Epilogue
The box labeled MISC weighs about forty pounds and holds every single thing I’ve owned since college that refused to fit in a real category.
My pack mule is supposed to show up in thirty minutes to handle the actual lifting.
I gave myself some time alone to deal with the last of the boxes because I wasn’t sure what was in some of them.
I wanted to keep my personal shame hidden if I found something weird.
I started going through the MISC box to condense it and got distracted by a framed photo of me at a Halloween party dressed as a sexy librarian that I definitely plan to show him. There’s also a candle in a jar that claims it smells like ocean breeze. It’s lying.
I gave up, and now the box is stacked by the door with the rest of them, ready to move to Bren’s. And this time, I’m going to unpack every one.
“Done,” I announce to my empty apartment as I wipe my hands on my jeans.
I stand in the middle of my packed-up living room.
My hand is flat against my stomach, and I don’t remember putting it there.
I know exactly why it’s there, which is the actual problem.
I’m late. Five days late, and I’ve run like clockwork since I was fifteen.
I did the math yesterday and then spent the rest of the day pretending I hadn’t.
That stopped working when I felt a little nauseous this morning.
There’s a pregnancy test in my bathroom. I bought it eight weeks ago, after he spanked me for being a brat and fucked me silly on his desk. I stashed it in my apartment because I wanted to pretend I wasn’t hoping.
I pee on the stick and sit on the lip of the tub. The three-minute wait turns out to be a geological era.
Two lines.
The second one is faint, so I do the responsible adult thing and hold it up to the light at four separate angles like I’m appraising a diamond. Still pink. Still knocked up.
“Holy hell.”
I’m pregnant and I’m sitting on the edge of a bathtub in an apartment I’m packing up so I can move in with the man whose baby this is, and everything in me is shaking, and I press my palm flat to my stomach and cry.
The crying lasts five minutes. The pacing lasts longer. I get through a full sleeve of peanut butter crackers without remembering I dug it out of my purse.
The breeding talk started as dirty words he said to make me clench. Somewhere in there, we both started meaning it. Now it’s a fact, and I’m thrilled and terrified in roughly equal amounts, which tracks, because I spent years making damn sure nothing ever got the chance to stick.
The test goes in a tissue, in my purse. My phone says 8:20, and he’s going to be here in ten minutes.
I’m telling him the second he walks in. Before I can find forty reasons to wait or wrap it in a joke so I don’t have to say the real thing out loud. I grab a bottle of water and what’s left of my nerve.
The knock comes at 8:32. Two minutes late, which is so unlike him I almost open the door wrong.
He’s standing there in a Henley and jeans—moving clothes—with two empty boxes folded under one arm. His eyes do their usual sweep of me before they land on my face.
He goes still. Whatever he reads stops him in the doorway.
“Lily.”
“Come in.”
He sets the boxes down without looking away from me, and I step back to let him through. The door closes behind him, and the click is the loudest thing in the room. He’s reading me—too well, like always—and I haven’t said a word yet.
“Should I be worried?”
“No. Maybe. Sit with me.”
I lead him to the couch, which is the only piece of furniture still where it belongs. He sits angled toward me, knee against mine, patient, which somehow makes it harder.
I open my purse, find the tissue, and set it on the cushion between us. It falls open enough. Two pink lines, the second one faint but fully committed.
“I’m pregnant.”
The room goes quiet. His gaze locks on the test, and his face does about six things in one second. He picks it up like it’s made of spun glass, and his fingers are trembling—that same tremor I saw when he collared me.
When he looks up, his eyes are wet.
“Bren—“ My voice cracks, and then his arms are around me, pulling me in hard enough to crush the air out of me, and neither of us cares. His face is in my neck. His shoulders are shaking.
“Say it again.” His voice is wrecked.
“I’m pregnant.” I kiss his temple. “You knocked me up. Turns out all that breeding talk delivered. Who could have predicted.”
He laughs and pulls back to look at me. His eyes are bright with tears, and his mouth won’t stop smiling.
His hand settles on my stomach, palm flat, fingers spread, the same gesture from his bedroom the night I came back.
“How far along?” he asks.
“No idea. I took the test 12 minutes ago.” I tip his chin up. His eyes are red but clear. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out rough. He turns his head and kisses my palm.
The corner of his mouth pulls up. He takes my other hand, laces our fingers together, and pulls in a slow breath. Holds it.
“I was going to wait,” he says. “Let you move in and get settled. Find the right moment. I had the whole thing planned—I’d find the perfect ring and the perfect setup.”
My heart is doing something I’m not sure is medically safe.
“But the timeline moved.” His grip tightens.
He’s looking right at me, and for the first time in maybe his whole adult life the man is winging it.
“And I don’t want to wait. I’ve spent almost a decade making everything I touch temporary, and then you walked in with coffee on your shirt, and now there’s a collar and half my closet emptied for you and a baby, and I’m not waiting for the right moment. The right moment is right now.”
I’m blurring at the edges.
“I’m messing this up,” he says.
“You’re really not.”
“I don’t have a ring.”
“I noticed. That’s actually the one part of this I have notes on.”
He huffs a laugh. “Lily, will you marry me?”
I give a half laugh, half sob that’s zero percent dignified.
“Yes.” I grab his face and kiss him. “Yes, obviously, yes.”
His forehead rests against mine, and he’s smiling so wide I have to look away from it.
And then, because I’m me, and because I have never once let a good moment go unpoked:
“Okay. Two things.” I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. “One. Since you don’t have a ring, that means we’re going ring shopping together. I have watched you spend nine minutes choosing a tie. I’m not letting you pick what I wear for the rest of my life unsupervised.”
“Supervised ring shopping.”
“It’s called quality control.” I hold up a second finger. “Two. Once we have the ring, you’re proposing again. Properly. The down-on-one-knee, planned-it-for-weeks version you just talked yourself out of. I want to hear the one you were going to give me.”
“I just proposed.”
“And it was perfect. I’m keeping it.” I pat his chest. “But you’re going to do it again.”
“So I have to ask you twice.”
“Yep, and I’m worth the encore.”
“You are,” he says, and he isn’t joking.
I almost open my mouth to make a third demand, the parking spot. But turns out when your boyfriend has a driver, you don’t need one of your own. The security guard has even stopped glaring.
I curl into his lap, head on his shoulder, the way I always end up. His pulse is steady under my ear. I said yes in a packed-up apartment with zero grace, and I wouldn’t change a second of it.
His palm settles flat against my belly and stays there.
The anklet warms against my skin. Under his hand, there’s a heartbeat I can’t feel yet and absolutely know is there. I close my eyes and breathe him in.
The temp who never stayed is home.
The End