THE WARMTH OF HIS BREATH AGAINST HER TEMPLE ACTED AS A TEMPORARY TOURNIQUET, stanching the flow of her panic, but it could not cure the wound entirely. Even still, to hear him so violently certain, so utterly unbothered by the administrative and social machinery that could crush her, felt both like a balm and standing in the eye of a hurricane. Her breath left her in a small, ragged exhale; the sound caught between them, trembling, humiliatingly soft. Her fingers curled more tightly in the fabric of his shirt, twisting there at his chest as the first tremor moved through her, and she tried to swallow them down, gathering herself. Slowly, she untucks her chin from his collarbone, leaning back just far enough to look up into the rugged lines of his face; his eyes are still blazing, a fierce, protective sentinel standing guard. Her throat had gone raw around words she could not seem to lift. There was a pressure behind her ribs, deep and dull at first, then rising, pushing, breaking up through the packed earth of her composure. Samira had imagined him saying it, those three words, in a hundred different ways. In bed, perhaps, in the soft after-dark hush when the world outside his windows had gone down to black glass and streetlight, and neither of them had the sense to remember what time they were due back at the hospital. In the parking garage after a shift that had left them both hollow-eyed, his voice low with exhaustion, the words slipped between them beside the dull silver flank of her car. In the cafeteria at two in the morning, over vending machine coffee and whatever stale, wrapped thing passed for dinner. She had imagined being clever. Maybe smiling a little, as though she had known all along. As though her heart had not been living in her throat for months. Suffice it to say? She had not imagined this version. All of her had gone strangely still, except for the frantic, bruising thud beneath her breastbone. She could feel it everywhere: in her wrists, her throat, the soft place behind her knees. Love, fear, relief, disbelief . . . all of it moving through one body with nowhere near enough room.
Despite herself, despite the hot pressure behind her eyes and the ache in her throat, Samira heard his threat again: the dark, ridiculous certainty of it, how he'd so easily said Robby included with such absolute seriousness that something inside her slipped, lost its footing, and fell directly through fear into laughter. A small, wet sound against her own teeth. Her hand rose before she could stop it. She touched his face with the tips of her fingers first; his skin was warm. His stubble rasped faintly beneath her touch. There was a small crease beside his mouth she had memorized against her will over the last year, a mark that deepened when he was tired, when he was amused, when he was trying not to smile at something she had said on rounds.
A laugh escaped her again, quieter this time, almost a breath. ❛ I love you, too.❜ Her eyes narrowed through the tears with a faint, ruined amusement. ❛ I love you. I love you, Jack. So much. ❜
The words had scarcely left her before the need rose up and took her by the throat; her hands rising to his face with almost reverent clumsiness, thumbs brushing the rough grain of his jaw, her tears slipping between them, salt on their mouths as she kissed him, her fingers tightening as if she could hold him in place inside this impossible, frightening, beautiful moment. For once, Samira didn't think about anything else. There was only Jack’s breath catching against hers, Jack’s hands on her waist, Jack loving her back so completely that the floor did not drop out beneath her feet. She smiled into the kiss before she could help it, a small, broken, breathless thing, because this was happening, God, this was really happening, and somehow, impossibly, she was terrified and happy at once. She let herself rest her forehead against his for one suspended breath. The closeness made her dizzy in a way that had nothing to do with panic now. A fresh spill of tears slid down her face, but she was still smiling, helplessly now, as though happiness had finally gotten its hands around her fear and dragged it, kicking, into the light. The feeling was so strange she almost mistrusted it.
And yet there it was.
Disbelief rose in her once more, but this time bright and terrifying, and she looked down at her hands as if she could not quite understand how this could be her life, how she could be here with Jack’s love still ringing in her ears, her own confession fresh on her tongue, her hand over a future she had been too afraid to want.
❛ This is insane, ❜ she whispered, and then she laughed again, softer now, more wonder than humor. ❛ This is insane, Jack. ❜ Her hand drifted, hesitant and almost shy, from his chest to her own stomach. ❛ It's early, it's . . so early. ❜ Samira's breath hitched, and her eyes closed for a second. When she opened them, another tear slipped free. ❛ I should make an appointment with my OB. Oh my god . . . we're gonna have a baby. ❜
