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The nights stretch long in Jackson, warm in summer and brutal in winter, but always unchanging is the quiet this new life brings both you and Joel. Jackson is full of sounds, full of life and punctuated with laughter, the kind that echoes into the night and spills from the mess hall and the Tipsy Bison—distant hammers against nails, idle chatter, horses clopping on dirt paths. Yet inside your own home, it’s muted, it’s breath full of a new life of its own and up until recently, the rhythmic sound of the rocking chair.
You used to hear it every night.
That slow, aching creak of wood on wood—groaning beneath Joel’s weight as he rocked back and forth, steady and sure, well into the early hours. The rhythm became a part of you, your breathing. Part of hers, too. The rocking chair Joel built when your belly was too round to let you sleep carried the three of you through restless nights.
It hasn’t made a sound in months.
Now she sleeps through the night in her crib, which Joel built too, limbs tossed every which way, curls stuck to her cheek, a stuffed moose tucked under one arm. You sometimes find Joel in that chair still, sitting in the dark, not rocking. Just… still.
The house holds the quiet close.
Joel is somewhere upstairs; if you strain your ears just enough, you can hear him singing too softly for you to make out the words. You know the sound of it, though, the way he hummed it through your pregnancy, in the late nights when he thought it was just him and her alone, or when he’s brushing tangled curls out of your daughter’s hair. His voice is smoke and gravel with a drip of honey, and you still come a little undone every time you hear it. You’re not even sure he knows he does it—just like you’re not sure he realises how often he kisses the top of the baby’s head, like he’s checking she’s still real.
You used to catch him watching her that way. Still do sometimes. Like he doesn’t know what to do with all the love that’s clawing its way out of his chest.
Neither of you planned for her. The world was already held together with threadbare hope and too many unknowns, and the idea of raising a child in it again? That felt reckless. Felt selfish. But she came anyway. Wild-haired and wide-eyed, with Joel’s mouth and your stubbornness.
Ellie is still in Jackson.
She and Dina have a little place two streets over, a raised garden bed full of runner beans and some stubborn tomatoes that refuse to ripen. Ellie was there the day before, she drops by more often now. She pretends it’s just to see the baby. Pretending that it’s not because she wants to hear Joel call her kiddo again, even though he only does it when he thinks she’s not paying attention.
The relationship between them, Joel and Ellie, is cautious, slow in the way that healing usually is. There are pauses in their conversations that used to be filled with fire and rage. Now it’s gentler—hollowed out in places, but steady. Ellie studies Joel when she thinks he’s not looking. Joel does the same. They’ve never talked again about Salt Lake. They don’t talk about the lie. But at least they’re talking.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Joel doesn’t talk much about it to you either. But you’ve caught him once or twice standing in the hallway after she leaves, his hand on the doorframe like he’s holding himself up.
The rocking chair lives by the window.
You remember when he started to build it.
He’d gone quiet for three days, disappearing into the shed after patrols. On day four, you went out and found him there, sweat-soaked and cursing, sanding down a curve with a reverence you’d never seen in him before. You leaned against the doorframe, taking him in for a moment before you spoke.
“You’re nesting,” you’d teased.
Joel looked over his shoulder, wiping the sweat from his brow, “Ain’t that what you’re supposed to be doing, darlin’?”
You rested a hand on your belly, “I am nesting,” you took a bite out of the apple in your hand, “the baby wanted apples,” you gestured to the work he’d already made on the raw wood, “you on the other hand, are… building furniture?”
“Guess I got the short end of that deal then.”
But he smiled when he said it. That soft, almost reluctant smile he only gave you.
He’d built it from salvaged timber—oak and maple, smoothed and varnished it until your fingertips had slid along the grain. He’d spent weeks on it. His fingers blistered, and he cursed words that had been new to you, but when he’d finally brought it inside and set it down, he’d looked so proud.
Scared, too.
“So, is this for me or the baby?” you’d asked as he’d placed it down in the living room.
Joel had paused, crouched to the floor before he stood to his full height, taking in the weight of the moment.
“Both of you,” he said, wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans, “all of us?” he ran a nervous hand through his hair, “Figure if I’m going to fuck it up, I might as well do it sittin’ down.”
You’d cried when she’d first fallen asleep in that chair, Joel’s calloused hand cradling her tiny spine, his lips at her temple whispering words just for her.
