Here’s the revised version with that section removed and everything else kept the same:

Ben had been prepared for the intellectual property joke.

Mostly.

He had not been prepared for the courthouse.

Or the way she said she still wanted it.

That part hit before the rest of him could organize itself. Before he could smile at the chip pointing in his direction like sworn evidence. Before he could defend his likely courtroom behavior or make some comment about seniority rights under the very serious legal doctrine of carrying the child.

For one second, everything in him went still.

She wanted the wedding.

The song.

All of it.

Not in some vague, distant, maybe-one-day way. Not as a softened promise thrown gently into the future so neither of them had to look too closely at it. She said it plainly, sitting across from him in a taco place with salsa on her plate, their baby’s first photograph between them, like it belonged among all the other true things.

Ben looked at her and felt the sentence move through his whole body.

He had known. Of course he had known. There were some things between them that lived past language, past timing, past all the damage they had done trying to love each other from the wrong distance. He knew she loved him. He knew she wanted a life with him. They had made a person together on purpose. That was not exactly ambiguous.

But hearing it still split something open.

He lowered his eyes for a second, because if he kept looking at her right away, he was going to become the exact emotional witness she had just accused him of being.

Too late, probably.

His laugh came out quiet and rough.

“I would absolutely cry on the stand,” he said, nodding once with grave acceptance. “No question. Terrible for the dignity of the court. Incredible for the jury.”

He looked back up at her, and the smile that found him was softer than the joke.

“I’d make eye contact with one sympathetic person in the back row and immediately ruin everyone’s afternoon.”

His thumb moved over the back of her hand. Slow. Careful. Like touch was the only thing keeping all the new doors from opening too quickly at once.

“And we’d win,” he added. “Obviously. Seniority, emotional damages, prior claim. Very strong case.”

He let the humor sit there for a beat, warm between them, before the quieter truth rose behind it again.

The courthouse.

Just us.

Sign the paperwork, eat somewhere afterward, wander around together.

It should have surprised him more than it did. Maybe some part of him had always known Cleo wouldn’t want a production with too many eyes on it. Maybe he knew because the best parts of them had never happened in front of anyone else. They had happened in the quiet margins. A childhood bedroom with the door half-shut. Her studio floor. A cabin outside Truckee. A hotel room in Iceland. Now this booth, with cooling tacos and a sonogram and queso behaving with unexpected dignity.

Their life had always been made real in small rooms.

A courthouse made more sense than it should have.

Ben exhaled slowly, his gaze dropping briefly to the sonogram before returning to her.

“For the record,” he said, voice low, “that does sound romantic to me.”

He watched her face as he said it, because he wanted her to know he meant it. Not as a consolation prize. Not as something he was agreeing to because she had offered a low-maintenance version. He could see it too easily: Cleo in something simple and perfect because everything she wore looked intentional without trying too hard; sunlight on courthouse steps; his hand shaking while he signed his name; her laughing at him because he cried before anyone even asked him a question. A late lunch somewhere ordinary. Walking with no plan. Married by dinner.

The image slipped under his ribs and stayed there.

“Actually, it sounds dangerously romantic,” he said. “Like, I’m going to have to pretend I’m not already thinking about it for the rest of lunch, which is rude of you.”

His mouth curved, but his eyes stayed bright.

“No seating charts. No aunt’s cousin asking if I’m still ‘doing music.’ No small talk with someone who corners you near a floral arrangement and says the word ‘timeless’ too many times.”

He shuddered lightly.

“Just us sounds… kind of perfect.”

Then he stopped himself.

Not because he wanted to pull away.

Because the last thing he wanted was for this to become something she had to manage. He could feel how close they were to a line. Not a bad one. Not a dangerous one. Just a line that, once crossed, would become another life-changing thing layered on top of an already life-changing day.

Their baby had shown up in sound and shadow less than two hours ago.

He did not need to turn lunch into a proposal just because his heart had lost its mind.

So he held himself steady.

Barely.

“But,” he added, lifting one finger with solemn restraint, “I am not proposing to you in front of queso.”

His gaze flicked to the bowl.

“No offense. Queso has been there for us. Queso has served honorably. But it does not get that much power.”

He looked back at her, softer.

“And I don’t want you wondering later if I asked because of the baby.”

There.

That was the root of it.

The thing he needed clean.

He leaned forward slightly, their hands still linked between them near her plate.

“When I ask you,” he said, and the when left him before fear could edit it into something safer, “I want it to be because I have loved you through enough versions of us to know I want every next one.”

His throat tightened, but he kept going.

“Not because we heard a heartbeat. Not because of paperwork. Not because Sage Briar Wilder sounds beautiful and I got suddenly emotional about last names in public like a lunatic.”

A faint smile touched his mouth, but it didn’t last long.

“Because of you.”

The words were quiet.

Plain.

He felt exposed by how simple they were.

He glanced down at the table, at their joined hands, at the place her chip had rested like a tiny legal baton of accusation. His pulse still felt too close to the surface. She had called him out gently, lovingly, for finding the emotional center of things before he knew he was doing it, and he wondered if that was why he felt so undone now. Because she saw the part of him he usually tried to hide under jokes and timing and noise.

She saw him go soft first.

And she liked it.

That was still the thing that could knock him sideways after all this time.

Ben lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her knuckles, lingering a second longer than he normally would in public. Not enough to make a spectacle. Enough to let the promise move through skin because language was getting crowded.

Then he eased their hands back down.

“And yeah,” he said, voice warmer now, letting the thread shift without leaving the feeling behind. “You’re right about the song.”

His eyes lifted to hers.

“I’ve been trying to make it carry too much.”

He knew that as soon as she said it. Had felt it immediately. The way she saw the problem not as a musician would, not technically, but emotionally. He had been building a monument when what he needed was a room. He had been trying to fit all of them into it—the breakup, the years, the return, the almost-wedding he had imagined before he admitted he was imagining it.

No wonder the thing kept collapsing.

“It doesn’t have to be the entire history of us,” he said slowly, thinking aloud now. “It doesn’t have to explain why it took us so long or justify anything or prove we survived.”

His gaze moved over the table.

The sonogram.

The receipt waiting somewhere in the future.

Her half-eaten taco.

The water rings.

Her foot still against his beneath the booth.

“It can just sound like this.”

His voice softened.

“Like sitting across from you and realizing the rest of my life is somehow both terrifying and extremely obvious.”

A small laugh left him.

“Like you asking for a song and then threatening litigation on behalf of your own seniority rights.”

His thumb stroked her hand again.

“Like loving you before and during and after everything changes.”

That felt closer.

Not finished.

But closer.

