Chapter Eleven
~ Cruz ~
I followed Jackson up the stairs, both hands shoved deep in my pockets because I didn’t know what else to do with them. He moved with the same deliberate efficiency he did everything—no wasted motion, no unnecessary words.
He hadn’t said “follow me” or “it’s upstairs” or any of the things people normally said when showing someone through their house. Just turned and started walking, the way he always did when he’d made a decision and was executing it.
The upstairs hallway was short—just two bedrooms and a bathroom branching off from a landing big enough for one person to stand comfortably.
Jackson went to the end of the hall, hand on the doorknob, and paused with his back to me. Just for a second, but I caught it—the slight straightening of his spine, the careful inhale before he pushed the door open and stepped aside.
The nursery door swung open, and I stopped dead in the doorway.
The room was finished. Completely finished. Not a work in progress or a collection of unpacked boxes or a half-painted project. A nursery. Full and complete and already in use, even with the crib still empty.
Warm yellow-green walls—not the bright primary colors people usually went for, but something softer, a shade that reminded me of new leaves in spring.
The crib sat angled in the far corner, positioned to catch the morning light from the east-facing window.
White with natural wood trim, sturdy as hell—the kind of construction that would hold a ten-year-old if necessary.
Next to it, a rocking chair with a handmade look, its wood a shade darker than the crib trim, a neatly folded blanket draped over one arm—faded blue with a geometric pattern along the edges.
Shelves lined the wall opposite the crib, filled with soft things in greens and yellows and warm neutrals—stuffed animals with no hard eyes or loose parts, blankets folded with military precision, the kind of organization that came from thinking about it carefully rather than just filling available space.
In the corner by the closet, a cedar-lined toy box with brass hinges, big enough to hold serious play but small enough that a child could reach inside without climbing.
The lid was partly open, showing a glimpse of wooden blocks and what looked like building toys—nothing plastic, nothing that required batteries or made electronic noise.
The bassinet sat within arm’s reach of the rocking chair, positioned so someone sitting could reach in without getting up. White muslin hung from its frame, the kind that would let air through but keep light out.
My hands stayed in my pockets. My jaw did something I couldn’t stop—tightened, then loosened, then tightened again. A physical response I hadn’t authorized and couldn’t override.
Jackson stood just inside the room, arms crossed, watching me the way he watched everything—reading, cataloging, waiting.
His face gave away nothing, but his shoulders were tense under the flannel, and he’d shifted his weight to his right foot—the stance he took when he was braced for something, but trying not to show it.
I stepped inside without being asked.
The room smelled like cedar and the clean that came from fresh paint properly cured.
No baby powder, no diapers, no trace of the person who would actually use the space.
Just the furniture and the careful planning and the absolute certainty that this would happen, had to happen, regardless of whether I came back from Istanbul or not.
Jackson didn’t wait to be asked. He started walking me through it immediately, not like a proud father showing off a nursery, but like a man who had been carrying a very heavy thing alone for a long time and had finally found somewhere to set it down.
“The crib’s rated for two hundred pounds,” he said, voice flat and factual, the same tone he used for drainage problems and soil pH.
“Slats are three inches apart—that’s half an inch narrower than the safety standard requires.
All the hardware is recessed. Nothing sticking out where it could catch on clothes or skin. ”
He was giving me an engineering report, not an emotional tour. Each feature delivered as data, not decoration—the weight rating, the slat spacing, the recessed hardware. Practical choices made with a specific outcome in mind.
I moved to the crib while he talked, running a thumb along the rail. The wood was smooth under my palm, sanded and finished. No rough edges, no splinters, nothing that could hurt or catch.
“I drove forty minutes to the next town for the chair,” Jackson said, moving to stand beside me at the crib.
“There’s a furniture maker there. Retired Marine.
Does custom work when he feels like it.” He paused, eyes on the rocking chair.
“The ones at the big-box store in Billings felt flimsy. Wrong in my hands.”
