I laugh. She’s always hungry.
It’s one of my favorite things about her. “Then let me feed you.” We get dressed again—she’s only wearing my shirt, which I love—and I reheat the now cold Thai takeout. “Thai food?” she smiles as she crunches on a spring roll. “I should have known.”
I pause, food suspended in midair. We’re sitting on the floor eating in front of the fireplace with our backs against the coffee table. “Is that a problem? Because if it is, I may have to rethink this whole loving-you-forever thing.”
She laughs, slapping my arm playfully. “I have no problems with Thai, but I can’t live on takeout, Mr. Grant.”
I frown at her. “Then how will we eat?”
She blinks at me. “Cook?” Her eyebrows raise up like she doesn’t understand how I didn’t automatically draw that conclusion.
“I don’t cook.” I’m not being an ass or anything. I really do suck at it, and beyond that, I have zero interest in learning when there is someone who will do it for me, like a restaurant.
“Well, I do, and since I enjoy it and am rather good at it, I guess it’s going to fall on me to sustain us.”
“You cook?” I can’t handle this. “And not only do you like doing it, but you’re good at it?”
She laughs at my expression. “Yes.”
“How did I not know this?” I ask more to myself than to her. “If it’s possible, Katie, I may love you more now than I did moments ago.”
“Pathetic,” she shakes her head, feigning dismay. “I was a wife and a mother, cooking sort of came with that.”
I cannot believe how casually she just said that. The flash of pain still flies through her eyes—I suspect it will always be there—but she’s not letting it control her anymore. It’s not running her life, she is, and she’s kicking ass at it.
I’m feeling brave, or stupid, or both. “Do you want that again?” She knows I’m not asking about the cooking.
She just stares at me for a long beat, my heart rate increasing with each second that ticks by. I’m suddenly wondering if I’ve pushed her too far. But I have to know. Finally, she nods once, but no words come with it. I don’t know if I had asked her that question months ago if she would have given me the same answer.
“Do you?” Her voice is so soft it takes me a moment to realize what she asked.
I look over at her, her sweet face shining up at me, so vulnerable and beautiful. “Yes, Katie. With you, I want everything,” I tell her, leaving no doubt as to what I’m saying, because as much as I need to know, so does she. “But first I want you to move in with me.” There, I said it.
“But you don’t know me that well.”
She’s kidding me, right? “Katie, I lived with you in a car for almost a month. I’d say I know you pretty well, and we can learn the small stuff as we go.”
She smiles softly, her shy smile. “Are you sure that’s what you want? I mean, it’s been so long since we’ve been actually together. Longer than we were together.”
I put down the container of noodles and reach for her, laying her body on the floor and hovering my long body over her short one. I love how she feels beneath me. I love how perfectly she molds to me, how she feels like she was made to be in my arms.
“I don’t care about any of that, Katie. I want what we had in that car. I want the excitement and the laughing, the teasing and the fun, the lust and the love.” Her heart is hammering against my chest. “I want our adventure.”
Her smile is dazzling. “Okay, Ryan. I’m in.”
Epilogue
Two and a half years later
* * *
“Can’t you drive any faster?” Katie yells at me as I try to get us around midday traffic in Seattle. The fact that it’s also the last day of Bumbershoot—which is where we were when this happened—is only making it worse. I’m freaking the fuck out. My heart is racing a mile a goddamn minute and I’m sweating like a fat man running up a mountain.
“I’m trying, sweetheart.” Fuck, I can’t even sound calm. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
“Ryan, love, I’m not delivering your children in my Prius.”
I look over at her, feeling my eyes turning as wide as saucers.
She’s beet red, her brow slick with sweat, and her eyes are…in control. “How close are you?”
“My contractions are three minutes apart and I’m having twins. None of this is good. I should be in the hospital by now.” She’s talking so fast I can hardly keep up. “My fluid was clear, so that’s good. But these babies weren’t supposed to be delivered for three weeks, and even that was early, so you need to get me there now.”
“Just breathe, sweetheart. Breathe.” Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say when your wife is in labor? That’s what they always say in the movies, but she’s shooting me a look that says she’s about to pummel me. Out of freaking nowhere, she folds into herself, grabbing her round, tensing belly and yelling so loudly that the windows shake.
“Fuck,” I hiss out.
“Ahhhh. Ryan, drive this car to the goddamn hospital!”
“I am!” I shout back over her screaming, but I realize I slowed during her last onslaught of pain.
Shit. Crap. Shit.
The navigation pops on telling me to take a left, and I do that at the speed of light. The Prius can really corner; I’ll give it that.
“You doing okay? Hanging in there?” God, everything I’m saying feels wrong.
“They’re early, Ryan. Early even by twin standards.” Shit. She’s crying. “What am I going to do if they’re not okay?”
I reach out and grab her hand to squeeze, but I quickly have to put it back on the wheel since I’m weaving like a bastard around cars.
“It’s going to be fine. Our babies are going to be perfect, just like their mother, you’ll see.” She’s right, though; she’s only thirty-four weeks. “The last ultrasound looked good, baby. Remember that.”
“Ryan, if something happens to me, you’ll protect our babies with your life, right?”
“What the fuck?” Yeah, I said that out loud, but seriously?
“Promise me,” she snaps back with a force I didn’t know she possessed. “I need you to promise me. Not only am I a nurse who’s seen the worst of the worst, but I’ve lived it too.”
She’s thinking about Maggie and Eric.
Of course, she is.
I soften my outrage. “I promise, Katie. I will always protect my family. You included.”
She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes close and she begins to hum as her hands run rhythmically over her large belly.
We got engaged about a year after Katie moved in with me, and we married a few months later in a small ceremony. Nothing fancy.
Katie said she didn’t want to do that again, and I didn’t care either way. I only cared about making her mine forever, so I went along with whatever she needed to get through it.
That included taking off her precious pendant.