Now

I’ve waited long enough now. The answer is right there, but I can’t look at the pregnancy test. Because all of a sudden, I’m not remembering anymore. All of a sudden, I am dreaming—about a little boy with muddy-brown hair or a little girl with amber eyes who’s stubborn as a mule. I’m dreaming about being the kind of mom I always wanted—about impromptu dance parties and wiping flour off of little noses and rolling down grassy hills just because we can.

“You’re crying.” Nash is on the other side of the bathroom door. I’m a silent crier. There’s no way he can actually know that there are tears streaming down my cheeks.

And yet, he does.

I open the door. His hands are gentle, calluses lightly skimming my cheek as he wipes away my tears.

“If you’ve got a name,” he tells me, “I’d take it.” He’s asking for the name of the person who made me cry.

I take a deep breath and look past him, toward the counter and the object laying on the counter, and I give him something else. “Hannah,” I say, and then I swallow. “For a girl, I was thinking Hannah.”

I see the shift in his expression, and suddenly, there’s nothing steady or understated about what I see in his eyes, and I know—

He’s dreaming, too.

And it’s beautiful.

“It might not be positive,” I told him. “It probably isn’t. But—”

“We look together,” he told me, taking my hands in his. “On three.”

“One.” I start off the count.

“Two.” He smiles, and then I do.

“Three.”