Page 78 of The Dare

Once he gets home though. Once Benji’s down in his cot it’s a different story.

I look forward to showing my man just how much he means to me, to all of us every chance I get.

In between trips to town, which I sometimes take with him if Benji’s up for it, we spend most of our days hanging out and watching each other do our part to make home what it is.

Michael traded his cost more than two and a half weddings of a car for a beat-up truck which is the new family car.

He’s taught himself fencing, planting and harvesting, and a ton of other rancher type things that all I can vouch for make him sweatier and sexier every time I see him coming inside.

Me? I’m working on putting that college education to some good use. Tutoring young single moms who are in college or trying to get into one online.

Then there’s running around after Benjamin, and somehow managing to find time to make or mend my own clothes. Something my online students taught me from another online group we’re in.

All this in-between growing two more babies inside me, we got an ultrasound once I started to grow bigger than my first pregnancy.

I was worried I’d never lose my first pregnancy weight, but Michael only rolls his eyes every time I mention it, using his own massive body or other parts of his anatomy for scale.

“See?” he’ll exclaim late some nights, making me laugh until I cry. “You’re tiny compared to me.”

I fix us our lunch.

Just some sandwiches, but it’s bread we baked, with the wheat we grew. And everything in it has one of our fingerprints on it or has passed through our hands at some point.

The taste and feeling of home.

Our place.

Benjamin lets me know he’s due for a feed himself, so setting our lunch aside, I make my way out onto the vast front porch and take a seat to wait for his daddy as I unbutton my blouse so he can help himself.

It’s a magical time of the day when the sun’s just right as it hovers above the mountains, the closest thing we get to a sunset on the plains even though it’s still only afternoon.

The heady scent of the sunbaked yard, the fields, and seemingly endless land beyond make me sleepy.

I ease back, rocking in the chair Michael restored himself, finding it in the loft of the old barn he restored.

Benji feeds quietly, and I eventually make out the rising trail of dust as Michaels’ truck swings into view.

He honks the old truck’s horn. Something from another time it seems.

And in a single moment, I look down at Benjamin and then up at the truck again.

Realizing this is the part of the dream I’ve always had but could never remember.

The one where I’d always wake up without knowing how it ended.

It’s not cold, but I shiver, clutching Benji closer and kissing his head.

I’m still in a bit of a daze by the time Michael pulls up out front, his heavy boots thudding on the porch as he kisses us both hello.

“You alright honey? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he says, pressing the back of his finger to my forehead like he always does when he thinks one of us has a temperature.

Curling my fingers around his, I bring them to my lips and kiss them.

“Just having a daydream,” I say.

I smile up at him, pulling him closer for a proper kiss.

“Hope it was a good one.”

He smiles, and lifting up Benji, he starts to rock him gently, burping him for me after his feed.

“Oh, it’s the best dream in the whole world,” I assure him.

The dream that I’m living.

The life we all share.

Us.

I love you, Michael.