Page 77 of The Backdraft
“I did, but I realized I forgot a few things.” He exited the vehicle, then opened the back door, and pulled Casey out. I took that as my sign to get out too, still very confused.
“You didn’t want us to wait in the car?” I made sure my tone was light, so he’d know I didn’t actually care.
“Nah.” He opened the front door and motioned me to walk through. “It’s going to be a minute or two. Plus, he’s probably due to eat soon, and my couch would be more comfortable than the car to give him a bottle.”
“True,” I conceded.
Archer set Casey’s carrier on the floor in the dining room, then turned back to me, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll be quick.”
I smiled. “No rush.”
With that, Archer dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, while I unfastened Casey from the car seat. He made asoft mewling sound against my chest as he scrunched his legs up underneath him.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, grabbing a bottle from the diaper bag and heading into the kitchen. The way I prepared a bottle with one hand while holding a baby in the other felt award worthy, but I’d settle for Casey’s contented sighs as he ate.
He had just about finished eating when Archer called down from upstairs. “Hey, can I get your help for a second?”
“Want to go help Dada?” I sing-songed, as I rose from the couch and headed up the stairs.
Archer was in his bedroom, searching around in his dresser when I poked my head in. “What do you need help with?”
“Can you check the guest room to see if I left my gray sweatshirt in there?” he asked, giving up on the dresser and moving to the closest. It wasn’t like him to misplace anything, not with how immaculate he kept everything, but then again, our brains had been pretty occupied the last couple of weeks.
“We sure can.” The response was for Archer, but came out in the high pitch I reserved for talking to Casey.
Padding down the hallway, I pushed open the door to the guest room, and stopped dead in my tracks.
I gasped. “Oh my . . .”
The guest room was that in title only because at some point, and I had zero clue when or how, he converted it into a nursery.
The walls were the same shade of green as the nursery back at my apartment, and as I spun slowly in the middle of the room, taking it all in, I realized he’d gotten everything I had put on the baby registry. The crib, the dresser, even the reclining glider I’d been obsessing over since I started shopping for furniture. It was all here, assembled, and in place. Of course, Archer had put his own spin on the room too. Cream curtains hung from rods with little fire hydrants at the ends, and the bookshelf in thecorner was the same natural wood as the crib, but shaped like a firetruck. It was tacky in the cutest way possible, and I loved it.
By the time I’d done a full three-sixty around the room, Archer was standing in the doorway, watching me intently.
Rapidly blinking against the burning sensation in my eyes, I shook my head and beamed. “How? When?”
He smiled and closed the distance between us. “I had some help from Harrison, and Linnea. We started the day after you got discharged from the hospital. It really wasn’t all that much work.”
I stepped toward him, and he wrapped his arms loosely around my waist, holding me without squishing our son. “You did all of this for him?”
“I did all of it for both of you.” Archer regarded me with an intense sincerity that had me holding my breath. “I want you two here with me. Not just some of the time either. I want to go to work and come home to the two of you making breakfast in the kitchen. I want to be here for his first laugh and his first steps. I want to be with you forreal. I want us to be a family.”
I swallowed hard against all the emotion in my throat. “Are you asking us to move in with you?”
He chuckled. “I kind of thought that was obvious from the room and the whole ‘I want you’ speech.”
Smirking, I rose up onto my tiptoes and brushed my lips against his lightly. “It was. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
Archer’s hands found my hips and gave them a firm squeeze. “Brat.” Then his mouth descended on mine, claiming and consuming me with a ferocity that had my toes curling. “Move in with me.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the nursery—the fuzzy blanket draped over the back of the recliner, the crib sheets that matched the walls, the basket already holding diapers on top of the dresser, and smiled. “Yes.”
THIRTY TWO
ARCHER
Moving everything out of Darcy’s apartment and into my house took a singular day with the help of our friends, and all it cost us was a case of beer and some hard seltzers. Once we sorted through her self proclaimed “organized chaos,” there really wasn’t much to move. We brought the last box in right as the pizza arrived, and we all gathered around my kitchen island, eating, drinking, and unwinding in a way my house had never seen before. At most, I’d only ever had Harrison over, maybe Sophie if she was with him, but now Shayna and Linnea were there too, not to mention Darcy and Casey, and for once my house was loud, but in a good way. And perhaps the weirdest part of all of it, was at the end of the night, when everyone left, two people didn’t. Myfamilydidn’t.
