Page 65 of Until You

I press my fingers to my eyes. "You're going to make me cry again."

“Darlin’, you haven't stopped crying."

"Shut up."

He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the room to me. Wraps his arms around me from behind, his hands settling on my belly. His chin rests on my shoulder. We stand there in the empty living room of our house—our house—and watch the light move across the hardwood.

"Welcome home, Cora," he says quietly.

I put my hands over his.

"Home," I repeat.

And I love that the word no longer scares me.

My phone buzzes fourteen times in the next six minutes.

I'm sitting on the kitchen counter eating the apple slices he brought in a cooler in the truck. He carried food wherever we go because he knows I need to eat every forty minutes or the nausea demon awakens.

After we’d walked through all the rooms of the house, I needed a moment, to rest. So he’d perched me up on this counter and now he's out on the porch making a call while I sit here in the kitchen that is now apparently my kitchen and try to process the fact that I own a home.

I own a home.

I pull out my phone.

Me: So.

Me: Update.

Jules: Oh God what did he do

Hope: Are you okay???

Me: Oliver just drove me to a two-story farmhouse outside of town.

Jules: Continue...

Me: With a wrap-around porch and a porch swing and twenty acres and a barn and a creek.

Hope: CORA

Me: And told me he bought it.

Me: For us.

Me: My name is on the deed.

Silence. Three full seconds. The longest Jules has ever been quiet.

Jules: I'M SORRY WHAT

Hope: HE BOUGHT YOU A HOUSE????

Jules: HE PUT YOUR NAME ON THE DEED???

Jules: I need to sit down

Jules: I'm already sitting down but I need to sit down MORE