We looked at the house the next day.
And I loved it.
“We’ll take it,” Heath said immediately the second my eyes lit up with the view of the ocean.
Heath hadn’t even blinked at the fact he had to provide the capital. “You’ve given me a home, least I can do is buy you one.”
“You’re not concerned I’m only with you for your money?” I teased.
And he had money. Not that you could tell. But considering we were buying a beachside cottage in Malibu, albeit rustic and not at all like the flashier ones around it—it was the shabbiest on the street, which was why I’d instantly fallen in love with it—it was still Malibu. And he was buying it all with cash.
“Well, I’m only with you for your looks, so it works,” he teased.
I was yet to tell everyone about the house, but I reasoned that I could tell Lucy now.
“Lucy—”
“Oh, fuck!” she hissed.
I froze, because of the utter pain in her voice.
“Lucy, are you okay, is it the baby?” I demanded, fear choking me.
“Yes it is,” she hissed. “And I was right, this baby is an asshole.”
“Lucy, I need more information.”
“That’s why I was calling,” she bit out. “To give you the information that I’m in labor. But then you had to start talking about physics and my child had to contract my womb with the power of its father’s stubbornness,” she ground out.
“Lucy, I told you, five fuckin’ minutes on the phone,” Keltan’s tight voice entered from the background.
“And I told you, when you push a baby out of your vagina, you get to make the rules. Until that point, you shut up and drive me to the place where they give me the drugs.”
“And where they’ll deliver our child,” Keltan added.
“Whatever,” she muttered.
She sounded calm.
Much too calm.
I was, however, freaking the fuck out.
“Lucy, you’re having your baby,” I chanted.
“I’m aware,” she replied. “We’ll meet you at the hospital. And I expect you to have a martini ready for me the second this baby comes out.”
Then she hung up.
* * *
I was pacing.
Pacing in a hospital, waiting for news on Lucy.
Heath was watching me.
It was like before.
Except instead of waiting for news that would shatter our world, we were waiting for news that would brighten it.
“How does it take this long? It’s crazy,” I muttered.
“I know,” Rosie put in from where she was trying to balance her soda on her belly. “Mine is going to be quick, in and out. Like a hair appointment. Two weeks from today.”
Luke caught the soda can as it toppled, resting his hand on her large bump.
“The birth of our child is nothing like a hair appointment,” he clipped.
She smiled. “Of course not.”
He frowned and glanced at his phone.
“It totally is,” she mouthed over his head.
I giggled.
Then Keltan burst into the room.
I held my breath. Because even though this was a joyous occasion, my mind was taunting me with all the things that could go wrong. Now I knew that the worst could happen, I kept bracing.
But Keltan was beaming, his eyes red. “We’ve got a daughter,” he said, voice somehow a yell and a whisper at the same time.
And then I let the joy chase away the dread.
* * *
“Sunshine.” Heath snatched me into his arms as I left the room, my arms were still heavy from the weight of my niece in them.
My heart still full from the sight of her and Lucy and Heath.
I leaned until Heath’s arms and he kissed my head, searched my eyes. “You okay?” he asked gently.
I knew why he was asking.
Because he was worried about what this was doing to my barren and empty womb. Seeing all the beautiful things that my sister had that I wouldn’t have. And though I did feel a pang of pain in the spot where I’d lost my child, it wasn’t as much as I’d expected.
Because I’d lost something precious and irreplaceable. But I hadn’t lost everything. I had my sister. My family.
Heath.
And just because I couldn’t grow a child inside me didn’t mean I couldn’t be a mother.
My father taught me that.
That there were plenty of children out there that needed love. And it didn’t matter whether that love was born in blood or not. I did have to discuss the idea of adoption with Heath first since being a part of a couple meant talking about things like adopting babies before you actually did one.
I had something more important to say first.
“I think we should get married,” I said in answer to his question.
He jerked.
He was silent for the longest time, long enough to think I might have to repeat myself.
I wasn’t scared he’d disagree. The man had just brought a house for me, for goodness sake. He’d stuck with me through everything. Loved me since I was eighteen.