Chapter Fifteen
~ Macon ~
The future looked like a skeleton, all ribs and bones, jutting up from the earth where the foundation had barely cured.
I stood on the edge of the construction pit, boots dusted with limestone and sawdust, eyes on Carter as he bounded over the plywood catwalk with the reckless optimism of a puppy who hadn’t read the warning sign.
He wore overalls rolled up at the ankles, a t-shirt so stretched at the belly it looked like it might split, and a grin that took up the whole topography of his face.
“Check it out,” he called, waving me over. “They framed the kitchen already!” He slapped a stud for emphasis, then pressed his palm flat against the raw wood, like he could taste the future through his fingertips.
I picked my way across the planks, hyperaware of every warped board and loose nail, because the idea of him falling—five months and change pregnant, center of gravity already working against him—made my teeth ache.
The baby wasn’t due for another week, maybe two if we were lucky, but I moved like the floor was booby-trapped and Carter was made of blown glass.
He pointed out the ghost of the pantry, the way the window would throw light on the breakfast nook, the corner where he wanted to put a reading chair for late-night bottle duty.
“And the mudroom’s huge!” he said. “Enough space for boots, goats, a stroller—hell, we could start a daycare in there if this whole ‘retirement’ thing gets boring.”
I let him rattle on, half-listening, half-scanning the site for hazards.
There was no one else I’d trust to build this place, but that didn’t stop me from sizing up every worker like I expected sabotage.
They moved through the framing with the fast, efficient choreography of men who’d done this a hundred times before.
The air was a punch bowl of wet cement, resin, and high-altitude pine; every breath was a reminder that the house was real, not just a fever dream sketched on napkins at the dining table at Black Butte Ranch.
Carter twirled, somehow, in that half-finished shell of a kitchen, one hand bracing his lower back, the other cradling the ledge of his stomach. His cheeks were pink, hair pulled back with a bandana that looked like it had come from a 4th of July parade.
“Can you believe it?” he said, voice hushed. “It’s really happening.”
I took it in—the grid of the beams, the blue chalk lines on the slab, the sunlight spearing down through rafters like a promise. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a miracle nothing’s on fire.”
He flipped me off, but the smile never faded. “You’re just mad I won the bet.”
The bet in question was whether we could get the place framed before the baby arrived. Carter had wagered a hundred bucks and a full week of dishwashing duty that he could hustle the permits, find a builder, and have walls up by the end of June.
I’d told him he was out of his mind—this was Montana, not Manhattan, and good help was harder to find than a sober cowboy. He’d proved me wrong in spectacular fashion, probably by threatening the contractor with a Yelp review.
The foreman—a blocky, sunburnt guy named Larry—wandered over, hardhat tucked under one arm. “Afternoon,” he said, nodding at me, then Carter, then back at me like he was waiting for a translation.
Carter grinned. “He doesn’t bite,” he told Larry, gesturing at me. “He just looks like that.”
“Noted.” Larry thumbed a roll of plans, half his fingers stained with ink. “Just wanted to update you—we’re ahead of schedule. Might even start on the roof trusses by Friday if weather holds.” He squinted at Carter. “You sure you’re comfortable walking the site like this?”
Carter planted his feet, hands on hips. “I’m fine. I promise I won’t go into labor in your porta-potty.”
Larry looked at me, then at Carter, then at me again. “All right. Just don’t sue if your water breaks on the slab.”
“Deal,” Carter said, and Larry trundled off, muttering something about “city people.”
When we were alone again, Carter threaded his fingers through mine, squeezing just hard enough to remind me who owned which part of my soul. We walked the perimeter, his pace slow but steady, pausing every few feet so he could point out another feature.
“I want a woodstove right here,” he said, marking the spot with his heel. “And an old-school mailbox at the end of the drive. None of that fiberglass crap.”
I let him talk, committing every detail to memory. The shape of his dreams had changed so many times since I met him—Houston skyline, Barcelona beach, Portland’s endless gray—but here, at the edge of a Montana hayfield, he looked more at home than I’d ever seen.
We stood in what would be the living room, sunlight pouring through the empty window frame. He leaned against the plywood, catching his breath, and looked at me with that unfiltered joy that still scared the hell out of me. “You think the baby will like it here?”
I shrugged, but it was all for show. “Not like they get a vote.”
