Page 270 of What We Become

“What about you?”

He looks down at our hands. “I was thinking about breakfast.”

“Brave, considering.”

“A high chair at the table.” His thumb strokes my knuckles. “Someone else stealing the strawberries off my plate.”

“You’d give them every one.”

“Yeah.” He looks at me. “I would.”

I glance at the counter again. The digital test flickers a little hourglass.

The line test is . . . Something.

I go cold from the scalp down.

“Micah, I can’t look.”

“Then I’ll do it.” He waits a second, like he’s giving me a moment to change my mind, and when I don’t he picks up the pink-line test and flips it toward him.

He’s silent.

I’m honestly not sure I’m breathing at all anymore.

“Is it broken?”

He turns the plastic stick so I can see.

There’s a line.

No, two lines.

Micah looks at me. His mouth opens, but for a moment nothing comes out. “Baby girl.”

My knees go a little weak. “Micah?”

His hand comes up, fingers shaking. “You’re—we’re⁠—”

“Oh my God.” I grab the stick from him and stare at it, like seeing it myself will change anything. But there’s no ambiguity or trick of the light. Not even a maybe. I laugh-sob. “We’re . . . ?”

My brain is oatmeal. He laughs and kisses my face, quick and hard, and I wrap my arms around his neck. We’re both shaking.

“Husbands!” I call.

Knox fills the doorway. Milo peers around his arm, with Eli and Holden crowding the hall behind them.

“Kitchen,” Micah says, laughing. “Give us room.”

He gathers the other two tests while I keep hold of the one with pink lines. Knox steps back, and Micah takes my hand as we follow the others down the hall.

Milo barely waits until we reach the table before taking the tests from Micah. He checks the digital screen, makes a strangled whoop, and picks up the other.

“She’s pregnant,” he says. “She’s so, so pregnant.” Then every bit of the performance drops out of him at once. “There’s a baby, kitten.”

Holden loses an entire octave from his voice. “Oh, fuck.”

Eli’s eyes go soft, then immediately glassy. “You’re sure?” he asks, voice hushed in the way you only get when the thing you want most shows up in the middle of an ordinary morning.