Epilogue

Charlotte

I couldn’t help but feel subdued as we went home after the wedding. I knew he was noticing it, but I didn’t know quite how to tell him what was going on. I didn’t want to do it now, that was for sure. Ruining this wonderful moment was not what I had planned.

I wasn’t sad. I made sure he knew that. But he could tell something was off. As we drove back to the ranch, I knew he was going to ask and tried to prepare myself for it.

“Hey,” he said, “are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired. It’s been a long week.”

He nodded, punching the gas a little harder as we got out on an open road.

“Yeah, it has,” he said. “I was looking for you when they all went to get drinks. We were doing a big celebration thing, but I didn’t want to drink since I was driving. I thought for sure you’d be part of it.”

“I just wasn’t feeling well at the moment,” I said, which was true. “Didn’t feel like more alcohol.”

“Ahh,” he said. “Still, you should have been there. It was a lot of fun. Luke is a blast when he’s the center of a party.”

“I saw,” I said, grinning. “I’m not sure any of those moves count as actual dancing, but they certainly were enthusiastic.”

He laughed, and I relaxed a little.

“I figured you didn’t eat enough today,” he said. “I didn’t see you stop to eat at all, actually.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That probably was part of it. If I drank any more, I’d have gotten really sick, so it was better that I didn’t.”

“Makes sense,” he said.

We stayed quiet for a little while as we kept driving. I heard him start to speak again a little while later, but I had begun to doze, and when he saw my eyes closed, he drifted off, not wanting to wake me up. Instead, he pushed the AC vents up so I wouldn’t get cold and turned the music down low.

I slept for what only felt like a minute, but when I woke up, I noticed we were on the highway. I looked at the clock and an hour had passed, and we were still on the road.

“Hey, where are we?”

“Almost there,” he said.

“Almost where?”

“Odessa,” he said.

“Odessa? Why are we going to Odessa?”

“Because it’s the closest place with a nice hotel,” he said. “And you deserve to be somewhere quiet with me tonight and not have to deal with a bunch of drunk Galloways.”

I smiled. “Did you think of that before or just now tonight?”

“Tonight,” he said. “But before we got in the car.”

“You are wonderful,” I said. “You know that?”

“I’m all right,” he joked. “Here we go.”

The hotel he pulled into was the nicest one in Odessa, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot. It was a chain, and when we pulled in, I could have recited from memory what the breakfast menu was going to be in the morning. And by breakfast menu, it mostly meant food that no one had to cook and a waffle iron so the guests could cook for themselves.

Jesse got out and went inside to check in, getting our key card and then coming back out. He parked along the side of the hotel, and we went in, riding the elevator to the top floor. It turned out he had sprung for a suite, and I smiled as I opened the door to find it was laid out much like the one he had been in at the Bethel in Oklahoma. Just much, much smaller.

He ducked into the bathroom, and I could hear him changing and decided I couldn’t wait anymore. I knew he thought something was wrong, and I wanted that off his mind. He deserved to know, probably as soon as I knew, but that moment had passed earlier today.

Now was as good as I could do.

“All right,” he said, coming out of the bathroom. “I brought a bottle of whiskey, but if you want food first, we can order pizza. There’s a place just down the street, so I can even go pick it up and it’ll be faster than having it delivered.”

“Pizza is fine, but I don’t want to drink,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Is something wrong? I mean, it’s fine if you don’t want to drink, but you’re just acting a little… weird.”

“Come here,” I said.

He crossed the room, closing the space between us, and I took his hand.

“I can’t drink,” I said. “I have a reason.”

“You do?”

I took his hand and placed it, palm first, on my stomach. He looked at me strangely for a moment, and then, slowly, a dawning realization crossed his face.

“I didn’t want to say anything and upstage Amber’s moment. She was already so gracious to not be upset that we announced our engagement right before their wedding.”

“Is it… are you… is this…”

I nodded.

“I’m pregnant,” I said. “I found out today. Last night, I guess. That’s when I took the first test, but I wanted to be sure. I had to wait until this morning to go get a few more. But things were so crazy, and I was so busy with Amber, I couldn’t tell you. And I didn’t want to tell you and distract you anyway. I wanted to wait until it was just us.”

“We’re going to have a baby?” he asked, his voice soft with reverence but tinged with excitement. “We’re going to have a baby?!”

I smiled and nodded again, and he lifted me in the air. Pressing his lips against mine, he kissed me and sat me back down.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. I’m going to be a dad! You’re going to be a mom!”

“I know,” I said, sharing his excitement and feeling myself finally experience it myself.

I’d spent the whole day worrying. It was silly, but I worried about how he would react. That it would burst the bubble we’d developed between us. That it would ruin our wonderous union and everything we’d built with a serious responsibility that would be too much for him.

But watching him dance excitedly in the room, occasionally grabbing me for another kiss and then dance some more, was delightful.

“We have to keep it a secret,” I said. “Just for a little while. A couple of weeks, max.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I can’t keep this secret. I’m too damn excited.”

“You have to, silly,” I said. “For your brother’s sake if nothing else.”

“Ahh, dammit,” he said. “All right. All right. But if I am going to keep a secret, I will need your help.”

“How can I help?” I asked, laughing. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to distract me,” he said. “When I get excited and want to tell the world, I need you to find a way to get my mind off blurting our secret out.”

“Oh,” I said. “So something like this?”

I reached down and lifted my dress, pulling it up and over my head. My breasts bounced as they fell out of the top, and I smiled at the reaction on his face.

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” he said. “Come here, you.”

He swept me off my feet, planting a kiss directly on my lips as he carried me to the bed. Gently, he laid me down and crawled on top. I pulled his buttons open as I giggled, and we both ended up just ripping each other’s clothes off. As the clothes hit the ground, he pulled the blanket up and over us, and I settled beside him, letting him lift my leg and settle between my thighs.

“This is how we got into trouble in the first place, you know,” I laughed.

“I know,” he said. “And I plan on getting into a lot more trouble with you for the rest of our lives.”

“Me too,” I said.