Of course.
Three years haven’t softened him.
They’ve steadied him.
The lines around his eyes are still there. The scars still map his skin. He still wakes some nights breathing too hard.
But he doesn’t wake alone anymore.
And he doesn’t pull away when I pull him back.
He feels me watching him and looks up.
That familiar heat flickers in his eyes, even now.
“You staring at me, wife?” he calls.
I smile. “Maybe.”
He drops the axe and walks toward me like he has all the time in the world.
When he reaches the porch, he rests both hands on my stomach and lowers his forehead to mine.
“How are my boys?” he asks softly.
“Or girls,” I remind him.
He grunts. “They’re boys.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I feel it.”
I laugh.
When I told him I was pregnant, he didn’t speak for a full thirty seconds.
Then he walked outside.
Then he came back in and said, very seriously, “We need a bigger house.”
When the doctor said twins, he went quiet again.
I thought he was overwhelmed.
Turns out he was calculating square footage.
“You’re quiet,” I tell him now.
He studies me. “I was thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
A low hum of amusement vibrates in his chest.
“I was thinking,” he says slowly, “that three years ago, I walked into a club ready to burn the world down.”
“And now?”
