I.
Love.
Him.
That’s what I’m thinking as the last beat hits, closing out the song.
That I love him and I will love him forever and there was never a way that my life would go that I couldn’t love him.
Cash hands the microphone back to Beck.
Levi and Tripp and Davis all grin at each other, and then Levi—the one guy who went solo after the band broke up—lifts his mic first. “Well. That was fun. You bring a good crowd, Aspen. Look at this.”
The crowd roars again.
“Take it off,” Tillie Jean yells.
All five of the men and Aspen look at her.
So do the security team lining the stage beyond a rope that we’re behind.
She whistles and repeats herself. “Take it all off!”
“Who let Cooper’s sister in?” Tripp asks. “Can we get security?”
“Hey, no security, I like Cooper,” Beck says. “You guys like Cooper? You know, Cooper Rock? Baseball player? About my height? Big ego? Hot bat? Crazy gymnastics at second base?”
Tillie Jean mock gags while the crowd goes positively nuts.
Tripp snickers.
Davis snickers.
Cash snickers.
“Yeah, that guy,” Beck says. “Pretty cool wife too. I hear you guys know her.”
The crowd roars.
“You’re not saying some baseball player has the better wife, are you?” Levi says to Beck.
“What? No way. My wife is the best. She runs this science blog called Must Love Bees, and it’s epic.”
“Also, she lives with you,” Cash says. “That earns her points for…something.”
“She doesn’t just live with me, man. She’s having our third baby.”
Annika screams.
Tillie Jean screams.
The entire arena screams.
My eyes burn hotter.
More babies. More babies in Shipwreck.
“Don’t tell my in-laws I told you,” Beck adds. “They don’t know yet.”