Now the chair is quiet. Now she sleeps without needing to be held. But sometimes you swear Joel rocks, just a little, even when there’s no weight in his arms.
Tonight, you’re lying in bed with Joel beside you, his breathing slow and steady. He never snores, though sometimes he talks in his sleep, mumbling strings of words and names that don’t make any sense, but somehow still manage to feel like a comfort.
Before he’d fallen asleep, he’d shifted, the bed protesting under the movement. He’d stared at you like he had been trying to memorize the lines of your face again, “You’re happy here?” he’d asked. No preamble, no softening.
You nodded, placing your makeshift bookmark between the pages of your book, “I am.”
There was a weighted pause, one that had you holding your breath.
He let out a sigh, “Me too.”
You took his hand in yours, your fingers intertwined. His hands are calloused and strong, and so, so, fucking careful with you. Always had been. Even when he was breaking apart in your bed, kissing you like he already thought he was going to hell, Joel Miller handled you like glass.
“I didn’t,” he said eventually. “Didn’t think I deserved this.”
You leaned into him, feeling the weight of him, solid and warm—it wasn’t a new topic, it’d come up before, always unpredictable.
“You do.”
Joel sighed again, but this time it was softer. Like surrender. Like he’s starting to believe you.
The next day, the porch step is still loose.
Second from the top. You’ve tripped over it three times this week, and every time, Joel mutters that he’ll fix it. That it’s on his list. You don’t remind him that this list of his has been growing for months now.
You also don’t want him to fix it.
That little groan of wood under your foot is how he knows you’re home. You hear the way the house stills, and how when you open the door, he’s there, the way the corner of his mouth pulls when he sees you. Like he still can’t quite believe you come back every time.
And maybe that’s fair. You still can’t quite believe he’s here either.
You make love in the dark.
It’s not frantic like it used to be, not desperation and a need to hold on to something, to tether yourself to something for fear of slipping away. Those nights were sharp-edged and teeth bared. Joel gritting out your name like it hurt him to say it. But this? This is something different. Something more.
He touches you like he’s trying to map you all over again, as if it’s the first time again. Like he’s still stunned you’re here. That you chose him.
His mouth moves slowly across your skin, each kiss devout, lingering. He murmurs things against your collarbone, your shoulder, the inside of your thigh. Nonsense, half-sentences, baby, and goddamn, and I missed you, even though he held you in that bed that morning.
Your back arches when he finally presses into you. It’s not rough. It’s not fast. He slides home like he belongs there, and maybe he does.
Your fingers curl into the broad muscle of his shoulder. He’s warm, solid, and shaking—just slightly, like he’s overwhelmed by how much he wants to be gentle.
“Joel,” you whisper, and he groans your name like it’s the only thing holding him to this earth.
“I’m here,” he breathes. “I got you.”
You kiss him, and he still tastes like whiskey and the cinnamon from the dessert you made after dinner. When you come, it’s quiet, gasped into his mouth. He follows soon after, forehead pressed to yours, his body heavy and sure above you.
He doesn’t move right away. Just stays there, inside you, wrapped around you, breathing hard. His heartbeat thudding against your chest.
“Stay,” you whisper, even though you know he’s not going to go anywhere.
“Always,” he says, and he means it.
He looks at you like you hung the damn moon.
The baby wakes at dawn.
You hear her before you feel Joel shift out of the bed. Her cries are half-hearted, still sleep heavy, but Joel was already up and pulling on the shirt he’d dropped to the floor last night.
“I’ll get her,” he says, voice rough with sleep as he places a warm kiss to your temple, “you sleep.”
You smile into the pillow, though mourning the loss of his warmth, “She’s probably hungry.”
Joel smiles to himself, already down the hallway, “I’ve got it.”
You hear him scoop her up, soft nonsense spoken in that slow, southern drawl. You hear the way she quiets when he holds her. You hear the kiss he presses to her cheek.
It hits you sometimes, out of nowhere—just how much he’s changed. Not the core of him. Not the fire or the fight at his soul. But the way he holds her? The way he carries her like she’s his redemption.
It undoes you.
And then—faint, tentative, but unmistakable—
the chair creaks.
Just once.
Like it remembers.
Like he does.
The house stills as if it’s holding its breath to allow them this moment.
You close your eyes, and smile.