Page 38

Six Years Later

“DID you say Maddie was coming to visit this weekend, or next weekend?” Noah asked as he walked into our bedroom with the basket of laundry he’d just pulled from the dryer.

“She and Grant will be here this Thursday.” I stood from where I’d been sitting at the head of the bed, reading from one of my biology textbooks. “Her interview is between a couple of my classes, so I’ll be watching Grant while she goes to her interview Friday morning.”

I was in my senior year at Yale and had planned to start my master’s program immediately after I graduated in May. But with the little addition we had coming our way this November, those plans might need to shift a little.

Noah was one of the assistant coaches for Yale’s lacrosse team and also played in the professional league with the New Haven Sharks, so he would be busy for the next few months.

But since things usually slowed down for him in the fall and winter, he should be available to help with the baby so I could take at least a few classes each semester.

“Think Maddie will let me take Grant to the game on Friday?” Noah dumped the laundry basket upside down on the bed so we could start folding together. “Every time we see him, he asks when I can take him to see my work.”

“As long as you two don’t get up to too much mischief, I’m sure she’ll allow it.” I smiled at my husband, loving the bond he had with our nephew who had just turned eight last month.

“Good.” He grabbed a pair of socks and folded them together. “I gotta keep earning my place as favorite uncle since I heard Easton and Juliette just took him to a dinosaur museum last week.”

“Grant will be one spoiled kid if you and Easton keep trying to one up each other in the favorite-uncle department.” I laughed.

“Yeah.” Noah shrugged his broad, lacrosse-player shoulders. “But now that Juliette is expecting, I’m pretty sure I’ll take the lead soon. Uncles with kids are always more boring than the ones without them.”

“You think so?” I asked, working hard to keep a smile from my lips at his mention of how kids changed things.

“That’s how my uncles were, at least.” Noah reached for one of his old jerseys from when he played for Yale’s men’s lacrosse team in college—the jersey that was now one of my favorite pajama shirts. “Once they had kids of their own, they were too tired to play with us.”

“Kids do change things like that, I guess.”

I had certainly been a lot more tired lately.

I picked up a pair of jeans to fold, purposely not grabbing the tiny white piece of clothing next to it since it was part of my surprise for Noah.

“It would be cool if Maddie gets the job here, though.” Noah set the folded jersey down, and my heart skipped a beat when I thought he was going to reach for the white onesie I’d planted there.

But instead of grabbing it, he picked up one of my Yale hoodies instead.

You’d think with how I taught him to separate the colors from the whites back when we were in high school and doing his laundry together for the first time, that he’d notice something off about the white onesie being mixed in with our dark, colored clothes.

But that was my husband for you. He was amazing at a lot of things, but paying attention to all the tiny details wasn’t always his strength.

Which was why he hadn’t known I’d had a major crush on him until after we’d gone through with the fake dating plan that ended up making us fall in love all those years ago.

I still smiled every time I thought about it. The band geek and the popular jock, pretending they’d been secretly dating behind everyone’s backs just so I could save face and he could keep all the girls from throwing themselves at him.

Yeah, my husband had always been a major hottie. But even though I’d thought he was the most gorgeous high school senior I’d ever laid eyes on back in the day, eighteen-year-old Noah had nothing on the twenty-four-year-old version that stood next to me now.

That’s right, Noah Taylor only got better-looking with age. Which should be impossible, but it somehow kept happening each of the six years we’d been together.

“How were your classes today?” Noah looked across the bed at me as he set my folded hoodie down. “Did Professor Lubbock grade your project yet?”

“She did,” I said with a smile. “And I got an A, so that’s a relief.”

“Of course you did. I’d expect nothing less…” His words tapered off as his gaze zeroed in on the onesie.

He picked up the tiny piece of clothing in his big hand, and his thick eyebrows knitted together as he inspected it.

“Did one of your shirts shrink?” he asked, continuing to study the item of baby clothing that I’d bought before coming home from school this afternoon. “And suddenly get these weird snaps at the bottom?”

“No…” I said, my heart pounding as he turned it over and looked at the back where I’d used a black Sharpie to write ‘Baby Taylor’ along with the number seventeen in big block numbers—Noah’s New Haven Sharks jersey number.

Yes, some girls went all out and had cute onesies custom-designed or did some other fancy-schmancy thing for their pregnancy announcement. But I’d been too excited to tell Noah I was pregnant that I’d gone with my own obviously homemade version.

