My laugh caused our lips to part. Holding my hand out, I gestured to the ring on my finger.
“Oh that. Shoot, yes.”
He pulled the ring from my finger and opened his hand. Two rings sat in it, and I creased my brows, reaching out to touch them.
“Needed to improve on the original,” he said, wrapping the two bands around my ring so they formed a circle of diamonds around the one.
As he slipped them on my ring finger, nerves tingled along my spine. Never had I imagined I would find him again, and we would be at this point. I’d dreamed of finding him and telling him off when I stopped crying, but once Reid was born, the emotions cleared, and I couldn’t free myself of him. Reid was a constant reminder of him, and the hollow space in my chest was another. But never had I dreamed this moment would happen.
“Did she say yes?”
I looked up to see everyone looking out at us from the deck.
“They all knew?” I asked him.
He gave me a shrug, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Yes!”
A cheer rang out, and within moments, I saw a small bundle come running toward us. Reid ran to Gabe, who picked him up and spun him around just like he had me.
“We’re going to be a family,” he squealed, and Gabe laughed.
“We already were,” he said, nuzzling Reid’s nose.
Tears sprang, flowing too easily, and Reid reached for me. I took him from Gabe and gave him a big hug.
“Mommy and Daddy.” It still left me speechless how he called Gabe that so easily, as if he’d been saying it his entire life. The change had come after Gabe took him out for the day, and I had cried the first time I heard him say it.
“And Reid,” Gabe added.
He giggled. “And me.”
We walked back to the house. There were hugs and tears and threats from Cash before he patted Gabe on the back and pulled him into a hug. Even Liv seemed unusually happy. I thought it might be the glasses of wine, but when she gave me an awkward hug, I suspected it wasn’t. She wasn’t much for showing affection, I’d been around her enough to see that, so I took that hug and catalogued it with the image of Reid sitting between her and Gabe while we watched the movie. I exchanged looks with Gabe every time Reid called her Auntie Liv, and her lips twitched while she tried to maintain her scowl.
The sound of Reid bursting into our room had my eyes flying open and Gabe tugging the sheets up over us. My parents had let us share a room this time, and Gabe had taken full advantage of that hospitality by making me into putty as he repeatedly brought rapture to my body. Celebrating, he had called it, but whatever it was, I wasn’t so sure the exhaustion that followed would make for a functional Christmas morning.
As Reid jumped on the bed, and Gabe grumbled, I was certain he hadn’t expected the childlike wonder that came with Christmas morning nor the early morning hours that accompanied it.
“Why do you never have your clothes on for sleepovers?” Reid asked, jumping on the bed so that I had to sit up and grab him before he went toppling.
“Because this is a grown-up sleepover,” Gabe explained, wiping his eyes. He reached over and looked at his phone. “Why are you up so early?”
“Santa came!”
“Welcome to parenthood,” I told Gabe, giving him a kiss on the cheek and pulling the blanket around me so I could stand. “Did you wake Grandma and Grandpa?”
“Shelby is.”
“Why don’t you go wake your Auntie Liv while we get dressed?” Gabe said with a sly grin.
“Okay.” He scooted off the bed and ran out the door, leaving it wide open.
I walked over and closed it just as Gabe’s hand yanked my blanket from me. “There’s no time for that,” I scolded him.
“There’s always time for that. Besides, Liv sleeps like a rock. It’ll take him a while to get her up.”
“That’s not nice, sending our son in to wake her. She’s just warming up to this, and you’re tormenting her.”
“She deserves it. I have plenty of paybacks from when we were little.” He yanked me to him, and I heard Liv’s shriek from down the hall.
