29. Bree
— ? —
Bree
I knew the feeling.
The nausea in waves, the exhaustion settling into my bones, the way coffee suddenly smelled wrong, after years of being the only thing that got me through mornings.
I’d done this before.
But this time, I wasn’t sitting in a bus station bathroom in Pennsylvania, alone and terrified and staring at a test I’d taken because a stranger suggested it.
Rafael had proposed at the harvest festival, back in the fall, and the months since had gone by easy and unremarkable in the best way, the two of us settling into a life that no longer felt borrowed while the winter loosened and the farm woke up around us. It was spring now.
Camille had taken her plea over the winter, the charge sheet long enough that I never had to sit in a courtroom and look at her. I didn’t follow the details. She’d cost me a house and four years, and I wasn’t going to hand her one more acre of my attention.
This time, I walked into my kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon, test in hand, and set it on the table in front of Rafael.
Two pink lines.
He was reading on his laptop. Spreadsheets, probably. He’d taken over the farm’s accounting, applying the same obsessive attention to our finances that he gave to everything else.
“What’s this?” he asked, not looking up.
“Look at it.”
He looked.
The spreadsheet was forgotten.
“Is this-” His voice cracked. “Bree, is this what I think it is?”
“Two pink lines.”
“Two pink lines means-”
“I’m pregnant.”
He stared at the test. Stared at me. Stared at the test again.
Then his entire operating system crashed.
I watched it happen in real time. His face went through expressions I’d never seen before: shock, disbelief, joy, terror, more joy. His mouth opened and closed, and his hands trembled.
“We’re - you’re - there’s a-”
“Baby,” I supplied. “Yes.”
He stood up so fast his chair fell over. Crossed the room. Picked me up and spun me around, laughing and crying at the same time.
“We’re having a baby.”
“We are,” I said, laughing at his face.
“A baby. Our baby. A real, actual-”
“Rafael. Put me down. I’m going to throw up.”
He set me down immediately, panic flashing across his face.
“Are you okay? Do you need water? Should I call a doctor? I should call a doctor.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I need you to breathe.”
He took a breath. Then another. His hands were still shaking.
“I missed this,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“This moment. With Rosie.” His voice broke. “You found out alone. In a bus station. With a stranger.”
“Molly.”
“She was a stranger then. You were scared and alone and I should’ve been there.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
“You’re here now.”
“I’m here now,” he agreed. “And I’m not leaving. Not for anything.”
He kissed me. Gentle and sure.
“I need to go to the store,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“Books. I need books. And vitamins. And the special pillow, the one pregnant women sit on-”
He was already on his feet, patting his pockets for his keys, his whole brain rebooting into logistics mode.
“Rafael.”
“And a journal. To track your symptoms. And a blood pressure monitor, because preeclampsia is-”
“RAFAEL.”
He stopped. Looked at me.
“The baby isn’t coming today. We have time.”
“We have approximately thirty-eight weeks. That’s not that much time. There are preparations to make. Schedules to arrange. I should probably read the AAP guidelines again, the ones about-”
I kissed him to shut him up.
It worked.
By that evening, he’d read the pregnancy book cover to cover. I found him in the living room with a highlighter, making notes in the margins, cross-referencing with his laptop.
“Did you know,” he said, not looking up, “that the neural tube forms in the first four weeks? We should increase your folic acid intake immediately.”
“I’ve been taking prenatals for a week.”
“Good. That’s good.” He made a note. “We should also discuss your sleep position. After the first trimester, left-side sleeping is recommended for optimal blood flow to the-”
“Rafael.”
“Yes?”
“Come to bed.”
He looked up. His eyes traveled over me, softening.
“The book can wait?”
“The book can definitely wait.”
He set aside his notes. Followed me to the bedroom.
The light was low. I’d lit candles, the way I did sometimes when Rosie was sleeping and the house was quiet and I wanted to feel soft instead of strong.
Rafael stood in the doorway, watching me.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m just looking.”
“At what?”
“At you.” He crossed the room slowly. “At my fiancée. Who’s carrying my child.”
“That’s a lot to process.”
“It’s everything I ever wanted.” He stopped in front of me. “I didn’t know how to want it before. I didn’t know how to want anything except the next deal, the next acquisition, the next win. But this, you, this is what wanting actually feels like.”
