She takes my hand. Moves it from her jaw. Places it flat against her stomach.
I go still.
"Julianna."
"I found out last Tuesday." Her voice is steady. "I've been trying to figure out how to tell you, and then Lily wanted to go to the creek, and?—"
My hands cup her face. My mouth finds hers. She makes a sound against my lips—half surprise, half relief—and then she's kissing me back.
She's pregnant.
Lily is going to be a sister.
I pull back just far enough to breathe. My forehead rests against hers. My eyes are closed. My heart is doing something in my chest that has no tactical application whatsoever.
"Tuesday." I stare down at her, dumbfounded. "You've known since Tuesday and you didn't tell me."
"I was waiting for the right moment."
"There is no right moment. There's just this one."
She laughs. That bright, clear sound I heard three times before lunch. Four times now.
"You're not upset?"
"Why the hell would I be upset?"
"Because the trial is in three days. Because we don't know what the verdict will be. Because bringing a child into this?—"
"Stop." I kiss her again. Shorter. Sharper. A period at the end of a sentence. "The trial is in three days. The verdict will be what it is. And you are carrying our child."
Our child.
I let the words settle. They don't feel wrong. They feel like the only math that's ever made sense.
"Lily's going to be impossible." Julianna leans her back against my chest, her shoulders relaxing. "She'll want to calculate the due date herself."
"Let her."
"She'll probably design a statistical model for predicting the baby's temperament based on our respective circadian rhythms."
"Let her do that too."
Julianna tips her head back. Looks at me. Her hand still pressed to her stomach, mine covering it.
"Colt."
She breathes my name like it's a variable she finally solved for.
"Yeah."
"I love you."
She's said it before. In the hallway. In the dark. But this is the first time she's said it in full daylight, in the main room of our cabin, with Lily asleep in the next room and a child she couldn't have predicted growing under my palm.
"I love you too."
It's not enough. Four words for what she's become to me—it's inadequate math. But she takes it. Tucks it away in whatever system she uses to track the things that matter.