He looked at her, and the song shifted somewhere inside him. Not dramatically. Not into a sudden complete melody. But a door opened. A chord settled somewhere it hadn’t before. A little less monument. A little more booth. A little more sunlight on glossy paper. A little more Cleo crunching a chip through one of the tenderest conversations of his life.

He laughed under his breath.

“God, you’re annoying.”

His eyes warmed immediately.

“I say that with reverence.”

He leaned back slightly, but only enough to breathe.

“You ask for one song and accidentally fix the one I’ve been fighting with for months.”

A beat.

“Very rude. Very muse behavior.”

The word sat there with humor around it, but there was truth underneath. She always did that to him. Not by posing as inspiration. Not by trying to be mythical or untouchable. By being unbearably herself in the middle of ordinary life and making him want to catch it before it disappeared.

He glanced at the sonogram again.

A tiny blur.

A whole person.

Sage Briar Wilder, maybe.

A name that sounded like leaves and storybooks and a future he already wanted to protect with a ferocity that scared him.

He looked back at Cleo.

“And for what it’s worth, I think Sage Briar is exactly enough nature.”

His smile returned, gentler now.

“Maybe borderline fairy-child. But in a tasteful way.”

A beat.

“Very strong moss potential.”

He took another sip of water, mostly because his throat felt raw and he needed to do something ordinary before he said something else devastating in a restaurant and never recovered socially.

Then he pointed at her with what remained of his composure.

“But yes. You get the song. You get seniority. You get the courthouse fantasy formally entered into evidence.”

His expression grew solemn.

“And if our child challenges your claim, I will testify. Emotionally. Excessively. Possibly with visual aids.”

He glanced at the sonogram.

“Exhibit A: Your Honor, this is the blob who tried to steal my client’s wedding song before developing knees.”

The smile broke through again, helpless and bright.

“We win in a landslide.”

He looked at her for a long moment after that, letting the laughter ease into something quieter. The kind of quiet that had started to belong to them in the spaces between revelations. Their booth, their baby, the city moving outside, the future stepping closer without asking permission.

His hand tightened around hers.

“And Cleo?”

He waited until her eyes were on his.

“I’ve been thinking about it too.”

Marriage. The song. The name. The next room. The whole impossible thing.

“All of it.”

The words were not polished. Not enough. But they were true.

He smiled then, a little uneven, still overwhelmed but no longer trying so hard to hide it.

“Just maybe don’t monitor my Notes app too aggressively,” he added. “Some of the file names are humiliating.”

A beat.

“And if you see one called ‘not cheesy wedding thing version 6,’ respect my process.”

Cleo had expected him to joke.

She hadn’t expected the joke to arrive wrapped around something so painfully earnest.

The image of Ben dissolving into tears in the middle of a courtroom pulled a laugh out of her before she could stop it. It escaped warm and bright, easing into the air between them until she found herself shaking her head, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she looked at him across the booth.

“Oh, you’d be unbelievable,” she said, smiling wider. “The judge would have to call a recess because Benjamin Wilder couldn’t stop emotionally addressing the jury.”

Her thumb shifted against the back of his hand almost absentmindedly, feeling the slow sweep of his skin over hers as he traced the same reassuring pattern he’d been drawing for what felt like the entire afternoon. The contact settled somewhere low in her chest, familiar enough now that she barely noticed herself leaning into it, her foot still resting lightly against his beneath the table while the sounds of lunch continued around them. Plates clinked together near the kitchen, someone laughed too loudly by the register, and the smell of warm tortillas drifted through the restaurant as though nothing extraordinary had happened here today.

Then he spoke about the courthouse.

Not teasing anymore.

Not humoring her.

He meant it.

The realization arrived quietly, without the dramatic force she’d expected. It simply settled into place, and she watched the way his eyes stayed on hers while he talked, as though he wanted to make absolutely certain she understood he wasn’t accepting the idea because it was easier than planning something bigger.

He could see it too.

That surprised her more than she wanted to admit.

She had pictured it because she’d never needed hundreds of people watching the happiest day of her life. The thought of vows disappearing beneath camera flashes or distant relatives she barely knew wanting pieces of the day had never sounded romantic. She’d always imagined the opposite without ever really saying it aloud. A courthouse. His hand in hers. A simple dress she loved because it felt like herself. Lunch afterward. Wandering without anywhere particular to be because they finally belonged to each other in the quiet way they’d always belonged to each other privately.

Hearing him describe almost the exact same picture made something inside her loosen.

She smiled into it, unable to stop herself.

“I think we’d spend the whole afternoon forgetting we’re married,” she admitted softly. “Then one of us would accidentally say ‘my wife’ or ‘my husband’ for the first time somewhere completely ordinary and we’d both stop walking.”

Her eyes flicked down to the sonogram lying between the baskets of chips and their cooling tacos before lifting back to him again.

“I’d probably make you repeat it.”

When he called the idea dangerously romantic, her smile grew until it became impossible to hide. She reached for another chip without thinking, dipping it lazily through the queso while she watched him try—and fail—to pretend he wasn’t already imagining it too.

“I knew it,” she said around the smallest laugh. “I planted that thought in your head on purpose.”

She bit into the chip, listening as he listed everything they wouldn’t have to deal with. Seating charts. Distant relatives. Conversations neither of them actually wanted to have.

The picture only became clearer.

Just them.

Exactly as she’d imagined.

Then she watched something shift behind his eyes.

Not away from her.

Into himself.

She recognized it immediately.

He was pulling on the reins.

She stayed quiet, letting him arrive wherever he needed to go without interrupting him.

His finger lifted.

His voice grew deliberately careful.

The mention of queso almost made her laugh again, and she did, quietly this time, shaking her head at the solemn dignity with which he defended the bowl sitting between them.

“Queso’s done enough today,” she murmured. “We shouldn’t ask any more of it.”

The humor lingered only long enough to soften the space before he said the thing underneath it.

She felt it before she answered.

Not because she disagreed.

Because she understood exactly why it mattered to him.

Her fingers tightened instinctively around his as he explained that he never wanted her questioning his reasons. She could hear how carefully he was choosing each word, could almost feel him trying to separate today’s miracle from another promise he’d apparently been carrying much longer than she’d realized.

Then came the word.

When.

Not if.

When.

She felt her breath catch almost imperceptibly.

It wasn’t surprise that he wanted to marry her. Somewhere deep down she’d always believed they would find their way there eventually, the same way she’d believed they’d eventually find their way back to each other after every wrong turn they’d ever taken. They’d simply never followed anyone else’s timeline, and she’d never needed them to.

Still…

Hearing him speak about it so plainly stirred something unexpectedly tender.

