Hunter's fingers ran along the rim of Katherine's belly like those of a blind man reading a face. In the past few weeks, it had begun to grow, swelling beyond what Kat could hide in the nakedness of her room. She liked when Hunter touched her like this. He often did, especially since he found out she was pregnant, sweeping his hands over her belly and breasts, a smile tweaking her lips.

She'd let him make the discovery, watched as, dry-mouthed, Hunter noticed the growth of her stomach but feared bringing it up. "Can I ask you something?" he'd started several times before he'd finally come out with the question. Kat had feigned surprise, given him the act of an innocent, as though the thought hadn't crossed her mind, as though she hadn't noticed the other effects of pregnancy in the months since their first encounter. He'd believed it. Believed that it was his baby. It only made his fingers hunger to feel her, his cock thirst to enter her.

Kat had thought that the pregnancy would scare him away. That had been the plan, anyway. But it hadn't. Kat didn't have it in her to tell him to leave. It was easier to let him stay and slip into her bed now and then when thoughts of labor, thoughts of her father, became too much. Hunter was not quite her boyfriend but not quite nothing either.

"Are you going to keep it?" he'd asked her.

"I have to keep it," she told him. She had to. She promised.

Ever since she'd allowed Hunter to become a regular excursion, ever since she'd allowed herself to be seen with him at the movies, at the cafeteria, everywhere, ever since she let him hold her hand, Kat had been thinking about what it would be like if it had been Hunter's child. Or if the child had never come to her. If Adam had never... 

Now, in the darkness of her dorm on the eve of winter break, Adam dominated her mind.

Kat wasn't sure about how she felt about their coming reunion. When first she came to the school, she wanted nothing but to be home with him. The college was foreign, dirty. The farm was familiar and, if not clean, then it had the right kind of stench. An in-the-open kind. Here, the scent of Lysol covered it up, but the smell from years of occupancy was still there.

The longer she'd lived at the college, though, the more she had come to think of it as a second home. The more she gave herself to frat parties and the boy in her bed, the farther away Adam seemed to be.

Do I still love him? Kat thought.

It was a dream, being with Adam. A guilty dream she'd dreamed since her mother died. A dream that soured when he married her stepmother. 

Do I still want it?

It was just the anticipation making her nervous. That was all.

She could banish the butterflies kicking in her belly by filling herself with Hunter.

His seed was still leaking away between her legs from nearly an hour earlier when first he'd slipped down the hall and into her room.

Hunter's hand embraced Kat's throat and passed to her face. In the darkness, he touched her chin, her lips, her nose. She felt his lips close over hers and returned the kiss, feeling passion through his tongue.

"Are you okay?" Hunter asked. He asked too often, but it was endearing. No one else had ever been so attentive.

"I'm great," Kat forced a smile that faded as she pulled him back to her lips.

Hunter rolled half on top of her, throwing an arm and a leg over her body. He was heavy with sleep, but she could feel his dick between her thighs, the slow gyration of his hips as he worked himself back to hardness. Kat reached down and found the head of his cock. She rubbed it gently with her thumb. He kissed her eagerly.

"Katherine," he whispered.

Kat felt him growing on her palm and slid her hand up and down the shaft.

"Can you go again?"

Hunter shifted his weight between Kat's legs. She felt his boyish stubble scrape past her breast as his mouth closed around a nipple. For a moment, she was reminded of the rough, seeking hands of her father. Pushing the association away, Kat stretched her hands around his back to feel his firm ass.

Even in the pitch darkness, Kat felt Hunter's curtained eyes boring into her as he entered her.

***

I waited all day for the car, finding excuses to stand by the living room window and gaze out at the street. 

"She'll be here," Agatha had teased when she caught me. "I know you don't like her on the road in this, but she'll be here."

The snow had started early in the morning, turning the trees into ghostly sentinels and the pavements to ice. At first, it was only a dusting. By lunchtime, the plows had come through three times to keep it off the ground and I'd been out there time and time again shoveling the drive clear.

