Epilogue #2
"Yes I do. You build everything to last. Our child won't be any different.
" Her hands flatten against my back, pulling me closer.
"You'll teach them to read timber. Mark trees.
Use a chainsaw safely at fourteen, just like my dad taught me.
You'll grind them fresh coffee when they're old enough and read them forestry books by candlelight when they're not. "
"Nora."
"And when they're difficult, because they will be difficult, because they'll be half Marsh and half Chambers and stubbornness is genetic on both sides, you'll do what you do with everything. You'll be patient. You'll wait. You'll let them come to you."
My arms tighten. Pulling her up onto her toes. Her face tilts, chin on my chest, brown eyes looking up at me with the unshakable certainty of a woman who drove eleven hours to a stranger's mountain and turned it into a home.
"I didn't ask for you," I tell her. "I didn't ask for any of this.
The agency. The letter. The woman in my driveway with two suitcases.
But I'm standing in a kitchen that smells like bread, holding my wife, counting down to July, and I have never in my life been more grateful for something I didn't ask for. "
"You should probably thank Bette."
"I'll die first."
Her laugh. God. That laugh. Full, warm, shaking through her body into mine.
My mouth finds hers. Slow this time. Not the urgent crash of reconciliation or the desperate heat of a first night.
Something deeper. The kiss of a man who knows how this story goes because he's living it, and the ending is a beginning, and the beginning started with flour on a cheek and a woman who wasn't afraid.
"Take me to bed, Hunter."
"It's two in the afternoon."
"And?"
My hands slide down to her thighs. One smooth lift, her legs wrapping around my waist, her arms looping around my neck. She weighs nothing. She weighs everything. The whole world, balanced on my hips, smiling down at me from a height she only reaches when I'm holding her up.
The bedroom door kicks open. The bed catches us both, her back against the mattress, my weight braced above her, mouth never leaving hers.
The flannel opens under my hands. No bra underneath because there never is in the mornings, and her breasts fill my palms, warm and full, nipples tightening as my thumbs circle them.
"Mine." Against her throat. My teeth graze her pulse. "Every part of you. Every part of what's coming. Mine."
"Yours." She arches into my touch. "Ours."
The flannel peels off. My thermal follows. Skin against skin in the afternoon light that pours through the south-facing window, painting her body in gold. Her jeans work down her hips, then mine, then the rest follows until there's nothing between us but heat and intention.
My mouth moves down her body. Throat. Collarbone. The swell of her breasts, each nipple drawn between my lips, tongued until she gasps. Her stomach, where my mouth pauses. Presses flat. A kiss against skin that is keeping the most important secret either of us will ever share.
"Hi," I whisper against her belly. Rough. Barely audible. Ridiculous. The kind of thing a man says when he's broken open so completely that the pieces have rearranged themselves into something better than the original. "I'm your dad. I'm going to build you a crib."
"Hunter." Nora's fingers thread through my hair. Her voice cracks. "You're going to make me cry."
"Later." My mouth continues south. Over her hip. The inside of her thigh. "Crying later. This first."
My tongue finds her pussy, wet and swollen.
One long stroke from entrance to clit draws a moan out of her that fills the bedroom.
Her thighs open wider, hips lifting, fingers tightening in my hair.
The taste of her floods my mouth. Familiar now.
Mine. Something I'll never get enough of, even after fourteen months of learning every sound she makes, every spot that makes her arch, every rhythm that drives her to the edge.
Two fingers slide inside. Curling forward, pressing, finding the place that makes her voice break on my name.
My tongue circles her clit in steady, relentless strokes while my fingers work her from the inside, building pressure, reading every tremor and gasp the way I read timber.
Patiently. Precisely. With the full attention of a man who takes his time because this matters.
"Fuck, Hunter, right there, don't stop?—"
Her orgasm hits hard. Back arching, thighs clamping, pussy gripping my fingers in rhythmic waves while she comes apart with my name on her lips and my mouth on her clit. Beautiful. Devastating. Mine.
Before the aftershocks finish, my body covers hers. One stroke sinks deep inside her, filling her completely, her gasp mixing with my groan in the space between our mouths. Her legs wrap around me. Ankles locked. Pulling me deeper.
"Harder."
My hips slam forward. The bed frame protests. Her breasts bounce with each thrust, nipples flushed dark pink. My mouth finds one, sucking hard, tongue lashing the peak while my cock drives into her at a pace that shakes the headboard against the wall.
"You're mine, Nora." Ragged. Against her breast. Between thrusts that hit deep and draw sounds from her throat that I will replay until I die. "This body. This life. This baby. All mine."
"All yours." Her nails score down my back. "Always yours."
My hand finds her thigh, pushing it higher, changing the angle so every stroke grinds against her clit. Her eyes roll back. The second orgasm builds fast, her pussy tightening around me, slick and hot, the pressure at the base of my spine becoming impossible to hold.
"Come with me." Against her mouth. "Now."
She breaks apart. The clench of her around my cock pulls me over the edge. My hips bury deep, pulsing, filling her while we shatter together in the afternoon light of a bedroom that smells like bread and wood smoke and the permanence of a life neither of us planned for but both of us chose.
Afterward. Tangled. Sweating. Her head on my chest, fingers tracing patterns through the hair there, my arm wrapped around her shoulders. The light has shifted from gold to amber. The woodstove needs feeding. The bread in the oven needs checking.
Neither of us moves.
"July," she murmurs against my skin. "We have until July."
"Crib will be done by March."
"Of course it will."
"And the reading nook. And the rocking chair. Going to need a rocking chair."
"You're going to build an entire nursery before this baby is the size of a lemon, aren't you?"
"Probably."
Her laugh vibrates through my chest. Warm. Settled. Home.
Through the window, the south ridge catches the last of the afternoon sun.
The garden is visible from here. Zucchini still producing.
Cold frames intact. The timber standing dark and tall beyond the fence line, the same trees my grandfather stood under, the same land my father worked, the same mountain that I swore I would live on alone.
I was wrong. The mountain is better with her on it. The cabin is better with bread in the oven. The table is better with two mugs. And the man I was before she showed up, quiet and orderly and alone, was not the best version of what I could be.
This is. Right here. Nora in my arms, a child on the way, a sign above the workshop door with both our names.
I didn't advertise for a bride. My sister did it for me. And it's the only thing Bette has ever done that I will never complain about.
"I love you," Nora says. Not a declaration. Just a fact. Quiet and permanent, like timber.
"I love you too." My lips press against her hair. "Now let me up. The bread is burning."
"Let it burn."
"Nora."
"Fine." She releases me. Rolls onto her back. Grins up at me with a smile that has been rearranging my life since the moment she stepped out of a rental car and didn't flinch. "But I get the first slice."
"You always get the first slice."
"Just checking."
The bread is perfect. It's always perfect. And so is she, and so is this, and so is the life we're building on a mountain that was waiting for both of us all along.