3. Jesse
Jesse
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
That’s the truth of it, whittled down to the bone.
I’ve run reconnaissance on hostile compounds with better information than I have right now, sitting in my truck at the top of the mountain with a pregnant woman beside me who barely trusts me enough to let me drive her, and still, somehow, protecting her stopped being a choice somewhere between her doorway and this parking spot.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. I just know it did.
The cabin sits at the edge of the treeline, log walls gone gold in the last of the afternoon light, the ridge behind it throwing long shadows across the porch.
It’s not much, one big room downstairs, a loft bedroom, a woodstove I’ve never needed to light in August; but it’s mine, built with my own hands over one summer when I first got here, and until this exact moment I never once thought about whether it was a place fit to bring anyone.
“This is where you live?” Elsie asks, and there’s something careful in her voice, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to be impressed.
“Five years.” I come around and open her door before she can try the handle herself. “Built it myself.”
She gazes at the cabin, and I watch something shift behind her eyes; surprise, maybe, that a man like me built something instead of just breaking things. I don’t tell her that most days I’m not sure which one I’m actually better at.
Twins.
The word’s been sitting in my chest since she said it, and it still hasn’t fully landed.
I carry her bag in, matching my pace to hers, and catch myself doing the math again two heartbeats instead of one, two names I don’t have yet, two lives that exist because of one night I told myself would fix my obsession with Elsie.
I don’t know the first thing about being a father.
I know less than that about being a father to two at once.
But some part of me had already made the decision to be one before Andrei Zidaru’s name ever came out of her mouth.
I was never going to let her go through this pregnant and alone, never going to let a child of mine grow up not knowing whose blood they carried, like I did.
The danger just made the decision louder.
“Sit,” I tell her, nodding at the couch, and she does, slower than I like, one hand pressed to the small of her back. I place her bag down.
She’s barely settled before her face goes pale, and she’s up and moving toward the bathroom before I can ask if she’s all right.
She’s throwing up on her knees, hunched over the toilet by the time I reach her, knuckles white as she grips the edge of the toilet bowl.
A couple of long braids fall across her cheek.
I kneel behind her, gather her hair back from her face, and rest my other hand flat between her shoulder blades.
“I’ve got you,” I say, low, and I mean it in every direction that sentence can go.
She’s sick for longer than I’d like, her whole body curling in on itself between waves. I rub slow circles against her spine, saying nothing because I can’t think of anything that might help. When it finally passes, she sags back against my chest, spent, and for a while neither of us moves.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
“Don’t.” My voice comes out rougher than I meant it to. “Don’t ever apologize to me for this.”
I never thought I’d be a father. The typical, loving kind of relationship that usually makes two people decide to have a child isn’t something I dared dream I could have.
I think about her doing this alone in that half-empty apartment.
There was no one to hold her hair, bring her water after, no one even in the next room to hear if something went wrong, and my chest goes tight and furious.
I should have known sooner. Should have swallowed my pride five months ago and checked on her the way every instinct told me to, instead of staying away because it felt like the responsible thing to do.
Responsible. What a joke that word sounds like now.
I get her cleaned up, get her back on the couch with a glass of water and a blanket she doesn’t need in this heat but takes anyway, and then I call Silas.
He’s up here inside twenty minutes, medic bag in hand, dark eyes assessing her before he’s even fully through the door.
Silas doesn’t waste words, never has. He checks her pulse, blood pressure, presses careful hands against her stomach while she watches the ceiling and breathes through it, and when he’s done, he looks satisfied in the quiet, competent way that’s kept half this team alive over the years.
“You’re dehydrated and run-down, but the babies sound strong, Elsie,” he says, setting up an IV line at her elbow with hands steady enough to make the whole thing look easy.
“Hyperemesis, probably — severe morning sickness, worse with twins sometimes. It should ease in a few weeks, but until then she needs to stay hydrated, eat what she can keep down, small amounts, often.”
“And if it doesn’t ease?” I ask.
