Erin stood near the kitchen island, enveloped in one of his oversized, faded collegiate sweatshirts.

It smelled faintly of his cedarwood body wash and offered a small shred of comfort against the heavy, aching reality of being thirty-nine weeks pregnant.

She shifted her weight, one hand resting protectively beneath the massive, dropping curve of her belly.

The baby was awake, rolling slowly against her ribs, a physical reminder of the ticking clock.

She watched her husband open and close the same kitchen drawer three times, his eyes darting around the room as if something vital was still missing.

“Ben,” she said gently, her voice cutting through the quiet scraping of the drawer.

“It’s a prenatal check-up, not a three-week expedition to the Arctic.

We’re going to be gone for two hours.”

He froze, his hand still resting on the drawer pull.

He glanced over his shoulder, offering a quick, practiced grin that didn’t quite reach the tension in his jaw.

“Last one before everything changes, Er.

I’m allowed to be intense.

We’re at the finish line.”

She smiled back, a soft, yielding thing, but the answer stayed with her.

It settled heavily in the base of her throat.

Because as she watched him turn back to the counter, aggressively wiping down a surface that was already spotless, she realized it wasn’t just intensity.

It was nerves.

But it wasn’t the warm, excited, slightly clumsy nerves of a soon-to-be father who was worried about changing his first diaper or surviving on two hours of sleep.

She had seen those nerves.

They had laughed about those nerves late at night in bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what their son’s laugh would sound like.

This was something tighter than that.

Something darker.

Every few minutes, he checked his phone.

He would pull it from the front pocket of his jeans, tap the screen, and stare at it with a hard, unblinking focus.

But the absolute second she shifted her weight, or the moment she looked over at him, his thumb would snap down on the side button, locking the screen and plunging it into blackness before sliding it away.

Twice in the span of thirty minutes, his phone had buzzed against the marble counter, the screen facing down.

Both times, he snatched it up with lightning speed and stepped out of the kitchen, retreating down the hallway toward the guest bedroom to answer.

He spoke in a voice so low, so deliberately muffled, that Erin couldn’t make out a single word, only the low, urgent cadence of his tone.

When he finally walked back into the kitchen after the second call, she narrowed her eyes, the protective instincts of a mother already beginning to flare.

“Who keeps calling you at eight in the morning?”

He didn’t miss a beat.

“Just confirming a few things with work.