Ben caught her because there was no universe where he didn’t.

She hit him like joy given a running start, arms around his neck, body warm and shaking with laughter and tears, and his own laugh broke out of him before he could stop it. It came out rough and startled and utterly wrecked, his hands finding her waist on instinct before immediately gentling, as if some brand-new, ridiculous, reverent part of his brain had already decided she was made of glass.

Then he realized what he was doing and laughed harder, breath catching against her shoulder.

“Oh my God,” he said, voice muffled against her hair. “I’m already being weird.”

His arms tightened anyway. Carefully. Completely.

He buried his face against her neck for half a second, breathing her in—skin, sleep, the faint clean scent of her T-shirt, the apartment around them, coffee burning somewhere faintly behind him because apparently fatherhood began with a minor appliance emergency.

They had sent it.

Their families knew.

Somewhere, phones were detonating. His mother was probably crying. Her sister was probably screaming. Jax was probably staring at the picture like it was abstract art and then texting something devastatingly sincere under five layers of sarcasm. The world, the small protected world of their people, had tilted with them.

But inside the apartment, everything had gone very still.

Ben pulled back only enough to look at her. Really look.

Her face was wet and shining, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with the kind of happiness that didn’t know where to go so it became motion, sound, touch. She was trembling in his arms. He was too. He could feel it now, the shaking in his own hands, the helpless flutter in his chest, the overwhelming sense that his body was too small for the life trying to happen inside it.

“We did,” he whispered.

A laugh slipped out of him, disbelieving.

“We made a person.”

He said it again like it was a lyric he had to test aloud before he believed it.

“A tiny person. Very small. Currently terrible at rent. Contributing nothing financially.”

His smile cracked wider, eyes wet.

“Already emotionally dominating the household, though. Strong start.”

The joke barely survived the feeling underneath it. His mouth trembled, and he pressed it together for a second, trying to get his breathing under control. Useless. Completely useless. He was gone. He had never been more gone in his life.

His hands lifted to her face, thumbs brushing gently beneath her eyes, not wiping the tears away so much as memorizing them. He wanted to remember this exact version of her forever. Morning light, bare feet, oversized shirt, happiness breaking through fear like sunrise through blinds.

“You’re…” He stopped, shook his head once, helpless. “I don’t have a word.”

That almost offended him. Professionally.

“I should have a word. Words are supposed to be, like, a thing I can do.”

His laugh came out watery again.

“I’ve got nothing.”

Then, softer, with all the humor stripped away because the truth had finally found a way through:

“You’re everything.”

His forehead lowered to hers. For a moment, he just stood there with her in the middle of the apartment, both of them breathing unevenly, both phones silenced on the counter, the proof sitting on the table in the sun.

He had imagined this before. Not in detail. He’d never let himself get that greedy. But in flashes: her hand over her stomach, a crib wedged into some impossible corner of wherever they were living, a little laugh that sounded like hers, a kid with paint on their hands and a toy keyboard under one arm. He had imagined wanting it and then told himself not to hold the image too tightly.

Now it was here.

Not fully formed.

Not safe from fear.

But real.

His gaze dropped, inevitably, to her stomach. Still flat beneath the soft fall of her shirt. No visible proof. No outward sign that the entire axis of his life had just shifted.

His hand moved there again, slower this time, almost shy.

“Hi,” he murmured, because apparently that was still the only thing his brain could manage when addressing their microscopic roommate.

He swallowed, then glanced back up at Cleo with a sudden, very serious expression.

“Do you think they heard me say the rent thing? Because I don’t want our first conflict to be financial.”

His thumb stroked once over the fabric of her shirt.

A beat.

“Also, I feel like we should be honest with them early that I was called Bean as a child. Just so nobody uncovers it later and uses it against me.”

The absurdity of that—of him standing barefoot in her apartment, announcing childhood nickname transparency to an embryo—hit him at the same time it hit his nerves, and he laughed again, low and overwhelmed.

Then he kissed her.

Not frantic. Not celebratory in some cinematic, sweeping way. Just deep enough to say what language kept failing to hold. He kissed her with gratitude, with terror, with a joy so bright it almost hurt. He kissed her like she was home and future and the person who had just handed him the rest of his life in a tiny plastic window.

When he pulled back, his hand stayed on her stomach.

“We’re doing this,” he said, steadier now. “You and me.”

His eyes searched hers, soft but intent.

“And I know we’re going to freak out. A lot. Probably creatively. Probably at inconvenient times.” His mouth curved. “I’m almost definitely going to Google something at three in the morning and make it everyone’s problem.”

He nodded toward the phones on the counter.

“And our families are going to become deeply unwell in approximately—actually, they’re probably already there.”

Another breath. His voice softened.

“But right now, before we let them in, before we answer anything…”

He looked around the apartment—the bed, the drafting table, the guitars, the forgotten coffee, the tests glowing in the sunlight like tiny artifacts from some impossible future.

Then back at her.

“I just want one minute where it’s only ours.”

His arms came around her again, careful and sure, drawing her into him with a gentleness he was already learning in real time.

“One minute,” he whispered against her hair. “With you. And them.”

He closed his eyes.

For once, he didn’t need music.

The room had its own rhythm now.

Her breathing. His breathing. The refrigerator hum. The quiet, impossible beginning of a third heartbeat they could not hear yet but already loved with everything they had.

His laughter vibrated through her before the words did.

Cleo felt it in the solid warmth of his chest, in the way his hands found her waist and then softened almost immediately, as if some instinct had already rewritten the rules of how he touched her. The tiny adjustment was so unmistakably him—earnest, overthinking, impossibly tender—that a fresh burst of delighted tears stung her eyes.

He was already trying to be careful.

The realization was so sweet it bordered on absurd.

Her arms tightened around his neck as he pressed his face into her hair. The scrape of his stubble against her temple, the uneven rush of his breathing, the sound of his voice muffled against her skin grounded her more than any conscious effort could have. The apartment still smelled faintly of coffee and turpentine and the lavender detergent they both used now because he had quietly started buying the same one she did.

Home.

That word shifted too.

When he repeated what they had done, the statement landed differently than it had a moment ago.

Not theoretical.

Not something written on a digital screen.

A person.

The image of a tiny human being—half him, half her, entirely unknown—rose in her mind with such startling clarity that her knees nearly weakened again.

Then he mentioned rent.

A startled laugh burst out of her so quickly she had to bury her face against his shoulder to catch her breath. The sound echoed between them, breathless and bright, and the pressure that had been building behind her ribs loosened.

“You’re impossible,” she managed, smiling so hard her cheeks ached.

His observation about their child already taking over the household sent another helpless laugh through her. The humor was ridiculous and perfectly timed, a lifeline thrown into the middle of all this enormous feeling.

When his hands moved to her face, Cleo lifted her head.

The pads of his thumbs were warm and slightly unsteady beneath her eyes. His expression was so open it made her heart contract with a tenderness so sharp it almost hurt.

Then he faltered over language.

That, more than anything, struck her.

Ben—who could pull melodies out of thin air and make thousands of strangers feel understood—standing in front of her without a sentence big enough for this.

The rawness in his voice when he finally found something made the air leave her lungs in a quiet rush.

Her lips parted.

For a moment, she couldn’t answer.

The weight of what he meant settled through her slowly, touching every version of herself that had ever wondered if she would be chosen completely.

Her fingers slid into the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I love you so much,” she whispered, the words emerging with trembling certainty.

When his forehead rested against hers, the contact felt less like a gesture and more like alignment. His thoughts moved visibly across his face. She could almost see the images forming behind his eyes, futures taking shape one uncertain piece at a time.

His hand drifted down to her stomach.

The movement was tentative now, reverent in a way that made her throat tighten.

When he addressed the life inside her with such solemn absurdity, Cleo laughed again, softer this time. The seriousness with which he considered whether he had offended an embryo was so unmistakably him that she felt another surge of affection so strong it left her momentarily speechless.

“I think they’re already on your side,” she said, her voice warm with amusement. “And if they inherited your sense of humor, we may never stand a chance.”

The childhood nickname revelation nearly undid her.

She pressed both hands over her mouth, laughing and crying all at once, then lowered them to cup his face.

“Bean is absolutely staying in reserve,” she informed him, eyes shining. “For strategic use when you become unbearably smug.”

His kiss stole the rest of her breath.

She leaned into it without hesitation, letting gratitude and fear and wonder and love pour into the contact. His mouth was warm and familiar, but the meaning beneath it had changed. Everything carried greater consequence now. Every touch contained one more person.

When he drew back and spoke with renewed steadiness, Cleo felt something inside her settle into place.

Not because the fear disappeared.

Because he was standing in it with her.

The mention of anxious midnight searches made her smile through lingering tears. She could picture it with painful ease: Ben in bed, illuminated by his phone, spiraling over infant sleep schedules and obscure symptoms while insisting he was being “appropriately proactive.”

“Creatively,” she echoed, laughing softly.

His glance around the apartment pulled her attention with it.

The rumpled bed where they had slept.

The painting she had left unfinished the night before.

The tests still glowing on the table in a square of sunlight.

The muted phones on the counter holding a storm of love they were not ready to open yet.

Then he asked for a single minute.

The request moved through her with profound gentleness.

Not to prepare.

Not to perform.

Not to manage anyone else’s feelings.

Just to remain here.

Together.

Cleo’s expression softened until there was no strain left in it at all.

She stepped fully into his embrace and let her cheek rest over his heart. The rhythm beneath her ear was still fast, but steadier now, as if his body had begun to understand what his mind was only starting to accept.