She watched him instead of answering immediately.

Watched the effort it took him to keep talking.

Watched the vulnerability settle across his face without him trying to hide behind another joke.

When he said it was because of her, her chest tightened so suddenly she had to draw a slower breath.

Not because the words were elaborate.

Because they weren’t.

Because he’d stripped away everything else until only the truth remained.

She felt his lips brush her knuckles a moment later, warm and lingering enough that she could feel the promise without either of them pretending it was one.

Her fingers curled slightly after he lowered their hands again, as though her skin wanted to hold onto the feeling a little longer.

By the time he shifted toward the song, she found herself smiling again.

This version of him—the one thinking out loud, letting ideas rearrange themselves as he spoke—had always been one of her favorites.

She listened without interrupting while he untangled something that had clearly been frustrating him for months. Every time he looked around the booth instead of somewhere distant, every time his eyes landed on the sonogram or the condensation rings or her abandoned taco, she could almost see the song changing inside his head.

She loved that.

Not because she had solved it.

Because she got to witness it happening.

When he said it could simply sound like this, she glanced around the table herself.

The glossy photograph.

The basket of chips.

The ridiculous amount of queso they’d somehow turned into a recurring character.

His hand.

Her hand.

The sunlight pouring through the front windows.

“I think that’s always been your best writing,” she said quietly. “When you stop trying to capture forever and just tell the truth about five minutes.”

His thumb brushed hers again.

She answered by turning her hand over beneath his so their fingers fit together more naturally, her palm warm against his.

Then he called her annoying.

She laughed outright this time.

“Oh, absolutely,” she agreed without an ounce of apology. “I’ve been trying very hard.”

She watched him talk about the song with an affection that made her cheeks ache from smiling. Watching ideas click into place behind his eyes had always felt strangely intimate, as though she were standing inside the room where the music began before anyone else would ever hear it.

When he called her his muse, she wrinkled her nose.

“I refuse that title on principle.”

She stole another bite of taco, chewing thoughtfully before pointing toward him with it.

“I prefer quality control.”

Her grin widened.

“Someone has to stop you from writing seven-minute emotional monuments when what you really needed was… tacos.”

His mention of Sage Briar made her eyes drift back toward the sonogram again.

She smiled instinctively.

“I still like it,” she admitted. “The more we say it, the more it sounds like them.”

The words felt gentler every time they were spoken aloud.

Then his attention swung back toward the imaginary courtroom, the imaginary lawsuit, the imaginary child attempting to steal her wedding song before they’d even developed knees, and she laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth before anyone nearby turned to stare.

“You’d absolutely bring visual aids.”

She shook her head.

“You’d have slides.”

The laughter softened as naturally as it had arrived.

The restaurant remained busy around them, the afternoon sunlight warming the edge of the table while condensation slipped slowly down her glass. Somewhere nearby another order was called out, a chair scraped across the floor, and none of it felt intrusive anymore. The ordinary sounds only seemed to make the conversation feel more real.

When he squeezed her hand and admitted he’d been thinking about all of it too, her heart answered before her head could.

She reached across the small space between them and brushed an escaped lock of hair back from his forehead with quiet familiarity.

“I know,” she said softly.

Not because he’d told her.

Because she’d always seen it.

Her thumb lingered briefly against his temple before her hand slipped back to the table.

“And I wasn’t in a hurry,” she continued, her voice gentle but certain. “I never thought we had to do everything in the order people expected us to. I never needed that.”

She smiled, the expression warming as another thought arrived.

“But if you asked me whether I’d walk into a courthouse with you today…”

She picked up another chip, crunching thoughtfully while she looked at him over the top of it.

“…I’d probably say yes before you finished the question.”

A quiet laugh escaped her.

“And then I’d make us stop for ice cream afterward because getting married feels like something that deserves dessert.”

For a second, Ben forgot how to sit in a booth.

Not literally. His body stayed where it was, tucked into the vinyl seat across from Cleo, one hand still folded around hers, the remnants of lunch cooling between them like evidence of a perfectly ordinary afternoon. But internally, something went airborne.

Today.

She had said today.

Not someday. Not eventually. Not when things were calmer, or when the baby was born, or when schedules made sense, or when he had found the right ring and finished the right song and created the perfect moment in which nothing could be confused for panic or obligation.

Today.

He stared at her, caught between the ridiculous tenderness of the ice cream detail and the sudden, dangerous urge to stand up, leave cash on the table, and drive them to the nearest courthouse before either of them had time to think better of it.

It would be so easy.

That was the problem.

He could see it with terrifying clarity. Cleo beside him in whatever she had worn to the doctor’s office, still carrying the sonogram in her bag, sunlight catching in her hair while they stood in some bland government hallway trying not to laugh too loudly. His hands shaking. Hers steady until they weren’t. A clerk saying something practical while Ben’s entire life rearranged itself again. Then ice cream afterward because of course she would want dessert, because she could take something as huge as marriage and anchor it to a cone melting over her fingers while they walked down the street in a daze.

God help him, it sounded perfect.

Too perfect.

His chest tightened so hard he had to look down at their hands for a moment just to recover. Her fingers were warm in his. Familiar. The same hand that had reached for his in the sonogram room when the heartbeat filled the air. The same hand that had slid across tables and bedsheets and studio floors and airport seats through too many versions of them to count.

He wanted to marry her so badly it startled him.

Not the idea of her.

Not the soft-focus future.

Her.

The woman crunching chips through life-altering conversations, threatening legal action against their unborn child, casually detonating him with the possibility of a courthouse and ice cream like she had not just handed him a loaded emotional weapon in a taco restaurant.

His laugh came out low and unsteady.

“You can’t just say things like that in public.”

He looked up at her then, and whatever humor he’d aimed for didn’t fully survive the trip to his face. It was there, barely, but underneath it was something far more exposed. His eyes moved over her slowly, helplessly—her flushed cheeks, the softness around her mouth, the brightness still lingering from all the crying and laughing and imagining.

“You can’t sit there with queso and our baby’s first picture and tell me you’d marry me today like I’m not a deeply impulsive man with car keys.”

His thumb moved once over her knuckles.

A breath.

“I’m trying to be honorable.”

The word made him wince slightly, because it sounded old-fashioned and dramatic and exactly like something he would make fun of if anyone else said it. But there it was. True anyway.

“I’m trying very hard not to let the fact that I’m stupidly happy and wildly in love and currently emotionally unstable around glossy medical paper make decisions for us.”

His gaze flicked toward the sonogram.

Then back to her.

“But, Cleo…”

His voice lowered.

