“I love it,” I breathe. “I…”
Christian pulls the piece of jewelry from the box and takes my left hand. With his eyes locked on mine, he slips it onto my ring finger. “Do you want me to ask again?”
Blinking so I can see him, I shake my head. “No,” I croak. “I like our first proposal. I want to keep that one.”
“Yeah?” His eyes redden.
I nod and admire the way my ring looks on my skinny finger. “Yeah,” I rasp. “Marriage is a forever thing, Christian.”
The corner of his mouth lifts into a half smile. “So are you,” he says. “You are everything to me. Everything I am is you, Lana. This house is for you. This ring is for you. My head, my heart, my body, my soul—everything is for you. And now it’s for this baby.”
“You didn’t want kids once,” I whisper, teasing him with a poke on his chest.
“That was before I loved you. Before I knew what love was and that our family didn’t have to be like mine.”
“It doesn’t.” I shake my head and cradle his gorgeous face. “Your heart is bigger than you think, Christian. Look at everything you’ve done for me. You called yourself damaged oncebut you never were. Look at this house. Look at us. Look atyou.”I choke on my tears. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I love you so much,” he breathes before he is on top of me and between my legs, kissing me. “We’re going to have a baby.”
I nod and he presses his forehead to mine. “Yeah. Is that okay?” I ask one more time.
“It’s perfect,” he breathes before he sniffles. I reach up for his lips but before I can, he removes himself from between my legs and walks away muttering, “I’m going to look at nursery ideas.”
I gape, half smiling. “Christian!”
My fiancé comes back with his laptop open, a smile on his face, and sits beside me. Smiling, I nestle into his side and look at the screen. “Are you on my Pinterest account right now?”
Christian starts a new board and titles itBaby #1. I snort and he’s already scrolling and adding photos. And this is how we spend the rest of our afternoon—finding ideas for a nursery and landing on the colors yellow and sage green for a subtle nature theme.
Then we order take out and eat on our comfortable couch in perfect bliss, laughing and already talking about names. Tomorrow, I’ll make an appointment with my doctor and we’ll move along with our ideas because we have everything we’ve ever wanted.
And it is all because of that silly little house jar.
Christian
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
THREE YEARS LATER
Lana walks like a penguin these days, and I really do try not to laugh. Sometimes I can’t help it though because it’s really cute. But other than cuteness, pregnancy has had its toll on her in a painful way.
With our first baby, it was her blood pressure. With our second, it’s gestational diabetes, her back, and a sore body with a prescription of bed rest until birth. After many conversations with the doctor, we might need a C-section for our second daughter. And it terrifies me more than it does Lana.
I've kept my fears for myself recently so I don’t scare her too much. I speak about them in therapy mostly. Lana knows where my head goes when I remember the C-section. I might have done it to myself when I read aboutaccidentsduring surgery. I don’t like it at all.
But Lana and I have decided that after our second, we’re done. And I don’t want to see her go through another painful pregnancy. She swears she’s okay every time I look at her orask, but I can see it in her face and the way she walks sometimes—especially if she’s avoiding weight on a particular leg or if she’s wincing a lot without realizing she’s doing it. She thinks she has a poker face when it comes to pain.
I’ve started showering with her so I can help her reach. I scrub her back, her legs, her feet. And sometimes she sits on the stool in the shower so I can bathe her instead. It hurts to see her that way, always in pain.
“Scream if you need me, okay?” I say through the bathroom door after helping my wife inside to pee.
“Yes, baby!” Lana says back so I walk away, reluctantly.
Walking away from our first floor bathroom, I find my baby.
Aaliyah, our two and a half year old daughter, is leaving handprints on the back sliding doors, staining the glass with yellow paint. She was supposed to be finger painting on the white papers discarded on the floor. I turn my back for one minute, I swear.
“Daddy!”