Her hand slid beneath his T-shirt and spread over the warm skin of his back.

“Yes,” she whispered.

The word was quiet, but it held all of her.

She closed her eyes.

The apartment hummed around them. Sunlight warmed the floorboards. Somewhere beyond the silenced phones, two families were erupting with joy. But inside the circle of his arms, time loosened.

Cleo exhaled slowly and turned her face just enough to press a lingering kiss to the center of his chest.

Then she spoke into the space between his heartbeat and her own.

“Hi, baby,” she murmured, her palm drifting down to cover his hand over her stomach.

A smile curved against his skin.

“We’re right here.”

The silence they created together did exactly what she needed it to do.

Not erase the enormity.

Not reduce the fear.

But give everything a shape she could begin to hold.

Cleo stayed folded against him until her breathing matched the steady rise and fall of his chest. His arms remained around her, one hand warm and protective over her stomach, the other resting at the small of her back. The position felt so instinctively right that she had the strange, overwhelming sensation of standing in the center of a life she had been walking toward for years without fully realizing it.

Her fingertips traced absent patterns against his skin beneath his shirt.

His heartbeat thudded beneath her cheek.

The room remained soft and sunlit around them.

Eventually, the first edge of her practical brain began to stir.

It always did.

Not because she wanted to control everything.

Because looking ahead helped her breathe.

Because if she could identify the next steps, the future stopped feeling like a wave and started feeling like a series of things they could do together.

Cleo lifted her head slowly, reluctant to move even an inch away from him. Her eyes searched his face, taking in the lingering tears, the wonder still written openly across his features.

A smile tugged at her mouth.

“I’m about to become deeply annoying,” she said, voice quiet and almost apologetic, though amusement flickered beneath it.

Her thumb brushed the corner of his mouth.

“I can feel my brain making lists.”

The confession earned a soft laugh from her, and she tipped her forehead briefly against his before stepping back only enough to keep her hands looped loosely around his waist.

“First, we need to call my doctor and make an appointment to confirm everything.” Saying the words aloud sent another ripple of disbelief through her. She shook her head, smiling helplessly. “And figure out how far along I am.”

Her hand drifted down to her stomach again, fingers resting there with growing familiarity.

“Then vitamins, if the ones I’m taking aren’t enough. And probably a thousand things I haven’t even thought of yet.”

Her brows lifted as another thought arrived.

“Oh my God, we might need more space.”

She turned slightly, glancing around the apartment that had always felt expansive despite its modest size. The tall windows. The drafting table. The bed tucked into its alcove. The guitar stands and stacks of books and paint supplies and all the pieces of the life they had built in one open room.

Suddenly she tried to imagine a crib.

A changing table.

Tiny clothes folded into drawers they did not currently possess.

The image was both comical and incredibly real.

A laugh bubbled out of her.

“I mean, not immediately. Our child is not going to demand a mortgage next week.”

Her eyes returned to his.

“But maybe we start looking. Apartments. Maybe a house eventually.” The word house came out with a softness that surprised her. “Somewhere with an extra room.”

The vision unfurled before she could stop it.

A small nursery.

Sunlight on painted walls.

A rocking chair in the corner.

Ben humming to a baby at two in the morning.

Cleo swallowed around the sudden ache in her throat.

“And we should probably figure out what your South America schedule looks like.” Her fingers tightened slightly against his sides. “I know you still have that month, but I want to know what we’re working with.”

There was no accusation in it.

Only the instinctive need to understand the landscape ahead.

To know what they were navigating.

Her thoughts continued to gather momentum.

“Books,” she murmured, half laughing at herself now. “And insurance. And maybe we should make a list of questions for the doctor because I know I’m going to forget everything the second we get there.”

She stopped and pressed both palms lightly over her face.

A muffled laugh escaped.

When she lowered her hands, her expression softened with affectionate embarrassment.

“I’m doing it already, aren’t I?”

Her eyes met his.

The vulnerability beneath the humor remained visible.

She wanted this more than she had ever wanted anything.

And because she wanted it so much, she wanted to protect it.

Prepare for it.

Build around it.

Cleo stepped closer again until their bodies touched.

Her hands slid to rest against his chest, feeling the steady beat beneath her palms.

“I know we don’t have to solve everything today,” she said quietly. “I just…”

Her gaze dropped to where his hand still rested over her stomach, and her smile became smaller, more tender.

“I want to take care of them.”

She looked back up.

“And I want us to feel ready. Or at least… less hilariously unprepared.”

A watery laugh escaped her.

Then her expression softened into something calm and deeply certain.

“We’re going to figure it out.”

She rose onto her toes and kissed him gently, lingering there for a moment before pulling back just enough to brush her nose against his.

“One doctor’s appointment at a time,” she whispered.

Her fingers intertwined with his over her stomach.

“And maybe one apartment listing at a time.”

Ben watched her brain come online in real time.

He knew the look. He loved the look. The slight narrowing of her eyes, the way her focus sharpened even while her cheeks were still wet, the way she could be standing in the middle of a miracle and still begin gently organizing it into tabs, appointments, timelines, categories.

It should have overwhelmed him.

It did, a little.

But mostly it made him love her so hard he nearly had to sit down again.

His hands stayed on her, one at her stomach, one low at her back, as if his body had already accepted a job his brain was still reading the description for. He felt the moment she started looking around the apartment differently. He followed her gaze to the bed, the drafting table, his guitars tucked into corners they had no business fitting into, the narrow kitchen where he had abandoned coffee in a state that could probably be described as criminal.

A crib.

A doctor.

Vitamins.

A house.

South America.

His chest tightened at that one—not with resistance, but with the sudden, sobering awareness that the future was no longer a vague glowing thing they whispered about under blankets. It had dates now. Logistics. Rooms. Bloodwork. Flights. A tiny life growing quietly inside her while his calendar still looked like a dare.

But then she kissed him, and his thoughts steadied around the warmth of her mouth.

One appointment at a time.

One listing at a time.

Ben let out a breath that shook at the edges and smiled against her nose.

“Okay,” he said softly. “First of all, I love your list brain. I need you to know that. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

His thumb moved once over her stomach, careful and wondering.

“Terrifying, yeah. Extremely powerful. But favorite.”

He leaned back just enough to see her face, and the sight of her nearly wrecked him again. Damp lashes. Determined little crease between her brows. A smile trying to be practical while joy kept breaking through the seams.

“You’re not annoying,” he said. “You’re doing the thing you do when something matters so much it scares you. You’re building a little room around it so it has somewhere safe to live.”

His throat tightened as soon as he said it.

A little room.

God.

He was going to cry again. He could feel it rising, ridiculous and immediate, and because he was him, because sincerity still made him reach for a joke like a railing on an icy bridge, he blinked hard and glanced around the apartment.

“Also, for the record, I do think our child will demand a mortgage next week,” he said. “I’m getting a vibe. Very ambitious. Very real estate-forward.”

He nodded gravely toward her stomach.

“Tiny landlord energy.”

The laugh that broke through him helped. It loosened the pressure in his ribs enough for him to breathe again.

Then he sobered, but not heavily. Just enough to meet her where she was.

“We call your doctor,” he said. “Today. Or we send a message. Whatever makes the most sense.” A beat. “And we make the list of questions, because yes, absolutely, we are going to forget everything the second we get there. I’m going to forget my own birthday. I might introduce myself wrong.”

His mouth curved.

“If I say my name is Bean in a medical office, you have permission to stop me.”

His hand slid from her back to her waist, holding her steady while his mind began doing its own version of what hers was doing—less neat, more frantic, but real. Doctor. Vitamins. Food. Space. Calendar. Tour. Home.

He looked toward the counter, where their silenced phones sat like two grenades with the pins still in. Somewhere inside them, both families were probably losing their collective minds. He could practically hear the chaos through the glass. But the quiet in the apartment held.

He wasn’t ready to break it yet.

“We’ll look at apartments,” he said, the words coming slowly because they felt huge and he wanted to mean every one. “Not in a panicked way. Not in a ‘we need to move by lunch’ way. But we’ll look.”

His gaze moved again through the space they’d made together—her canvases, his guitar, the coffee mugs, the sunlit table with the tests on it. He loved this apartment. Loved it because it was hers before it had stretched to become theirs. Loved the way it had held them in the strange, tender in-between.

But he could see it now too.

A little room.

Paint on the walls.

A rocking chair.

A baby sleeping somewhere close enough that they both woke at every sound.

His voice softened.

“Somewhere with sunlight,” he said. “And room for your work. And a place where I can be loud without ruining nap time, which, honestly, may be my first real parenting challenge.”

He swallowed, then looked at her.

“And South America—” He nodded once, grounding himself before the logistics could turn sharp. “We figure it out. I’ll get the full schedule today. I’ll call whoever I need to call. We’ll map it around appointments as much as we can.”

His fingers tightened gently at her waist.

“You’re not carrying that part alone.”

He felt the weight of the sentence as soon as it left him. Not promise as performance. Not the kind of grand declaration that sounded good and collapsed under pressure. Something simpler. Better.

A commitment to be in the details.

To learn the names of vitamins. To remember appointment times. To stand beside her under fluorescent lights and ask the questions neither of them knew they needed yet. To be reachable. Present. Useful. Hers.

Theirs.

He glanced toward the kitchen and finally registered the faint bitter smell in the air.

“Also,” he said, eyes narrowing slightly, “I think I may have murdered the coffee.”

He held up a finger, suddenly solemn.

“That is not a metaphor for my fatherhood. I want that on record.”

