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“I want to be a real police officer.”

Tate tears into a coffee crisp, popping the entire mini bar into his mouth. “What happened to paleontology?”

“I want to be both,” Owen says with the conviction only a six-year-old can have.

“Cool,” Tate agrees. “Why choose when you can have it all?”

“Exactly!” Owen yawns.

I give him a bum-tap in the direction of the stairs. “Jammies, Officer Wilder.”

He gives me a two-finger salute. “Aye, aye, Officer Mommy.”

Tate snorts as Owen climbs the stairs with Duke hot on his trail. “I’m not sure if we’re police, pirate, or paleontologist now.”

“We like the P’s.” I slide the wine we opened last night from the counter, pouring two glasses. “We’re whatever makes him happy.”

Tate takes the glass I hand him. He raises a brow as he asks, “You looking to get wild tonight?”

My glass stutter-stops on the way to my lips. “What?”

“How many shots did you have tonight?”

I give him sheepish eyes. “Whose keeping count?”

“You had seven.”

“Okaaaay.” I sip my wine pointedly. “Apparently you’re keeping count.”

“I’m surprised you’re still standing.”

“Are you calling me a cheap drunk, Tate Wilder?”

He rounds the counter to crowd me. My breath catches as it always catches when he does this, even years later. “I’m saying it doesn’t take much to get you tipsy and when you get tipsy you tend to get wild.” A devilish curl of his lips has the deeper parts of my womb contracting. “I’m only asking if you think we should call Memaw for a sleepover.”

“I think⁠—”

“I’m ready for my snuggle.” Owen interrupts what I’d been about to say, and my shoulders fall.

“Too late for that.”

“It’s never too late,” Tate says darkly.

My womb contracts again, reminding me cruelly, that it’s empty.

I slip out from between my husband and the counter he’s pinned me to, abandoning my wine for the stairs. “I think we’ll just have to practice using our indoor voices.”

Tate gives me a look that nearly sends me over the edge right then and there. Instead of letting myself melt into a puddle on the stairs, I hurry to my son’s room for his nightly snuggle.

My reflection blurs where I stand before the misted mirror in my towel. The room is hot, but my skin is hotter, flushed from the shower where I scrubbed away my day.

I don’t hear the door click open or realize I’m not alone until Tate slides my wine onto the counter beside me. I feel him then—the heat of his body at the back of mine.

That heat only gets hotter when he dips his head to brush his lips over the skin of my exposed neck and over my shoulder. Gooseflesh pebbles my skin and my breath hitches.

There’s gravel in his voice when he rasps, “You smell so good.”

Tate has always loved the warm vanilla spice of my body butter. But I still use my peach shampoo and body wash.