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"Poppy."

"Six weeks. The doctor confirmed it this morning."

His voice is wrecked. Raw in a way I've only heard once, the morning he told me he loved me in Room 12. "You're pregnant."

"Due in June."

His other hand comes up. Both palms on my stomach now, spanning the width of me, thumbs touching at my navel. He drops to his knees in the dirt between the apple trees. Presses his forehead against my belly. Stays there.

His shoulders shake. Once. A breath that's too big for his body, held too long, released all at once.

"Deck." My fingers slide into his hair. "Deck, are you crying?"

"No." His voice is muffled against the flannel. "Absolutely not."

"You're crying."

"I'm having an allergic reaction."

"To what?"

"To you. To this." He lifts his head. His eyes are wet. Red at the edges. Full of something so open it steals the air from my lungs. "To everything you've given me."

My own tears start. Can't stop them. Don't want to.

He stands. Pulls me against his chest. Arms wrapped around me, chin on top of my head, his heart hammering under my ear. We stand in the orchard while the light goes from gold to pink, holding each other between the trees his mother planted thirty-seven years ago.

"June," I say against his chest.

His arms tighten. "Same month we got married."

"I know."

"You planned this."

"I absolutely did not plan this. This was Gerald's doing. Stress-induced fertility from chasing that goat out of the squash for the ninth time in a week."

His laugh vibrates through his chest into mine. Real, full, unguarded. The laugh I earn every day, the one nobody else gets. "We're blaming the goat."

"We're always blaming the goat."

His hand slides to my jaw. Tilts my face up. Kisses me soft, slow, salt on both our lips. Then deeper, his tongue sliding against mine, his hand moving from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my curls.

Heat pools low in my belly. The same heat that built in the barn at the cider press. The same heat that hasn't faded in twelve months of sharing this man's bed.

"Take me inside," I murmur against his mouth.

We don't make it to the bedroom. The kitchen. He lifts me onto the counter, steps between my thighs, mouth on my neck. My fingers pull his thermal up, over his head, tossed somewhere near the stove. My palms press flat against his bare chest, the warmth of him, the solid weight of muscle under skin.

"Off," he says, tugging the flannel buttons.

"You love this flannel on me."

"I love it on the floor more."

Buttons undone, flannel dropped. My shirt follows. His mouth finds my nipple through the bra, sucking hard enough to make my hips jerk. The clasp opens. Both breasts free. His hands cup them, thumbs dragging across the peaks while his mouth works one, then the other.

"Sensitive," I gasp. Everything's heightened. Hormones, probably. Or just him.