A/N: Happy New Year everyone! Today marks the start of my fifth year of this Lucaya Project. This year's project will be a sequel to last year's story, carrying along with the narrative of the past three years, and like previous years, there will be a new chapter a day. Hope you enjoy it!

Texas Series
1. A Hart in Texas (2017)
2. Our Brand New Years (2018)
3. Endings, Beginnings, and the Journey in Between (2019)
4...

FIRSTS OF MANY

January 1st 2020

Chapter 1
Their House of Family

For near as long as they had been big enough to do so, Maya's young sisters had made a habit of sneaking into her room in the morning, whenever she and Lucas would be spending the night in the room which had been hers, and then theirs, and then hers all over again. They had gotten much better at being sneaky, that had to be handed to them, though the expectation had a way of spoiling that surprise. Maya would always play along, and so would he. Only this time…

This was the first night the two of them spent at the Hunter Hart house as residents of Austin. Two weeks had gone by since Zay and Nadine's wedding, and as they'd quickly decided, they had packed up and left Houston three weeks ahead of their original plan. As little as they looked forward to leaving their friends behind any sooner than they had to, they really just wanted to make it to Austin already, to be near their families again, to get started settling up to move into the house… Maybe it was the fact that they were now engaged to be married, making them want to maintain this traction into their future.

Lucas had been hypnotized, looking at that ring on her finger as she slept, curled up at his side. The morning was hitting the diamond in such a way as to unlock its array of colors. Just like her, full of brightness, full of colors… The previous day, getting everything on to the rented truck, saying goodbye to everyone, unloading everything… She'd been spent, and now here she was, sleeping like a stone, enabling him to lay here and watch her. His fiancée… It still felt like a dream a lot of the time, that night when he'd proposed, but then there'd be the ring, proof of reality.

Also their parents, inquiring at every turn in their 'subtle' ways after their plans, but mostly the ring.

In the stillness of morning, any sounds in the house became amplified, and always the telltale sign of an approaching visitor would be the slow, deliberately 'covert' steps coming down the stairs. Lucas heard them now, and in an effort to allow Maya to sleep on, he quietly got up and moved to the door, pulling it silently open just in time to find three-year-old MJ Hunter standing there with his small hand in the air, about to reach for the handle which now found itself out of his grasp. He gasped, caught.

"She's sleeping, okay?" Lucas whispered, holding his index to his lips. The blond boy looked around him, to the bed. After he'd spotted his sister and confirmed as much, he looked unable to decide what he might do next. Lucas motioned for him to step back a bit before stepping out and shutting the door again. "Anyone else up?" What time was it?

"Mommy and Haley are upstairs, Daddy went with Nellie and Gracie," the boy informed him.

"Went where?"

"Pancakes," MJ declared with a surge of anticipation which Lucas took to mean Shawn had taken the twins to pick up breakfast for everyone rather than a sit-down meal just the three of them.

"Ma Maggie's?" Lucas guessed, and MJ nodded before looking to the closed door. He still wanted to see his big sister, and knowing her, Maya wouldn't care so much about missing a few minutes' sleep when someone wanted her attention and that someone was family. "Alright, come on, but we stay quiet, yeah?" Lucas whispered. MJ agreed at once.

It was just after ten in the morning, as Lucas finally established when he led Maya's young brother back into the room. No wonder they were the last to rise.

Lucas lifted up the boy and deposited him next to Maya, where he sat on his knees and stared at her like he wasn't sure what to do next. Seconds later, very suddenly, an arm swiped up to capture him and he had his vow of silence pushed out of him in favor of giggles.

"Hey, Sneak," Maya mumbled, cuddling her brother near.

She had so been looking forward to this, so much that it defied words. They didn't know exactly how long they would be staying here before officially moving into the house. It wasn't about the place being ready or not. She'd only really wanted to spend some time with her family, with her family, after having been far off in Houston the past four years. She'd left having two siblings here and she'd returned with twice as many. MJ and Haley weren't strangers, nor was she one to them, but then it wasn't the same as with the twins, was it? She'd needed this time with them, and Lucas, being Lucas, had been all for it. So, they were living here, for now, and until they both felt ready to go.

"We're eating pancakes!" MJ tipped his head back until he could see Maya's face.

"You mean we're having pancakes, while you, Matty J, go stacking up potato wedges in a tower that you'll gobble all up before you remember you have pancakes and then you won't be hungry anymore," she squinted at him with founded suspicion. Her brother, looking more and more like their mother and her every day, tried and failed to cover his urge to laugh.

"Do not!"

"Do, too!" Maya countered, leading to a few more rounds back and forth before Maya called on Lucas to give the verdict. He came and sat on the bed.

"Bunch of potatoes, bunch of rolls, you two are set."

"Hey, hey, you didn't have to pull me into this!" Maya 'complained,' making her brother laugh again.

A few minutes later, Lucas went off with MJ so the two of them could take the dogs for a walk. Maya bowed out, blaming post-move aches.