"Can't a father worry about his child?" I'd said, wanting to say, Can't a man worry about the mother of his child? She said this friend of hers is from Texas. She won't know how to drive in the snow."

Still, four long hours passed before anything but snow swept down the road. When finally the red station wagon came to rest in our driveway, I hurried out onto the porch. It was Katherine, cheeks flaming from cold, bundled in layers of coats and jackets. 

A boy stepped out of the driver's seat, looked at me, waved, and went back to the trunk. I knew that wave, the awkward greeting of a boy meeting his girl's father for the first time.

No, I thought. Not that.

Katherine saw me looking and a smile came across her face, untroubled. I felt a burning in my belly. I'd thought her friend was a woman.

She darted over to me through the swirling snow and threw herself into my arms, chilling my fears away to nothing. 

"Hi, daddy," she said, planting a kiss on my cheek. I returned it, feeling her cold cheek on my lips.

"It's good to see you, baby," I said under my breath.

"You too."

Kat pulled just away from me, locking her eyes to mine. I held her there for a moment as the boy clomped up the porch steps with Kat's suitcase. I released her and took it from him.

"Thanks for bringing her home," I said. I hoped that I didn't sound too defensive.

Kat wove an arm through mine.

"Of course," he said. "Happy to do it."

"Daddy," Kat said. "This is Hunter. He's a friend."

I extended a hand and Hunter grasped it. I could feel the strength in his arm. He was handsome, tall. I weighed him like a rival.

"Nice to meet you, sir," he said.

I let his hand go and opened the door to let them both in. Kat kept close to me as though to reassure me of her allegiance. I watched her from behind as she went into the house, trying to detect a new curve, a hint of the pregnancy I'd seen only in her few risked photographs. Even in the warmth of the living room, Kat kept her coat on, covering herself. I felt my heart leap. 

If she's showing, we can tell Agatha. I can keep her home. I was thinking only of keeping her from the boy.

"Hi, mom," Kat was saying, wrapping her arms around her stepmother. Hunter stood awkwardly in the doorframe. 

Leave, I wanted to say.

Agatha drew him farther into the house, playing the host, getting his name, asking about his people.

"How much farther do you have to go?" she asked Hunter.

"Another hundred miles," he said. "I have familiy in Philidelphia. They're taking me the rest of the way."

My wife turned to me.

"We can't send him out in this," she said.

The burning was still roiling in my stomach. I watched them both. The flash of Kat's eyes. The way Hunter shifted on the spot. Clenched my teeth. Who is he to her? I was desperate to ask her, desperate to get her alone and press her up against a wall with a kiss, to feel our child inside of her.

"Of course not," I said. "Stay the night. We have a guest room."

I punctuated the last two words with a hard look. Hunter didn't meet my eyes when he thanked me.

***

The clatter in the kitchen told us that Hunter had offered to help Agatha with the dinner clean-up, leaving Kat and me alone in the living room. All through dinner, Hunter had seemed nervous, shooting glances first at Katherine, then at me. Kat was as cool as anything with him, too casual.

I looked over at her on the couch beside me, clutching a hot chocolate spiked with whiskey. She was staring into the flames of the woodstove, blue eyes reflecting orange and yellow. Her whole face was alive with the flame of her warmth. She was beautiful.

"Do you remember last winter?" I said. "We all slept out here because of the cold."

"I remember it not being quite so cold," she grinned at me.

I brushed my hand across her face to push back a strand of blond hair.

"I wanted you that night," I said. Even though our relationship had long since gone past it, I felt a lump in the back of my throat admitting it.

It was properly snowing now, not like that night a year gone when Kat and I had slept together, nearly naked.

Kat smirked and snuggled into my shoulder. "I know."

I looked back through the bar window to the kitchen. Agatha had her back turned, stacking plates on a high shelf. Hunter was looking out the far window.

