Page 36 of Rust and Bloom

"Hey." His voice is rough from sleep. "You okay?"

I sit back on my heels, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and stare at the floor.

And it hits me.

Not slow. Not like a suspicion building over time into something manageable. Like a door blown off its hinges. Like all the pieces were already assembled in the dark and someone just turned the lights on.

The sleeping in. I have never in my life slept past seven without a fever or a tragedy to justify it. The way food has smelled wrong all week. The strange, boneless exhaustion that's been sitting behind my eyes like weather. The way I cried at Marigold's sleeping face in Destiny's arms and called it sentimentality.

I stand up slowly.

We're both naked, standing in the marble bathroom of the Jackson house with pale mountain light comin' in through the frosted window, and I turn around and look at him.

Really look at him.

I think about him holdin' a baby.

I think about those hands wrapped around something that small and that new.

I think about the way he talks to Mercy when he thinks no one's listenin'.

My chest fills up with something so large I can't hold my face right.

"Legion."

He goes still. All of him.

"I think I'm pregnant."

For one half-second he doesn't move.

Then he crosses the two feet between us, wraps both arms around me, lifts me clean off the floor, and spins me—actually spins me—laughing, this low, incredulous, overwhelmed sound coming out of him that I have never heard before and that absolutely destroys me from the inside out.

"Legion—" I grab his shoulders. "Legion, stop⁠—"

"Savannah—"

"I am going to throw up on you, I swear to God⁠—"

He stops spinning but doesn't put me down, arms locked tight, face buried against my neck, and I can feel him shakin' slightly, or maybe that's me, or maybe it's both of us at once.

I pull back enough to look at him.

The smile, my God. No earthly being should be this beautiful. He belongs in heaven.

"I need a test," I say hurriedly. "So don't get ahead of yourself."

"Yeah," he laughs. "Yeah, a test. We need one of those fuckin' tests. Let's go get one right now. Where the fuck are my pants?"

I laugh, then see the time on the clock. "Oh, shit!"

"What?" Legion has found his pants and is pullin' them up.

"It's eleven-thirty-five! Colt and Destiny will be here at noon. We'll get the test later⁠—"

"No, fuck that," Legion says, pullin' on yesterday's shirt. "We're goin' now."

"Legion," I say, walkin' over to him and placin' my hand on his chest. "There's no rush. You go fish with Colt. Work it out. Get him to come home. Talk him into it. Promise him anything. And while you're doin' that, Destiny and I will take that baby into town and I'll grab a test while we're there."