Chapter 34
Marco
T he first time Maya smiles at me that morning, something inside my chest loosens so suddenly that I almost have to look away from her just to steady myself.
The smile itself is small, soft around the edges, appearing while she wipes down the front counter at Calder Café & Market before the breakfast crowd fully arrives, but over the last week every expression she gives me seems to carry the weight of my entire future.
Ever since she told me she was pregnant, I have been walking around with my heart lodged somewhere high in my throat, overwhelmed by a happiness so sharp it almost frightens me, because wanting something this badly means acknowledging how much there is to lose.
Snow drifts steadily beyond the front windows of the café, covering the sidewalks of Silver Pine in fresh white while the first customers wander inside wearing heavy coats and knit hats dusted with flakes.
The familiar smell of coffee, cinnamon, and fresh bread fills the warm room, and for a few quiet minutes I simply stand near the espresso machine helping out by pretending to organize supply boxes while I watch Maya move behind the counter.
She rests her palm unconsciously against her stomach now and then, almost like she still cannot fully believe there is a child growing inside her, and every time she does it my chest tightens with a fierce, disorienting kind of tenderness I never imagined I would feel in my lifetime.
A baby.
Mine.
Ours.
Even now, the idea feels impossible enough that I occasionally catch myself expecting reality to correct itself somehow.
Tess notices me staring and shakes her head while pouring coffee for Jake and Amy. “You know,” she says dryly, “for someone who used to live alone in a mountain cabin avoiding all forms of human connection, you’ve become ridiculously obvious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been looking at Maya like she personally hung the moon for the last seven days.”
Jake agrees, “Honestly, it’s kind of intense.”
“Shut up.”
Amy grins. “No, Tess is right. It’s actually adorable.”
Across the counter, Maya glances toward us suspiciously. “Why do I feel like all of you are talking about me?”
“Because we are,” Tess answers immediately.
I shake my head under my breath while Maya laughs softly, and hearing that sound in the middle of the warm café, surrounded by people who somehow became family without me fully realizing when it happened, creates an ache inside me that feels dangerously close to peace.
That realization still catches me off guard sometimes.
For years after the deployment, peace felt temporary, fragile enough to disappear the second I relaxed my grip on it.
I spent so much time convincing myself that surviving was the same thing as living that I never stopped to consider how exhausted I had become carrying guilt everywhere I went.
Some nights I still wake up hearing imagined rotor blades cutting through darkness, and I still remember watching helicopters disappear into the sky carrying wounded men while all of us remaining in the patrol convoy drove three radio-silent hours back toward the base, all of us praying the medical evacuation had been enough.
Even now I can still hear the first question we asked when we finally returned to the relative security of our base.
Did they make it?
For three hours, hope existed.
Then it didn’t. That kind of moment changes the structure of a man from the inside out.
Maya walks toward me before I realize I have drifted too far into my own thoughts, and the warmth of her hand settling lightly against my wrist pulls me back into the present so gently that my throat tightens.
“Hey,” she says softly, studying my face with that quiet awareness she has always had when it comes to me. “Where’d you just go?”
I exhale slowly before sliding my hand around her waist. “Nowhere important.”
“That’s usually not true when you say it.”
Her voice carries no accusation, only concern, and somehow that makes it harder to hide from her than anger or rejection ever could.
“I’m okay,” I tell her honestly. “Just thinking.”
She leans into me slightly, lowering her voice while the others continue talking nearby. “You’ve been watching me all morning like you’re trying to memorize me.”
Maybe I am.
Because for the last week I have been carrying around a question so large it has started occupying every quiet space inside my head.
I know I want to marry her. I know it with the same certainty I once knew how to treat injuries under fire, instinctive and absolute, but wanting something and believing you deserve it are two entirely different things.
Some broken part of me still struggles to understand how I ended up here, standing in a warm café in a mountain town with a woman who somehow looked at every damaged part of me and stayed anyway.
Maya brushes her thumb lightly across my wrist. “What?”
I realize she is waiting for an answer.
“You make me happy,” I admit quietly.
Her expression softens instantly, and for one terrifying second I think I might actually say everything right there in the middle of the café, but Tess chooses that exact moment to loudly announce that more customers are arriving, effectively saving me from myself.
Maya laughs under her breath before returning behind the counter, and I watch her go while my hand drifts toward the ring hidden inside my jacket pocket.
Not yet.
But soon.
Very soon.
* * *
Maya
Something is going on with Marco.
I know him well enough now to recognize the difference between silence and anticipation, and all afternoon he moves through the cafe carrying a restless kind of energy that makes me increasingly suspicious.