The restaurant blurred around the edges again. Not gone, exactly. Just distant. Plates, voices, the register, the tiny scrape of someone’s chair—none of it reached the booth with any real force.

“If you asked me the same thing, I’d say yes before you finished too.”

There.

It sat between them, warm and frightening and completely real.

He didn’t dress it up. Didn’t soften it. Didn’t laugh it away.

For a moment, he simply let himself look at her with the whole truth of it.

Then he exhaled, slow and careful, because if he didn’t put one hand on the wheel of this conversation, they were going to end up legally married before his coffee from this morning finished cooling in the sink.

“And that is exactly why we should probably not go to a courthouse today.”

His mouth curved faintly, apologetic and amused and still wrecked.

“Because apparently we are both compromised.”

He lifted their joined hands slightly, as if presenting Exhibit A.

“You are full of pregnancy hormones and romance and tacos. I am full of panic, devotion, and whatever queso-based courage is currently circulating through my bloodstream.”

A beat.

“That’s not a legally sound environment.”

The joke helped, but only a little.

He leaned forward, elbows near the edge of the table, their hands still caught between them.

“I want to marry you when we’re not trying to outrun the feeling of today,” he said quietly. “Not because today isn’t real. It is. It’s maybe the realest day I’ve ever had.”

His eyes softened.

“But I want it to have its own room.”

That felt right as soon as he said it.

Their baby had today.

The heartbeat. The picture. The first stunned lunch where the whole world narrowed to a blur on glossy paper and Cleo’s foot against his under the table.

Marriage deserved its own quiet too.

Not bigger. Not grander. Just separate enough that she would never have to wonder which miracle had pulled the other into motion.

“I want us to remember this as the day we saw them,” he said, glancing at the sonogram. “And heard them. And ate emotionally significant tacos.”

His gaze returned to hers.

“And when I ask you to marry me, I want that day to be about you saying yes because you want me. Not because everything already feels huge and sacred and impossible.”

He swallowed.

“And I know you know the difference. I do. But I want the memory clean for you.”

For her.

Always, embarrassingly, inevitably—for her.

His thumb traced the side of her hand again, steadier now.

“Also,” he added, voice gentling into humor, “I have a song to finish. Apparently.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“And I now know the wedding may involve courthouse paperwork and dessert, so the arrangement might need to reflect civic romance and ice cream. That’s a challenging brief.”

He looked down at the table and huffed a quiet laugh.

“Very niche. Very you.”

But the mention of the song opened something again. Not fully. Not enough for him to explain. Still, he could feel it inside him—the unfinished melody adjusting itself around the new information. Not a ballroom. Not a huge aisle. Not some cinematic swell under lights and flowers.

A courthouse hallway.

Her hand in his.

A cheap pen.

A receipt from wherever they bought ice cream afterward.

The song had been trying too hard to sound like forever.

Maybe forever sounded like her laughing because he couldn’t stop crying while signing a legal document under fluorescent lights.

His throat tightened all over again.

He looked at her, and this time the softness in his face was almost shy.

“I am going to remember that,” he said. “The ice cream.”

A beat.

“All of it, actually. But especially the ice cream. That feels like critical information.”

He leaned back slightly, needing air, but he didn’t let go of her hand.

“And for the record, when we do this, I’m going to call you my wife in the most inconvenient possible location just to see if you make me repeat it.”

His smile grew, slow and warm.

“Grocery store aisle. Parking garage. Some deeply unromantic place where you’re holding oat milk or yelling at me for buying the wrong paper towels.”

He imagined it and felt something in him steady.

“My wife.”

The words came out quietly.

Not aimed at the room.

Not quite testing them.

More like touching them once, carefully, to see if they were real.

They were.

They landed in him so hard he had to blink.

He let out a soft laugh, almost under his breath.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “You’d definitely make me repeat it.”

For a moment, the booth went quiet around them again. The kind of quiet that had threaded itself through the whole afternoon, appearing between jokes and plans and little shocks of realization. The sonogram lay between them, and Ben looked at it with a tenderness that still felt too large for his body. Sage Briar, maybe. Their little almost-strawberry, already dragging them into conversations about names and rooms and law and art and marriage as if being loved by the two of them would ever be a simple thing.

He reached for the receipt the server had dropped at the edge of the table without either of them noticing. It sat facedown, curled slightly from the heat and humidity of the restaurant. He turned it over, glanced at the total without absorbing it, then pulled it closer.

“This is going in the box,” he said.

His tone was solemn, but his eyes were bright.

“First HomeState receipt after heartbeat. Historic. Queso present. Tacos partially consumed. Parents emotionally unstable but charming.”

He folded it carefully once, then again, not too small, and slid it beside the sonogram like it had earned its place.

Then he looked back at Cleo.

“And when we get ice cream after the courthouse,” he said, “that receipt goes in too.”

A beat.

His smile softened.

“Different box, maybe.”

Their box.

The thought hovered there without needing to be spoken.

He squeezed her hand once.

“But not today.”

The words were gentle, not a refusal. More like a promise with its hand over its own heart.

“Today we eat. We take this picture home. We put the receipt somewhere safe because we are apparently those people now. We maybe stare at the sonogram for another twenty minutes in the car before I’m allowed to drive.”

His mouth curved.

“And then tonight, after you inevitably fall asleep on the couch because this day has used every emotional resource you’ve ever had, I’m going to pick up my guitar very quietly and pretend I’m not working on your song.”

He gave her a look.

“You will pretend not to notice.”

The teasing stayed soft. Careful. Full of the life they were building in increments.

He brought her hand to his mouth again and kissed her knuckles.

Then, because he couldn’t resist, because restraint was a muscle and his was already exhausted, he lowered their joined hands back to the table and looked at her stomach for one brief, aching second.

“Your parents are not getting married in front of queso,” he murmured, very quietly, to the baby forming there. “This is me showing judgment.”

His eyes flicked back to Cleo’s.

“Personal growth.”

Then he smiled, overwhelmed and tender and still halfway demolished by her.

“But someday,” he said.

The word carried everything he couldn’t fit into the booth.

The courthouse.

The song.

The dessert.

The first time he would say my wife and make her stop walking.

The last name he hoped she would choose only if it felt like belonging.

Their baby with a name that already sounded like moss and wildflowers.

Someday.

Ben held her gaze, his thumb still moving over her hand.

“And when it happens,” he said softly, “we’re absolutely getting ice cream.”

Cleo let the silence sit for a second after he finished, not because she was trying to make him nervous, but because she wanted to feel the full shape of what he had said before she answered it. The restaurant stayed busy around them, plates moving past their booth and voices rising near the counter, but her attention stayed fixed on him, on the way he held her hand like gentleness required concentration, on the careful restraint in his face as though he thought he was protecting her from the weight of her own words.

