Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I moved my neck so her hand fell off my forehead, then buried my face into her crotch.
She started laughing, so hard, in fact, that her knees buckled.
Catching her with practiced ease, I let her see my grin.
When she was even with my eyes, I laid her backwards until her back hit the soft white carpet of the nursery floor.
“I love you,” I said. “Even if you’re being a shit head.”
She scowled. Or tried to, at least.
It came out more like a smile.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered after a few long seconds.
I shrugged and leaned forward, planting both of my hands on the ground next to her head.
Then I pressed my lips against hers.
“I know you are,” I said. “But I wish you’d just fucking marry me already.”
It sounded like a whine, and maybe it was.
But she refused to marry me until she wasn’t pregnant anymore. And with the rate that we were going, it’d never happen.
Which was what the fight had been about this morning before Mia had left to go to her mother’s for the morning to ‘cool off’ as she’d said.
So I’d used the time to put together the baby bed. As well as the new baby bed for the other baby that we’d just gotten in the mail that morning.
Apparently, you needed two beds.
One for our bedroom, and one for their bedroom.
I just hoped Mia actually did what she said she was going to start doing and that was to put JJ in his bedroom to sleep at night.
No matter how much she wanted to blame it on me for not putting together the bed, it was really because this had been very hard on her.
She still had nightmares every night, and she’d wake up gasping for air as she rolled over and felt to make sure JJ was breathing.
We’d saved the cord blood from JJ’s birth, too, just in case.
No one but Jack, Winter, Masen, and Mia’s mom babysat him.
And it was beginning to feel a bit suffocating – for ALL of us.
Something else I’d told her that morning.
“You’re going to have to let him breathe, baby?” I said softly.
She looked up at me, tears in her eyes.
“I’m going to let him breathe,” she promised.
I pressed my lips to hers and drew her into my arms.
“I love you, Mia,” I said. “And I want you to be my wife. I want you with me for the rest of my life. I need you to take my name, the same name as our babies have. I want you to stop holding back. I fucking want it all.”
***
Four weeks later
“Well,” Mia said against my lips. “Do you feel like you have it all?”
I smiled, lifting her ring clad finger up to my lips and kissed it before looking into her eyes.
“I have you. A healthy son, and a little girl on the way. There’s only one thing that I could wish for right now…and that’s something that I can’t give you. If I could, though, I would. So yeah, I feel like I mostly have it all.”
Tears formed in her eyes.
“He would’ve loved it here. With you. With his brother.” She pressed her hand lightly to her stomach. “With his sister. He would have been so happy.”
Her voice broke.
“But he’s looking down at us from heaven, and he’s got my mom. My sister. Your dad. Adam. My dad. He’s got just as much love up there as we have down here,” I promised.
She hiccupped.
“He does have a lot of love up there, doesn’t he?” She whispered.
I nodded. “He does.”
“I love you, Mr. Stoker.”
I pressed my lips to hers once more, then pulled back only long enough to say, “I love you too, Mrs. Stoker.”