He keeps disappearing into quiet conversations with Tess and John whenever he thinks I am distracted, and every time I catch him looking at me his expression turns so openly emotional that my heart stumbles painfully against my ribs.
The thing is, I understand why he looks at me that way now.
A week ago, when I told him I was pregnant, I saw something shift inside him so completely that I do not think either of us will ever fully forget the moment.
For a few terrifying seconds after I told him, he simply stared at me in stunned silence while emotion moved openly across his face, joy colliding with fear and disbelief so quickly that tears actually filled his eyes before he looked away.
Then he wrapped both arms around me with a kind of desperate tenderness that nearly broke my heart, holding me so carefully it felt like he was afraid the entire future might disappear if he loosened his grip.
Since then, he has hovered around me constantly in the sweetest possible ways.
He makes me tea without asking. Walks me home every night even when the snow is falling hard enough to cover the streets in inches.
Carries boxes I am perfectly capable of lifting myself while pretending not to notice me rolling my eyes at him.
Every gesture feels so sincere and unguarded that sometimes I catch myself simply watching him when he is not paying attention, overwhelmed by how much this man loves despite everything life has done to him.
The late afternoon rush fills Calder Café with noise and warmth while snow falls steadily beyond the windows.
Sarah and Graham occupy their usual table near the fireplace while Amy argues with Jake about construction permits for something involving the new housing project, and Emily sits beside Graham Sinclair laughing loudly enough that half the room occasionally turns to look at them.
Somewhere near the espresso machine, Tess catches my eye and gives me an expression so blatantly excited that I narrow my gaze immediately.
“What are you doing?” I ask suspiciously.
“Nothing.”
“That is absolutely not a nothing face.”
John starts coughing into his coffee to hide a laugh.
Before I can question either of them further, the front door opens again and several more people from town wander inside shaking snow from their coats.
The café becomes louder, fuller, alive with the kind of warmth that first made me fall in love with Silver Pine years ago when I arrived here feeling lonely and displaced after leaving San Diego behind.
And then suddenly the room begins to quiet.
At first I do not understand why.
I step out from behind the counter carrying a tray of pastries just as conversation around the café starts fading one table at a time. My confusion deepens when I notice nearly everyone staring toward the same spot near the center of the room.
Marco.
My pulse jumps instantly.
He walks toward me slowly, and the look on his face steals every coherent thought from my head before he even reaches me.
I have seen him angry, grieving, protective, broken, vulnerable, overwhelmed by love, but I have never seen him look quite like this.
There is fear in his eyes, yes, but also certainty, deep enough that suddenly my hands begin trembling around the tray.
“Marco,” I whisper.
He gently takes the tray from my hands and sets it aside before lowering himself onto one knee directly in the middle of the cafe.
The entire room goes silent.
Completely silent.
My heart feels like it physically stops inside my chest.
“Oh my God,” Amy breathes somewhere behind me.
Marco looks up at me with so much emotion in his face that tears immediately sting my eyes before he even begins speaking.
“I spent a long time believing the war ruined me,” he says quietly, his voice rough with feeling.
“I thought what happened over there turned me into someone who shouldn’t get to build a life with anybody else.
Every time I started wanting something good, part of me kept waiting for it to disappear because I honestly didn’t believe I deserved to keep it. ”
Tears slide down my cheeks before I can stop them.
“But then you loved me anyway,” he continues, never looking away from me.
“You limped into that cabin and saw every damaged part of me, and instead of leaving, you stayed long enough to remind me I was still human underneath all of it. You gave me peace when I didn’t think peace was possible anymore, and now you’ve given me a family too. ”
The ring appears in his shaking hand.
“Maya, I love you more than I know how to explain. I love you enough that forever stopped terrifying me somewhere along the way. So I’m asking you now in front of everybody who matters to us... will you marry me?”
For one suspended second, I cannot speak.
All I can see is the man kneeling in front of me, the same man who once isolated himself in a mountain cabin because he believed the war had permanently separated him from ordinary happiness, now looking at me with hope so raw and vulnerable that it nearly undoes me.
“Yes,” I whisper immediately through tears. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you.”
The café erupts around us.
Applause crashes through the room while Tess openly sobs behind the counter and John lifts his phone to record everything for what I am certain will become the entire town’s entertainment by tomorrow morning.
Marco rises just as I throw my arms around his neck, and the second his hands settle against my waist I kiss him hard enough to make several people whistle nearby.
He laughs softly against my mouth, overwhelmed and emotional and alive beneath my hands, and while the people we love surround us in warmth and noise and celebration, I realize something quietly extraordinary.
For the first time since I met him, Marco finally looks like a man who believes he gets to stay.