Epilogue
DELILAH
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
The test stick is on the edge of the bathroom sink and I am sitting on the closed lid of the toilet in one of Garrett's thermals, staring at two pink lines that came up so fast the control line was almost offended.
Ghost is lying across the bathroom doorway like the hallway isn't good enough anymore. He goes where I go now. Ten-year-old habit he picked up the first weekend I came back to the cabin and never put down.
"Good boy."
My voice sounds strange.
I press my palms flat to my thighs and breathe.
Eight months of us.
I took the AG office job for the spring.
I finished the Crestview grand jury. The parent LLC got unspooled across three states.
The contractor who came up that ridge looking for me pled out to federal conspiracy charges and is going to die in a cell.
Six others followed him. My notebook ended up cited in a brief so many times a paralegal in Reno sent me a laminated copy of the cover page with a heart drawn on it.
Garrett took the Carson City coordinator job.
He hated the commute for about four weeks.
Then he stopped commuting. Sold the idea of a hybrid position to his director and now he runs backcountry operations two days from the field and three from home, home being a cabin he expanded last fall with a second bedroom and a proper office for me and a greenhouse addition off the south wall because I mentioned once that I missed growing my own herbs and he had foundation poured the next month.
He doesn't say he loves me much. He doesn't have to. He builds me things.
Also he says it. He says it plenty. I was wrong about that.
We got engaged on a Tuesday in October because I refused to let him plan anything fancy.
He dropped to one knee in the kitchen while I was elbow-deep in mixing dough for pizza.
He had a ring in his pocket he'd been carrying for three weeks.
He said my name and I said yes before he finished the sentence and Ghost barked once like he'd been waiting.
I haven't picked a wedding date.
Because I keep finding reasons to wait, which is ridiculous for a woman who made up her mind on a county pickup seat eight months ago.
Now I'm looking at two pink lines.
I reach for my phone. Stop. Put it down. Pick it up.
Text Patty Cole because Patty Cole is the only woman in Whisper Vale who will not give me advice and Patty has become a friend in a way I did not expect when I met her at the Mountain Bloom festival in May and she shoved a blueberry muffin into my hand and asked whose I was.
I type. Delete. Type again.
Patty. Two lines. Don't tell anyone. I mean it.
Three dots. Then.
Oh honey. Put your feet up. I'm gonna bring you a roast tomorrow. Does he know.
Not yet.
Tell him before you tell Hank or Hank will tell everyone in six minutes.
Hank is Ev Cole's foreman. Hank has a PhD in gossip from Cole Timber. Patty is right.
I put the phone face down.
I pick the stick back up.
Two lines. Definitely.
A baby.
Our baby.
My chest does something strange. Warm. Big. Half terrified and half in love with a person who is the size of a grain of rice.
Garrett's truck pulls up outside.
I hear the door. I hear his boots. I hear him drop his keys in the bowl on the entry table the way he does, one clink, and Ghost lifts his head but doesn't leave his post at the door because he knows Garrett will come to us.
He does.
Stops in the doorway.
Sees me.
Sees the stick.
His face goes through about six things at once.
I watch them all because I've learned his face the way I learned his hands.
The set of his jaw when he's worried. The line at the corner of his eye when he's trying not to smile.
The way his mouth softens when he looks at me and doesn't know anyone else is watching.
"Is that what I think it is."
"If you think it's a positive pregnancy test, yes."
He steps into the bathroom. Crouches in front of me the way he did the first night I was in his cabin, when I asked him to stay a minute and he thought I didn't know my own mind.
He takes my hands.
"Delilah."
"Garrett."
"How long."
"Six weeks, maybe. Have to see Doc Morrison."
"Are you okay."
"I'm terrified."
"Me too."
I laugh. Wet at the edges.
He lifts both my hands. Kisses my knuckles. Doesn't let go.
"Is this. I mean. Is this something you want."
"Are you asking me if I want a baby with you while I'm holding the stick that says I am actively having a baby with you, Hawk."
"I'm asking if you're okay with how fast."
"We've been together ten months."
"I know."
"And we've lived together for eight of them."
"I know."
"And we're engaged."
"I know."
"I want this baby."
He leans his forehead against my knees.
I feel him breathe.
"Me too."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
I put my hand in his hair. He lets me. He leans into it the way he has since the second week, when I figured out he liked my hands on him more than he would ever ask for.
"Garrett."
"Mm."
"I want to get married before the baby comes."
He lifts his head.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Small. At the cabin. My mom, Patty, Parker, a few people from the station. Sadie's been asking me for six months if she can cater an event up here. Let her cater this."
"Done."
"Just done."
"Tell me a date."
"First weekend in May."
"Done."
"You're not even going to pretend to check your schedule."
"Delilah."
"Yeah."
"I'm marrying you in May."
He stands. Pulls me up with him. My bad ankle is fine now. It's been fine for six months. He still takes my weight the way he did in the beginning because the habit didn't leave, and I let him because I don't want it to.
He wraps both arms around me.
Careful, the way he is.
Not as careful as he was.
I tip my head back against his chest. I can feel his heart under my ear. Steady. A touch faster than usual. Only I'd know.
"Hawk."
"Yeah."
"Ghost is going to be a terrible big brother."
He laughs into my hair.
Real laugh. Low and warm. The one I earned back on a Reno sidewalk and still hear like the first time.
"Ghost is going to be the best big brother this mountain has ever seen."
"He's going to lie across the nursery door."
"He's going to guard that door with his life."
My eyes sting.
I press my face into his Henley.
He runs a hand down my back. Slow. Settles it at the base of my spine.
"You're shaking."
"I'm happy."
"I know."
"I didn't know I'd be this happy."
"Me either."
Ghost gets up from the doorway. Shoulders his way between us because he's a ten-year-old dog who does not understand personal space. Pushes his muzzle into the side of my thigh.
Garrett looks down at him.
"We're having a baby."
Ghost's tail thumps once.
Garrett looks back at me.
"May."
"May."
"I'll get Parker to officiate. He'll cry."
"He will."
"You want a dress."
"I want a dress."
"Delilah."
"Yeah."
"Whatever you want."
I slide my arms up around his neck.
I go up on my toes.
I kiss him, slow and long, the way I've been kissing him for months when we aren't in a hurry, and he kisses me back the way he does, which is like a man who has stopped being scared and started being home.
When I pull back, his forehead stays on mine.
"I love you."
"I love you too."
Outside, the mountain is doing what it does in late March. Thawing. The creek behind the cabin is louder than it was a week ago. Spring is coming. A wedding is coming. A baby is coming.
I stand in my bathroom in Garrett Hawkins' thermal with his dog at our feet and his hands at my back, and I think about a slope in a ravine at four in the morning and a man carrying me out of it saying I got you.
He wasn't kidding.
Thank you so much for reading Sheltered By The Mountain Man Ranger.