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The effect is immediate and his body goes rigid, every muscle locking, every tendon going taut, his arms tightening around me to the point of almost pain. His breath catches, a sharp, punched-out sound that I feel more than hear, and for one terrible, suspended second, I think I’ve broken him. That the news is too much, too soon, that the man who survived Caldwell and concrete rooms and the particular hell of loving someone with a target on their head can’t handle this.

Then his hands slide from my hips to my stomach. His palms press flat against the lace of my dress, warm and shaking, actually shaking, that fine, constant tremor I haven’t seen in months, and he drops his forehead to mine. His eyes are closed. His breathing is ragged, uneven, the particular rhythm of a man trying hard not to fall apart.

“Trix,” he says, and my name sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel and prayer. “Are you being⁠—”

“Twelve weeks,” I whisper, and I cover his hands with mine, pressing them harder against my belly. “I found out three weeks ago. I wanted to tell you, but I needed it to be real. I needed to be sure.”

He opens his eyes. They’re wet, glossy, bright, and raw, the gold flecks catching the lights like something holy. He looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen before, not the protective fury, not the tender devotion, not the quiet, aching love. This is something new. Something vast and terrified and fiercely, overwhelmingly grateful.

“A baby,” he breathes. The words are barely audible, barely there, but they carry the weight of everything, every promise, every bloodstained vow, every moment of darkness survived to reach this one, impossible point. “We’re having a baby.”

“We’re having a baby,” I confirm, and my voice cracks on the last word because the reality of it, of us, of a child, of the particular miracle of creating something new from two broken people, hits me all over again, fresh and staggering.

Carter sinks to his knees.

Right there, in the cold grass, at the edge of the fairy lights, my husband drops to his knees in front of me. His hands are still pressed to my stomach, and he looks up at me with those wet, luminous eyes, and his face—God, his face is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Open. Shattered. Rebuilt in real time.

He presses his lips to my belly. Through the dress, through the lace, I feel the warmth of his mouth, the tremble of his jaw, and I thread my fingers through his hair, holding him there, holding this moment like something sacred.

“You’re going to be the most incredible mother,” he says against my stomach, and his voice is wrecked, broken into pieces, and reassembled into something stronger. “Trix, you’re going to be⁠—”

He can’t finish. The words crumble, and he presses his forehead against my belly instead, his shoulders shaking, and I realize with a jolt that cracks through my own composure that he’s crying. Carter Kingston, who didn’t cry when his ribs broke in the cage, who didn’t cry when he killed a man in a concrete room, who didn’t cry through any of the violence that shaped him, is kneeling in the grass with his arms wrapped around my waist, sobbing against my stomach.

I sink down with him. The cold seeps through my dress, the grass damp against my knees, and I pull him to me, this huge, trembling, devastated man, and cradle his head against my chest. His arms come around me, crushing, desperate, and I feel his tears through the fabric, hot and endless.

“I love you,” I say, rocking him gently, my fingers in his hair, my lips against his temple. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I’ll protect you,” he says into my chest, and his voice is thick, muffled, the voice of a man making a vow that’s bigger than any he’s made before. “Both of you. I’ll protect you both. I swear it, Trix. I swear on everything⁠—”

“I know.” I press my lips to the top of his head, breathing him in, whiskey and cedar and that darker, earthier scent that’s just him. “I know you will.”

We stay like that for a long time. Kneeling in the grass, wrapped around each other, the fairy lights painting us gold, the stars watching overhead. His breathing slows, evens out, and when he finally pulls back, his face is raw, red-eyed, swollen, streaked with tears, and he’s never looked more human. More real. More mine.

He places his hand on my stomach again, gentle now, reverent, his fingers splayed wide. “Hi,” he whispers, and the word is so tender, so achingly soft, that fresh tears spill down my cheeks. “Hi, little one. I’m your dad. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you know how much you’re loved.”

I cover his hand with mine, and we kneel there together, at the beginning of everything.

Six Months Later

Trixie

The pain is a living thing.

It starts in my lower back, a deep, grinding pressure that radiates forward, wraps around my belly, and settles into a tight, merciless band across my abdomen. I’m on my side in the hospital bed, knees drawn up, Carter’s hand crushed in mine, and the contraction peaks with a white-hot intensity that makes my vision blur at the edges.

“Breathe,” Carter says beside me, and his voice is steady, calm, even, but his hand is shaking in my grip, his knuckles white where I’m squeezing hard enough to grind bone. “You’re doing great, sweetheart. You’re doing so fucking great.”

The contraction crests, holds for an eternity that lasts roughly forty-five seconds, and then releases in a slow, blessed ebb that leaves me gasping, sweat-soaked, and trembling against the sheets. I collapse back against the pillow, my chest heaving, and Carter wipes my forehead with a cool cloth, his movements precise and careful, the way he touches me when he’s terrified of breaking something.

“Five minutes apart,” the nurse says from somewhere near the foot of the bed. Her voice is cheerful, professional, the particular brightness of someone who’s seen this a thousand times and still finds it magical. “Dilations at eight centimeters. We’re getting close, Beatrice.”

Beatrice. The name sounds foreign in this context, clinical, stripped of everything that makes me. I’m Trixie. I’m Carter’s wife. I’m a trauma nurse who’s stitched up gunshot wounds and held the hands of dying patients and somehow, impossibly, ended up here sweating through a hospital gown, veins threaded with IV lines, a heart monitor beeping the too fast rhythm of a body doing something extraordinary.

Another contraction builds. I feel it gathering in my lower spine, that deep, tectonic shift that means my body is working whether I’m ready or not. I grab Carter’s hand harder, my fingers finding the spaces between his, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. His other hand is on my forehead, the cool cloth pressed against my skin, and his eyes, those gold-flecked eyes, are locked on mine with an intensity that would be terrifying if it weren’t so familiar.

“You can do this,” he says, and his voice doesn’t waver. Not even a tremor. “You’re the strongest person I know, Trix. You’ve survived worse than this.”

He’s right. I have. I survived a van, bandaged hands, and a broken heart. I survived a courtroom and the particular hell of loving a man who walks into darkness and comes back bloodied but whole. This pain, this primal, animal intensity, is just another thing my body can do. Another mountain my stubborn, surviving heart can climb.