Page 40 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask finally, because the waiting is louder than anything he could say. “Should I be scared?”
His eyes lift, steady. “You should beaware,not scared.” He sets the mug down, turns fully toward me. “Mercer was on us today. We confirmed it. Duke pushed him off near the clock tower, and Gunner shadowed him to the train. We still don’t know who hired him or why he pivoted from the client tous.He’s not a smash-and-grab guy—he’s a watcher. That’s its own kind of risk.”
My heart does a tight, fast thing. “And me?”
“You’re in our orbit,” he says, honest, not softening it. “So we tighten the bubble.” He ticks them off, not patronizing—just concrete. “Vary routes, park under cameras, stairs over elevator when we can, no predictable times. Check-ins. If I’m not with you, I’ll have someone on the block I trust. If anything pings wrong—smell, vibe, pattern—you saygingerbreadand we change the plan. I mean anything, Mel. Your intuition is a sensor.”
I breathe, slow like Dr. Patel taught me. “Okay.”
“I wish I could say ‘ignore it,’” he adds, mouth flattening. “I can’t. But I can say this: you are not alone in it. We are not reactive. We’re proactive.”
“Proactive and cocoa,” I say, lifting my mug like a toast I’m not quite ready to drink.
He clinks it, eyes warmed by something that isn’t just the chocolate. “Proactive and cocoa.”
We finish the mugs in tandem silence that’s less sharp. He rinses, I dry, and a strange domestic calm slides over the fear likea blanket. Bed sounds good—not as an escape, exactly, but as a place where our breaths line up and the world gets smaller.
He does the last checks with the ritual I now find soothing—the wedge seated, the chain set, the phone faced down on the nightstand. I slide under the duvet and feel him slip in beside me, one arm curving under my neck, the other landing warm and heavy across my waist.
“I’ll always keep you safe,” he says into my hair, as if it’s the simplest fact he knows.
I swallow against the ache that sentence wakes. “How?” I ask before I can pretty it up. “When you’re in Denver.”
The quiet changes shape. Not bad. Not gone. Just honest.
He breathes out against my temple. “I don’t have a press release answer.” Another beat. “I’m not planning to disappear in January and pretend this was a holiday assignment. We’ll talk. We’ll make a plan that doesn’t ask you to carry everything, or me to be a postcard.” A small squeeze. “I’m not leaving you unguarded—in any sense of the word.”
I nod, but the expiration-date clock I’ve been ignoring lights up again in the corner of my mind, a little red LED blinkingafter the holidays.I hate it. I also can’t turn it off. The baby kicks low, a firm punctuation.
“I’m sad,” I admit, whispering it to the quilt like a secret. “I like… this. I like you brushing your teeth next to me and your socks under my couch and you yelling at me to drink water. I like it so much it hurts to think it might have a time limit.”
His hand finds mine under the covers, fingers lacing, grip certain. “Then let’s not borrow hurt from a day we haven’t livedyet.” He tips my chin so I’m looking at him. “We do what we’ve been doing. One sandbag at a time.”
The tears come hot and fast in that embarrassing pregnancy way, and he thumbs them away like he’s done it forever. “Okay,” I say, which is not a solution but a truce.
He kisses me—slow, unhurried, the kind that saysI’m here nowand meansI’m not sprinting for the door.I kiss him back with everything tight in my chest, and it loosens. The make-out is soft and sweet and a little desperate at the edges, but we keep it where we decided to keep it: a slow yes, not a rush toward a fix. He’s careful of my belly, my back, my breath, and I’m careful of his restraint, his worry, the way he’s carrying more than he’ll ever say out loud.
We break for air and lie forehead to forehead. The apartment hums—heater, someone’s muffled laugh down the hall, the faraway shush of a car through slush. Peanut decides the moment needs a drum solo and kicks, solid and undeniable, right under my palm.
“Whoa,” I whisper, half laugh, half gasp. “Do you want to?—?”
He’s already nodding. I guide his hand to the spot. We wait. One heartbeat, two—and then there it is: another thump, stronger, like a tiny fist knocking from the inside.
Lucas inhales like he’s been punched and blessed at the same time. His eyes go glassy in the low light, mouth parting on a sound that isn’t a word.
“Hi,” he says, so softly I feel it more than hear it. His palm spreads, thumb trembling just once. “Hey there, Peanut.” He laughs, a shaky, disbelieving thing. “Permission to lose my mind a little?”
“Granted,” I whisper, and now I’m crying again, but in the good way, the way that feels like a pressure valve releasing.
We lie there with his hand on our child and my cheek wet against his shoulder, and the world—the case, the train, the wedge, the after-New-Year blinking—tips a little out of frame. What stays in focus is simple: his hand, that kick, this room.
“I didn’t know,” he says, voice rough. “I mean—I knew. But I didn’t know likethis.”
“Me neither,” I say. “Every time it feels new.”
He presses a kiss into my hair, then another, like he’s saying thank you without words. We fall quiet. After a while he starts talking low and ridiculous to my belly—about cocoa, and how he overcooked the green beans by exactly one minute, and how he’s buying noise-cancelling headphones for the first six months so it can cry as much as it wants. I laugh, and the baby does a slow roll like their version of applause.
Things take a turn a few minutes later when he kisses my forehead, and then the tip of my nose. His eyes land on mine, and then the next thing I know we're kissing. We’re kissing and not in the PG type of way. This is purely R rated.
