CHAPTER FIVE #2
Afterward, we lay tangled together in the wreckage of our sheets, hearts pounding and breath slowly returning to normal.
"That was..." I trailed off, unable to find words.
"Yeah." Tristen pressed a kiss to my temple. "It really was."
I curled into his side, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat gradually slow.
For the first time in years, I felt truly connected to him.
Not just physically, but emotionally. Like the wall that had been building between us, brick by brick with every failed pregnancy, was finally starting to crumble.
"We're going to be parents," I said softly.
"We are."
"I still can't quite believe it."
Tristen's arm tightened around me. "I know. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and check my phone just to make sure it wasn't a dream. That the ultrasound photos are still there."
I smiled against his skin. "You do that too?"
"Every night."
We lay in comfortable silence for a while, just breathing together. The afternoon light was fading outside the window, painting the room in shades of gold and amber. It felt peaceful. Sacred, almost.
"What do you think she'll be like?" I asked. "If it's a girl?"
"Stubborn as hell," Tristen said immediately. "Just like her mother."
"Hey!"
"It's a compliment. Your stubbornness is one of my favorite things about you."
I propped myself up on one elbow to look at him. "And if it's a boy?"
"Then he'll have your eyes and my complete inability to admit when I'm wrong."
I laughed and swatted his chest. "God help us all."
"Seriously, though." Tristen reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, his expression turning tender. "I think our kid is going to be incredible. Because they're going to be raised by you."
"By us."
"By us," he agreed. "But mostly by you. I'll probably be the fun parent who lets them eat ice cream for dinner and stay up past bedtime."
"So basically useless."
"Beloved but useless, yes."
I leaned down and kissed him, slow and sweet. "I'll take it."
We stayed like that for another hour, trading dreams and fears and half-formed plans.
Names we hadn't agreed on yet. Schools we wanted to research.
The first vacation we'd take as a family of three.
It was the kind of conversation we'd been too afraid to have for years, always worried about jinxing ourselves, but now the words flowed easily.
Eventually, hunger drove us out of bed.
I threw on one of Tristen's t-shirts and a pair of shorts while he pulled on sweats and nothing else. We padded into the kitchen together, bumping shoulders and stealing kisses like teenagers.
"I'll cook," he offered. "You pick the music."
I connected my phone to the speaker and scrolled through playlists until I found something soft and acoustic. The first notes of a vaguely familiar love song filled the kitchen as Tristen began pulling ingredients from the fridge.
"Pasta okay?"
"Pasta's perfect."
I hopped up on the counter to watch him work, my bare feet swinging.
He moved around the kitchen with an easy confidence, chopping garlic and sautéing onions and somehow making the whole process look effortless.
I knew he'd taken cooking classes a few years ago as a stress relief thing, but I'd never fully appreciated the results until now.
"You should cook more often," I said.
"I would, but someone keeps buying those fancy meal delivery kits."
"Those meal delivery kits are convenient and portion-controlled."
"They're also boring as hell." He glanced over his shoulder at me, grinning. "Admit it. My pasta is better."
"Your pasta is adequate."
"Adequate? I'm wounded."
I was laughing when his phone buzzed on the counter.
He ignored it, continuing to stir the sauce. But it buzzed again. And then a third time, rapid-fire.
"That might be important," I said, even though part of me wanted to throw the phone out the window.
Tristen wiped his hands on a dish towel and checked the screen. Something shifted in his expression, subtle but unmistakable. That same flicker I'd noticed before, gone before I could fully identify it.
"It's Oakleigh," he said. "She's anxious about the move."
My stomach tightened. "At eight o'clock on a Wednesday night?"
"She says she can't sleep. She's worried about the logistics, whether she'll be in the way, if we'll regret having her here."
I wanted to say that those concerns could wait until morning. I wanted to point out that we were in the middle of dinner, in the middle of reconnecting, in the middle of something that felt fragile and important. But the words stuck in my throat.
Because what kind of person would I be if I prioritized pasta over a pregnant woman's anxiety? What kind of mother would that make me?
