“You did it,” he whispers, voice wrecked in the good way, forehead against mine, breath warm. “Riley, you did it.”
“We did,” I whisper back, because even if my body did the thing, he stood in the square of curtain and held the line with me until it became a door. The words settle in my chest with the weight on my skin. True all the way through.
Someone fusses quietly near my feet; someone else murmurs numbers that don’t scare me anymore. The room is a chorus of competence making space for wonder.
I look down at the face under my chin—squinty, indignant, perfect—and feel an unfamiliar ease roll through me like a tide and claim me. I did not disappear. I expanded.
Jason’s hand cups the back of the tiny cap, touch so careful I could cry about that alone. He leans in, voice hoarse. “Hey, teammate,” he says. “Welcome to the bubble.”
Oliver snuffles like he accepts the contract. My laugh turns into a hiccup. Dr. Hassan smiles in my periphery. Somewhere a pen scratches a note. The world holds.
The room settles into its afterglow—warm lamps, soft gauze of voices, a rustle that feels like applause someone remembered to keep quiet. Oliver’s breath puffs damp against my skin in tiny furnace bursts. Jason is still saying “hey” like it has a thousand meanings, each softer than the last.
A nurse appears with a clipboard and the sort of smile that knows when to whisper. “Everything looks good,” she says, eyescrinkling at the cap tucked under Jason’s palm. “When you’re ready, I have a couple of forms. No rush.”
Forms. The least romantic part of forever. I nod, and she tucks the top sheet back, pen clipped like a baton waiting to be passed.
Jason glances at me, question open, excitement threaded with a humility that makes me want to kiss him senseless. “You ready?” he asks, like we’re stepping onto fresh ice and not into the rest of our lives.
“I think so,” I say, and mean it. Fear doesn’t vanish; it just sits down to watch. “Say it.”
He leans close, cheek almost brushing Oliver’s cap, voice low enough to be a secret the three of us will keep. He murmurs the name we circled and starred and wrote on napkins, the one that sounds like strength without swagger, like a door you can knock on and be welcomed. Hearing it in his mouth knocks something loose in my chest I didn’t know was stuck.
“Yes,” I whisper back, immediately, entirely. It fits our mouths and the weight on my skin and the life we drew in messy pen. “Yes.”
The nurse’s pen uncaps with a small plastic pop. “Perfect,” she says, professional and pleased. “And…ready to make it official?” She points to the line on the birth certificate form where our messy, ordinary, miraculous choice becomes a record.
Jason exhales like a man about to take a faceoff that matters. He looks at me again, and we both laugh because there’s still so much game in our metaphors. “Together?” he says.
“Always,” I answer.
Oliver snuffles like he is contributing to the discussion. Their fingers flex, crescent nails catching the light, and then settle again on my collarbone like punctuation.
“Okay,” I say, and shift just enough to free my right hand. Jason steadies the form on the tray table with one palm; theother hovers near the napkin with our vows like it can lend ink courage. My fingers curl around the pen. It’s absurdly light.
A thousand flashes of names flicker through my head—the ones I wore, the ones I was given, the ones I built. Trainer. Daughter. Partner. Mother. None of them cancel the others. The ring glints, small and certain. The bubble holds, edges invisible and real.
I lower the tip toward the line. Somewhere in the hall a cart squeaks; somewhere down the ward a newborn voices their opinion of the universe. In here, the only sound is the soft rasp of paper as I breathe.
The nurse waits, patient. Jason’s thumb draws that familiar line on my forearm, a cue only we can hear. The pen hovers, black against white, future pressed up against present.
Chapter 32
Stronger Together
Jason
Morning comes in fragments—steamcurling off a bottle like a ghost with good intentions, the soft metronome of a sleepy latch, the rustle of a burp cloth surrendering another square inch to a milk constellation. I move on autopilot through a kitchen that smells like coffee and warm sugar and baby shampoo, shoulder’s got the cloth, hands are doing the one-handed twist on a bottle ring I could probably now do blindfolded with gloves on.
“You’re better with the left,” Riley says from the doorway, voice husky with not-enough sleep, hair in a knot that deserves a parade. She’s in his—their—favorite spot on my chest’s map, Oliver tucked in like he belongs there, which he does. Her tee is milk-stained and she still looks like the person I’d pick in a room full of cameras. Boardroom spine, bare feet.
“Lefty’s humble,” I murmur, testing the milk on my wrist the way the nurses showed me. Warm, not hot. The bottle steams like a rink on a cold morning. I tap the bottom twice and trade with Riley. Oliver takes it like a pro with a tiny sigh that couldunmake me. A drip escapes; a drool bubble pops against my knuckle. I’m done for.
The living room is a maze—playmat, folded blankets that never stay folded, my skate bag half-zipped by the door like a dog that knows it’s going out and is trying to be patient. I move around it all with the clumsy grace of a man learning choreography mid-performance.
“Stick, tape, phone, keys,” Riley prompts, pointing with her chin toward the pile as I shoulder into a hoodie. “Helmet hair without the helmet if you leave now.”
I kiss her temple because I can’t not, because it smells like us, because that little place where her hairline curves always feels like home ice. “I’ll be back before you miss me,” I say, and she gives me a look that sayswe’re not keeping score, but I still like the stat.
