Chapter 53
Winter passed quietly, the kind that settles slowly.
By the time the snow melted, our routines had rooted themselves: mornings with coffee, kisses, and Brody’s easy hum moving through the small space, afternoons spent writing at the little built-in desk he made for me, evenings that smelled like something we made together simmering on the stove.
The world outside kept going, emails, deadlines, the slow miracle of my next book taking shape, but in here, life had found a different pace. One that made sense. One that fit.
Our now.
Thankfully Andrew had been convinced by his lawyer to plead guilty to avoid the ordeal that going to trial would cause.
His lawyer knew that with the live recordings of Andrew, all the evidence of his attack and everything else we had against him it would be a brutal trial for him.
And with that I was able to close that chapter of my life and focus solely on my life now.
The land was starting to show its next stage.
Stakes in the ground, orange lines pulled between them.
Brody and Chase arguing cheerfully over the best angle for the front porch.
My dad pretending not to enjoy “supervising.” On weekends, Adam and Dean came by with extra hands, and my mom showed up with muffins that everyone devoured.
And Clara, radiant, round, and exhausted, was due any day.
When the call came that her water had broken, we barely made it to the hospital before Mason came running out of her room, tears streaming down his face, crowing, “It’s a girl.”
The words felt like sunlight through a window.
The room was all soft chaos. Clara was pale but glowing, and Mason hovered right beside her bed, while nurses moved around quietly. Jackson sat on the chair beside the bed, tiny hands clutching a teddy bear that looked almost bigger than him.
Then I saw her.
Tiny. Perfect. A head full of dark hair and the kind of new baby rosy skin that made your chest ache.
“Hannah,” Clara whispered when I asked her name.
Brody's smile reached all the way to his eyes. “She’s beautiful,” he said, and his voice went soft in a way I’d only ever heard when he said my name.
Mason handed her to me. She weighed almost nothing but felt like everything.
The world went quiet, the good kind of quiet. The kind where time stops making demands and just lets you feel.
Something shifted in me. Not panic. Not expectation. Just… knowing.
A small thought, tender and persistent: you’re late.
When we said our goodbyes, Clara made me promise to come by the next morning with coffee and breakfast sushi.
Brody kissed the top of her head, telling her she did good and to let us know if they needed anything or if they needed us to keep Jackson for the night, and then we left, wrapped in each other's arms.
As we walked through the halls of the hospital, I saw the pharmacy and knew I needed to make a stop. “I just need to run in there real quick,” I said, nodding toward the sign down the hall.
Brody looked at me, head tilted. “You feeling, okay?”
“I think so.” My voice came out too careful. “Just… maybe I should check something.”
He didn’t ask what. He just nodded once, squeezed my hand, and followed me in.
The fluorescent lights felt jarring after the soft hush of the maternity ward. We found the aisle, the tests, the quiet understanding that passed between us when I grabbed the box, and his eyes went wide with hope.
Back home, the heat had just kicked on. Brody locked the door, then leaned against it, watching me with that same steady patience he gives everything that matters.
“You want me to wait out here... or?” he asked gently, scanning our place with a nervous energy.
“No,” I said. “I want you with me.”
We ended up in our tiny bathroom, both of us laughing nervously because it suddenly felt ridiculous to be nervous about something that, deep down, I already knew. I tore open the box, followed the directions, and then set the test on the counter.
“Five minutes,” Brody said, glancing at his watch.
“Longest five minutes of our lives.”
We sat on the floor just outside of the bathroom, shoulder to shoulder, his hand covering mine. He traced slow circles against my skin, the same small motion that always quieted my mind.
Neither of us spoke. We just listened to the hum of the pellet stove, the soft tick of the clock in the kitchen, the rhythm of our breathing.
When the timer on his phone buzzed, I looked at him, silently asking him to check.
Brody kissed my temple, then stood. When he came back out of the bathroom, his smile was wide, disbelieving, beautiful. “Two lines,” he said quietly.
I stood on shaky legs, with a laugh that turned into happy tears, and pressed my face into his chest. “We’re having a baby,” I whispered.
He pulled me impossibly closer, his voice breaking on a laugh. “Yeah, we are.”
We stayed like that for a while, breathing each other in, letting the reality of the news sink in and feeling the biggest emotions we’d ever had.
It wasn’t chaos. It wasn’t fear. It was life, right here, beginning again.
Brody kissed the side of my head, whispering, “Guess we’ll need to prioritize the nursery in the new house.”
“Guess so,” I said, smiling into his shirt. “And maybe a little more space in my office for a bassinet.”
He laughed softly. “A family business, huh?”
“Something like that.”
The fire ticked in the stove, steady and warm. The night folded itself around us, quiet and sure.
I looked down at our joined hands, my ring catching the lamplight, and thought about all the versions of myself that had come before this one. The girl who thought survival was the end goal. The woman who learned it was only the beginning.
Now, this was living.
Brody touched my cheek, brushed away a tear that quietly slipped free. “Hey,” he whispered, “How are you feeling?”
I nodded. “I’m happy.”
And for the first time in my life, happiness didn’t scare me.
I had everything I had ever dared to dream of right here in this small space, wrapped in the safe arms of my childhood crush, growing our future. A future we chose.