Epilogue Rae
I turned into the driveway at half past five. The porch didn't sag anymore, and the paint was fresh, pale gray with white trim that caught the late afternoon sun. Nash's truck sat where it always did, under the oak tree, which meant he was home and had been for a while.
I cut the engine and grabbed my bag from the passenger seat.
My hands smelled like hydraulic fluid and engine grease no matter how many times I scrubbed them at the shop.
Ruben had let me take the lead on a Piper today, and I'd spent six hours tracing a fuel leak that turned out to be a cracked gasket someone else had installed wrong two years ago.
Small thing. Easy fix. The kind of work I could do in my sleep now.
The front door opened before I reached it. Nash stood in the doorway, barefoot, sleeves rolled up, his hair still damp from a shower. He looked at me the way he always did now, like I was the only thing in the room even when we were outside and there was no room at all.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
He stepped aside to let me in, then caught my wrist and pulled me back before I'd made it three steps.
I turned, and he kissed me, his hand sliding up to cup the back of my neck.
I leaned into him, my bag hitting the floor somewhere behind me, and let myself forget about the Piper and the gasket and the fact that my boots were still on and probably tracking dirt across the floor he'd refinished himself.
When he pulled back, his thumb brushed along my jaw. "Missed you."
"I was gone eight hours, Nash."
"Yeah." He kissed me again, slower this time, and I felt the heat of him through my shirt, the way his other hand settled low on my back like he was memorizing the shape of me.
God, I was never going to get used to this.
Six months in and I still flushed when he touched me like that, still felt my pulse kick up when he looked at me too long.
We made it to the bedroom. Barely. He pulled my shirt over my head and I worked the buttons on his, and then we were on the bed and his mouth was on my throat, my collarbone, lower.
I dug my fingers into his shoulders and forgot how to think in complete sentences.
Forgot everything except the weight of him and the way he said my name like a question I'd already answered.
After, we lay tangled together, the ceiling fan turning lazy circles above us. His hand rested on my stomach, which wasn't flat anymore and hadn't been for weeks. I could feel his thumb tracing small circles just below my navel, absent and steady, like he wasn't even thinking about it.
"I love you," I said.
He turned his head to look at me, his hair falling across his forehead. "I love you too."
It still landed wrong in my chest every time he said it, not because I didn't believe him but because I did.
Because six months ago I wouldn't have, and a year ago I'd stopped asking for it entirely, and now here we were in the little house he'd built with his own hands and he said it like it was the easiest thing in the world.
His phone rang from the nightstand. The screen lit up with a number I recognized — Elias, probably, or someone else from Austin who wanted something Nash used to give them without thinking twice. Nash glanced at it, then reached over and declined the call. The screen went dark.
"You didn't have to do that," I said.
"Yeah, I did."
I turned onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow. "What if it was important?"
"Then they'll leave a message." He kissed my shoulder, then sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "You hungry?"
"Starving."
"Good. I'll make dinner." He stood and pulled his jeans back on, not bothering with the button, and looked back at me over his shoulder. "Chicken okay?"
"Chicken's fine."
I watched him leave, then lay there for another minute listening to him move around in the kitchen.
Cabinets opening, the fridge door, water running in the sink.
Normal sounds. Ordinary. The kind of thing that used to make me ache because it was always temporary, always about to end the second his phone rang or someone in Austin needed him for something I couldn't compete with.
But he'd declined the call. He'd stayed.
I got up and pulled my clothes back on, then walked down the hall to the yellow room.
The door was open the way it always was now.
The crib sat against the far wall, white and simple, next to the rocking chair my mother had given us.
The walls were the color of late summer sun, bright enough to make the whole room feel warm even when the light outside was fading.
On the windowsill, exactly where I'd left it, was the first sonogram.
The one I'd folded and slipped into my back pocket the night I left the penthouse.
Black and white, grainy, a shape that might've been anything if you didn't know what you were looking at.
I picked it up and held it for a moment, my throat going tight the way it still did sometimes when I wasn't expecting it.
The new one was in my bag. I'd gotten it yesterday, and the tech had printed two copies because I'd asked. One for me, one for Nash, though I hadn't shown him yet because I kept forgetting and then remembering at the wrong times, like when we were in the truck or he was halfway out the door.
I set the old sonogram back on the sill and went to find my bag.
Nash was at the stove when I came back into the kitchen, a skillet in one hand and a spatula in the other.
He'd put a shirt on, which seemed like a waste, but I didn't say so.
The table was already set — two plates, two forks, two glasses of water.
Like he'd planned this, or maybe he just did it now without planning because it was what we did.
Dinner together. Every night. In the same house, at the same table, no suitcase by the door and no flight to catch in the morning.
I sat down and watched him work. He wasn't a great cook, but he was competent, which was more than I'd expected a year ago when I didn't think he knew where we kept the pans. He'd learned. Quietly, without making a thing out of it. The same way he'd learned how to stay.
"Ruben asked about you today," I said.
Nash glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah? What'd he say?"
"Wanted to know if you were still showing up." I smiled. "I told him you were."
"Good."
"He said the Cessna rebuild was the best work he's seen in ten years. Said my name when people asked who did it."
Nash turned off the stove and brought the skillet to the table. He set it down on a trivet I didn't remember buying, then sat across from me. "That's because it was your work, Rae."
"I know." I did know. It didn't stop me from feeling something complicated and warm every time someone said it out loud. "It's just different now. People know. They ask for me."
"They should." He served the chicken onto my plate, then his, and I realized I was starving in the way I got now, sharp and immediate, like my body had its own schedule and I was just along for the ride.
We ate without talking for a while. The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of forks on plates and the faint hum of the fridge in the corner. Outside, the sky was going purple, the way it did this time of year, and the oak tree threw long shadows across the driveway.
Nash set his fork down and leaned back in his chair. He looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and then he said, "What goes up comes down. One way or another."
I blinked. The words landed exactly the way they had the first time I'd heard them, flat and matter-of-fact, like something you'd say without thinking. But I knew he was thinking. I could see it in the way he was watching me, waiting for me to catch up.
"Ruben said that," I said.
"I know."
"When I was working on the Cessna. Back when—" I stopped. Back when I didn't know if Nash was coming home or if I was driving to Austin to fight for something I couldn't name. Back when everything felt like it was falling and I couldn't see where it would land. "A long time ago."
"Yeah." He reached across the table and took my hand. His thumb brushed over the ring I'd put on myself, the one he'd offered and I'd claimed. "But we're still here."
I nodded. My throat was too tight to say anything that would've made sense, so I didn't try.
After a minute, I pulled my hand back and reached for my bag. The sonogram was folded inside the front pocket, still crisp from the printer. I unfolded it and set it on the table between us.
Nash looked down at it, and something in his face shifted.
Not surprise — he'd known I had the appointment — but something quieter.
He picked it up carefully, like it might tear, and studied it the way I had yesterday when the tech had pointed out the shape of a head, a spine, hands curled into fists too small to see.
"Jesus," he said quietly.
"I know."
He looked up at me, then back down at the sonogram. "This is?—"
"Yeah."
We sat there for a while, neither of us moving, the image between us on the table like a promise we were both still learning how to believe.
The first sonogram was in the yellow room, on the windowsill where the light could reach it.
This one would go there too, next to it, because they both belonged and I wasn't putting either of them away.
Eventually Nash stood and came around the table. He pulled me to my feet and wrapped his arms around me, careful of my stomach, his chin resting on top of my head. I leaned into him and let myself feel the whole weight of it — the house that didn't move, the man who stayed, the baby we hadn't lost.
"We're going to be okay," he said.
I believed him.