"You should call her," I heard myself say.
Tristen looked at me, really looked, and I saw guilt flicker across his face. "Are you sure? I can just text her back."
"No, a call is probably better. It's hard to read tone over text, and she's already stressed. Just... don't be too long, okay?"
He crossed the kitchen and kissed my forehead. "Ten minutes, tops. I promise."
He took his phone and stepped out onto the balcony, sliding the glass door closed behind him. Through the window, I watched him pace back and forth, his lips moving, his free hand gesturing as he talked.
The pasta water began to boil, and I realized he'd left in the middle of cooking.
I sighed and slid off the counter, taking over where he'd left off. Salt in the water. Pasta in the pot. Stir the sauce so it didn't burn. The domestic rhythm felt hollow now, the magic of the evening slowly draining away.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Then twenty.
I drained the pasta and plated two servings, setting them on the dining table with napkins and forks. The candle I'd lit earlier had burned down to a stub, wax pooling at its base.
Through the balcony door, I could see Tristen still talking. He'd stopped pacing and was now leaning against the railing, his posture relaxed, like this was any normal conversation. Like he wasn't leaving his wife alone with cooling pasta while he soothed another woman's nerves.
I sat down at the table and stared at my plate.
The pasta looked fine. Perfectly adequate, just like I'd joked. But my appetite had vanished, replaced by something cold and heavy in my stomach.
It's temporary, I told myself. She's scared and alone and carrying your baby. He's just being kind.
Thirty minutes.
The pasta was cold now. I'd stopped pretending I was going to eat it.
Finally, the balcony door slid open and Tristen came back inside, his phone clutched in his hand. He had the grace to look sheepish when he saw me sitting at the table alone.
"I'm so sorry," he said immediately. "She was really spiraling, and I couldn't just hang up on her."
"It's fine."
"Aubree..."
"It's fine, Tristen." I stood up and began clearing the plates, even though neither of us had taken a single bite. "She needed you. You were there for her. That's what we agreed to."
"You're upset."
"I'm not upset. I'm tired." I scraped the untouched pasta into the trash, watching it fall with a splat. "I'm going to bed."
"Let me heat up the food. We can still have dinner together."
"I'm not hungry anymore."
He caught my arm as I passed him, his grip gentle but insistent. "Hey. Talk to me. Please."
I looked up at him, this man I loved, this man who had made love to me so tenderly just moments ago. His eyes were full of concern, his brow furrowed with worry, and I knew he genuinely didn't understand why I was upset.
That was almost worse than if he'd known and done it anyway.
"We were having a moment," I said quietly. "A real moment. The kind we haven't had in years. And you left to spend forty-five minutes on the phone with another woman."
"She's not just another woman. She's carrying our baby."
"I know that. Don't you think I know that?" My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. "That's why I told you to call her. That's why I'm standing here telling you it's fine when it doesn't feel fine at all."
"Then tell me what you need. Tell me how to fix this."
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell him that I needed to come first, just once, just for one goddamn evening. I needed to know that I was still his priority, that our marriage was still the foundation everything else was built on.
But I couldn't say any of that without sounding jealous and petty and unreasonable. Without sounding like the kind of woman who would endanger her own baby's health because she couldn't stand to share her husband's attention.
"I need to go to bed," I said instead. "We can talk about it tomorrow."
Tristen let me go.
I walked down the hallway to our bedroom, closed the door behind me, and sat on the edge of the bed in the darkness. The sheets still smelled like sex and the two of us tangled together. An hour ago, that scent had made me feel loved.
Now it just made me sad.
It's temporary, I told myself again. Oakleigh will be here for a few months, and then she'll be gone and we'll have our baby and everything will go back to normal.
I repeated it like a mantra as I crawled under the covers.
Temporary. Just temporary.
But lying there alone in the dark, listening to Tristen putter around the kitchen cleaning up the dinner we never ate, I couldn't shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted.
And I wasn't sure how to shift it back.