The absurdity of it hit him, and he laughed again, one hand dragging through his hair in disbelief before returning immediately to her, like he couldn’t stand not touching her for more than a second.

“Okay,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Food. You need food, right? That feels like a thing. Pregnant people need food. People in general need food. I’m already crushing this.”

He looked down at her stomach again, expression softening into awe despite himself.

“Your mom is going to make a list,” he told the tiny nothing-and-everything beneath his palm. “I’m going to make breakfast. We all have roles.”

Then he looked back up at Cleo, and the humor thinned into tenderness so complete it nearly stole his voice.

“I’m scared too,” he admitted quietly. “I’m happy—God, I’m so happy I feel insane—but I’m scared.”

His thumb brushed over her knuckles where their hands were intertwined.

“But not of doing it with you.”

That part was clear. Crystal.

He leaned in and kissed her once, gentle and slow, not to interrupt the planning but to bless it. To say yes to the doctor and the vitamins and the apartment listings and the million terrifying unknowns waiting just outside the room.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers again.

“One doctor’s appointment at a time,” he echoed.

A breath.

“One apartment listing at a time.”

His smile grew, shaky but radiant.

“One deeply unnecessary baby spreadsheet at a time.”

Then, softer, with his hand still covering hers over the place where their future had begun:

“And right now, one breakfast at a time.”

He kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, then dropped one more kiss to her forehead because he couldn’t help it.

“Stay right here,” he whispered. “Or come with me. Or start the list. Whatever your brain needs.”

His eyes flicked toward the table where the tests sat in sunlight, and his chest filled all over again.

“But don’t go too far,” he added, voice warm and a little helpless. “I’m still in the part where I need to keep looking at you to make sure this is real.”

Cleo stared at him through the blur of tears and sunlight, and for one suspended second she could do nothing except feel.

Not just his words.

The certainty beneath them.

The way his hands never left her, as though every plan he was making began with the simple assumption that she belonged exactly where she was—pressed against him, trembling, carrying the child they had only just discovered.

Each promise found its place inside her.

He loved the part of her that turned fear into lists.

He answered every practical question she threw at him without hesitation.

Doctor.

Vitamins.

Apartments.

South America.

The tour.

He did not minimize any of it. He did not ask her to slow down or tell her they would worry about it later.

He stepped into the details with her.

And when he told her she would not carry any of it alone, something deep inside her finally unclenched.

She lifted her eyes to his face and saw everything there at once.

The joy that still looked almost too large for him to contain.

The fear he was honest enough to admit.

The quiet determination underneath both.

Not a grand declaration.

Not optimism for the sake of optimism.

Ben.

Steady. Open. Completely present.

A wet laugh slipped from her when he insisted the ruined coffee was not a symbolic reflection of his future as a father. She shook her head, wiping her cheeks as he spoke to the tiny life beneath his palm with all the solemnity of a man assigning official family duties.

The sight was so unbearably tender that her chest tightened all over again.

Then he said he was scared.

And when he followed that with the truth that he was not afraid of doing this with her, the world seemed to narrow to the space between their foreheads.

She believed him.

With a tenderness that made her hands tremble, she lifted them to his face and brushed her thumbs over the dampness at his lashes.

“You realize,” she said, her voice rough with emotion, “that our child is going to be impossible.”

A watery smile touched her lips.

“They’re going to inherit your flair for drama and my need to organize everything into color-coded categories.”

She let out a shaky breath.

“So by the time they can talk, they’ll probably be requesting a larger bedroom and presenting us with a five-year plan.”

His smile steadied her enough to continue.

Her fingertips slid down to rest over his heart, feeling the uneven beat beneath her palm.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The words were small, but they carried everything.

For meeting her fear with calm.

For answering her questions instead of avoiding them.

For already loving this child with his whole heart.

For making her feel less alone than she had ever felt in her life.

Another tear slipped free.

“I know this is huge,” she said softly. “And our timing is objectively ridiculous.”

Her smile wavered but held.

“But I have never felt safer than I do with you.”

She kissed him slowly, letting all the awe and gratitude she could not fully put into words pass between them.

When she drew back, she kept her forehead against his.

“And for the record,” she murmured, a small smile returning, “you can introduce yourself as Bean in every doctor’s office for the rest of our lives if it means you keep looking at me like this.”

Her hand slid down to cover his where it rested over her still-flat stomach.

The gesture felt instinctive now.

Natural.

As if they had always stood this way.

“Our baby,” she whispered, tasting the words again.

Theirs.

A life already reshaping the future in ways she could only begin to imagine.

A heartbeat they had not heard yet.

A nursery somewhere in the distance.

Sleepless nights.

Tiny socks.

Ben pacing with a newborn at three in the morning while humming absentmindedly under his breath.

The images came in flashes, but for the first time they did not feel overwhelming.

They felt real.

She looked back up at him, her eyes shining.

“I keep waiting to wake up,” she admitted. “Not because this feels wrong. Because it feels too good.”

Her fingers threaded through his.

“I know we’re going to be scared. And I know we’re going to make mistakes.”

A soft, tearful laugh escaped her.

“I’ll spiral after reading one alarming article online. You’ll buy something wildly unnecessary because you think it’s adorable.”

Her thumb brushed over his knuckles.

“But this baby is going to know they were wanted.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

“From the very beginning.”

She took a slow breath, grounding herself in the warmth of him.

“Okay,” she said softly, smiling through fresh tears.

“Come make me breakfast.”

She squeezed his hand over her stomach and let herself savor the truth one more time before speaking.

“And then,” she whispered, wonder brightening every syllable, “we start becoming parents.”

Cleo did not let go of his hand immediately.

For a moment she simply stood there, their fingers intertwined over the small, unchanged plane of her stomach, as though moving too quickly might disturb the fragile miracle that had settled around them.

Then Ben shifted, reluctant but smiling, and the warmth of his body began to pull away.

The loss of contact was brief, but she felt it instantly.

A strange, almost magnetic need rose in her chest to stay close to him—to keep him within arm’s reach, within sight, within the safe perimeter of this new and terrifying joy. So when he turned toward the kitchen, she followed without even thinking about it.

The apartment felt different now.

The same sun spilled across the wood floors.

The same half-finished canvases leaned against the walls.

The same test sticks rested on the dining table beside two abandoned mugs and the phones neither of them had touched.

And yet everything had shifted.

Every familiar object seemed to belong to a life that had quietly expanded while they were standing in the middle of the room.

Cleo settled onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter, tucking one leg beneath her as she watched Ben move through the small space.

He looked adorably overwhelmed.

Focused, but in the way he always was when trying to appear more competent than he felt.

He opened a cabinet, paused as if reconsidering what breakfast even meant, then reached for bread with exaggerated determination.

The sight made a soft laugh slip from her.

Her hand drifted unconsciously to her stomach.

Their baby.

The words no longer felt impossible.

They felt astonishingly real.

Ben moved around the kitchen with restless energy, pushing his hair back, checking the pan, opening the refrigerator, muttering quietly to himself as though narrating an extremely important cooking show no one else could hear.

The domesticity of it hit her harder than any grand declaration could have.

Not the dramatic moments.

This.

Watching the man she loved stand barefoot in his own kitchen, trying to make breakfast while mentally recalibrating his entire future.

Her throat tightened.

She imagined him here months from now, half-awake and carrying a newborn against his chest while balancing a bottle in one hand. She imagined him learning lullabies, researching strollers with absurd intensity, whispering ridiculous jokes to a baby who would almost certainly inherit his eyes.

The thought filled her so completely that she had to blink away fresh tears.

Ben glanced up, likely catching the expression on her face.

Cleo smiled, tender and helpless.

“I can’t stop looking at you,” she admitted softly.

Her fingertips traced idle circles over her stomach beneath the hem of her shirt.

“You’re making toast, and somehow it’s the most attractive thing you’ve ever done.”

A tiny laugh escaped her.

“Which is frankly unfair, because you’ve set the bar very high.”

She watched him crack eggs into a bowl with grave concentration, as though breakfast were now a matter of national importance.

Warmth spread through her chest until it nearly ached.

The fear was still there.

The unknowns remained.

Doctor appointments.

Schedules.

Tour dates.

Families.

A thousand things they would have to figure out.

But beneath all of it was a new and steady certainty.

They were doing this together.

Cleo rested both hands over her stomach and let the truth settle deeper with every breath.

Her eyes stayed on him as he moved around the sunlit kitchen.

“Our baby is so lucky,” she said quietly.

The words were simple, but they carried all the love she felt.

A small smile touched her lips.

“They get you.”

And as she watched him standing there in the morning light, making breakfast with a seriousness that was both absurd and profoundly beautiful, Cleo felt the future unfurl inside her with a tenderness so vast it left her breathless.

Ben almost dropped the egg.

Not fully. Not enough to make a mess. Just enough that it slid wrong in his hand and forced him to catch it with the kind of dramatic, full-body concentration usually reserved for saving heirloom glassware or defusing a bomb.

Because apparently that was who he was now.

A man who could survive festival crowds, red-eye flights, technical failures, and interviews conducted on three hours of sleep—but not Cleo sitting at the counter, hands resting over the place where their child existed, telling him their baby was lucky to get him.

He went still over the bowl.

For once, the kitchen noise did not save him. The pan warming on the stove, the faint pop of the toaster, the quiet hum of the refrigerator—all of it seemed to pull back and make room for what she had just said.

His throat tightened.

He looked up at her.

