“You’re glowing,” she said, grinning. “Like, annoyingly so. I wasbloated, and sweating, and crying at puppies in toilet roll commercials at this stage. I still am most days.”
I laughed, shifting in my seat. “Oh, I did cry in the cereal aisle last week, so don’t worry. I’m not immune.”
Sue chuckled and sipped her coffee. “I keep telling her, Kate looks like she was made for this.”
I blushed, brushing a hand down over my stomach. “Thank you. I…don’t always feel like it.”
Izzy and Sue exchanged a glance, one of those instinctive mother–daughter things I’d always found fascinating. Just full of shared understanding.
Izzy leaned forward slightly. “Are you missing home?” she asked warmly.
I blinked at the question. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. My throat caught before I answered.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Yeah. My house. My job. My old routines. It was a life I built completely on my own, but giving it up…well, it didn’t feel like giving it up at the time. It felt like choosing my boys. But some days, I still feel guilty.”
Sue reached out and wrapped her hand around mine without hesitation. “Sweetheart,” she said gently, “that’s allowed.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and pushed on. “It’s not that I regret anything. I don’t. I’d do it all again, a hundred times over. But sometimes I feel like I’m pretending. Like I’m about five steps behind everyone else, just waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me I don’t belong here. That I’m not enough for this…life.”
The silence that followed was gentle. No rush to fill it. Just the breeze and the occasional noise of the birds that chirped so loudly out here.
Sue gave my hand a squeeze.
“Oh, love,” she said, her voice soft and sure. “You are exactly what he needs.”
That broke me a little. My eyes burned.
“I’ve never seen him like this,” she went on. “Not ever. He’s calm. He’s grounded. He’s happy. Properly, deeply happy. And it’s not justabout the baby, or the timing, or some whirlwind holiday romance…it’s you. The way he looks at you…it’s like he’s finally home.”?
I smiled unconvincingly at Sue. “I was just worried you’d all think it was a bit mad. Too fast. Like I was trying to pin him down.”
Izzy shook her head. “Not a chance. I’ve known Jordan through every phase from teenage idiot, to world-class athlete, to casually dating women who clearly just wanted the attention. And this is different.You’redifferent. He doesn’t have to perform around you.”
“Jordan never used to talk about any of his relationships with us. The fact that he even told us about you, I knew you were the one,” Sue said warmly.
It felt so ridiculous but the thought of Jordan with other women twisted a little knot in my stomach. I couldn’t help it. My brain flashed with images of glossy blondes and shallow flirtations. But then I remembered the way he kissed me. The way he held me like I was sacred. The way he’d looked at me in his childhood bedroom, like I was everything.
Sue’s voice broke through gently.
“You see him,” she said. “Not the version everyone else thinks they know. You see the boy I raised. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted for him. Someone who sees him and loves him, anyway.”
My throat was too tight to speak. I blinked fast, laughing through the tears that threatened.
“Bloody hormones.”
Izzy handed me a napkin. “Nah. Just truth.”
And it hit me; this didn’t feel like just a polite welcome. They weren’t just accepting me into the family.
They were seeing me as one of their own. The reality dawned on me that this would be my little boy’s family and he was going to be so loved.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt likeIbelonged in a family.
We chatted for what felt like hours. I heard all the childhood stories about Jordan, the way he once tried to surf down the front stairs on a mattress, the time he got his head stuck in the stair banister, the cricket bat incident that left a dent in the garage door and his brother’s shin. Apparently he was a menace, even back then. Sue told it all with such pride, though. Like every scraped knee and detention was just another reason to adore him.
We’d sat so long Izzy had to help me up, laughing as she pulled me gently from the rattan chair I’d all but moulded into. “God,” I groaned, hand on my lower back. “Your brother’s big baby is not making it easy to get up out of things lately.”
“I hear that,” she said, rubbing her own bump. “This one’s currently using my bladder as a trampoline.”
