Maybe I don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna keep her anyway.
“Come here.” I pull her a little closer.
She closes her eyes and leans down to brush her lips against mine.
After a few soft, sweet kisses, the randy little thing draws a laugh out of me by asking, “Now can we have sex?”
Her eyes twinkle mischievously and I nod my head, pressing my forehead against hers. “Now we can have sex.”
23
Alyssa
The next several weeks pass by in a blur. Brant officially moves me into his place, I start work at the yoga studio, and Brant takes me to my first prenatal appointment. The doctor lets us hear the baby’s heartbeat and tells us the baby’s due date—Valentine’s Day, as luck would have it.
Brant doesn’t seem like a Valentine’s Day kind of guy anyway, so what better way to spend the holiday than at the hospital, pushing a tiny, screaming human out of my body?
I can’t wait to meet that tiny, screaming human, though. I especially can’t wait to meet him or her with Brant right by my side.
When I first found out I was pregnant, that was the one thing I knew for sure I’d never be able to offer this baby, and now because of Brant, that’s not true anymore.
He’s so wonderful.
Amid all the excitement of everything else that’s going on, I’ve had to start planning our wedding. We decided to keep it small and intimate, just family and a handful of friends.
I haven’t really talked to any of my friends since the night Brant swept into my life. A few inconsequential texts here and there, sure, but my life has changed so much, it doesn’t feel like I fit in with them anymore. None of them know I even got pregnant. That alone would have been quite a shock and culture break, but now I’m getting married on top of it, and I don’t have the first idea how to explain.
In the end, I decide not to bother. I’d rather not have anyone at the wedding who might make Brant feel uncomfortable, and none of my friends are really close enough at this point that I feel too badly about it. None of them even knew about Theo, and isn’t that the kind of thing someone should have known?
Just family works for me. Since Brant has a giant barn on his property and plenty of parking space, we decide to have the reception in the barn and the ceremony in the clearing behind it. I wanted to have an autumn wedding, especially because all the trees set behind the barn would make an incredible backdrop for our wedding photos with all the fall colors, but I also want to be able to fit into a form-fitting dress. So, in the end, we go with the last weekend in September and just hope Mother Nature might cooperate.
My dress is gorgeous. Brant didn’t encourage me to cheap out on anything, but for the most part I tried to be as frugal as possible with the wedding since we have the baby coming and that will undoubtedly bring with it a lot of additional expenses. I splurged a little on my dress, but I wanted to make sure when I stepped into his line of sight, the image of me on our wedding day took Brant’s breath away.
I’m in the house on the phone with the dress shop confirming my appointment to come in for my final alterations when I hear a door slam shut and Scout barking outside.
Looking at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall, I see it is about time for Brant to get home. I love when he’s home; I wish he never had to leave. The prospect of him being home for the night makes me eager to get off the phone so I can go greet him.
When I look outside, though, my heart slams to a halt and my eyes widen. Those aren’t Brant’s feet crunching the gravel beneath his boots. They’re Theo’s.
Throwing the door open and rushing outside without proper thought, I call out, “What are you doing here?”
The sun’s still out, so when he looks back at me over his shoulder, his gaze is blocked by the bronze lenses of his sunglasses. “What do you mean, what am I doing here?” he calls back.
Frown deepening, I step off the porch and start down the walkway in his direction. “You’re not supposed to be here when Brant’s not home. You’re barely supposed to be here when he is.”
“Oh, he’s not home yet?” he calls back innocuously, like he couldn’t tell from the absence of Brant’s big blue truck in the driveway that he isn’t here. “Figured he would be by now.”
The frown never leaves my face, but as I move closer, I start to realize why he is here. We’re going to have a traditional champagne toast, but instead of a traditional manned bar for the rest of the reception, we’re going to fill galvanized buckets full of ice and load them up with beer and an assortment of other alcoholic beverages for the guests.