“Yeah, I’m going to miss it here, though, I think. Havenridge has been a home to us for a little while now.”
“I think you’ll find it was the company more than the village. Don’t get me wrong, this place is okay, but there are much nicer ones, safer ones, too.”
“You don’t have a home somewhere you want to go back to, Indy?” I ask him.
He shakes his head before looking down at me with a smile. “I already told you, my love, my home is with you.”
“I love you, Indy,” I tell him as I turn to face him, my hands sliding up his hard chest. “These last few weeks have been the best of my life, hands down. I think that I’m just a little scared to lose the bubble we’ve been in here. Waking up with the three of you every morning, spending our days and nights together…” I trail off, not sure how to end that.
“Sugar, they’ve meant so much to me, too. But don’t feel sad, we’re not splitting up. We’ll continue our adventure on the roadnow.”
“I know, I’m just afraid of things changing between us, I can’t lose you Indy, any of you.”
“You couldn’t if you tried,” he says, dipping his head to press his lips to mine. My fingers tighten in his shirt as I open my mouth for him. He wraps his arms around me and I lose all sense of where we are, loving the feeling of him holding me, keeping me safe. We slowly ease away from each other, and he asks, “Ride with me first?”
I smile and nod up at him, causing him to smile back.
We decided to take the wagon, pulled by two horses, with two drivers, and two additional horses for the other two men to ride. Any fewer horses and it would be too much weight for them to pull, any more, and it would mean bringing more water for the additional horses too. They said I could rotate between the two riders and the wagon, as I am a lot lighter than them.
They said they had camels in this world, too, which would have been far better for crossing the desert with, but they were unable to locate any nearby.
“Everyone ready?” Silver asks, climbing on the second horse as Brax and Ry head to the front of the wagon. Everyone agrees as Indy lifts me effortlessly onto his horse, before climbing on behind me. Silver offers to take the lead, and Indy and I take the rear to make sure nothing happens to the wagon on our journey.
After a couple hours, I start to get bored of the constant trees around us, they all start to look the same. I decide it’s a good time to get to know more about my husband.
“Indy, will you tell me about your childhood?”
“My childhood?”
“Yeah, I want to know more about you, tell me some stories about you as a kid.”
“Hmm… Well, as you know, I grew up with Apollo. As our parents weren’t the kindest towards him, we tended to keep to ourselves. There was a beautiful pond not far from our home, and we’d often spend our free time there, swimming and jumping off the waterfall.”
“Wow, that sounds amazing.”
“Do you know how to swim?”
“Yes, I love swimming,” I tell him.
“Good,” he says, kissing the top of my head from where he sits behind me. “We’ll have to go swimming together one day.”
“Oh, yes! We could play Marco polo!”
“Marco polo, what’s that?”
“It’s a game played in the water, someone is ‘it’ and they keep their eyes closed and yell out ‘Marco!’ and everyone else has to reply ‘polo’, and without opening their eyes, they have to use their other senses to find one of the others. When they touch them, then that person becomes ‘it’.”
“Sounds a little dangerous with their eyes closed.”
“Nah, the others make sure they’re okay. It’s normally played in swimming pools, though, which is a bit safer than a pond.”
“A swimming pool?”
“Yeah, it’s like a pond that you build in your own backyard, there are no plants or fish in it though.”
“Interesting. Will you tell me about your brother, if you don’t mind?” he says as his hand rubs soft circles on my belly.
“Charlie and I were so close when we were young. We could make a game of anything. We’d make bets all the time, how many people we’d see wearing red at school that day, what mom was making for dinner, who could hold their breath the longest underwater, who could climb the tree the fastest. The best part was that it didn’t matter who won, we were just happy to play. As we got into our teens, we didn’t hang out as much anymore. I had Ria, and he had some guy friends from school. We still got along, but we did less together. Sometimes I wonder if I could have stopped him from becoming friends with those other boys.Maybe I should have tried harder to get him to hang out with Ria and I.”