Morning light had caught in her hair and along the damp edges of her lashes. She was still tear-flushed, still trembling at the seams with joy and fear and everything too large to name, and her hands were resting over her stomach like her body had already learned where to protect the future.

Ben had no defense against it.

None.

He had spent years learning how to stay upright under attention. How to let thousands of people look at him and not feel stripped bare. How to take noise and turn it into something useful, something rhythmic, something he could survive.

But this?

One woman in his kitchen, looking at him like he was already becoming someone worthy of their child.

That undid him completely.

He glanced down at the egg in his hand, then back at her, his mouth parting around a laugh that came out shaky.

“I’m holding poultry under extreme emotional duress,” he said, voice rough. “So I need you to know that if this breakfast gets weird, legally, that’s on you.”

It helped. Barely.

He cracked the egg into the bowl with absurd care, like their entire future depended on shell-free scrambling. Then he checked the toast with the solemnity of a man monitoring a spaceship launch. His hands were still trembling a little, so he made them useful. Fork. Bowl. Salt. Pepper. Butter. Tasks. Small things he could touch while the rest of him tried to catch up to the fact that he was going to be a father.

A father.

The word moved through him again, huge and soft and terrifying.

His father had been a father.

His dad had packed lunches and changed tires and showed up with the kind of steadiness Ben had not always appreciated until adulthood made him understand how much quiet effort looked like love. And now Ben was standing barefoot in a sunlit kitchen, trying not to burn toast while some microscopic person existed inside Cleo and apparently already owned him completely.

He cleared his throat and pointed the fork at her with mock severity.

“Also, respectfully, our baby is lucky because they get you.”

His expression softened before he could stop it.

“They get your brain. Your eye for things. Your terrifying emotional accuracy.” A beat. “Your ability to turn fear into a spreadsheet before breakfast.”

He whisked the eggs a little too hard, caught himself, slowed down.

“They get the person who will notice if they’re quiet for a reason. Who will save their weird drawings. Who will know which songs undo them before they know how to explain why.”

His voice had gone quieter by the end, and he had to turn toward the stove for a second because if he kept looking at her, breakfast was going to become an abandoned concept.

He poured the eggs into the pan.

The soft sizzle steadied him.

“Meanwhile, from me they get… height, probably. Deeply unnecessary facial expressions. A historic inability to pack lightly.” He stirred the eggs gently, frowning in concentration. “And, if we’re unlucky, my childhood nickname coming back as generational trauma.”

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes bright despite the dampness still clinging there.

“For the record, we are not naming the baby Bean. I know you’re thinking about it. Don’t lie to me in front of the eggs.”

The toaster popped.

Ben startled so hard he nearly dropped the spatula.

He froze.

Then slowly looked toward her, caught between embarrassment and laughter.

“Great,” he muttered. “Excellent. Calm paternal presence. Very reassuring.”

But the ridiculousness of it loosened the room. He laughed under his breath and rescued the toast before it could cross from golden into symbolic failure. Butter went on thick because if there was ever a morning that deserved it, it was this one. He found a plate, then another, then opened the fridge and stared inside for three full seconds with no idea what he was looking for.

Fruit.

Right.

He grabbed strawberries, because they were there, because she liked them, because something about putting them on a plate beside eggs and toast felt like proof that he could provide at least one beautiful, unnecessary thing.

He rinsed them carefully.

Then he caught sight of her again.

Cleo at the counter, watching him.

Not laughing at him.

Not evaluating.

Just loving him through the chaos of becoming.

His chest went tight all over again.

He set the knife down and walked over to her before he could talk himself out of it. The eggs could survive thirty seconds. Probably. Maybe. If not, they would become part of the origin story.

He stepped between her knees where she sat at the stool and cupped her face in both hands. His thumbs moved lightly over her cheeks, reverent and still not quite steady.

“I’m going to try so hard,” he said.

The words came out plainly. No joke attached. No flourish.

His eyes stayed on hers.

“I’m going to mess things up. I know I am. I’m going to buy the wrong thing and overthink the right thing and probably assemble a crib backward while insisting I understand the instructions.”

A small, helpless smile touched his mouth.

“But I’m going to try. Every day.”

His gaze dropped to her stomach and something in his face changed again, gentler than awe, deeper than surprise. He lowered one hand, resting it over hers.

“For both of you.”

The sentence left him almost breathless.

Both.

There were already two people in front of him now.

Cleo, who he loved in a way that had survived every version of them.

And the baby, unnamed and unseen, already folded into the center of everything.

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Cleo’s forehead. Then, after the smallest hesitation, he crouched enough to kiss the back of her hand where it rested over her stomach.

Not performative.

Not grand.

Just instinct.

Then he stood quickly, blinking hard, and pointed toward the stove.

“Okay. Breakfast. Before I become a Victorian ghost in this kitchen.”

He returned to the pan, salvaged the eggs with what he considered heroic timing, and began plating everything with the focus of someone arranging offerings at an altar. Toast. Eggs. Strawberries. A little extra butter. A glass of water because his brain had latched onto hydration as a fatherly duty and would probably never let it go.

When he set the plate in front of her, he did it with a small bow that was only half a joke.

“For the future mother of my child,” he said, voice warm and cracked at the edges. “Breakfast, version one. Nutritionally questionable but made with devastating emotional commitment.”

He leaned on the counter across from her instead of sitting immediately, because he still wanted to look. Needed to.

His eyes flicked toward the silenced phones. They were face down, mercifully quiet, but he could almost feel the chaos waiting there. Their mothers. Her sister. His siblings. Jax. The whole circle of people they loved becoming part of the morning as soon as they let the world back in.

Not yet.

Ben reached across the counter and took her hand.

“After this,” he said softly, “we can check the phones.”

A beat.

“Or we can throw them in a drawer and pretend we live in 1997 for another hour.”

His smile tugged crooked.

“I’m flexible. Mature. Extremely chill.”

He held the look for maybe half a second before shaking his head.

“No, I’m not. I want to see everyone lose their minds. But I also want this.”

His thumb brushed over her knuckles.

“You. Breakfast. Them.” His eyes dropped briefly to her stomach again. “This apartment before it becomes headquarters for everyone else’s joy.”

The eggs steamed gently between them. The coffee machine hissed once, offended and forgotten. Sunlight stretched across the floorboards and touched the table where the tests still sat side by side, blunt and miraculous.

Ben squeezed her hand.

“We’ll start becoming parents,” he said, echoing her without meaning to, letting the words settle into him. “But first you eat. Then we call the doctor. Then we let your sister scream at a frequency only dogs and unborn children can hear.”

His mouth curved.

“And then maybe I Google one thing.”

A pause.

“Two things.”

Another pause, honest and immediate.

“Okay, a medically irresponsible number of things, but I will do it beside you, so that makes it romantic.”

He finally sat on the stool next to her, close enough that his knee pressed against hers, close enough to keep one hand near her, because apparently distance was no longer an acceptable concept.

He looked at her plate, then back at her.

“Eat,” he said, gently bossy now, trying the role on for size. “Please. I have decided feeding you is my first official dad-adjacent act, and I need a win after the coffee incident.”

Then, softer, with his gaze steady on hers:

“And for what it’s worth…”

His voice lowered.

“I think they’re lucky because they get us.”

The word was small.

Us.

But it held the whole room.

Cleo climbed onto the stool at the kitchen counter and tucked her feet beneath her, her fingers curling around the edge of the cool stone as she watched Ben move through the narrow space.

He was trying very hard to look like a man who had complete command of breakfast.

The effect was undermined almost immediately when he opened the refrigerator and stood there for a beat, staring into it as though eggs might have acquired new instructions in the last ten minutes.

A soft laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

The sound drew his attention for only a second, but that was enough. His hair was still disheveled from her hands. His T-shirt was wrinkled. His expression held the kind of concentrated seriousness most people reserved for defusing explosives.

Something in her chest squeezed so sharply she had to press her palm to her mouth.

He turned back to the stove, shoulders slightly tense, and she recognized what sat underneath the humor.

He was trying.

Not in a performative way.

In the quiet, deeply sincere way he approached anything he loved.

The skillet hissed when butter met the heat. The smell bloomed into the apartment, rich and familiar, cutting through the lingering bitterness of the coffee he had sacrificed earlier. Cabinet doors opened and shut. A fork clinked against a bowl.

Ordinary sounds.

And yet every one of them felt newly significant.

Cleo rested one hand low on her abdomen and let herself absorb the sight of him in this version of their life: barefoot, intent, slightly overwhelmed, making breakfast while carrying the same life-altering knowledge she was.

Her throat tightened.

There was no dramatic speech in front of her.

No cinematic declaration.

Just the man she loved, taking care of her because that was the most natural instinct he had.

He reached for the carton with too much enthusiasm, nearly lost his grip, caught it at the last second, and exhaled with visible relief.

Another laugh slipped out of her, warmer this time.

“You know,” she said, her voice soft but steadier than it had been all morning, “watching you handle eggs like they’re a high-risk operation is doing something to me.”

The corner of her mouth curved when he glanced over.

She traced her thumb across the fabric of her shirt where her hand still rested.

“I’m serious.”

Emotion swelled unexpectedly, but it was gentler now—less like a wave and more like a tide rising with quiet certainty.

She took in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he moved, the fact that even in his own shock his first instinct had been to feed her.

To make the next hour manageable.

To transform something enormous into a skillet, toast, and a place to begin.

Her eyes burned again.

“Our baby is going to think this is normal,” she said, almost to herself at first.

Then she lifted her gaze fully to him.

“They’re going to grow up assuming this is what love looks like.”

The words left her without calculation.

