She swallowed hard. “You’re serious,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “Serious about…” She waved toward the window, quietly gathering everything—the sea, the house, us—into the permanence we’d earned. “Why?”
My hands shifted to her waist, and I fit her against my chest. “I’ve spent too many months leaving you. I’m not doing that again.”
“Are you sure about all this? I mean, we haven’t—”
“Don’t even start with that shit, peanut,” I interrupted. “I am going to marry you so hard you won’t remember your maiden name. I’m going to love you and protect you, and I’m going to put up with your brothers and the violent citrus-throwing, too. You better get used to it because I’m here to stay.”
At first, I thought I was she was crying when her shoulders started jostling. Then, I felt her laughter vibrating against my sternum. “Your proposals are about as good as my compliments.”
Shaking my head, I pulled her closer. “It’s not like you want roses and champagne, peanut,” I said. “Was that ayes?”
“No,” she said, looking up at me with her dark, dark green eyes. “It was afuck yes and let’s christen our house now.”
Epilogue
SHANNON
Nine months later
Iwoke upalone.
I was exhausted, and needed a few more hours of sleep, but I hated lying there alone. And I had to pee. Again.
After heaving myself out of bed and hitting the bathroom, I changed into a sundress and headed down to the kitchen. Even though I had the air conditioner cranked as cool as it would go, this early autumn heat wave was hotter than Satan’s balls.
“That better not be my wife on the back stairs. I’ve repeatedly told her that she’s not allowed on those stairs alone, and if she’s out of bed and on those stairs, she’s not going to like the consequences.”
I stopped and pressed a hand to my lower back. This baby was rearranging my bones and organs, and his father’s voice only got him fired up.
We found out I was pregnant in March when I went to the doctor after a weeklong stomach virus wouldn’t quit. As it turned out, the virus was a tiny human and Will’s commando sperm was no match for my birth control pills. When the surprise of it all wore off, he was exceptionally pleased with himself and his apparent virility.
The ultimate commando tactic.
I, on the other hand, freaked the fuck out. I didn’t feel ready or qualified, and I didn’t know how I’d manage something so delicate and important. The nausea and exhaustion of the first trimester hit me hard, but once I turned the corner into the second trimester, it was slightly more manageable. Slightly.
I stopped worrying about whether we were prepared, and surrendered to the fact that there wasn’t one right time. My life wasn’t composed of scripted moments. There were many things I could control—and I did—but everything else was out of my hands.
“What are you doing on the fucking stairs?” Will asked from the landing. I still hated seeing fresh surgical scars on his shoulder, those sharp red lines marring his golden skin, but it was the price for alleviating the pain and regaining some feeling in his fingers.
“Froggie is kicking the shit out of my bladder,” I said. “Also, I’m starving.”
Will jogged toward me, climbing two steps at a time, and put both hands on my belly when he reached me. “Froggie, we talked about this,” he whispered. “You have to go easy on Mama.” Another kick landed beneath his hand, and his eyes widened. “My girl’s got some swimmer’s legs.”
“This is not a girl,” I said, gesturing to the planet under my dress. We decided to wait until Froggie made his or her arrival to discover the sex, although Will thought he saw a penis during the last sonogram. It was a leg. “This is an eight-year-old boy. I’m giving birth to a preteen.”
He smiled up at me while massaging my bump. The shiny glint of his wedding band still caught me off guard, like a star I didn’t expect to see in the sky. We took the ferry to Montauk in January, got married, and spent the weekend at Kaisall’s house. We shared the news before returning to the city, and it set off a small firestorm of congratulations and some very loud grumbling from the family and friends who weren’t invited. Which was all of them.
But a secret weekend was the only way for us.
“Let’s get you fed. Then we’ll talk about you hiking through a damn construction site while seven months pregnant.”
He took my hand, and placed his other on the small of my back. Part of the Galloupes Point house that we called home was still under construction, but the master bedroom, kitchen, and his-and-hers offices were finished. Froggie’s room was next, although…I still didn’t like the idea of him sleeping all the way down the hall. I wanted to reach over in the middle of the night and feel the rise and fall of his tiny—or not so tiny, such that I was enormous—chest.
“How’s the water?” I asked, gazing at Will’s bare back.
His hair was wet and he was wearing board shorts that hung from his narrow hips in a way that was nearly obscene. And I was good with obscene. Not long after we moved in, the ladies in our neighborhood discovered that Will hit the waves with the sunrise every morning. He accumulated a considerable audience, and they didn’t even pretend they weren’t lusting all over my husband.
They could look, but I was the only one to touch.