Her thumb stilled against his hand when he mentioned hormones, and something in her shifted. Not anger. Not hurt. Just a quiet, clear resistance that settled into her spine and made her sit back a little straighter against the booth. She looked at him across the table, calm and steady, the sonogram still between them and the folded receipt beside it, both of them sitting there like proof that this day was enormous, yes, but not irrational.

“Ben,” she said softly, and her voice didn’t sharpen because it didn’t need to. “I love that you’re thinking about all of that. I do. I love that you don’t want me to look back and wonder if we made a choice because everything felt big today.”

She let that part land first, because it mattered. It mattered that he was careful with her. It mattered that he was trying not to let excitement or fear or the heartbeat in that small exam room turn into a decision they couldn’t separate from the rest of the day. But it also mattered that he understood she wasn’t floating away from herself just because she was pregnant.

Her gaze stayed on his, unwavering now.

“But my hormones are not speaking for me right now.”

She said it plainly, without defensiveness, then reached for her iced tea and took a slow sip because her mouth had gone a little dry. When she set the glass back down, condensation slid under her fingertips, cool against her skin, and she used that tiny sensation to keep herself grounded instead of letting the moment become bigger than it needed to be.

“I’m emotional. Obviously. I’m happy. I’m over the moon. I heard our baby’s heartbeat today, so yes, I am probably not operating at my usual level of sarcasm and emotional containment.”

A small smile touched her mouth at that, enough to soften the correction without taking away its seriousness.

“But I knew I wanted to marry you before this.”

Her hand rested lightly near the edge of her plate, close enough to his that she could still feel the warmth of him without reaching again. She wasn’t pulling away. She wasn’t making a point with distance. She was just giving the words room to stand on their own.

“I’ve known for a long time,” she continued. “I didn’t need to rush it because I wasn’t worried about whether it would happen. I didn’t need us to do everything in the order people expect. I didn’t need the wedding first, then the house, then the baby, then the socially approved version of a life that makes strangers comfortable.”

Her eyes flicked briefly to the sonogram, and the sight of it softened something in her face before she looked back at him.

“I just knew we’d get there.”

That was the difference she needed him to understand. She hadn’t been waiting anxiously. She hadn’t been measuring love by whether there was a ring yet. She had simply trusted the shape of them, even when it was messy, even when it didn’t look traditional, even when the world would have had a thousand opinions about the order in which they chose to build their life.

“So when I say I’d go to a courthouse with you today,” she said, leaning back fully against the booth now, her shoulders relaxed and her expression open, “I’m not saying it because I’m overwhelmed and romantic and full of tacos.”

Her smile grew a little.

“Though, for the record, I am all three.”

She held his gaze with a confidence that felt easier than she expected.

“I’m saying it because it’s you.”

The words came without tremble, without hesitation. Around them, HomeState kept moving, the afternoon light bright on the table, the chips cooling in their basket, the queso still sitting there with all its undeserved ceremonial importance. Cleo didn’t feel swept away by any of it. She felt present. Clear. More herself than she had all morning, actually.

“I don’t need today to become our wedding day,” she added, softer now. “I understand what you mean about letting this day be its own thing. I like that. I want that too.”

Her fingers moved toward his again, not taking his hand yet, just brushing lightly against the side of it.

“But don’t protect me from my own answer.”

She let that sit for a breath.

“Because my answer is real.”

Ben felt the correction land before he had time to defend himself.

Not like an accusation.

Worse, maybe.

Like truth.

His fingers went still against hers, the little reassuring motion cut clean off as her words moved across the table and found the exact place in him that had been trying so hard to be careful he had stepped wrong anyway. The restaurant kept clattering around them—forks against plates, someone laughing near the register, the bright scrape of a chair being pulled back—but for a second, all he could hear was the quiet steadiness in her voice.

Not angry.

Clear.

That made it hit harder.

He looked at her, really looked, and saw the difference immediately. She wasn’t spun out. She wasn’t floating above herself in the aftershock of the appointment. Her eyes were bright, yes, her face still softened by the day, but there was nothing uncertain in the way she held his gaze. Nothing fragile about it.

He had been trying to protect her from doubt.

And somehow, in the process, he had doubted her.

The realization made heat rise behind his ribs.

His thumb brushed once over the edge of her hand, then stopped again, hesitant now—not because he wanted to pull away, but because he was suddenly aware of how easily comfort could become control if he wasn’t paying attention.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

The word came rough, scraped clean of humor.

He swallowed, eyes dropping briefly to the sonogram between them. The little black-and-white blur sat beside the folded receipt, both of them carrying the weight of the day without asking to be interpreted. He looked at them for half a second, then back at Cleo, because this deserved his full face.

“You’re right.”

No joke. No detour. No performance of being wounded because she had corrected him.

Just that.

“You’re right,” he repeated, softer. “I’m sorry.”

The apology came easily because there was no part of him interested in winning. Not with her. Not here. Not when she had just handed him something so real and asked him not to explain it away in the name of protecting her.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, then immediately shook his head, catching himself. “No. That’s not enough.”

His mouth tightened faintly, not in frustration with her, but with himself.

“I know I didn’t mean it that way, but it still came out like I was putting an asterisk next to your answer. Like today made it less yours.”

He held her gaze.

“And I don’t think that.”

A server passed their booth with a tray balanced against one hip, warm tortillas and coffee drifting in their wake. Ben waited until the sound moved past them before he spoke again, because he wanted every word to be deliberate. Wanted her to hear that he wasn’t rushing to smooth the moment over.

“I think I got scared of wanting it too much,” he admitted.

That was closer to the truth.

His hand shifted, palm turning upward beside hers, open again. Not taking. Offering.

“And instead of just saying that, I dressed it up as being responsible.”

The corner of his mouth moved, but it didn’t become a smile.

“Which is obnoxious. Very emotionally elaborate. Unfortunately on brand.”

He took a breath, slow and careful, letting the air fill the space that panic had tried to occupy.

The thing was, he had been so focused on not making her feel trapped by the baby, by the name, by the rush of the heartbeat still living under his skin, that he had forgotten Cleo had never needed him to decide what was real for her. She had never been a woman who wanted a life handed to her already interpreted. She wanted partnership. Not protection that turned her into something breakable.

And he loved that about her.

He loved that she could sit in the middle of an enormous day and still know herself.

“I believe you,” he said.

The sentence felt simple enough to hold everything.

“I believe your answer. I believe you knew before today. I believe you’d say yes because it’s me, not because of tacos or hormones or because our baby has already started making us both completely insane.”

