray, jaw heavy with a new growth of beard—but I didn’t care. Carter was right: sunrise here was better than any dream.
In the kitchen, I started the coffee and found the last of the bread. I sliced it thick, set the toaster, and went hunting for the honey. Jojo had, in fact, hidden it behind a wall of preserves, but I found it anyway.
Carter came in a minute later, hair damp, face scrubbed clean. He wore one of my shirts, big enough to cover the top of his belly, and a pair of old sweatpants cinched tight at the waist.
He looked ridiculous and perfect.
He made for the coffee first, pouring himself half a cup and blowing on it while I worked the toaster. I watched him over my shoulder, making sure he didn’t topple over. He perched on a stool, one arm wrapped around his middle, the other propping up his head.
“You ever think about what it’s going to be like?” he asked, eyes on the window again. “After?”
I set the toast in front of him, slathered in butter and enough honey to give a dentist nightmares. “Yeah,” I said. “Every day.”
He smiled. “Me too. Used to scare the shit out of me.”
“Does it now?”
He looked at me, the old uncertainty gone. “No. Not with you here.”
Something unspooled in my chest—a knot I hadn’t realized was there.
We ate in silence, the comfortable kind. When we finished, I cleaned up, and Carter wandered back to the bedroom to grab a sweater. He moved slow, but not like he was hurting. More like he was savoring every step.
When he came back, he had his phone and a folded sheet of graph paper. He laid the paper on the table and smoothed it out. It was a rough map of the Hargrove land, sketched in pencil, with little Xs marking the river, the tree lines, and the old irrigation ditch.
“You’ve been planning,” I said.
He shrugged, sheepish. “You said you wanted to build a house. I just—“ He trailed off, then started again. “I want it to be perfect.”
I set my hand over his, pressing down until he met my gaze.
“It will be,” I said.
He nodded, and I knew he believed me.
We finished our coffee, got dressed, and by the time we were ready to go, the sun had fully broken over the hills, turning the fields outside into a sea of gold.
Carter grabbed his coat, shrugged it on over his massive belly, and gave me a look that dared me to laugh.
I didn’t. I just held the door for him, one hand on his back, the other ready to catch him if he slipped.
Outside, the air was cold and clean, the kind of morning that made you believe in second chances. We walked to the truck together, and for the first time, I felt like we were exactly where we belonged.
We were ready.
The drive out to the Hargrove place was longer than I remembered, all dust and switchbacks and the kind of silence that didn’t get filled by words.
We took Rawley’s truck, the battered F-150 with the custom shocks and the welded brush guard, because Carter insisted he didn’t trust my hands on his precious car with “all those hills.”
We hit the end of the ranch’s drive, turned onto the county road.
It was early enough that the sun hadn’t burned off the river mist, so the world looked like something half-dreamed, the fields gone flat and gray, the sky a white wall overhead.
I kept my hands at ten and two, careful over the frost heaves and the places where gravel bled into mud.
Carter was quiet. Not the sulky, nursing-a-grudge quiet of our early days, but the kind of stillness he only wore when something was pressing hard on the inside. He kept his gaze glued to the window, fingers drumming on the meat of his thigh in an even, unbroken rhythm.
“You all right?” I asked, voice low enough it didn’t feel like a challenge.
He nodded without looking at me, then after a beat, “Just… thinking.”
I let him be. The road did a long curve along the bluff, past the cluster of willows that marked the halfway point to town. The mountains in the distance got bigger, then faded again, as if they were holding their breath. A hawk tracked us for a quarter mile, then veered off toward the river.
At the turnoff for the estate, Carter straightened. “It’s this one,” he said, pointing at the wrought-iron sign that arched over the drive: HARGROVE, in letters so ostentatious you could probably see them from orbit.
I eased the truck through the gate, tires crunching on the perfectly-maintained gravel.
The land opened up—fields that went on forever, all cut to the same length, fences laser-straight.
The house was visible from a mile out, perched on a low rise, its walls the color of a threat.
Four columns framed the entryway, and the whole thing had a look like it wanted to remind you who was king.
“Jesus,” I said under my breath. “Victor really went for the whole Bond villain aesthetic.”
That got a smile out of Carter, quick and bright, before the nerves came back and he tucked his hands between his knees.