Not worth the risk, he meant. Not something he’d trust with what mattered.
I nodded, understanding without being told, and crouched briefly to check the recessed hardware. Solid brass, countersunk, the kind that wouldn’t work loose with time or use. No exposed edges, no parts a child could reach or remove. Nothing that could fail.
“The toy box is cedar-lined,” Jackson continued, moving to the corner. “This place gets damp in winter. The east wall sweats when the temperature drops. I wasn’t putting a child’s things anywhere they could mold.”
Each explanation landed with the specific weight of a decision made in complete solitude, with no one to check the thinking against. No second opinion, no one to say “that’s overkill” or “maybe try this instead.” Just Jackson, alone in this house, making choices about weight ratings and slat spacing and the kind of wood that would keep moisture out.
I moved slowly through the room while he talked. My brain noted the engineering logic of each choice—the sightline from the rocking chair to the door, the distance between the changing table and the diaper pail, the way the shelf brackets were mounted to catch rather than bounce if the wall shook.
Underneath that operational assessment, something else was cracking open that I was absolutely not going to name out loud right now.
There was a child coming. My child. A fact that had been true since the moment the doctor handed Jackson that ultrasound image, and was now suddenly, physically present in a way it hadn’t been before.
Not just a medical reality or a logistical problem or the reason Jackson had gone silent for six weeks.
A person.
A specific person who would, in approximately three months, sleep in this crib and sit in this chair and reach into this toy box for blocks and stuffed animals and whatever else Jackson had already decided belonged there.
A person who would have Jackson’s eyes, maybe, or my height, or some combination of features neither of us could predict.
I straightened and caught Jackson watching me, his expression giving away nothing. Not asking what I was thinking or how I felt or whether I had questions. Just waiting, the way he always waited, for whatever came next.
The room was quiet around us—just the soft tick of the clock from somewhere downstairs and the sound of Jackson breathing, measured and controlled.
Outside, the morning had fully arrived—light coming through the east window at exactly the right angle to turn the crib rail gold.
I looked at Jackson standing in the doorway of this room he’d built with his own hands, in this house he’d chosen specifically for the distance it put between him and other people, and wondered what it had cost him to ask me to come upstairs at all.
“When’s the due date again?” I asked, the question coming out rougher than I’d intended.
Not because I’d forgotten—I’d done the math at the kitchen table twenty minutes ago—but because I needed to hear it standing in this room, in front of this crib, with morning light coming through the east window.
Jackson’s expression didn’t change. “End of April,” he said. “Three months out, give or take a week. Six months total for an omega pregnancy.”
I nodded, doing the math again in my head. Same result, same landing. The mission had started in late August. We’d had one night together before I shipped out. Then six weeks in Istanbul, six weeks of Jackson alone in this house with a positive test and no one to call.
Six weeks of Jackson driving forty minutes for a rocking chair and installing cedar lining in a toy box and positioning a bassinet exactly where he could reach it without getting up.
“Istanbul,” I said, the word coming out before I could stop it. “I was in Istanbul.”
Something flashed across Jackson’s face—too quick to catch, gone before I could name it. He nodded once, his eyes on the crib rather than my face.
“Did you do all this yourself?” I asked, gesturing at the room around us—the painted walls, the assembled furniture, the carefully arranged shelves.
“Mostly,” Jackson said. “The two brothers from town helped with the heavy lifting. Furniture up the stairs, mostly. The rest I handled.”
The brothers. The same ones whose truck I’d seen parked by the barn, whose voices had carried from behind the greenhouse. Not Rawley or Decker or any of the ranch crew, but strangers Jackson had hired rather than asking for help from people who’d have given it without question.
I looked at the bassinet again, at the precise distance between it and the rocking chair—close enough to reach without standing, far enough that someone sitting wouldn’t bump it getting up.
At the careful way Jackson had placed everything, how he’d thought through sightlines and reach distances and the way bodies would move through the space.
The question that had been sitting in my throat since I walked through the front door finally worked its way free.