A little humor finally touched the last part, but gently. Carefully. Not to dodge the seriousness. Just to let breath back into the booth.

His eyes softened.

“And I’m sorry I made you remind me.”

The sonogram caught a strip of sunlight, the glossy edge shining silver for a second. Ben looked at it, then at the folded receipt beside it, then back to her. The whole table felt like a map of things arriving too quickly and somehow exactly on time.

“I do still want this day to be its own thing,” he said. “I meant that part.”

His fingers curled slightly against the tabletop.

“But I hear what you’re saying. Keeping today separate doesn’t mean pretending your answer only exists outside of it. It doesn’t mean I get to put your yes on a shelf until I decide the conditions are pure enough.”

He winced faintly.

“God, that sounds insane when I say it back.”

A breath of laughter left him, quiet and self-directed.

“I was trying to be noble and accidentally became a man guarding a courthouse from his pregnant girlfriend’s fully informed consent.”

His eyes lifted to hers again, warmer now.

“Not my best work.”

He reached across the last bit of space then, slowly enough that she could meet him or not. When his fingers found hers, he didn’t tighten right away. He let the contact rest there first, light and asking.

Then, only when she stayed, he folded his hand around hers.

The relief was immediate and disproportionate.

His voice dropped.

“Your answer is real.”

He said it like he was putting it somewhere safe, not locking it away.

“And mine is too.”

The restaurant seemed to soften around that, all the ordinary noise folding itself into the background. Someone’s order was called from the counter. Ice clinked in a glass. The queso sat between them with all its absurd ceremonial dignity, cooling into something less impressive than the role they had given it.

Ben glanced at it and, despite everything, a faint smile tugged at his mouth.

“I am still not proposing in front of queso,” he said.

A beat.

“But not because I don’t trust your yes.”

He looked at her, fully now.

“Because when I ask, I want to ask well. Not perfect. I’m not suddenly becoming a man with a coordinated floral budget and a working understanding of linen rentals.”

His thumb moved gently over her knuckles again.

“But well. Thoughtfully. In a way that feels like us.”

A small, almost shy smile appeared.

“Which apparently might mean courthouse-adjacent and ice-cream-forward.”

The image returned—the two of them walking out married, stunned and sunstruck, Cleo making him repeat wife in some ridiculous place until they both laughed too hard to keep moving. It no longer felt like a hypothetical tossed across lunch. It felt like something waiting.

Not today, maybe.

But real.

He leaned closer over the table, careful of the sonogram, careful of the receipt, careful of all the small objects that had suddenly become sacred.

“And I’m going to try not to protect you from yourself,” he said quietly. “I may mess that up sometimes. Not because I think you need managing. Because I love you and occasionally my brain becomes a badly supervised panic room.”

His mouth curved.

“But I’ll listen when you call me on it.”

His gaze held hers, steady and open.

“I don’t want to be careful in a way that makes you smaller.”

That felt like the heart of it.

The thing he had been circling.

The thing she had deserved to hear the first time.

“I want to be careful in a way that makes room.”

He squeezed her hand once, warm and sure.

“For your answer. For mine. For today. For whatever comes next.”

His eyes flicked down to her stomach for one brief, tender second, then back to her face.

“And for the record, I am also emotional, over the moon, full of tacos, and completely in love with you.”

The smile broke through then, soft and crooked.

“So apparently we’re equally compromised.”

A pause.

“Still legally admissible, though.”

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, lingering just long enough for the apology and the promise to live there together.

Then he lowered their hands between them again, beside the sonogram and the folded receipt, and let the afternoon settle around them.

“Okay,” he said quietly, voice gentler now. “Your answer is real.”

His thumb brushed her skin.

“And someday, when I ask properly, I’m going to remember that you already gave it to me in a taco place.”

Cleo watched the first change pass through him before he said anything, the way his fingers stilled against hers and the careful motion disappeared as though he had caught himself reaching for the wrong tool. The absence of it registered immediately against her skin. She did not pull her hand away, but she felt the hesitation in him as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud, and something in her chest softened before the apology even arrived.

When he looked at her fully, without the easy cover of humor, she held his gaze and let him see that she was still there. There was no anger gathering behind her ribs, no desire to make him sit in discomfort longer than the truth required. She had wanted him to understand the distinction, and the moment his expression changed, she knew he did.

His first acknowledgment settled over her cleanly. The second carried more weight, followed by the apology that came without defensiveness or qualification. Cleo’s shoulders loosened against the back of the booth, and her fingers shifted beneath his, turning slightly so the contact no longer rested along the side of her hand but met him palm to palm.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

She kept the response simple because anything larger would have made it sound as though he had committed some enormous betrayal rather than made one clumsy assumption while trying too hard to take care of her. The restaurant continued around them in bright, ordinary motion, but the space at the table felt steadier now, the tension losing its edge without disappearing into false cheer.

When he corrected his own explanation before she had to, her mouth softened at one corner. That was the part she trusted most. He did not hide behind intention once he understood the effect. He looked directly at what had happened and named it without making her drag him there.

“You were trying to be careful,” she said, her thumb brushing once over the base of his fingers. “I know that.”

The warmth from his hand had returned gradually, no longer moving with the same unconscious confidence as before. She felt the restraint in it and understood why, but she did not want him suddenly afraid of touching her because one sentence had landed wrong. Cleo pressed her hand more firmly into his, closing the uncertainty he had left open.

“You don’t have to act like you crossed some terrible line,” she added, her voice gentle. “You heard me. That’s what I needed.”

The admission that fear had been underneath his caution pulled her attention closer. She watched the faint tension around his mouth, the way he turned his palm upward instead of reaching for her, offering the choice so deliberately that it made affection rise in her throat. She slid her fingers into his before he could wonder whether she would.

“That makes more sense,” she murmured.

It did. Ben’s fear had always worn elaborate costumes. Sometimes it looked like jokes, sometimes preparation, sometimes restraint polished until it resembled wisdom. This time it had dressed itself as responsibility because wanting her too openly had apparently frightened him more than the possibility of being wrong.

Her expression softened further when he said he believed her. The words did not inflate the moment; they grounded it. Cleo felt the correction settle fully between them, not erased, but completed. She squeezed his hand once and nodded, letting him see that she accepted the apology without needing to make him earn his way back from it.

“I know you believe me now.”

The humor that touched his voice when he mentioned the chaos of the day brought a brief smile to her mouth. She glanced toward the sonogram, then toward the queso that had somehow become a witness to half their future, before returning her attention to him.

“We are being a little insane,” she conceded. “That part is probably medically accurate.”

