Page 56 of Until You

Rebecca holds my face in both hands the way she’d held my hands at the party. “Welcome to the family,” she says. “Welcome, welcome, welcome.” Each word is deliberate. Like she’s giving me something with each one.

James puts his arm around his wife and looks at Oliver over her head. Something passes between them—father and son, quick and complete, the kind of communication that doesn’t need language. Then James looks at me. “You’re not getting rid of us,” he says simply. “Might as well start getting used to it.”

“We’re a lot,” Kelsie says.

“She’s probably already noticed that,” Addison says.

“You get used to it,” Thorne says.

“Mostly,” Ethan mutters.

Pops leans over to Oliver. “Good choice,” he says, in his gruffest voice. “I liked her from the first day.”

“You patted her on the head,” Oliver says. “Like a dog.”

“A man expresses affection in different ways.”

Then, one-by-one, the siblings come over to hug me.

Kelsie is first. When she steps away from the hug, her smile takes over her whole face. “I’m going to be an aunt,” she says.

“I’m going to be an uncle!” Payton says from somewhere over her shoulder, too loud for a hospital lobby and entirely unapologetic about it. He’s holding the paper bag aloft like a trophy. “And I brought pancakes. I feel like that demonstrates excellent uncle energy.”

“Where did you get pancakes?” Ethan asks.

“I stopped by Ruthie’s diner on the way here.” He pats his stomach. “I’m a growing boy.” He extends the bag out toward me. “But I would give up my pancakes for my niece or nephew.”

“I’m good, thank you, though,” I say.

“We do need to get you some food,” Oliver says, tucking me even closer to his side.

“I think you are exactly what this family needed,” Addison says. “And what my brother needed. If the last three months are any evidence.”

I look at Oliver.

He’s watching me with those steady eyes.

I’m all-in, he’d said in that small room behind the curtain. You and me.

My heart picked you that night at Ace’s, and it’s been picking you every day since. I just didn’t know where you were.

And here’s the thing about me. Here’s the thing I’ve spent twenty-seven years rehearsing, the response I’ve built into my bones like a reflex: it won’t last. They’ll change their minds. The warmth will cool. The hug will end, the smile will fade, the welcome will expire, and I’ll be standing at another door with my garbage bag full of my random belongings, learning again that nothing lasts.

I feel it rise up. The familiar, worn-smooth story. The one I’ve told myself so many times it’s carved grooves in my very DNA.

And then I think of all the photos I spent a week scanning.

The holidays, the family vacations, the ranch animals, and random pets. All the births and birthday parties and everything in between. Then all of them came here. Even before they knew I was carrying Oliver’s baby. They showed up here for me. Me. A veritable stranger.

The way Oliver told me, I’m not going to take anything away from you with his thumbs moving across my knuckles and his eyes on mine, and not a single syllable of but.

These are people who make commitments and stand by them. No matter what.

I’ve been living inside the evidence long enough to see it.

I scanned it, photo by photo, yes, into a digital slideshow, but also into my permanent memory.

I know these people. Maybe not in every detail, not yet. But in every way that matters—in the shape of who they are, in the architecture of how they love—I know them.