The Fifteen-Week Mark
The mirror didn't lie anymore.
I stood in the dim light of my bedroom, smoothing a hand over the cotton of my camisole before adjusting the stiff fabric of the diner apron around my waist. The bump wasn't big—not to the rest of the world, perhaps—but to me, it was an island rising out of the sea.
It was small, round, and undeniably firm.
Fifteen weeks.
I'd finally hit the milestone where I could no longer attribute the change in my silhouette to my mom's heavy-handed use of butter or the sheer exhaustion of being back in Willow Creek. This was a person. A tiny, growing tenant who was slowly reclaiming my body as its own.
Mom had been thrilled when I finally asked if I could start picking up shifts at the diner.
She called it "keeping me busy," a way to pass the time between my monthly appointments and the bouts of morning sickness that still struck at random intervals like a localized storm.
But I knew her better than that. She wanted me within arm's reach.
She wanted to be able to press a glass of ginger ale into my hand the second I looked pale and to keep the town gossips at bay with a sharp look from behind the counter.
The routine was saving me, honestly. The clatter of heavy ceramic plates, the hiss of the industrial coffee pots, even Harper swinging by at noon to leave an outrageous twenty-dollar tip on a four-dollar slice of pie just to make me flush with embarrassment.
For those few hours a day, I wasn't the girl who ran away.
I was just Aubrey, the girl who remembered everyone's order.
A rhythmic, low knock sounded at the back door. My heart did a familiar, happy little stutter. I already knew the weight of that hand.
When I pulled the door open, Nick filled the frame, the mid-morning sun casting a golden halo around his broad shoulders.
He looked like he'd come straight from the shop, a smudge of grease on his jaw and the sleeves of his black T-shirt pushed up to reveal the ink on his forearms. He was holding a grease-stained paper bag that smelled heavenly of buttermilk biscuits and thick-cut bacon.
"Brought you some fuel," he said, stepping inside with the effortless grace of a man who had long since stopped asking for permission to enter my life. "Figured your mom's black coffee and a piece of dry toast isn't enough to keep you on your feet until the lunch rush."
I rolled my eyes, though a traitorous warmth spread through my chest, settling deep in my bones. "You have to stop feeding me like I'm a prize heifer, Nick. People are going to start thinking I'm spoiled."
"Good," he said, his voice dropping into that low, possessive register that made my toes curl. "They should know you're taken care of."
He set the bag on the laminate counter, but he didn't move away.
He turned back to me, his stormy gray eyes dipping immediately, instinctively, to my midsection.
I felt the familiar heat rise in my cheeks as his expression shifted.
The hardness in his jaw vanished, replaced by a look so reverent it made my throat ache with the sheer weight of it.
Before I could find my voice, he stepped into my space. He cupped my hip with one large, calloused hand, grounding me, and then he did the thing that undid me every single time.
He knelt.
He bent his head, pressing his lips in a lingering, tender kiss right against the small, firm curve of my bump. "Morning, baby," he murmured against the fabric of my apron, his voice muffled but steady. "You be good to your mama today. Don't give her any trouble."
My breath caught in a jagged little hitch, my hands instinctively sliding into the thick, dark hair at the nape of his neck.
The tenderness of the gesture was a physical blow.
It wasn't just that he was being sweet; it was the way he included the baby in every thought, every touch.
He was claiming a life that wasn't his by blood, weaving himself into a future that most men would have run from at eighty miles an hour.
"Nick..." My voice was a trembling thread.
He looked up, his gaze locking onto mine, his eyes clear and certain. He stayed on one knee for a second longer, his hand splayed over the life growing inside me. "Fifteen weeks," he said softly. "You're showing, Aubrey. Really showing."
"I know." My laugh was shaky, half a sob. "I don't know if I'm ready for the rest of the town to start noticing. I don't know if I'm ready for the questions."
"They can notice all they want," he said simply, rising to his full, towering height and brushing the pad of his thumb over the apple of my cheek. "Let 'em talk. Doesn't change a damn thing about what's happening in this house."
His thumb traced the line of my jaw, pulling my focus back to him. "You're beautiful, Aubrey. More every single day."
Tears pricked hot and fast at my eyes, and I blinked them back, trying to hold onto my composure. "You make it sound so easy, Nick. Like we aren't standing in the middle of a minefield."
He leaned in, his lips finding mine in a kiss that was slow, deep, and tasted of morning air and untapped promises. It was the kind of kiss that suggested he had all the time in the world to convince me.
"It doesn't have to be easy," he murmured against my lips, his forehead resting against mine. "Hard things are usually the ones worth keeping. It just has to be real. And this? Everything right here? This is the realest thing I've ever felt."
My chest tightened, the knot of fear that had lived there since the city finally loosening its grip. Standing there in the circle of his arms, with the scent of bacon and cedar filling the kitchen, I let myself believe him.
If only for this quiet hour before the world rushed back in, I believed that we were enough to weather the storm.