He kissed me. Soft at first, then deeper, his hands coming up to frame my face, in no hurry to be anywhere else.
We undressed each other slowly. No urgency tonight. Just his fingers working the buttons of my shirt one at a time, his mouth following every inch of skin he uncovered, the candlelight turning us both gold.
When he peeled the last of it away and looked at me, his breath went ragged.
“Every time,” he said. “Every single time, you undo me.”
He laid me down and took his time. Kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth.
The line of my jaw, the spot below my ear that always made me arch.
His hands moved slow and sure over my breasts, my ribs, my hips, learning the small changes that were already there, cupping the weight of me until I was pushing up into his palms and biting back sound so I wouldn’t wake the house.
Then lower.
His lips traced a path down my body, stopping at my stomach. It was still flat, too early for anything visible, but he pressed his mouth there anyway.
“Hi,” he said softly. “I’m your dad.”
I laughed. It came out watery.
“I know you can’t hear me yet. But I want you to know that I’m going to be here.
For everything. For your first kick and your first cry and your first steps.
For the good days and the bad days and all the days in between.
” His voice cracked. “I missed that with your sister. I’m not going to miss it with you. ”
“Rafael-”
“I love you,” he said, to my stomach. “I already love you.”
Then he looked up at me, and his eyes were wet.
“I love you too,” he said. “Both of you. All of you.”
Then he kissed his way lower again, past the swell of my hip, and when his mouth closed over my clit I had to fist a hand in the sheets to stay quiet.
He took his time, reading me by the sounds he dragged out of me and chasing them down, one broad hand splayed low on my belly to hold me still.
I came against his mouth with his name bitten off behind my teeth, and he gentled me down through all of it.
He kissed his way back up my body. When he finally slid inside me, it was slow and careful, his hand splayed protectively over my belly.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“It’s perfect. You’re not going to break me.”
“I don’t want to hurt-”
“You won’t. The baby is fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
He moved in me, gentle and deep, his eyes never leaving my face.
Every slow drag of him stoked the heat higher, my breath catching on each roll of his hips, my hands sliding up the flex of his back to pull him closer.
There was no desperation in it, just a slow, steady build and the weight of him over me, his eyes never once leaving mine.
“I love you,” he murmured against my skin.
“Show me,” I whispered.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”
The words became a rhythm, a heartbeat, a promise. He said them over and over, into my neck, against my shoulder, across my collarbone, until they weren’t words anymore, just breath.
The second wave took me slower than the first, cresting and cresting until it finally broke and I clenched around him, pulling him with me. He followed with my name in his mouth, his face pressed to my throat, both of us breathing hard in the candlelight.
We lay there afterward, his hand still on my stomach, both of us staring at the ceiling.
“We should set a date,” he said.
“For what?”
“The wedding.”
I’d almost forgotten. There was so much happening, so many changes, that the engagement had started to feel like just one of many things on a very long list.
“When were you thinking?”
“After harvest. Before the baby.”
“That’s a narrow window.”
“I know.” He turned his head to look at me. “But I don’t want to wait. I’ve already waited four years. I don’t want to wait anymore.”
I did the math in my head. Harvest ended in late September. The baby was due in early November.
“I’ll be eight months pregnant.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be huge.” I said it into his shoulder.
“You’ll be beautiful.”
He said it as plain fact, no hesitation, and the worst part was that he meant it.
“I won’t fit in a normal wedding dress.”
“Then we’ll get an abnormal wedding dress.” He kissed my shoulder. “I don’t care what you wear. I don’t care what anyone wears. I just want to marry you. For real this time. With our daughter as the flower girl and our families in the audience and our whole town watching.”
I thought about it. About waddling down an aisle in the Texas heat, enormous with pregnancy, surrounded by everyone I loved.
“Okay,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“Let’s do it. After harvest. Before the baby. Let’s get married.”
He grinned. The full, unguarded grin that I’d come to love.
“I should start planning,” he said, already reaching for his phone. “The logistics alone will require-”
“Rafael.”
“Yes?”
“Sleep first. Plan tomorrow.”
He set the phone down. Curled around me, his hand still on my stomach.
“I’ll be eight months pregnant,” I said again, mostly to myself. “Walking down an aisle. In front of everyone.”
“It’ll be a short aisle,” Rafael said, already half asleep. “We’d better make it a short aisle.”
I smiled in the darkness.
We had no idea how right he was.