Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 48039 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48039 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“Is that…” The words scrape. I try again. “Savannah, is that—”
“Yeah.” The grin wins. “That’s our baby.”
The laugh that escapes me is nothing I’ve ever let anyone hear. It’s rough and helpless and full of something I didn’t know I could hold. She lets me stumble through it, tears sliding down her own cheeks now. She yelps and then laughs against my throat while I spin her once like a lunatic because if I don’t move I might explode.
“You’re…” I swallow, press my forehead to hers, breathe her and fire and the new gravity of that photo. “You’re pregnant.”
“Six weeks,” she says, palms cupping my jaw. “I was going to tell you at dinner, but I couldn’t keep it inside. Like, physically. My body refused to cooperate with plans.”
“Good. Screw plans.” I kiss her, fierce and reverent, the kind of claiming that’s all hands and restraint at the same time. When I look down again I have to see it one more time. I carry her to the couch with me and we sit, shoulder to shoulder, the ultrasound in my hand tremoring like a third heartbeat.
“That little bean made me throw up in the ambulance bay,” she confesses, cheeks pinking with mortification and joy. “Levi offered me a donut. I told him if he didn’t back away I would teach him about projectile trajectories.”
I bark a laugh I can’t control. “Did you tell Dax?”
“I told no one. Yet.” She nudges me. “You get to tell Captain Cole and the entire firehouse that you did the thing they made too many jokes about.”
“I’m going to have them make us another banner.” I can’t stop looking at the shadows and light on paper. I could count pixels and learn nothing; I could close my eyes and see our entire future. “We’re having a baby.”
“We are,” she says, and it keeps getting bigger.
Silence again, not empty. The fire settles. The river changes key. Savannah lays her head on my shoulder and we stare at the print the way you stare at a fire you built from sparks. When I can speak like a man again, I turn to her.
“Names.”
She snorts, delighted. “Of course you want to name this cloud.”
“Protocol.”
“Protocol, he says.” She taps her finger on the glossy corner, thoughtful mischief sliding across her face. “Okay. Rules. No exes, no villains, no weather events that destroyed towns.”
“Agreed. No household appliances either.”
“No ‘Toaster Brooks-Ramirez’?”
She laughs. “What about Ever? Like all the time. Like inevitable.”
Her head bumps my shoulder. “I love Ever. Boy or girl.”
“Joy?” I offer, suddenly unashamed of the sweetness of it because I don’t have room for shame tonight.
“Perfect for a middle.” She grins sideways. “Winter for a December baby.”
“River,” I say, because it made us and keeps making us. “Or Ridge. Or Haven.”
She makes a face at Ridge. “He’s going to come out with a snowboard and a trust fund.”
“Fine. Haven.”
“Haven is beautiful.” She lifts her head. “Also, for the record, I get one veto.”
“Same.”
She threads her fingers through my hair and squints at the photo again like she can will it to reveal more. “I thought of Luca if it’s a boy.”
“Luca Ramirez. Not bad.”
“Or Mia if it’s a girl.” She bites her lip. “But Mia makes me think of mine, and you already call me that—your menacing possessive tendency is rubbing off.”
“It’s not a tendency.” I drop my mouth to her neck and find the place she keeps just for me. “It’s a policy.”
She shivers. “Your policies are very thorough.”
“Always.”
She tips my jaw back up with a finger. “Also—and I’m just brainstorming here, don’t panic—Axelle.”
I pretend to think, then deadpan, “Approved.”
“Stop.” She laughs into my mouth when I kiss her. “We are not naming our daughter after you.”
“It’s a strong name.”
“It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Firefly?” I offer, because her eyes do that thing when she’s happy.
“Now you’re just trying to seduce me.”
“It working?”
“Yes,” she says simply, and heat sweeps the room in a way the hearth can’t compete with.
I set the photo carefully on the coffee table, the way you set a lantern down on a night trail—deliberate, with respect—and pull her into me like gravity met its match. The kiss starts soft because that’s the only way to hold this much, then deepens because I don’t know any other way to tell her what the ultrasound took out of me and filled me with. Her hands go under my sweatshirt, palms flat to my back, and for a heartbeat I’m not a hero or a husband or a man who survived a fire. I’m just a person who gets to love her without apology.
“Axel,” she breathes when I slow us down again, mouths barely apart. “We’re really doing this.”
“We always were,” I say, forehead to hers. “We just didn’t know which page we were on.”
She smiles and it’s the one that gets me—bright, a little feral, a lot free. “You’re going to be ridiculous.”