No flourish.

Just truth.

Her fingers tightened on the edge of the counter as emotion caught in her throat.

“A person who gets scared and stays anyway,” she said quietly. “A person who takes care of the practical things. A person who makes breakfast when the world changes.”

A tear slipped free, but she smiled through it.

“I’m really glad that person is you.”

She let the silence settle after that, warm and unhurried.

The butter crackled softly in the pan. Morning light shifted across the countertop. Ben stood in the center of her kitchen, and for the first time since seeing the two pink lines, Cleo felt the next moment arrive without fear.

She rested both hands over her stomach and watched him

Cleo waited until he set the plate in front of her before she moved.

The eggs were a little uneven, the toast slightly darker than usual, and there was a smear of butter near the edge of the plate where he had clearly been operating with more emotion than precision.

It was the most beautiful breakfast she had ever seen.

Her throat tightened as she picked up her fork.

The first bite tasted like warm bread, salt, and the unmistakable comfort of being cared for. She had not realized how hungry she was until the food settled in her stomach and some of the lightheadedness finally began to fade.

Ben took the stool beside her, close enough that their knees brushed every time either of them shifted.

Cleo chewed slowly, her fingers finding his free hand almost without thought. She laced their fingers together and looked down at their joined hands resting between their plates.

The image felt strangely intimate.

Not dramatic.

Foundational.

She swallowed and drew in a small breath.

“I’ve been thinking about something.”

Her thumb moved over his knuckles as she searched for the right words.

“I don’t want to know if the baby is a boy or a girl before they’re born.”

Saying it aloud brought an immediate sense of certainty.

She looked up to gauge his reaction, her expression soft but resolute.

“I want that moment to be a surprise.”

A smile tugged at her mouth.

“I want one of us to be crying and exhausted and completely overwhelmed, and then somebody says, ‘It’s a—’ and we find out right there.”

The thought sent a rush of anticipation through her that felt almost dizzying.

She took another bite, then continued, her voice growing more animated as the picture sharpened in her mind.

“And I don’t want the nursery to look like a candy store exploded.”

Her nose wrinkled slightly.

“No walls covered in bubblegum pink or electric blue.”

She set down her fork and began absentmindedly sketching shapes on the countertop with her fingertip.

“I want it to feel calm.”

Her eyes lifted, brightening as she imagined it.

“Soft greens. Warm browns. Muted yellows. Creams. Natural wood.”

She smiled, more grounded with every detail.

“Sunlight. Linen curtains. Maybe a vintage rug.”

The artist in her was already arranging tones and textures, building a room that felt gentle rather than overstimulating.

“I want it to feel like the rest of our home. Thoughtful and peaceful.”

Her hand drifted once more to her stomach.

“Something they can grow into, no matter who they turn out to be.”

The words lingered between them, and she felt a quiet thrill at how naturally she had said when rather than if.

When they arrive.

When they sleep in the room they create.

When they become a family in a way they were only beginning to understand.

Cleo took another bite of toast and leaned lightly into his shoulder.

“I know we have months before we need to pick paint colors,” she said, smiling. “And we should probably survive the first appointment before I start ordering swatches.”

Her fingers tightened affectionately around his hand.

“But I wanted you to know.”

She turned her head and looked at him, eyes full of warmth and certainty.

“That’s what I picture.”

A small, emotional laugh escaped her.

“Our little mystery baby in a room full of sunlight and soft colors.”

She brushed her lips to his shoulder.

“And us figuring it out as we go.”

Ben had been doing a fairly convincing job of eating breakfast like a normal person until she started building the nursery in the air between them.

Then the fork paused halfway to his mouth.

Soft greens. Warm browns. Cream. Natural wood. Sunlight.

He could see it too vividly, too quickly: a room that didn’t exist yet, in an apartment or house they hadn’t found yet, with light falling across linen curtains and some small impossible person sleeping in the middle of it like they had always been on their way there.

His throat tightened around absolutely nothing useful.

He set his fork down carefully, because apparently he could no longer be trusted with utensils when she talked about their future in color palettes.

For a second, he just looked at her.

She was leaned into him, still eating the breakfast he had made with more love than skill, her hand warm in his, her mouth soft from the kiss she’d pressed to his shoulder. She looked calmer now than she had in the bathroom. Still tearful around the edges, still glowing with the enormity of it, but steadier. Like picturing the room had given the future walls.

And Ben realized, with a fresh and slightly terrifying ache, that this was how she was going to mother.

By making space.

By noticing light.

By refusing to let the world tell their child who to be before they arrived.

His thumb moved over her knuckles, slow and absent.

“Yeah,” he said, voice quiet at first. “Okay.”

It wasn’t a throwaway agreement. It came out small because the feeling behind it was too large.

He turned slightly on the stool so he could face her more fully, their knees still touching beneath the counter.

“I don’t want to know either,” he said. “I mean, for one thing, I would absolutely be the weak link. I’d know for eight minutes and then say something deeply obvious in front of your sister, and she’d pin me to a wall with her eyes.”

His mouth tugged into a crooked smile.

“I cannot be trusted with state secrets or baby secrets. I’m very brave, but I’m also… me.”

The humor helped him breathe, but it didn’t dilute the sincerity. Nothing could, not now. His gaze dropped briefly to her stomach, still hidden beneath her shirt, still completely unchanged and yet somehow the most important place in the room.

“And I like the idea of meeting them all at once,” he said, softer. “Not a file. Not a category. Just… them.”

He swallowed.

“I want that moment too. The crying, the exhausted, completely unhinged version. I want to find out when they’re here.”

A beat.

His brows pulled together slightly, thoughtful and tender and already overwhelmed by a memory that hadn’t happened yet.

“I’m going to cry so hard,” he admitted. “Like, medically concerning. The staff is going to be checking on me, which will be humiliating because you’ll be the one who did all the work.”

He looked back at her with mock solemnity.

“I’ll try to keep it tasteful. But no promises.”

His hand tightened gently around hers.

The nursery took shape again behind his eyes. Not as a finished room, not as some curated thing meant to look good in pictures, but as a place that felt like them. Her paintings. His records. Books that got chewed on. A rug with a history. Wood warmed by sun. Maybe a mobile that moved when the window was open. Maybe a tiny shelf for treasures no one else understood.

A room their child could grow into.

A room that didn’t shout expectations from the walls.

“No candy-store explosion,” he agreed. “No aggressive pink. No electric blue. Nothing that looks like a gender reveal party fought a toy aisle and lost.”

His eyes brightened.

“Though I do reserve the right to buy one deeply embarrassing onesie. Just one. Maybe two if the first one is musically relevant.”

He paused, then lifted a finger.

“Not a slogan onesie. I have standards. I’m a father now.”

The word landed funny in his mouth.

Father.

Dad.

He went still for half a second, then laughed under his breath, quiet and disbelieving.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Still buffering.”

He leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her temple, letting his mouth linger there while the morning hummed around them. The phones were still silent. The coffee was still ruined. Their plates were half-finished. The tests still sat in sunlight on the table like small, plastic witnesses.

When he pulled back, his expression had softened all the way through.

“I love what you picture,” he said. “I love that it already feels like them without knowing anything yet.”

His thumb brushed over the back of her hand.

“And I love that you want calm for them.”

He said it simply, but it moved through him in layers. Cleo knew too well what it meant to need peace. To need somewhere soft to land. To need a room that didn’t require performance before you could rest.

Their child would get that from her.

From them.

Ben let out a slow breath, then reached for the napkin near his plate and tugged it closer with sudden focus. He grabbed the nearest pen from the counter—one of Cleo’s, because there were always pens within arm’s reach in her apartment—and clicked it with unnecessary gravity.

“Okay,” he said, angling the napkin between them. “This is not a spreadsheet, because I respect your process and also because napkins have limited infrastructure.”

He started writing anyway.

“No gender. Mystery baby. Calm room. Soft greens. Warm browns. Muted yellows. Creams. Natural wood. Vintage rug. Sunlight.”

His handwriting was terrible. Emotional. A crime against legibility.

He looked down at it, frowned.

“Wow. This child is going to need to inherit your handwriting. Mine looks like a haunted bassline.”

He added one more thing at the bottom.

Then turned the napkin toward her.

At the end, beneath the colors and furniture and half-formed room, he had written:

Figure it out together.

His voice went quieter.

“That part’s my favorite.”

He looked at her then, all the teasing stripped back for a breath.

“Us figuring it out as we go.”

The fear was still there. Of course it was. It lived under the joy now, not gone but quieter. There would be appointments and bloodwork and schedules and impossible decisions. There would be days when the whole thing felt too enormous to hold. There would be mistakes. He would make some. Probably a lot.

But she was sitting beside him in the morning light, building a room for their child out of colors and gentleness, and he knew with absolute clarity that he would spend the rest of his life trying to be worthy of that room.

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.

“Our little mystery baby,” he said, smiling against her skin. “Extremely stylish already. Very tasteful. Possibly judging my eggs.”

He glanced toward her plate, then back to her stomach.

“Fair, honestly. They’re uneven but sincere.”

Then he leaned his shoulder into hers, gentle and warm.

“And for the record,” he said, voice soft but certain, “I don’t care where the room is yet. Apartment, house, whatever. We’ll find it.”

His eyes moved around the small apartment again—their crowded, sunlit, impossible little world.

“Somewhere with enough space for them. Enough space for you. Enough space for me to badly assemble furniture while pretending I’m nailing it.”

A smile curved his mouth.

