The bathroom door opens.
Lola walks out holding two sticks. Her face is unreadable. She’s doing that thing she does when she’s trying not to react until she’s decided how she feels.
She sets them face down on the counter between us, and we just stare at them for three whole fuckin’ minutes.
“Together?” she says.
“Together.”
She flips the first one.
Two lines.
She flips the second one.
Two lines.
I look at the tests. I look at my wife. She looks at me. Neither of us can form a damn word.
And then her composure cracks wide open, and she bursts into the most beautiful, messy smile I’ve ever seen on a human face. “Oh my God,” she breathes.
“Oh my God,” I echo, and my voice comes out like someone’s standing on my chest.
“Hunter. I’m?—”
“Pregnant,” I finish for her.
“Pregnant,” she repeats.
I round the counter in two strides, grab her face with both hands, and kiss her. I kiss her so hard she has to grasp onto my wrists for balance. I kiss her until we’re both out of breath and laughing against each other’s mouths.
“The baby-making room worked,” she jokes.
I bark out a laugh and press my forehead against hers. “Yeah, it did.”
She grabs my hand and presses it flat against her stomach. There’s nothing to feel yet. But my palm covers the space where my child is growing, and something shifts inside my chest.
I’ve been here before. Six years ago. And Wyatt was my biggest blessing. But this is different. This time, the woman looking up at me is the one I’d walk through fire for. The one who walked through fire for me. The one who pushed my son through a window and stayed behind. The woman who truly loves my son as if he’s her own.
She’s given him the mother's love he deserves.
This time, it’s right.
“We’re having a baby,” I say, and my voice cracks on the last word. I don’t try to fix it.
She nods, tears streaming down her beautiful face.
“We have to tell Wyatt,” she says.
“Right now?”
“Right now. I can’t hold this in. I’ll explode. You know how bad he wants to be a big brother.”
I take her hand, and we walk into the living room.
Wyatt is on the floor, lying on his stomach, chin propped on his fists, watching a cartoon about a dog that solves crimes. Gary is beside him. Not watching the television, no, that little shit is chewing on the corner of the rug.
“Wyatt,” Lola says, and the tremble in her voice makes him look up instantly.