"Lazy morning?" She lifted her head from where she still lay on the bed, taking in the sunshine of that June morning. Her mother stood in the door, one-year-old Haley perched in her arms.

"Moving is hard," Maya sighed over-dramatically.

"Motion or relocation?" her mother teased, approaching her. Haley grew fidgety in her arms, and finally Katy held her youngest to her eldest, who happily received her.

"All of it," Maya smiled, sitting up with her baby sister, running her fingers through her fine hair. She could feel her thoughts shifting, sliding into the place she'd been evading since the previous morning.

"Hey, what's going on in there?" her mother asked. Maya looked up, feeling her mother's finger prodding at the side of her head.

"Oh, so many things," Maya hummed. Katy sat with her, smiling as they both watched Haley drag her tiny finger along the shapes tattooed on her sister's forearm.

"What's the headliner?" Katy asked. She didn't even have to say it. She looked at her mother, and it must have been all over her face. "Are you sure?"

"I'm not, actually. That's kind of the thing, and I just… We went through this once before and it… it really messed with us for a while. I've been going around with a… a possibility since yesterday. Right now it could be nothing again, or…"

"Or it could be…" Katy breathed out, looking to her daughters before getting up. "Come with me," she moved out of the room. Maya blinked, startled.

"Wait!" she moved to rise, holding Haley with care. "Where's she going, huh?" she asked the girl as she stepped out and saw that their mother was going up the stairs. By the time she got to the top of the stairs, Katy was out of sight. "Mom?"

"Bathroom!" She reached the door just as her mother stood back up from fishing something out of the cabinet. "Here," she held out the box.

"I…" Maya hesitated. "Do you just keep a stock of pregnancy tests or something?"

"Just had the one left," Katy shrugged. "Take it, use it. You know how." Maya squinted at her.

"I do," she confirmed. "But I… I don't know," she shook her head.

"Do you want to wait for Lucas…"

"No," Maya cut in, taking the box. "If it's negative, I don't…"

"Okay… okay. Here," Katy took Haley back. "I'll be downstairs, unless you want me to wait out there."

"I'll be fine," Maya smiled. "Thanks."

"Always."

Shutting the bathroom door, Maya let out a sigh, pressing her forehead to the wood. She wasn't even worried about what would happen if the test came positive. She had her degree, but she didn't have a teaching job yet, so it wouldn't have been the worst timing, though it might alter a thing or two about the wedding. And Lucas… Lucas would be over the moon. It was the negative that worried her, remembering what it was like, three years ago. She didn't want to go through something like that again.

Would she though? They'd done plenty of growing, him and her, since that Halloween night, and things were different. They were just moving back, preparing to start new things, to move into their house, to get married… If that test came out positive then they'd just add having a baby to that list. And if it came negative, well… then it just wouldn't be the time, not yet. She repeated as much to herself, once and again, tearing the test box open.

She didn't have to tell Lucas. He already knew, guessed that she suspected it at least. Much as she'd tried to be covert about it, the day before, he could tell she was trying to be careful about lifting things, making it seem like she was participating in the move more than she actually did. And he'd recognized the look on her face. He hadn't said anything, didn't want to get ahead of wherever she was in her thoughts.

But then when he came back from walking with the dogs and MJ, when he saw her again, he found a new look on her face, a shift in her posture. The doubt was gone. She wasn't pregnant.

She looked good, took it better than three years before. He guessed she wasn't going to tell him, but he understood why she wouldn't, and that was her choice. So long as she was okay, he was, too.

"Hey," he gave her foot a tap under the table after breakfast was over. "What do you want to do today?" Maya planted her chin in her palm, considering the question.

"It's a beautiful day, not too hot… It'd be a shame to waste it. We could go to the pool."

"Pool sounds good," Lucas nodded.

"And if we happened to make a detour at the hardware store before or after, I mean…"

"More colors?"

"A girl can never have enough," she declared with a meek smile.

"I think if you want more you'll have to invent them yourself at this point," he smiled back. She grinned.

"Now that's a job I'd like. Naming colors, for swatches, you know? Wouldn't make a lick of sense but you'd want that color on your walls because it'd sound fun."

"What would you call… this?" Lucas pointed to his shirt. She sat back, considering the green fabric.

"Oh, that's a tough one… Could be a turtle, or a lime, or something… springy…" Lucas chuckled, making a springing motion with his hand. "No, like the season," she laughed along.

"Think you're on to something then," he agreed. Silence regained for a beat, and in that moment, looking to one another, it felt like letting walls down, momentarily, long enough to allow room for honesty.

I thought we were…

I know. Are you okay?

Completely okay.

"Can't wait until Sam comes around," Maya smiled. "I was thinking you and I could drive up to Tucson to get him, day after Haley's birthday."

"Road trip…" Lucas nodded. "I like the sound of that. Maya beamed.

"No summer complete without one."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners