Page 42 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
“Yeah. Better than okay.”
Eventually, he shifts, and tucks me closer. “Sleep,” he murmurs. “I’m on watch.”
“Always?” I ask, not because I want to catch him—because I want to remember how this feels.
“Always,” he says, and it lands not like a promise he can’t keep but like a thing he intends to build.
Between fear and future, I picknow.I tuck into the space under his chin, let the baby drum once more against his hand, and sleep in the safest place I’ve ever known.
17
Lucas
I used to like puzzles. Process of elimination. Edges first, corners sorted. Mercer isn’t a puzzle; he’s sand in the gears. Every time we clean a route, he appears three moves later with the same patient posture, like he’s waiting us out. I can feel my tolerance ratcheting tighter by the hour.
In the meantime, my life has turned into the version I didn’t know I wanted. Two coffee mugs by the sink. Her lemon-scent shampoo in my shower. The tree on a timer that clicks alive right when the afternoon light goes thin. I make breakfast with the radio low, and she shuffles in wearing my sweatshirt, hair a riot, eyes soft. She steals my last triangle of toast and I pretend to be mad. It’s domestic and ridiculous and it slots into my bones like they were built for it.
I wish I never had to leave.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do about January. The idea of flying back to Denver and turning this into a story I tell myself on red-eyes sits like a bad meal. The idea of asking her touproot… I won’t. Not yet. Not without a plan that doesn’t make her carry the weight.
“Appointment day,” I remind both of us as I cap her Stanley and set her vitamins by it like a man who’s learned where he’s useful.
She makes a face. “Appointment day.”
“Want me to do the blood pressure joke?”
“I will literally throw a lemon at you,” she says, but she’s smiling.
We take the stairs, wedge out, door locked. I sweep the hall without looking like it, log the building’s noises, mark the elevator’s chime in case it becomes relevant. The winter air bites and smells like snow that’s thinking about it. I angle us toward the camera as we cross the lot, reverse the route we took yesterday just to be rude to any patterns Mercer likes. The SUV engine turns over on the first try, and the heater coughs and catches.
At the OB’s office the receptionist knows our names now. That shouldn’t make me feel as good as it does. The waiting room is a slideshow of futures—newborns in hats the size of dinner rolls, tired parents with stupid-grin eyes, a grandparent pretending not to cry in a corner chair. I sit where I can see the door and the nurses’ corridor and the reflection in the poster frame that shows the hall behind me. Melanie scrolls, then slides her phone into my palm. The lock screen is the heartbeat printout from last time. My chest does that expanding thing I still don’t have a better name for.
“Melanie?” a nurse calls.
We’re a unit. We stand.
Dr. Patel is brisk-warm as ever. Vitals, weight, a string of answers to good questions Melanie has saved. Then the short exam. I stay at the head of the table, not because I’m squeamish but because I’m a wall where she needs one.
“Cervix is softening,” Dr. Patel says, businesslike. “About one centimeter dilated today. Totally normal at this stage. No immediate action item, just your usual: hydration, rest, call if your body decides to rehearse too enthusiastically.”
Melanie squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back. One centimeter. A measurable thing. The train isn’t at the station, but you can hear the tracks humming.
On the way out, Dr. Patel taps the chart. “Two weeks, unless baby wants a different calendar.” She smiles at me. “Good job on the support team.”
I accept the compliment like a mission ribbon I didn’t ask for and wanted anyway.
We take the long way home—my call, not hers. The low sun turns the street into mirrors, and that’s when my neck prickles. Sedan three cars back. Clean. Unremarkable. The kind of unremarkable you rent when you bill expenses to companies that don’t exist.
I change lanes, casually. He changes lanes after a pause that’s half a beat too perfect. Another two turns and he’s still there, maintaining just enough slop to look like incompetence. It reads as practice.
“Gingerbread?” I ask, eyes on the rearview.
“Cinnamon roll,” Melanie says, and I love her a little more for the steadiness in it.
I tap comms, pitch low. “Tail on Seventh heading north. Slate sedan, temporary tag. Mirrors our last two vectors.”
“Duke,” Gunner crackles, “I’ve got you on traffic cam—copy slate sedan. No plate hit. Rental behavior.”