I raised Kat's chin and kissed her lightly. She tasted like chocolate and bourbon. Her eyes darted to the kitchen. Then, she placed a hand on my cheek and kissed me again, deeper this time. I felt the wire-framed bra through her thick sweater. We broke apart and fell into silence.

Kat sipped from her hot chocolate and stared into the fire. I watched her.

Finally, I had to ask.

"Who is the boy?" I asked.

Kat hesitated.

"I never meant for him to drive me," she said. "Lisa decided not to go today because of the snow and he offered."

I waited.

"I thought people should see me with someone," she said quietly.

Though I had expected it, my stomach lurched violently. For a moment, I thought I was really going to empty my stomach. The burning in my belly was a storm now, a fit of jealousy rising through my chest and into my throat. I swallowed it and remembered all of those cold autumn nights with Agatha. Mornings too.

I'd been keeping up appearances with her. And filling the void Katherine had left behind.

"Daddy?" she said. "Are you okay?"

"What does he think you are?" I asked her. "Does he know?"

"I told him he's the father," Kat said. "Now, no one will suspect, right? We're safe."

The anger was still there. I wanted to take her over my knee and thrash her, belt her until she cried. I wanted to ground her. And then I wanted to beat her boy bloody. But I let the feelings cool.

"But you've broken it off with him," I said.

Her silence and the blush creeping up her neck gave my answer.

"You'll have to when we pull you out of school," was all I could say.

The flush deepened.

"There's something else I wanted to tell you," Kat said, finally.

Hunter came into the room with a bottle of wine and a tray of glasses. He smiled at Katherine and set it all down on the coffee table. I felt Katherine pull away from me, as though she'd been caught out.

As I poured the wine, I watched the pair of them talking out of the corner of my eye. They, too, spoke as though they shared a secret.

***

I stared into the darkness of my room, Agatha breathing easily beside me. The snow had fallen well into the night in great, unending flakes that now blanketed the house in silence. I wanted to creep into Katherine's room and hold her, feel the curve of her belly, and know that she was mine. The mask of the snow would protect us.

But I knew, too, that with strangers in the house, we were just as likely to be caught. Kat had already been skittish with me--on the couch and earlier when I caught her coming out of the shower.

Hunter and Agatha were in the other room, making uncomfortable small talk. When I heard the shower hiss off and the bathroom door open, I made an excuse and met her, dripping and naked, in the hall. Her hair was slicked back and her towel was pulled up over her breasts. Through the thin towel, I could see the changes to her body. Before she could protest, I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her. She slipped her tongue into my mouth.

"Daddy," she'd warned, pressing her head into my chest. "Be careful."

I pushed her against the wall and kissed her harder.

"I want you," I told her, slipping a finger into the knot of her towel and pulling it loose.

She stifled a giggle and rushed to cover herself.

"In here," she hissed. "Quick!"

Only when she'd tugged me into her room did she drop the towel, letting me see her pale, naked skin for the first time since she'd gone away.

For a moment, I only stood there, drinking her in. She watched my eyes and bit her lower lip, fingers wandering together across her gently curving belly. Beneath her heavy coats and sweaters, she might have just put on a little weight, but in nothing but her skin--goose-pimpling in the sharp winter air of her childhood bedroom--it was unmistakable life. Already swelling breasts perked above a new roundness.

"What did you want to tell me?" I said, remembering as though remembering a dream.

"Later," she said. "Touch me, daddy."

My fingers on the familiar touch of a pregnant belly brought me back years to her mother's first pregnancy and Katherine's. My beautiful girls. We kissed in the silence of her room for a long time, my fingers rediscovering her body, before a sudden bark of laughter in the living room brought me back to reality. 

Now, I lie beside my sleeping wife with Kat's golden figure burned into my mind like a ghostly after image, a temptress calling me across the hall. I slipped a hand below the blankets to find myself hard for her.