Chapter Six #2
She came with her forehead on mine, her second orgasm harder than the first, the clench dragging a groan out of me that started in my spine. My palm covered her stomach and I held her there while my hips snapped up and I buried myself deep and followed her over.
We fell back into the sheets. Tangled, sweating, her weight on top of me and my arms locked around her.
She lifted her head. Flushed, wrecked, grinning.
“Your cabin is not designed for this,” she said.
“It’s held up fine.”
“We destroyed a coffee pot. Last night I dented the hallway baseboard with my spine. Your bathroom door doesn’t close properly anymore. We are a structural hazard.”
“I’ll fix the baseboard.”
“My hero.” She dropped her chin on my ribs. “So you’re a builder. That’s your love language. You just build things.”
“I build things that need building.” I could have framed her a wall right then.
Wired the loft, hung the window, built a crib with my bare hands.
And it still wouldn’t have been enough to say what I meant, because I was a man who could sand a nursery floor in silence for a week but couldn’t get three words out without sounding like I was ordering feed at the supply store.
“Like nurseries,” she said. Her voice softened. “Like ginger tea that you think I didn’t notice.”
“The loft floor needed sanding.”
“The loft floor needed sanding because you’re building a nursery for a baby nobody told you about.”
I tucked her hair behind her ear. “Somebody read my essay and drove to Montana. That was enough to start.”
She leaned into me and closed her eyes. Outside, the early foragers were heading out, that low hum that never stopped until dark. The creek was running with the last of the snowmelt. A varied thrush sang from the ridge, two notes, the same as every morning.
“I need to call my mother,” she said.
“So do I.”
She looked up. “Your mom?”
“My parents are in Billings. My mother is a retired school librarian, Flora. She reads every book that crosses her desk. She has opinions about parenting that she will deliver regardless of whether anyone asked. And my father is a retired county extension agent who will want to know the exact dimensions of the garden you designed and whether the soil drainage meets his standards.”
“Your dad is going to quiz me on soil drainage?”
“He’s going to love you. That’s worse. Gene Morrow doesn’t love easily and when he does he shows up with a truck full of compost and doesn’t leave.”
She lit up. “What about Nate?”
“My brother will have one question.”
“Which is?”
“Is she pretty.”
“And what will you say?”
I looked at her. Dark hair wrecked on my pillow. A crease on her cheek from the pillowcase. Naked and grinning at me like she’d won and hadn’t known she was competing.
“I’ll tell him to mind his own business.”
“Atlas Morrow. That is not the answer.”
“It’s the answer he’s getting. He doesn’t need details.”
“You are the worst communicator on this mountain. Including the bees. The bees at least dance.”
I almost smiled. She saw it — she always saw it — and her grin got bigger.
“I also need to call my mother,” she said. “She’s going to want your dental records, your credit score, and your stance on co-sleeping. Minimum.”
“I’ve got good teeth.”
“She’ll want to verify.”
Then she got up.
I watched her pull on cargo pants — olive green, a size too big, cinched with a belt — that she’d picked up at Connie’s after her three-day suitcase ran out of options.
A tank top from the same haul. She grabbed my T-shirt off the headboard where it had landed, rolled the sleeves to her elbows, and left it untucked.
It looked better on her than it had ever looked on me.
“Stay,” she said, pointing at the bed. “I’m making breakfast.”
“You don’t have to—”
“You have fed me every single day since I got here. Trout, venison, sandwiches delivered to the garden with ice water. I have been a freeloader, Atlas. A well-fed, sexually satisfied freeloader. I’m making you breakfast.” She pointed again. “Stay.”
I stayed. I heard the stove click, the fridge open. Eggs cracking into the cast-iron skillet, the sizzle of butter. She was humming again, that wandering melody, and I lay there listening to a woman cook in my kitchen and my lungs expanded until I couldn’t breathe around it.
She came back with two plates. Scrambled eggs with chives she’d cut from the patch by the porch, sourdough toast with honey drizzled in thin lines, sliced apple on the side. She balanced the plate on my chest because I was still lying down and raised an eyebrow.
“I told you I could cook.”
“You did tell me that.”
“You called it a bluff. The night we made venison. I remember.”
We ate in bed. She got crumbs on the sheets and honey on the pillowcase and I didn’t care about any of it.
“I can do my work from here,” she said between bites. “Most of my clients are in Portland but the design side is all remote. Site visits I can fly back for.”
“There’s room in the loft for your drafting table. Once the window’s in, the south light will be good for drawing.”
She put her fork down. “You’ve been thinking about where my drafting table goes.”
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.”
“You’ve been pricing glass and planning furniture layout and you didn’t know my last name when I got here.”
“I knew your last name. You said it facedown in the dirt.”
She buried her face in my shoulder. “You can’t say these things to me while I’m naked and emotional.”
“You’re not naked. You’re wearing my shirt and cargo pants.”
“I’m emotionally naked. It counts.” She tipped her chin up. Her gaze was bright and damp and fierce. “I love you. I should have said that first. Before the logistics. I love you.”
Six years on this mountain, not needing anyone, and believing it. Then she’d showed up and talked for five straight minutes and most of it had been a lie. None of it mattered. The part that was real was the only part I needed.
“I love you,” I said. It came out plain and true and not nearly big enough for what I meant. But she heard it — she always heard me, the full sentence behind the short one — and her whole face opened up.
“That’s the first time you’ve said it.”
“I’ve been saying it. You just weren’t listening to the right frequency.”
“Decaf and vitamins.”
“And a floor. And a window I haven’t cut yet.”
She kissed me. The taste of ginger and salt. When she pulled back there were tears on her cheeks, and I wiped them with my thumbs.
The light in the bedroom had shifted. I could hear the bees in the balsamroot, the spring forage rising toward its peak.
Flora’s garden was blooming. The penstemon along the creek, the lupine in the middle band, the blanketflower opening orange faces toward the sun.
She’d built that. A pollinator corridor that would carry my colonies from April to first frost.
I spread my hand across her stomach. Low, open, covering the place where our kid was growing. Seven weeks. The size of a blueberry, according to the book I’d picked up at the shop in Stevensville and stashed under the driver’s seat.
“The first extraction is in two weeks,” I said. “The spring wildflower.”
“I want to be there.” She traced a line down my forearm. “Uncapping, spinning, all of it. I want to see what your bees made from my garden.”
“Once we tell them, my mother will drive down from Billings. With the truck. You understand that.”
“The compost truck?”
“She’ll bring food. My father will bring the measuring tape. Nate will bring beer and bad advice.” I pulled her closer. “They’ll want to meet you, Flora. All of them. And they won’t leave.”
Her expression softened. “Good.”
“You say that now.”
“I say that meaning it.” She laced her fingers through mine over the baby. “I want the compost. I want your mother’s opinions about parenting and your father’s soil drainage quiz. Every loud stubborn generous piece of your family, Atlas. All of it.”
The creek ran. The bees worked the meadow. She was holding my hand on her belly, and the Morrows were coming. Everything I’d been building in silence could come into the open now.
I still had the ring my grandmother had left me. It was in a box in the back of my closet, behind the spare bee veils. I’d never had a reason to get it out.
I had a reason now.