His insistence that he still wanted the day to remain separate from whatever came next did not bother her. She understood it differently now that he had stopped using it to question her certainty. There was care in wanting the heartbeat to have its own memory, its own shape, without another milestone crowding into it before either of them had absorbed the first.

“I agree with that part,” she said. “Today belongs to them.”

Her gaze dropped briefly toward the photograph. The edge of it caught the sunlight, stark and glossy against the worn tabletop, with the folded receipt sitting beside it as though the two objects had always been meant to share space.

“And when we do get married, that can belong to us.”

She looked back at him as he recognized the absurdity of appointing himself guardian of her informed consent. The laugh that left her was warm rather than sharp, and she tipped her head, studying him with a fondness that made the correction feel smaller now.

“It was a little dramatic,” she admitted. “You were one sentence away from asking me to return with legal counsel.”

When he reached across the table slowly, Cleo noticed every inch of the movement, the deliberate pace and the restraint in his fingers before they touched hers. She met him halfway, sliding her hand into his before he had to wait in that uncertainty, and the moment his fingers closed around hers again, she felt the last guarded place in her body ease.

His confirmation that both their answers were real landed more deeply than she expected. Cleo’s breath shifted, slow and quiet, and her eyes stayed on his as if looking away might make the sentence feel less solid.

“Good,” she said softly. “Because I don’t want either of us pretending we didn’t say it later.”

The renewed refusal to propose in front of queso made her smile, though this time the joke did not feel like retreat. It sat beside the seriousness instead of covering it. She looked at the bowl as if considering its candidacy and gave a small shake of her head.

“It would become unbearable,” she said. “It already thinks it carried this whole lunch.”

As he described wanting to ask well rather than perfectly, Cleo felt the words find a calmer place inside her. She did not need spectacle. She did not need choreography or a hidden photographer or anything that could be packaged for other people. Thoughtfulness from him had never meant grandness. It meant attention. It meant choosing something because he knew her rather than because the world had decided romance required it.

“Thoughtful is enough,” she told him. “More than enough.”

The courthouse-adjacent, ice-cream-forward description drew another smile from her, brighter this time, and she leaned back slightly without letting go of his hand.

“That sounds very professionally planned,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

When he admitted he would sometimes get care wrong because fear took over, Cleo listened without rushing to reassure him out of the discomfort. His honesty mattered more than an immediate promise that he would never make the mistake again. She knew better than that. They would both step wrong. They would both occasionally confuse love with whatever habit felt safest in the moment.

The promise to listen when she named it mattered more.

“I’ll tell you,” she said, steady and unthreatening. “And you can tell me when I do it to you, because I probably will.”

His next words caught more tightly under her ribs. The distinction between making her smaller and making room reached somewhere vulnerable she had not intended to expose over lunch. Her gaze held his, but the confidence in her expression softened around the edges as her thumb moved slowly across his knuckles.

“That,” she said quietly, “is what I want.”

The glance toward her stomach followed, brief enough that it did not feel performative, and Cleo felt her free hand move there before she consciously decided to place it. Her palm settled against the flat plane beneath her shirt, not because there was anything to feel yet, but because the movement had already started to become instinct.

His declaration that he was equally emotional, equally happy, and equally in love with her made amusement return to her face. She arched one brow, giving him a long look across the table.

“Equally compromised sounds fair.”

The kiss against her knuckles came warm and lingering, and Cleo felt the contact travel beyond the small place where his mouth touched her skin. Her fingers curled around his as he lowered their hands again, keeping him close rather than allowing the gesture to become an ending.

When he repeated that her answer was real, she believed this time that he was not merely correcting himself for her sake. He was allowing himself to accept what she had offered without immediately protecting both of them from it.

Her smile turned small and certain.

“And yours is too.”

She leaned forward slightly, reducing the distance across the table without disturbing the sonogram or the folded receipt between them. The movement brought her closer to the quiet openness still visible in his face, and she let herself look at him for a moment without filling it with another joke.

“When you ask,” she said, “I’ll still want you to ask. I don’t want you thinking you’ve lost the moment because I already told you what I’d say.”

Her thumb stroked once along the side of his hand.

“You get to have your question. I get to have my answer. We can both know what it is and still let it matter.”

Then she glanced toward the queso, her mouth curving again as the mood lightened naturally instead of being forced there.

“Just maybe not here,” she added. “It’s already been given far too much authority.”

Cleo let the last of the conversation settle without trying to add anything else to it. She had already said what she needed to say, and Ben had heard her, which left the space between them calmer than it had been a few minutes before. Her fingers remained wrapped around his for another moment, warm and loose now instead of braced around the point she had been making, while the restaurant carried on around them with the same bright indifference it had shown all afternoon. Someone near the front laughed loudly enough to turn a few heads, silverware struck ceramic somewhere behind her, and the air still smelled like coffee, toasted tortillas, and the queso they had somehow promoted into a family witness.

She eased back against the booth and exhaled slowly, letting her shoulders sink into the vinyl. The movement pulled her farther from the table without breaking the contact between their hands at first, and the distance made her suddenly aware of the weight settling into her body. The appointment, the heartbeat, the picture, the food, the future, the marriage conversation—every part of the day seemed to arrive in her muscles at once, leaving her heavy in a way that felt less emotional than physical now.

Her eyes drifted down toward the sonogram and the folded receipt beside it. The urge to pick the photograph up again was still there, immediate and familiar, but for the first time she did not follow it. She let it stay where it was, safe between them, while her palm slid away from Ben’s and came to rest low against her stomach through her shirt.

“I think I’m ready to go,” she said, her voice softer than before, worn at the edges by the day rather than sadness. “I need a nap before I start crying over the receipt too, and I really don’t want to give HomeState that much power.”

The humor was still in her mouth when a yawn interrupted her, wide and sudden enough that she had to cover it with the back of her hand. Her eyes watered immediately, and she blinked through it with a faint, embarrassed smile, tilting her head against the booth as though the exhaustion had caught her in the act of denying it.

“Okay,” she murmured once the yawn passed, rubbing lightly beneath one eye. “That was aggressive.”

She glanced toward Ben again, too tired now to pretend she had any intention of being useful on the drive home. The softness in her expression came without effort as she nudged the sonogram carefully toward the center of the table so neither of them would accidentally leave it behind.

“You’re driving,” she added, already reaching for her bag. “And I’m probably going to fall asleep before we get out of the parking lot.”

Ben was already moving before she finished saying she was ready.

