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I thought about it. Johnny wasn’t the only one who’d be a fish out of water in a place like that. “As much as I want to try and fit this”—Ipointed to my stomach—“into an evening gown, I think we should just let him have his moment.”

Micah’s face shifted into a sweeter, softer smile. He nodded. He set down his bowl and sat up, taking hold of my chair and rolling it toward him until I fit between his legs. “Six weeks until we’re family.”

I set my own bowl beside his, wrapping my arms around his neck. I looked down into his face. “We’ve always been family.”

His hands moved over my stomach between us. “This is different.”

It was. I could feel that in my bones.

It was one thing to share a life, to share memories and spaces. But this child growing inside of me that neither of us planned was made by the two of us. It was the place Micah and I—our bodies and blood and even our souls—came together. It was a whole new story waiting to be told.

I looked past him, to the drawings overlapping on the wall, meeting the eyes of Autumn Fischer. I woke up in the middle of the night sometimes and drew her. That was the only thing I drew in the dark. She’d find me in my dreams, and I would wake almost convinced that the moments were real. That I was somehow tapping into memories Johnny had of her.

Her body was never found, and we never revisited the site where we left Johnny’s ashes. After everything, Johnny and Autumn had died in the same place, for different reasons. That was enough to make me wonder if in some twisted way, their fateshadbeen tied together.

I rubbed at an ache below my ribs, thinking that this baby was going to be born into a world that Johnny wasn’t in. It still felt so wrong. Like there would be no way for this child to know me, if she never knew Johnny.

Micah drew my face back in his direction, meeting my eyes. He’d read my mind. “We’re here. Now.”

He’d said that to me before, a reminder that what happened before didn’t matter. Not anymore. We were starting our own lives, the two of us, for the first time.

I set my forehead against his. “You know how we agreed not to leave things unsaid?”

“Yes.”

“I feel like I should finally tell you that I’ve always found it annoying when you know what I’m thinking.”

“I know.” He laughed. “But I should probably tell you something, too.”

I waited, pulling away from him so that I could see his eyes.

His hands moved around the shape of me, pulling me closer. “I have loved you for a very long time, James.”

“I know.” I echoed his words.

He let me go, leaving me in the golden hour light, and I turned back to the drawing, hand itching for the charcoal. It was a portrait of Johnny standing on the cliffs at the gorge exactly how I remembered—arendering that captured all the versions of him that lived behind those eyes. I finally understood that they all could be true, all at the very same time.

Maybe we were made in the dark, like Johnny said. But we’d found a way to create our own kind of light.