He rested his head on my shoulder, hair tickling my jaw. For a second, everything else—the workers, the foreman, even the whine of the generator—faded out. All that was left was the two of us, and the space where the next chapter would grow.
“You’re quiet,” he said, the words feather-light. “You nervous?”
I thought about it. About all the ways the world could go sideways. About the memory of a hospital corridor, the sight of a birth gone wrong, all the things that could be lost in a single flicker of fate. I watched his hand trace the curve of his stomach, protective and proud and impossibly brave.
“Yeah,” I said. “But that’s normal, right?”
He kissed my neck, slow and deliberate. “You’re going to be a good dad.”
I snorted. “You barely trust me to build a bookshelf.”
“Because you refuse to read the instructions.”
“Instructions are for people who haven’t done it before.”
He laughed, loud and sharp. The sound bounced off the beams, echoing through the skeleton of the house.
We did one more lap, Carter refusing to let me help him down the plywood steps until the very last one, where he pretended to trip just so I’d catch him. When we reached the truck, he groaned and leaned against the door, palm pressed to the top of his belly.
“You all right?” I asked, scanning him for distress signals.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just tired. And hungry. And maybe, just maybe, slightly over this whole gestation thing.”
“Want to head back?”
He nodded, and I unlocked the passenger side, helping him up and buckling the seatbelt under his stomach.
I did a quick perimeter check—habit, not need—then rounded to the driver’s side.
For a minute I just sat there, letting the sensation of his laughter, his warmth, wash away the last of my nerves.
He fiddled with the radio, settling on an old country station. “You realize,” he said, “that in a couple weeks, we’re going to have a tiny person depending on us for literally everything.”
I grinned. “We’ll teach it to run power tools by three.”
He nudged me with his elbow. “You’re not supposed to let the baby chew on nails.”
“Only the stainless-steel kind,” I said, deadpan.
He rolled his eyes, but I saw the dimple at the corner of his mouth.
As we pulled away from the site, I glanced in the mirror one last time. The house stood raw and unfinished, but the light caught the beams in a way that made it look alive, like it was already holding a memory.
I didn’t say it out loud, but I felt it down to my bones: this was going to work. We were going to make it work. And, for the first time in a long, violent life, I was ready for whatever came next.
The drive back to Black Butte Ranch was a slow bleed into summer dusk, all the heat of the day trading places with shadows that stretched out forever across the fields.
Carter slept most of the way, head tipped against the window, one hand bracing his stomach as if the baby was liable to bail out at the next cattle grate.
He woke up three miles from the turnoff, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, blinking at the world like it was a test pattern he hadn’t studied for.
“You hungry?” I asked, because the answer was always yes.
He yawned. “Starved. Is Jojo cooking tonight?”
“He hasn’t stopped cooking since sunrise.”
Carter patted his belly, satisfied. “There is a God.”
We crested the hill above the house and saw the porch lights already burning gold, a string of Edison bulbs looping from the eaves all the way out to the barn.
In the yard, someone had dragged out two sawhorses and dropped a new plank table across them, unfinished wood that still smelled of sap and ambition.
The table was already set, plates stacked, wildflowers jammed into a row of old whiskey bottles, candles stuck in between like they’d been growing there all along.
I pulled up, killed the engine, and watched Carter take it in.
“Surprise,” I said, though the effort was all Rawley’s. He’d recruited the rest of the misfits to build the thing, and if I knew him, he’d made a competition out of it—who could saw straightest, whose legs were plumb, whose screws lined up like parade formation.
Carter rolled down his window, breathing deep. “It’s beautiful.”
I wanted to say, Not as much as you, but even I had a limit.
The rest of the squad was already out there.
Burke, beer in hand, was trying to teach Jojo how to open a bottle with a lighter; Hooper was setting out folding chairs, his flannel rolled up to the biceps in defiance of the evening chill.
Rawley loomed at the far end of the table, arms crossed, his gaze raking the horizon as if expecting an airstrike.
They all turned when we came around the corner.
“Well, well, well,” Burke called, grinning wide. “If it isn’t the happy couple.”
Hooper whooped, tossing a napkin in the air. “’Bout time you got here! The lasagna’s setting up like concrete.”
Carter laughed, holding his stomach. “That’s how I like it. Fewer carbs per cubic inch.”