Not abruptly, not with the frantic edge he’d had in the bathroom that morning, but with the immediate, quiet purpose that had been building in him all day. The kind that no longer needed announcement. Cleo was tired. Cleo wanted home. Cleo had reached the end of whatever miraculous, impossible reserve had carried her from the doctor’s office to this booth and through tacos and sonograms and marriage and the legal standing of queso.

So he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Okay. We’re going.”

There was still a part of him that wanted to sit there forever.

That part had memorized the table already—the slant of light across the sonogram, the folded receipt beside it, the half-finished queso cooling into history, the place where her hand had been in his. That part didn’t want to leave because leaving meant the day would move forward, and moving forward meant this moment would become past tense.

But then she yawned again, smaller this time, eyes damp from exhaustion rather than tears, and Ben’s chest pulled tight with such plain tenderness that the ache became practical.

Home. Nap. Water. Quiet.

He could do those.

“First of all,” he murmured, reaching for the sonogram before the impulse to guard it could become unreasonable, “that yawn had a body count.”

His fingers were careful on the glossy edge, almost absurdly so. He slid the photograph into the protective little folder the doctor’s office had given them, then tucked the folded receipt behind it as though it were equally precious and not proof that they had spent too much money on queso during a life-altering afternoon.

“Second,” he added, glancing at the bowl, “HomeState is already unbearable. We can’t let it witness receipt tears. It’ll start charging admission.”

The joke came easily, but quietly, pitched for her and not the room.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet, thumbed out cash without really checking the exact total, then paused and added more. The server had been kind. Patient, too, considering the two of them had spent most of lunch staring at a medical photograph like it was ancient prophecy. Ben folded the bills once and tucked them beneath the edge of his glass, enough to cover the meal and a tip that felt excessive only if the person leaving it had not just heard a heartbeat for the first time and become generous with the entire physical world.

Then he stood.

The booth felt strangely empty the second his body left it.

He didn’t like that.

Cleo started reaching for her bag, but Ben got there first, lifting it gently from beside her hip before she could protest. He slung it over his shoulder like it belonged there, then gathered the sonogram folder in one hand. He checked the table once, then again—the way people checked hotel rooms before leaving behind phone chargers, except this was infinitely worse. A lost receipt could be mourned. A lost sonogram would require him to walk directly into traffic.

Keys. Wallet. Her phone. His phone. Sonogram. Receipt. Bag.

He looked ridiculous, probably.

He did not care.

“You are carrying,” he said, turning back to her with solemn authority, “absolutely nothing except the ambitious blueberry and whatever dignity remains after that yawn.”

His mouth curved.

“I’ll handle the rest.”

And God, he meant it too much.

The sentence almost caught in him as soon as he said it, because it wasn’t about the bag. Not really. It was about the sudden animal certainty that had taken up residence beneath his ribs. The need to make the world a little easier around her, to clear a path, to notice the glass before it fell, the hunger before it sharpened, the exhaustion before it swallowed her whole.

He knew he couldn’t carry everything.

He was not stupid enough to think love worked like that.

But he could carry her bag.

He could carry the picture.

He could carry the tiny relic of this lunch folded behind it.

He could hold the door.

He could drive.

He could keep his voice low and his hands steady while his own heart still hadn’t figured out what size to be.

He stepped closer as she slid from the booth, his free hand hovering near her back—not grabbing, not rushing her, just there in case the day had made her body feel as unsteady as his soul. The restaurant seemed louder now that they were leaving it. Orders called from the counter. Someone scraped a chair backward. Sunlight hit the floor in hard bright rectangles, and the air smelled like tortillas, coffee, lime, and the faint metallic edge of afternoon heat waiting outside.

Ben looked once more at the booth.

Their booth, now.

Not officially. Not in any way the restaurant would recognize.

But still.

He saw the empty plates. The queso. The cash tucked beneath the glass. The space where the sonogram had been.

His throat tightened unexpectedly.

There were places a life changed that looked exactly like everywhere else.

He turned back to Cleo before the feeling could get too big.

“Ready?” he asked.

He did not say for what.

The answer was too large.

She looked tired enough to fold into herself, but softer now too, her whole face worn open by wonder. Ben slipped his hand into hers once they started toward the door, the sonogram folder held carefully in his other hand, her bag resting against his side. He moved at her pace through the narrow aisle, past tables and strangers and plates stacked with ordinary food, and every step felt strangely ceremonial despite the napkins on the floor and the hostess calling out a name near the front.

Outside, Los Angeles met them in a wash of sun.

The afternoon was bright and warm, the kind of light that made windshields flash white and the sidewalk throw heat back through the soles of his shoes. Traffic moved beyond the curb in impatient bursts. A dog barked somewhere down the block. Someone passed too close with an iced coffee and didn’t glance at them twice.

The world still had no idea.

Ben tightened his hand gently around Cleo’s.

For once, that felt like a gift.

He guided her a little to the side, out of the path of the door, into a slice of shade beside the restaurant windows. Not the car yet. Not driving away. Just a pause between one part of the day and the next.

The sonogram folder rested against his palm, and he looked down at it before he could stop himself.

The receipt was tucked inside.

The first picture.

The proof of tacos.

The day, already becoming something they would tell badly and too often.

He laughed under his breath, small and disbelieving.

“We have evidence now,” he said.

His voice was soft, almost lost beneath traffic.

“Medical evidence. Financial evidence. Queso evidence.”

He looked at her then.

The sunlight caught the tired shine in her eyes, the loosened pieces of hair around her face, the hand that had found her stomach again without her seeming to notice. Ben felt the future press closer—not as a wave this time, but as warmth.

He lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckles once, quick and careful in public, lingering in meaning.

Then he lowered them but didn’t let go.

“You can fall asleep whenever you want,” he said. “In the car. At home. Standing right here, honestly, though that one’s less ideal and may require me to become structurally useful.”

A small smile pulled at his mouth.

“I’ve got the picture. I’ve got your bag. I paid. I tipped like a man who is emotionally compromised but respectful of service labor.”

He glanced down at the folder again, then back to her.

“And I’m not letting anything happen to this.”

The promise came out quieter than the joke before it.

He meant the sonogram.

He meant her.

He meant the tiny life no bigger than a secret, tucked beneath her heart.

He meant the whole impossible thing.

Ben stood with her in the shade, one hand full of the first artifacts of their child’s life, the other wrapped around Cleo’s fingers, and let the day breathe around them for one more second before they moved again.

Not because he was stalling.

Because he wanted to remember this too.

The sidewalk. The heat. Her tired smile. The folded receipt. The fact that the world had kept going while his had become three people wide.

He squeezed her hand.

“Okay,” he murmured, steady for her even though joy was still roaring quietly through him. “Let’s get you home.”