Shannon nodded, saying, "I know, right? She loves it when Will takes off his shirt and cuddles her on his chest. You do realize that I'm going to be pregnant again within three months, don't you?"
"Whatever you do, don't take off your shirt," Erin said, stabbing a finger at me.
I loosened the buttons at my collar. "Are you sure about that? Skin-to-skin contact is outstanding for helping newborns regulate their body temperature."
"And ovulating on command," Shannon murmured.
"Shannon, take the baby," Erin said. "I need to talk to my husband."
"If I wasn't going to bring her back to my room and feed her now, I'd remind you that this is Froggie's nursery and no one kicks her out. We also have several other bedrooms, another family room on the fourth floor, and numerous walk-in closets," Shannon said as she settled the baby on her shoulder. "But we'll let it go this time."
Erin's gaze was fixed on mine, and though I'd expected to find her flustered and overwhelmed, she was calm. When the nursery door clicked shut behind Shannon and we were alone, I prowled toward Erin, gripping her hips and pinning her against the wall. "What's on your mind, lovely?"
"There's an old church, on an island off the Basque coast of Spain. They call it Gaztelugatxe, 'the stairs above the sea,'" she said, tracing the buttons down my shirt. "It was built in the tenth or eleventh century, and since then it's been attacked, burned, sacked. It's seen the Crusades, the Black Death, the Inquisition. It's been beat to shit, but it's always rebuilt."
"That's good," I said, nipping her jaw. "Can't let the bastards keep you down, right?"
"It's an island, but it's connected to the mainland by a narrow stone path," she said. "It looks like a long, thin wall that rose from the ocean floor to keep the island from drifting away, and even though wind and waves should've eroded it down by now, it's still standing. When you reach the church, you look out over everything—the hike from the mainland, the miles of sea and sky, the rocky shore—and it all seems improbable. Like none of it should have survived so much, and yet it has." She dragged her fingers through my hair and pulled me away from kissing her neck. "We shouldn't have survived, but we did."
"I told you we would," I said. "Love, and get your heart broken, and say fuck it, and love again and then again. Right? Isn't that it, Skip?"
"Yes, but…" Her voice trailed off, and she frowned at my chest. "But I don't think I can do the heartbreak thing again."
"Fuck no," I said, groaning. "That was awful."
She pouted, and it took all of my strength not to bite her lower lip. Then I thought better of that strength and bit her lip anyway.
"The next six months are going to be weird," she declared, her lips on my cheek. "I figure I can shuffle around my lab time. Between that, sessions at Oxford, and some of the conferences I'm attending, I can stay here while I'm working on my dissertation. I can stay with you."
I pulled back. I was certain I hadn't heard her correctly. All I could do was blink and breathe.
"And then, after my program is finished," she continued, seemingly unaware that she'd robbed me of words, "we need to find a place. Together, that is. We'll need more room for books, love. I'm sure we can find something in the same area so you're close to the hospital. Shannon said she'd be happy to help us—"
"You've already engaged Shannon's assistance," I sputtered.
"Is that okay?" she asked, her brows knitting together in concern. "She knows the market, and—"
I kissed her. Hard. A squeak sounded in the back of her throat and her head knocked against the wall and my thumbs were pressing into her cheekbones because she was staying. She was fuckingstaying.
"It's perfect," I breathed, my words spoken directly to her lips. "What about your research?"
She hummed, nodding. "There'll be research," she said. "Conferences, too. But we'll make it work for us, Nick. I think—I think I know what I want now. I think I get it."
My lips mapped her jaw, her cheeks, her eyelids. "What do you want, lovely?"
Her hands were on my shoulders, and a smile was tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I don't want to wait for our life to start," she said. "We've already—I've already—let so much time pass, but that ends here. We have this time, this totally inadequate time, and I want all of yours. I want birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, but I want the full moons and high tides, too."
"You can have them," I said. I couldn't look away from those green green green eyes if I tried.
"We should explore the world," she said. "That rural medicine program? The one in New Zealand? We should do that. We should get up and go and experience all of these things together because why the fuck not?"
"I'll take six months, a year, whatever," I said. "We can go to Madagascar, or wherever you want. I'll follow you anywhere."
"And I'll follow you." She tucked her hair behind her ears, taking a breath. "We should explore everything that we have right here, too. This family of ours, they're loud and nosy and opinionated, and none of that's about to change. But there are babies and weddings, and pedicures and farmers' markets, and those are adventures I don't want to miss. Not anymore."
"What changed for you?" I asked.
"I realized tonight that I don't need to stay away," she said. She squinted off into the distance, as if she didn't comprehend it herself. "And home, it's not a place. Not for me. It's people. It's you." She met my eyes and offered a shrug that told me she was as surprised about this as anyone. "Of course, all of this presumes that you want me and—"