“And enough sunlight for the vintage rug you’re absolutely going to find and pretend was ‘practically free’ even though I’ll know it wasn’t.”

He kissed her shoulder, then stayed close, his cheek brushing lightly against her hair.

“But yeah,” he whispered. “That’s what I picture too.”

A room full of sunlight.

A baby they hadn’t met yet.

Cleo beside him, making the future feel less like a cliff and more like a doorway.

Ben looked down at the napkin again, then at her.

“Okay,” he said, gently bossy again because it steadied him. “Eat more. Then maybe we look at apartments for exactly fifteen minutes and absolutely do not accidentally fall in love with a place we can’t afford.”

A beat.

His expression turned thoughtful.

“Unless it has good light.”

Another beat.

“Then we’re doomed.”

Cleo watched the exact moment the fork stopped in his hand, and warmth moved through her immediately—not because he agreed with her, but because he didn’t dismiss the vision as impractical before letting himself enter it.

Most people did.

Most people heard softness and immediately reached for realism like it was maturity.

Ben just… went there with her.

The realization settled low and steady in her chest while he set the fork down with exaggerated care, like the conversation itself required both hands now.

Her fingers stayed laced through his as he turned toward her more fully, and the movement shifted the heat of him closer along her knee beneath the counter. The apartment still carried the sleepy remains of morning around them—coffee cooling too fast, butter drying on abandoned toast, sunlight creeping slowly across the wood floor in pale uneven bands.

When he admitted he’d be the weak link about finding out early, a smile pulled at her mouth before she could stop it.

Not teasing exactly.

Fond.

Because she could already see it happening with humiliating clarity. Him trying to act normal while visibly vibrating with information. Her sister narrowing her eyes from across a room like a hawk spotting movement in a field.

Cleo’s thumb brushed once against the side of his hand in silent agreement before he kept going.

Then his voice softened.

Not a category. Just… them.

Something in her chest tightened hard enough that she stopped chewing entirely.

There it was.

The thing she’d been trying to explain without fully knowing how.

He understood.

Not perfectly, not academically, not through some rehearsed language—but instinctively. Emotionally.

That mattered more.

Her gaze dropped briefly toward the counter between them because looking directly at him suddenly felt dangerous in the way honesty sometimes did. She could feel her pulse in her throat. In her wrists. Everywhere.

And when he started talking about the moment the baby arrived—messy and exhausted and real instead of curated—her breath left slowly through her nose.

The image that hit her wasn’t visual at first.

It was sound.

His voice breaking.

A newborn crying.

Her own breathing wrecked from effort.

The thought moved through her body with startling physical force.

Then he admitted he was going to cry.

Cleo let out a quiet laugh that folded instantly into emotion before it could fully become amusement. She pressed her lips together briefly, trying to contain it, but her shoulders still shook once.

“You’re going to scare a nurse,” she murmured softly. “They’re gonna think you’re the one delivering the baby.”

Her voice came out rougher than she intended.

Because underneath the humor, something vulnerable kept opening wider every time he spoke.

Not because he sounded fearless.

Because he didn’t.

He sounded present.

His hand tightened around hers again while he talked about the room, and Cleo could feel the rhythm of his nerves in the subtle shifts of pressure against her skin. The more he described it, the more her body relaxed beside him instinctively—not into fantasy, but into recognition.

He wasn’t trying to build an image.

He was trying to build atmosphere.

A place where a person could unfold safely.

That distinction mattered so much to her she almost couldn’t bear it.

Then came the terrible onesie discussion.

The laugh escaped her immediately this time, warm and breathy and impossible to hold back, her forehead dropping briefly toward his shoulder.

“Absolutely not,” she said, already smiling against him. “You get one.”

A beat.

“And I retain veto power if it looks emotionally manipulative.”

The word father shifted something visible in him the second he said it.

Cleo saw it happen before the laugh even arrived after.

Saw the flicker of disbelief move through his face.

Saw the tiny fracture in composure.

And God, that hit her harder than she expected.

Because suddenly he looked young to her for half a second. Not immature. Just unguarded in a way men rarely let themselves be when something matters enough to scare them.

The kiss at her temple lingered warm against her skin after he pulled back, and she stayed close instead of moving away, her shoulder fully settled into his now.

Outside, a truck rumbled somewhere down the street. Pipes clicked softly in the wall beside the sink. The city kept moving around them while this tiny kitchen somehow held still.

Then he said he loved what she pictured.

Cleo’s throat tightened again immediately.

Not because he complimented it.

Because he treated her inner world like somewhere worth living in.

That feeling landed deep.

She looked down at their joined hands while his thumb moved against her skin, and emotion gathered slowly enough this time that she actually felt it building before it arrived.

Then the pen clicked.

The sound pulled her attention back up instantly.

And suddenly he was making a list on a napkin with absurd sincerity.

Cleo stared at him for one suspended second, caught between affection and disbelief.

“You’re fully nesting already,” she said quietly.

The words slipped out before she could overthink them.

Not mocking.

Wondering.

She watched the pen move while he wrote color after color after color in awful handwriting, and when he frowned at it, another laugh threatened at the corners of her mouth.

But she stayed quiet.

Because she wanted to see what else he’d add when he stopped trying to be funny.

Then he turned the napkin toward her.

Figure it out together.

Everything in her softened at once.

Not dramatically.

Not all at once like a movie.

More like a knot loosening strand by strand.

Cleo picked up the napkin carefully with her free hand, studying the messy ink like it contained something fragile.

And maybe it did.

Because beneath the list and the jokes and the breakfast and the fear, what he’d really handed her was partnership without conditions attached to it.

No pretending he knew what he was doing.

No pretending she had to either.

Just—

Together.

Her eyes burned suddenly.

She blinked once hard before lifting her gaze back to him.

“My mom is going to steal this and put it in a frame made of driftwood,” she said softly.

A watery smile pulled at her mouth.

“And then tell us the baby’s aura already likes natural fibers.”

Cleo kept looking down at the napkin for another second after speaking, thumb smoothing unconsciously over one of the creases forming through the middle of it.

The paper already looked lived in.

Coffee-smudged at the corner. Bent slightly where his wrist had pressed into it while writing.

She loved it irrationally.

Her eyes finally lifted back to him, catching the way he was still watching her—not impatiently, not waiting for the conversation to become easier or lighter, just there with her fully—and something warm unfolded low in her stomach.

It made the next words come easier.

“You know what’s funny?” she said quietly, folding one leg higher onto the stool beneath her. “I didn’t realize how unusual my childhood was until I got older.”

The sunlight had climbed far enough now that it touched the edge of her shoulder, warming the thin fabric of her shirt. Dust drifted lazily through the beam near the window. Somewhere downstairs, somebody started playing music faintly enough that only the bass traveled through the floorboards.

Cleo leaned more comfortably into him as she spoke, letting herself settle there.

“I thought everybody grew up with parents who let random people stay for weeks because they were ‘finding themselves.’”

A small smile curved at the corner of her mouth.

“Or with six unfinished art projects happening in the kitchen at all times. Or adults having full philosophical debates with children like their opinions actually mattered.”

The memories arrived in fragments instead of chronology.

Bare feet on warm decks in summer.

Beaded curtains moving in the breeze.

People laughing too loudly late at night.

Her father sanding wood outside while somebody played Fleetwood Mac through blown-out speakers.

And every single morning—

She groaned softly, dragging a hand over her face.

“Oh my God, the green drink.”

Her expression pinched immediately.

“I’m still traumatized.”

The laugh that escaped her afterward came quieter, tangled up with affection instead of annoyance.

“My mother genuinely believed spirulina could solve emotional problems.”

She turned slightly toward him, eyes narrowing with playful seriousness.

“You already know this, but I need you to understand how bad it tasted warm.”

The memory hit so vividly she could practically feel the texture again. Grainy. Bitter. Somehow both earthy and aggressively alive.

Cleo shuddered dramatically.

“And every morning before school she’d hand it to me like she was passing down sacred wisdom from the mountain.”

A beat.

“I’d be wearing fairy wings and rain boots eating toaster waffles while she explained the importance of chlorophyll.”

The image pulled another soft laugh from her, but underneath it, emotion shifted quietly through her chest.

Because for all the weirdness—

For all the green sludge and moon rituals and strangers sleeping in the guest room—

She had never doubted she was loved exactly as she arrived.

Cleo’s fingers slipped back into his slowly, grounding herself there.

“They never cared who I turned into,” she admitted, voice softer now. “Not in the way people usually mean it.”

Her gaze drifted toward the window again, thoughtful.

“There wasn’t this pressure to become one specific thing that reflected well on them. If I changed my mind constantly, nobody panicked. If I got emotional, nobody treated it like I was difficult.”

She swallowed lightly.

“I could just… exist.”

The simplicity of that still felt startling when she said it out loud.

Especially now that she was old enough to understand how rare it actually was.

Cleo turned back toward him fully then, her knee pressing more firmly against his beneath the counter.

“That’s what I want for them,” she said quietly. “Not perfection. Not some curated childhood where everything looks impressive from the outside.”

Her thumb brushed once across the side of his hand.

“I want them to feel safe being unfinished.”

The words settled between them softly.

Not polished.

True.

She smiled faintly then, eyes lowering briefly toward the napkin again.

“And honestly? If they end up slightly weird because they were raised by two emotionally intense artists and occasionally forced to drink alarming smoothies, I think that’s probably fine.”

Ben had been smiling about the smoothie horror story—really smiling, the kind that creased his eyes and made his whole face go warm—but the expression softened into something else when she said the part about being safe unfinished.

His hand stilled around hers.

