“I know,” he said. “I think I’ve known for a while.”
“You —” I put my hand to my forehead. Honey in my hair. Shirt backwards. Barefoot on his floor, having just delivered the most catastrophic confession in recorded history. “You knew?”
“You knew my brother’s name the second day. You stopped tolerating coffee the week you arrived. You press your hand to your stomach every time you think I’m not watching.” His voice was calm. A man who’d had time to sit with this. “I donated in grad school. The pieces aren’t complicated.”
“How long?” My voice was thin as paper. “How long have you known?”
“Suspected after you said Nate’s name. The fatigue. The way the wax rendering sent you running.” He held my gaze. “Certain for about a week.”
“A week.” I was going to faint. “You’ve known for a week that I’m carrying your baby and you just sanded a floor? Bought vitamins? Hid them behind the aspirin?”
“They weren’t hidden. You found them in thirty seconds.”
“You’ve been giving me decaf, Atlas. For a week.”
The smile broke through. Not the quarter-smile, not the twitch at the corner. The full thing, unreserved, crinkling at his eyes, transforming his entire face. “You said you liked the new roast.”
“Because I didn’t know it was decaf.”
“You drank three cups.”
“I... that is not the point. The point is...” I was sputtering. Standing in front of a man I’d lied to since I’d arrived who had responded by sanding a nursery floor and silently decaffeinating my life. And I was arguing about coffee. “Atlas Morrow.”
He stepped forward. Took my face in both hands, rough and broad and gentle, and tilted it up.
“You picked me,” he said. The quiet voice. The one I’d heard him use for the bees and for me and for nothing else in the world. “Out of a catalogue. Out of everyone. You picked me. Then you drove across three states to find me. And you tripped into my bee yard. And you stayed.”
“I also committed extensive fraud.”
“You built a garden that’s going to feed my colonies for twenty years.” His thumbs swept my cheekbones. “I’ll take the fraud.”
I cried. Not gracefully. The ugly, gasping, snot-producing kind that happens when you’ve been carrying a weight so enormous for so long that the act of setting it down cracks every bone you were using to hold it up. I buried myself against his chest and sobbed. He held me with both arms and his chin on my head and didn’t say a word.
“I tripped into your bee yard,” I mumbled into his shoulder. Muffled, hiccupping. “There was nothing romantic about it.”
“You showed up, fell on my equipment, lied to my face, and I’m keeping you.” His arms tightened. “Romantic enough.”
I laughed. Wet, ragged, ridiculous. I used him as a tissue, which he had coming.
“I need to call my mother,” I said. “She still thinks this is a design research trip.”
“We’ll call her.”
“She will have questions. Marta Diaz does not receive information without conducting an investigation.”
“I can handle questions.”
I pulled back enough to see him. His thumb wiped a tear off my jaw. He was certain and so full of warmth that I wanted to fold myself into it and never come out.
“The loft needs a window,” he said.
I stared at him.
“South wall. I’ve been measuring.” His hand found my belly. Open, deliberate, his palm against the skin below my navel. “For the nursery.”
He’d sanded the floor. Drawn the measurements. Bought vitamins and ginger tea and quietly reshaped his home for a child he hadn’t been asked to claim. He didn’t declare himself. He built a room and waited.
“You can’t just say for the nursery while your hand is on my —” My voice cracked. “Atlas.”