“Then we manage it as long as it takes.” Silas glances at Elsie, then back at me, something almost gentle in his usually unreadable face. “She’s going to be fine, Jesse. So are they.”
I don’t relax until he says it a second time.
He leaves the drip running, tells her to call if anything changes, and lets himself out. I watch his truck disappear down the mountain road before I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Elsie is sleeping when I get back to her. She’s lying on her side, one hand under her head, the other resting on her belly. Even in sleep, she’s protecting our babies. I reach out a hand, wanting to touch the soft, milk-chocolate skin across her exposed neck.
I draw it back, disgusted at myself. She needs sleep. I get my laptop and start reading up on stages of pregnancy.
By the time she’s awake, the sun’s dropped low enough to throw the whole cabin in that orange, end-of-day light, the kind that used to mean nothing to me before and now, somehow, makes the whole room feel different with her sitting in it.
I move around my own kitchen, making dinner, aware of her eyes on me the entire time, across my shoulders as I pull vegetables from the fridge, down my back when I reach for the pan on the top shelf.
There’s a satisfaction in it I have no business feeling. Something primitive and low, the same thing that used to sit in my chest every time she leaned over my table at the diner to refill my coffee, like some part of me has been waiting two years for her to be in a room I control.
“You don’t have to do all this,” she says from the couch, IV line taped neatly at the crook of her elbow, blanket pooled around her hips.
“I like cooking.” It’s true, and it’s also not the whole truth. I like cooking for her specifically. I’m enjoying chopping onions in my own kitchen while she watches from a few feet away. Caring for her feels good.
When I finish frying the vegetables and small strips of seasoned meat I bring her a plate, small portions like Silas said, and sit across from her at the little table I built the same summer as the cabin, watching to make sure she actually eats instead of just moving food around.
“It’s really good!” she says after a couple of bites, the tone of her voice clearly showing she didn’t expect it to be.
Satisfaction spreads through me.
“And I love your apron! The knitted image of Oscar the Grouch is vivid. His green fur is beautifully knitted. I know because I love Sesame Street; it’s still one of my favorite shows.” She glances to where it’s hanging on the wall. “It’s cute on you!”
If Colton or anyone else had said that, I would have scowled. She’s teasing me, yet I’m not mad. I’m actually pleased.
“Did you have to stop yourself from laughing when you saw me put it on?”
She chuckles as if she can’t contain herself anymore. It’s a beautiful sound, innocent and carefree, and I made it happen.
“Mrs. O’Connor made it. She insisted on giving it to me one Christmas. I couldn’t say no.”
Elsie smiles knowingly, because she knows my boss’ mom.
She manages to eat more than I expect. Color’s coming back into her face by the time she sets the fork down, and when our eyes meet across the table, neither of us looks away.
Same as it’s always been. Same as it was at the diner, two years of glances neither of us acted on until one bad anniversary broke something loose in me I couldn’t put back.
She stands and crosses to where I’m sitting. Before I can ask what she’s doing, her hand’s on my jaw, warm and soft, and she leans down and kisses me.
It’s soft. Barely a kiss. Still, my heart slams against my ribs as if she’d taken a swing at it, my whole body lighting up the way it did five months ago, every rational thought I have burning off in about half a second flat.
I pull back before it goes any further. Take her hands gently in mine, set them at her sides instead of on me.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
Her cheeks are pink. She pulls back as if she’s been burned. “I forgot you want me here for the babies only.”
She inhales.
“Do me a favor. Stop looking at me like you’re dying to get me naked.”
“I want you naked under me so badly I’ve been counting my own breaths since we walked through that door. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day you first smiled at me at the diner.” I shake my head, frustrated I hurt her.
“But you were sick earlier and you’ve got an IV in your arm. This can’t happen tonight while I’m supposed to be taking care of you. You need rest.”
She studies me for a long moment, something working behind those dark eyes, and when she speaks again, her voice has dropped, quieter, harder to brush off.
“Then why did you leave that night?” she asks. “Why haven’t you said anything since then?”