For a second, the kitchen seemed to quiet around that sentence. The ruined coffee smell, the cooling toast, the faint bass from downstairs, the low hum of the fridge—all of it became background to the way those words landed in him.

Safe being unfinished.

He looked at her like he was trying to memorize not just the way she looked in the sunlight, but the exact shape of the thought she’d handed him. Her knee pressed against his beneath the counter. Her fingers were warm between his. The napkin lay nearby with his terrible handwriting on it, suddenly feeling less like a joke and more like the first artifact of a house they hadn’t found yet.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, his voice a little rough. “That.”

He swallowed, thumb moving once across her knuckles.

“That’s exactly it.”

He turned more fully toward her, the breakfast between them temporarily abandoned, because apparently fatherhood had already begun with cold eggs and emotional ambushes at the counter.

“I want that too,” he said. “I want them to know they don’t have to arrive fully formed. Or impressive. Or easy to understand.”

A small, crooked smile tugged at his mouth, but his eyes stayed earnest.

“Which is good, because genetically speaking, they’re probably not going to be easy to understand. They’re going to come out with very strong opinions about lighting, rhythm, and soup texture.”

He glanced at the napkin, then back to her.

“And possibly terrifying handwriting. We’ll work through it as a family.”

The humor steadied him, but only barely. Beneath it, something old and tender had been stirred. He thought about his own childhood—not bad, not cold, not cruel, but different from what she was describing. More ordinary in some ways. Less porous. Fewer strangers finding themselves on the couch. Fewer adults asking children what they thought and actually waiting for the answer.

He pictured little Cleo in fairy wings and rain boots, solemnly holding a cup of warm green sludge while her mother gave a speech about chlorophyll like it was a sacrament, and the image made his chest ache with such affection he almost laughed again.

Almost.

Instead, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her skin. “I’m going to need a second with fairy wings and toaster waffles. That might be the most Cleo origin story I’ve ever heard.”

His smile broke through properly then.

“And I do need to say, on behalf of children everywhere, warm spirulina feels like a violation of the Geneva Convention.”

He paused, thoughtful.

“Emotionally. Spiritually. Possibly legally.”

He held her gaze, the joke folding gently into the tenderness underneath.

“But I love that you had that,” he said. “Not the swamp beverage. To be clear. I’m anti-swamp beverage.”

His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist.

“I mean the room. The permission. The not having to turn into something acceptable before you were loved.”

The words came slower now, like he was choosing each one by hand.

“I love that you know what that feels like. Because you’re going to give it to them without even thinking. It’s already how you love.”

His eyes dropped to her stomach again, still flat beneath her shirt, and the sight of her hand there almost unraveled him. It wasn’t visible yet, nothing had changed from the outside, but his whole body had already recalibrated around that place. Around them.

He leaned down, just enough to rest his forehead briefly against her shoulder.

“God,” he muttered, voice muffled in the soft fabric of her shirt. “Our baby is going to be so weird.”

A beat.

Then, with deep seriousness:

“Beautifully weird. Artistically confusing. Emotionally articulate at an alarming age.”

He lifted his head and gave her that bright, crooked look, the one that arrived whenever he was trying to charm his way around the fact that he was dangerously close to crying again.

“I’m picturing a toddler in rain boots holding a tambourine and refusing to answer to their government name.”

His brows pulled together as if he were genuinely considering it.

“Honestly? Strong brand.”

Then the softness returned before he could outrun it.

He reached for the napkin again and dragged it closer, clicking the pen with solemn purpose.

“Okay. New addition.”

Under the messy nursery list, beneath Figure it out together, he wrote slowly, concentrating harder than necessary:

Safe being unfinished.

His handwriting was still terrible. Maybe worse now, because his hand was not completely steady.

He stared at it for a moment, then nodded once.

“That stays,” he said quietly.

He turned the napkin back toward her, and his expression had gone completely open again.

“That’s the thing I want on the wall,” he said. “Not literally, unless your mom gets involved and suddenly it’s painted on reclaimed wood with pressed flowers.”

A flicker of amusement crossed his face.

“Which, honestly, I would respect.”

He leaned closer, his knee brushing hers beneath the counter.

“But that’s the feeling. That’s the house. That’s the room. That’s us.”

His voice thinned slightly on the last word, not from uncertainty, but from being overwhelmed by how naturally it fit now. Us no longer meant two people orbiting each other with history between them. It meant three. It meant their child inheriting not a perfect home, but a living one. A place with paint on the floor and guitars in corners and sunlight and too many books and at least one parent overexplaining oatmeal consistency before eight in the morning.

He could see it so clearly it frightened him.

A baby asleep against Cleo’s chest while she sketched with one hand.

A tiny hand curled around his finger while he hummed something unfinished.

A child at the table, making a mess, being loved through it.

A person allowed to become.

He exhaled slowly and squeezed her hand.

“I don’t want to be the kind of dad who needs them to make sense all the time,” he said. “I don’t want them to feel like they have to be good at something before they’re allowed to love it.”

His eyes flicked toward his guitar beside the record player.

“I want noise. Bad songs. Weird drawings. Questions that ruin dinner. Emotional breakdowns over socks. Whatever.”

A small smile.

“I mean, ideally not all in one afternoon. But I’m flexible. I’m a father now. Very mature.”

He reached for his fork, then immediately set it down again because eating still felt absurd when the future was sitting beside him with damp lashes and bare knees tucked on a stool.

“And I want them to see you like this,” he said, softer. “Not scared exactly. Not perfectly calm either. Just honest. Making room for everything you feel.”

His hand moved carefully to her stomach again.

“They’re going to learn so much from that.”

The sentence surprised him with its certainty.

He leaned in and kissed her once—slow, warm, grateful. Not to interrupt the moment, but to seal it. When he pulled back, his mouth hovered near hers for another breath before he smiled.

“But I do have one concern.”

His expression turned grave.

“If your mom introduces our child to warm spirulina before they can legally protest, I may have to intervene.”

He lifted one hand.

“Respectfully. Diplomatically. Possibly with a decoy waffle.”

A beat.

“And if you start saying things like ‘alarming smoothies’ with that nostalgic look in your eye, I’m going to need a signed waiver.”

He looked down at her stomach, speaking now with ceremonial weight.

“Tiny mystery baby, this is your father. I support your artistic freedom and emotional development. I do not support room-temperature pond juice. We’ll discuss when you’re older.”

Then he looked back at Cleo, and the joke melted into something far warmer.

“But if they’re a little weird,” he said, “good.”

His thumb traced a slow circle over her shirt.

“Weird means they were allowed to become something specific.”

His throat tightened again, but he didn’t look away.

“And loved while they were still figuring out what that was.”

The room held them there, breakfast cooling, sunlight stretching, phones still silent, the napkin between them already becoming part of the story. Ben finally picked up her fork and nudged it gently toward her plate, his mouth curving.

“Okay,” he said, voice soft but mock-stern. “Eat another bite before I start crying into the eggs and making them worse.”

He glanced at the plate.

“Which would be hard. They’re already operating on sincerity alone.”

Then he leaned his shoulder into hers, staying close enough that she could feel him when he breathed.

“And after breakfast,” he added, quieter, “we can start making room.”

A beat.

“In the apartment. In our schedules. In our terrifyingly intense artist hearts.”

His smile turned lopsided.

“And in the smoothie policy, which I believe should require unanimous parental consent.”

Cleo felt the shift in him the second the words left her mouth.

Safe being unfinished.

It moved through him visibly.

Not dramatic. Not performative. Just real enough that his hand stopped moving against hers for a beat, and something inside her softened immediately in response.

She stayed quiet while he sat with it, watching the way his expression changed around the edges when something mattered too much for humor to carry first. The kitchen suddenly felt smaller in a strangely intimate way, narrowed down to warm hands, cooling breakfast, and the morning light catching in his lashes when he looked at her like that.

Then he said that.

That’s exactly it.

The certainty in his voice hit her harder than she expected.

Because she hadn’t realized until now how afraid some part of her had been that she would fail trying to explain this correctly. That it would sound naïve or impractical or too loose around the edges to someone raised differently.

But he understood the emotional architecture of it immediately.

Her shoulders eased without her meaning to.

When he started talking about their child not needing to be impressive or easy to understand, Cleo’s mouth curved slowly upward again, affection building warm and helpless in her chest.

Then came the soup texture comment.

She snorted before she could stop herself.

An actual snort.

One hand flew briefly over her mouth while her shoulders shook with startled laughter.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, already grinning. “Absolutely horrifying.”

The image arrived instantly: some tiny intense person rejecting soup based entirely on emotional mouthfeel while the two of them argued sincerely about whether that was developmentally healthy or deeply concerning.

And somehow that future felt weirdly plausible.

The kiss against her knuckles pulled her attention back to him immediately afterward, laughter fading softer this time around the edges.

When he mentioned fairy wings and toaster waffles again, embarrassment flickered through her first—quick and instinctive—but it dissolved almost immediately beneath the look on his face.

Not teasing.

Treasuring.

That did something dangerous to her heartbeat.

Cleo looked down briefly toward their hands because the tenderness of being seen that clearly always hit too close to the center of her.

Then he started talking about the spirulina like it was an actual human rights violation, and another laugh escaped her, quieter now but full-bodied enough that she tipped forward into his shoulder for a second.

“You’re so dramatic,” she murmured against him.

But she could barely get the words out through the smile still pulling at her mouth.

The warmth didn’t last untouched for long though.

Not because he changed.

Because he got quieter.

