A month after their wedding,Gray and Abby sat in an obstetrician’s office and learned that they were to become parents again. To twins. He was on his way to that basketball team, and felt happier than ever before.
“Are you scared?” Abby asked him, completely misreading his silence.
He turned to face her, brows lifted, smile broad. “Are you?”
She laughed. “Um, kind of. But only because one baby was hard enough to accommodate – I can’t even imagine growing two inside of me.”
“It’s amazing what the female body is capable of,” the obstetrician interjected.
“I’m going to be with you every step of the way,” Gray promised, squeezing her hand.
It wasa platitude that many fathers had likely uttered to many expectant mothers at some point throughout the pregnancy, but by the eighth month of the twins’ gestation, Abby had taken to calling her husband Dr Gray. He had devoured every book he could on pregnancy, and when the books offered to the general public no longer provided any new information, had moved onto medical texts, so that he had detailed conversations with Abby’s actual doctor about blood pressure and the twins’ positioning at each of their appointments. When he cut the umbilical cords, she joked that he was finally putting his degree to good purpose. Gray laughed, but it choked in his throat and morphed into something layered with rich emotion. To see their children in his arms, to see Abby at the moment she became a mother again, was almost more than he could cope with. Life was beyond perfect, and he didn’t know if he deserved that, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth again. Ever.
The five ofthem returned to the penthouse, but it didn’t take long before they felt a change was required and began to house hunt, finally choosing a property in upstate New York with a white picket fence and a golden Labrador, as well as a home in the Cotswolds, just down the lane from Max and Noah. They split their time as much as they could, now a family of five, and happier than Gray or Abby had ever dared hope they might be.
THE END