Page 170 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

I wasn’t ready. But I would be.

So I built.

Let Garrett handle the blueprints for the cabin extension. Let Asher argue with the electricians and talk his way into free insulation.

My brothers knew how to show up in their own way. This was mine.

I brushed wood dust off one of the railings, inspecting the carved pattern along the side. Small mountain ridges. Trees. Two foxes curled together in the center, tucked safe beneath a crescent moon.

For Riley.

For the way she looked at nightfall, silhouetted against the porch light with her hands on her belly and her whole body humming with something soft and wild.

I’d never loved anyone like this.

Not only her.Them.

All of them.

A creak from the doorway pulled my attention, and I looked up to find her standing there, bundled in one of my old flannels over a cotton dress, hair loose around her shoulders.

She was glowing again. Not in the cliché way people talk about pregnant women. It wasn’t about skin or shine.

It was presence. Gravity.

Riley had become the kind of center things orbit around. And I was more than okay with being caught in her pull.

Her eyes found the cribs behind me. She stepped in slow, quiet as a deer at the edge of the clearing.

“You made these?”

I nodded.

She moved closer, one hand reaching out to trace the curve of the fox I’d carved. “They’re beautiful.”

“They’re theirs,” I said, surprising myself with the sound of my voice. “I wanted them to have something that’ll last. Something made by hand.”

She looked at me then, really looked, and something shifted in her face. Like she could feel everything I wasn’t saying.

“Beckett.”

“I don’t know how to be a dad,” I admitted quietly. “Not like this. Not to two. But I can give them something solid. Something safe.”

She stepped closer, placing her hand over my heart.

“You already are,” she said. “You show up. You protect. You build. That’s more than I ever had growing up.”

I swallowed hard.

She leaned in, resting her head against my chest. “You think love’s this big, loud thing. But it’s this,” she whispered. “Two cribs in a workshop. Wood chips on your boots. Your heartbeat steady against mine.”

I wrapped my arms around her, tucking her in like she was something breakable. And maybe she was. But she was also steel.

“I’ll never leave,” I murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Neither am I.”

Outside, I could hear Garrett shouting for Asher to stop nailing things drunk and crooked. Something crashed. Laughter followed.

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