He leans across the console and kisses me, a tender press of lips that's nothing like the wild, bruising kisses from last night. This is worse. Or better. I'm not sure which.
When he pulls back, his hand cups my cheek, his calloused thumb brushing my lower lip.
"Come on," he says. "Let's go home."
Home.
That word used to give me hives. Home meant weakness, vulnerability, a base someone could take away from you. But now?
Now it's where Kasen is. Where our son will be. Where I wake up to freshly made coffee and fall asleep knowing he’s nearby and I’m safe.
For fuck's sake. When did I turn into this person?
I follow him inside anyway, because apparently this is who I am now—someone who feels more at home with Kasen James than I ever felt within four walls of my own. And you know what?
I don't hate it.
I've always been a possessive bastard, but there's something about watching Wren sleep in my bed that makes me want to build walls around this house just to keep her from ever walking away.
Pink hair spills across my pillow and I can't imagine it any other way. She's colonized my space—stealing my shirts, my sweatshirts, my socks, and pieces of my sanity every time she bends over in front of me. I catch myself staring at her, memorizing details like they might disappear: the dip at her waist, the small sigh she makes before fully waking up, how she unconsciously rubs her stomach in her sleep.
I'm falling for her so hard and fast it scares the living shit out of me.
The moonlight filters through the blinds, casting silver stripes across her bare shoulders. She's curled on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek and the other resting on the swell of her stomach where our son grows bigger and stronger every day. I can't stop staring at her, memorizing the scatter of freckles across her shoulders that you'd never notice unless you were close enough to count them.
I've counted all nineteen of them.
I should be sleeping. It's almost two in the morning, and I've got shit to do tomorrow. But sleep feels like a waste when I could be watching her instead.
Carefully, so I don't wake her, I slip out of bed and pad down the hall to my office. The sketchbook I keep hidden in the bottom drawer calls to me. It's where I put the things that matter most—beer label designs that are too stupid or off the wall to share but have sentimental value, drawings that reveal more of me than I'm comfortable showing to anyone.
I flip through pages of half-finished sketches. There’s beer shit, sure, but also the vintage Harley I've been planning to restore, designs for a custom crib I want to build in my workshop downstairs, and stupid little cartoons of Clover with Noble that I text her whenever she sounds stressed on the phone.
Then I find what I've been working on for weeks now. It's not for any beer we currently brew. It's my own project—a special batch I want to release when our son is born. My own way of marking the day everything changes.
The label doesn't have Timber's usual look. I've designed something different. It’s a simple silhouette of pine trees against a night sky that lightens at the horizon. There's a constellation mapped out among the stars, the same one on Wren’s shoulder scattered in freckles. At the top, I've lettered "Dawn Breaker IPA" with smaller text beneath: "Crafted for the newest James."
It's understated, nothing overtly about babies, but it still means something. The trees represent legacy, something passed down, something that outlasts us. The stars are a reminder of her, of something uniquely hers that only I would recognize. And the name, it's about endings and beginnings, about the light that comes after darkness. Our kid will break the dawn on whatever the hell comes next.
Fuck, it's sentimental garbage. The kind of soft shit I'd never put in our regular lineup. But every time I try to scrap it and start over with something edgier, I keep coming back to this design. It says things I don't know how to say out loud.
I add more detail to the stars, my pencil moving while my brain churns through the mess of my life. How did this happen? Four months ago, I was hunched over divorce papers for a woman who drove me fucking insane. Now I wake up every morning with her pink hair in my mouth, and the thought of her not being here makes my chest feel like I took a sledgehammer to the ribs.
A soft sound from the doorway makes me look up. Wren stands there in nothing but my t-shirt, hair a mess from sleep, eyes sleepy. Those long legs go on for miles, and my dick immediately perks up at the sight.
"What are you doing?" she asks, her voice husky from sleep.
I close the sketchbook quickly. "Couldn't sleep."
She tilts her head and her hair falls across one eye before she tucks it behind her ear. "So you were drawing?"
"Something like that." I set the book aside and push back from the desk, opening my arms to her. "Everything okay?"
Instead of answering, she crosses the room and settles onto my lap, her legs straddling mine in the chair. My hands automatically find her hips.
"I woke up and you weren't there." She loops her arms around my neck, fingers playing with the hair at the back of my neck. "I got cold."
"Can't have that." I pull her closer. Having her this close does things to me—makes me stupid, makes me soft in ways I never thought I could be. "Better?"