And when he started talking about permission instead of green drinks, the air shifted again.

Cleo felt it.

Felt the exact second the conversation stopped being playful and became something frighteningly sincere.

Her fingers tightened around his automatically.

He kept speaking slowly, carefully, like he didn’t want to rush past the truth accidentally, and every sentence landed deeper than the last.

It’s already how you love.

That one nearly undid her.

Not visibly at first.

But her chest tightened so hard it became difficult to breathe normally for a second.

Because he said it like it was obvious.

Like she wasn’t trying.

Like love naturally moved through her that way without effort.

Nobody had ever framed her softness as competence before.

The realization cracked through her quietly enough that she almost missed it.

Then his forehead rested briefly against her shoulder.

And the sound of his voice there—muffled, overwhelmed, affectionate—made her eyes burn instantly.

Our baby is going to be so weird.

Cleo laughed through the sting gathering behind her eyes, one hand sliding instinctively into his hair for half a second before resting against the back of his neck.

“Weird in a deeply committed way,” she whispered.

Then came the toddler image.

Rain boots. Tambourine. Refusing their government name.

The laugh that tore out of her this time was helpless.

Full.

She folded toward him again, forehead briefly against his shoulder while she tried unsuccessfully to recover.

“Oh, no,” she managed between breaths. “That’s real. That child already exists somewhere.”

Her stomach actually hurt from laughing now, which felt surreal after crying in the bathroom barely an hour ago.

Then the pen clicked again.

Cleo straightened slowly, still smiling as she watched him drag the napkin back closer with complete seriousness.

The shift fascinated her every time.

How quickly he moved from joking to reverent when something mattered.

She watched him write.

Safe being unfinished.

The sight of the words in his messy handwriting hit differently than hearing them spoken aloud. More permanent somehow. Tangible.

Her smile faded softer at the edges.

Then he said he wanted that feeling on the wall.

Not literally.

And Cleo immediately pictured her mother doing exactly that anyway.

The image arrived so vividly she laughed under her breath.

“She absolutely would,” she said quietly. “And she’d cry while sealing it with beeswax.”

Her thumb traced absentmindedly over the edge of the napkin while he kept talking, his knee brushing hers beneath the counter.

That’s the house. That’s the room. That’s us.

The us landed differently now than it used to.

He was right.

It didn’t feel theoretical anymore.

It felt inhabited already.

Cleo could practically see pieces of it flickering through him while he spoke—future memories forming in real time behind his eyes. She recognized the look because artists always got it when imagination stopped being abstract and became emotionally physical.

When he started talking about bad songs and ruined dinners and emotional breakdowns over socks, warmth spread through her again, slower this time.

Steadier.

“You say that now,” she murmured, watching him abandon the fork again almost immediately. “But wait until somebody screams for forty minutes because the moon looks judgmental.”

A tiny smile tugged at her mouth.

“Which, genetically, feels possible here.”

Then he said he wanted their child to see her honest.

Not fearless.

Not composed.

Honest.

The hand against her stomach made her inhale softly without meaning to.

Every time he touched her there, her body reacted before thought caught up. Heat bloomed low in her abdomen. Emotion followed immediately after.

Because he touched her like there was already someone there listening.

The kiss interrupted the spiral before it could pull her under entirely.

Slow.

Warm.

Grateful.

Cleo melted into it instinctively, one hand lifting to his jaw while the morning seemed to suspend around them again for one lingering second.

When he pulled back, she stayed close enough to feel his breath against her mouth.

Then his expression shifted grave.

And she knew immediately he was about to say something ridiculous.

The spirulina intervention nearly broke her again.

Especially when he started addressing the baby directly like a tiny legal representative.

By the time he finished condemning room-temperature pond juice, Cleo was openly laughing again, eyes wet, face warm, shoulders loose in a way they hadn’t been all morning.

“You are absolutely getting outvoted eventually,” she informed him softly. “If they come home from kindergarten wanting chia seeds in everything, that’s between you and the universe.”

But the humor faded gently when he looked back at her afterward.

Weird means they were allowed to become something specific.

That landed deep enough to quiet her immediately.

Not because it sounded poetic.

Because it sounded true.

Her gaze held his while his thumb moved over her shirt, and something inside her settled with frightening certainty.

This.

Not perfection.

Not certainty.

This.

The warmth. The fear. The honesty. The room they were already building emotionally before they ever found a physical one.

The fork nudged toward her plate pulled a quiet huff of laughter from her nose.

“Bossy,” she murmured automatically.

Still, she took another bite.

The eggs really were terrible now.

She chewed anyway while he leaned into her again, talking about making room.

The words wrapped around her slowly.

In the apartment.

In their schedules.

In their terrifyingly intense artist hearts.

Cleo swallowed, then turned her face toward him fully again, one hand lifting to touch the side of his neck gently.

“I think,” she said softly, “we already started.”

Cleo stayed close to him for another quiet second after speaking, her hand resting against the side of his neck while the apartment settled gently around them again.

The emotional intensity of the morning hadn’t disappeared, but it had changed temperature somehow. Earlier it had felt sharp and breathless and impossible to hold all at once.

Now it felt lived in.

Warm.

The kind of warmth that lingered in old kitchens and soft sweaters and conversations that changed people permanently without needing to announce it.

She watched him for a moment longer before finally taking another bite of eggs purely because he’d clearly committed himself to monitoring her breakfast intake like it was now part of his parental duties.

The eggs were objectively awful at this point.

Cold. Slightly rubbery. Too much pepper in one section and none in another.

Cleo smiled anyway while she chewed.

“Sincere,” she repeated quietly after swallowing, glancing toward the plate. “That’s a very compassionate way to describe these.”

Her foot brushed his beneath the stool.

Outside, the city had fully woken up now. Car horns drifted faintly through the windows. Someone downstairs was laughing loudly enough to carry through the pipes. Sunlight stretched farther across the apartment floor, reaching the legs of the table where the tests still sat beside abandoned coffee cups like evidence from another lifetime.

Except it hadn’t even been two hours.

That realization still felt surreal.

Cleo finished the last bite slowly, then reached automatically for her mug before remembering the coffee had gone cold too.

She grimaced faintly.

“Everything in this kitchen has emotionally moved on from breakfast.”

Still, she drank a sip anyway.

Terrible.

Her face pinched immediately.

Ben caught it, which only made her laugh under her breath as she finally slid off the stool.

The hardwood felt cool beneath her bare feet when she crossed toward the table where both of their phones still sat untouched beside the pregnancy tests. The screen of hers lit immediately the second she picked it up.

And—

“Oh my God.”

The words burst out of her before she could stop them.

Not panicked.

Overwhelmed.

Her shoulder shook once with a disbelieving laugh while notifications continued stacking faster than she could process them.

Texts.

Voicemails.

Photos.

Three missed FaceTimes from her mother.

Cleo unlocked the phone, thumb moving quickly while Ben stayed behind her close enough that she could still feel his warmth near her back.

The first thing waiting at the top was a video message.

Of course it was.

She opened it immediately.

And there her mother was—fully crying already, wrapped in some loose embroidered robe with wet hair and absolutely no concern for dignity whatsoever.

The video began mid-emotion.

Cleo pressed her lips together hard trying not to laugh while listening.

By the end of it, her mother was talking directly to “tiny cosmic baby” through the camera and promising to start knitting immediately despite never successfully finishing anything knitted in her life.

Cleo covered her mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, eyes burning all over again. “She’s fully gone.”

But she was smiling too hard for the words to sound remotely critical.

Another message came through while she stood there.

Then another.

Her sister: i already bought a tiny plant. not for the baby. for emotional support.

One from an old family friend asking if the baby would “prefer natural fibers.”

A photo of her dad holding up a bottle of expensive champagne looking stunned in the background while her mother visibly cried beside him.

Everything about it felt exactly right.

Ridiculous.

Loving.

Immediate.

Cleo leaned back unconsciously until her shoulder brushed Ben’s chest behind her, grounding herself there while she answered messages one by one.

Her fingers moved slower after the first few.

Not because she didn’t know what to say.

Because emotion kept catching up to her in waves.

Everyone was happy.

Not cautiously supportive.

Not politely excited.

Happy.

The realization loosened something in her she hadn’t fully noticed was still tight.

When she finally lowered the phone slightly, her eyes drifted toward the window again where sunlight now flooded almost the entire living room floor.

The apartment looked different in daytime.

Messier.

Smaller.

Real.

Sketchbooks stacked beside the couch. Records leaning crookedly near the player. One of Ben’s sweaters hanging off the chair from the night before.

And somehow she loved it more now than she had yesterday.

Cleo turned finally, resting back against the edge of the table while looking up at him.

Her face still carried traces of crying and laughing both.

“My mother says the baby already has ‘gentle energy,’” she informed him solemnly.

A beat.

“She also said she’s making a blessing basket.”

Her expression broke immediately afterward.

“I don’t know what that means.”

The laugh that followed came softer this time, quieter around the edges from emotional exhaustion finally beginning to settle into her bones.

She reached for his hand again automatically.

Then looked down briefly toward her stomach before back up at him.

The room went still around the realization moving through her.

Not overwhelming now.

Certain.

This was real.

And somehow, against every instinct she’d had to panic earlier—

It felt good.

Scary.

Huge.

But good.

Cleo stepped closer until she could fold herself against him properly, cheek resting near his collarbone while she exhaled slowly.

“We should probably take a nap before we accidentally make seventeen life-changing decisions today,” she murmured.

A beat.

“Because right now I feel emotionally capable of buying a farmhouse and raising bees.”