Page 139 of Mountain Daddy

The word still catches me sideways. The way Chleo says it makes it seem like something always meant to be.

“Coming, baby!” I shout, flushing the evidence. Wrap the test in toilet paper. Stuff it deep into the trash under used cotton pads and a half-empty mascara tube. I’ll tell Nikolai. Just… not with Chleo watching.

Not yet.

The kitchen smells like syrup and heaven. Nikolai’s at the stove. Chleo’s stacking strawberries into smiley faces on our plates. One for me. One for him. One for the man who somehow became ours.

It’s domestic. Ordinary.

Beautiful.

“You okay?” Nikolai’s voice cuts through my haze, low and full of heat.

His eyes find mine. They always do. The man misses nothing.

“Just tired,” I lie, planting a kiss on his stubbled jaw.

His hand finds my waist. Holds me there. Not hard. Not soft. Just his.

“You sure?”

“Later,” I whisper, lips brushing his skin, low enough that Chleo doesn’t hear.

A domestic lifeis a busy life. Later doesn’t come until a week after.

I find him on the porch one evening, staring out at the mountains like he’s waiting for a war to arrive with the morning mist.

His shirt’s half unbuttoned. Hair still damp from the shower. He’s brooding. Tense. Handsome.

I step behind him, wrap my arms around his waist. He doesn’t flinch. Just lowers his head, exhales slow like it hurts.

“They’re not coming, you know,” I whisper against his back.

“They always come.”

His voice is gravel. Rough with a lifetime of waiting for bad things to happen. With the FBI still on his heels, he’s only waiting for the other ball to drop.

As for me? I’m ready to let the past go. Even if they’ll come, we’ll handle it. Together.

There’s a whole bright future for us to look towards.

I turn him around. Look up into those storm-green eyes. My heart’s about to punch through my ribs.

“I need to tell you something.”

He watches me, unreadable. But I see the flicker—worry. Readiness. That part of him that braces for the worst.

“I’m pregnant.”

The silence stretches.

Then—

He smiles.

A real one. Slow. Deep. It hits his eyes. “You think I didn’t know?”

I blink. “What?”

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