“Baby Taylor…?” Noah read the words aloud, like he still wasn’t quite sure he was interpreting them right. He pressed his lips together and lifted his gaze to mine. “Are you…” he started, his eyes bright and his expression showing that he was trying to tamp down his excitement level just in case he was reading things wrong. “Are you pregnant? Are we going to have a baby?”

“Yes.” I grinned. “I took the test this morning after you went to work.”

“Really?” he asked, looking at my stomach briefly, as if he’d be able to tell. “Are you serious?” He sounded even more excited. “You’re actually pregnant?”

“I took three tests and they all came back positive.”

And before I could say anything else, Noah was lifting me in his arms and saying, “I’m going to be a dad!” before twirling me around and kissing me.

“Yes, you’re going to be a dad,” I said against his lips between kisses, feeling the thrill of excitement pulsing through my veins now that I could celebrate this news with my best friend.

“And you’re going to be a mom,” he said before kissing me again.

After he set me back on the ground and hugged me for a long moment, I said, “I actually had something else to give you that went along with the onesie, but it, um…” I scrunched up my nose. “It didn’t turn out like I’d hoped.”

“What is it?” he asked, curiosity etched in his eyes.

“Well, you know I’m not much of an artist, right?” I said, walking back to my nightstand where I’d stowed the T-shirt I’d made for him.

“What did you make me, Lexi?” he asked in a singsong voice, a giddy smile on his lips, like he was actually excited to see what I’d made for him.

“Well…” I pulled the white T-shirt out of the top drawer and held it out to him. “You don’t have to wear it. Like, really, we can throw it away.”

“Man, I bet it’s amazing with how well you’re selling it.” Noah chuckled and took the T-shirt from me. And when he unfolded it and saw what I’d tried to draw, he laughed out loud.

“I know,” I said, feeling my cheeks warm as I took in the roughly-drawn trophy with the words ‘World’s Best Dad’ written on the front. “It looks like a kindergartner drew it.”

I’d tried to make it look fancy by using different colored markers—even drawing little curve lines to make the trophy look 3D. But I should have known better than to use my science-girl brain to be artsy.

Because it looked bad.

Like, I probably should have hidden it in the dumpster by our apartment building before Noah got home from work…

Noah laid the T-shirt out on the bed so he could get a really good look at the horrendous thing. And it wasn’t just the trophy that looked like it had been drawn by a five-year-old. The block lettering had proven harder than I’d thought. The “B” and the “E” were decent enough, but I hadn’t gotten the spacing part down too great so that those two letters ended up huge. And then the “S” and the “T” were significantly smaller because I’d tried to make them fit on the same line.

“I love it.” Noah laughed. “It’s perfect.” He pulled me against him and kissed me on top of the head.

“It’s terrible,” I said, eyeing my very sad-looking gift. “We should probably burn it.”

“No way!” As if to prove how much he liked it, Noah took off his shirt, revealing his tanned torso for a moment before pulling his new T-shirt over his head.

“It’s even too small.” I groaned, looking at my husband. “I can literally see every muscle and bone in your upper body.”

“Then it’s even better than I thought,” he said with a wink before glancing down at himself. “I know how much you like seeing my muscles.”

I tried to scowl but ended up smiling instead. “You can’t wear that in public, okay?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sitting on the foot of our bed and pulling me onto his lap. “I was thinking of wearing this to your dad’s house the next time we visit. Use this trophy shirt of mine to brag about how I finally figured out how to do what he was afraid I’d do when we were in high school.”

“Noah!” I gently smacked his chest, my jaw dropping at the idea of him even talking to my dad about getting me pregnant. “You better not say anything about that.”

“Come on. Your dad would looove it.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

Even if my dad loved Noah now and treated him like he was just as much his son as Easton was, I still doubted my ex-drill sergeant father would want to think about that part of Noah’s and my relationship.

“We’ve been married for two and a half years. He’s probably been waiting for this moment ever since our wedding day. You know how much he loves being a grandpa.”

“Yeah, he does now,” I said. “But I still remember how he reacted when Maddie told him she was pregnant with Grant.”

“He’s not going to do that,” Noah said. “If anything, he’ll be so excited he’ll ask you to make a ‘World’s Best Grandpa’ T-shirt for him.”

And now I knew my husband was delusional.

“But you’re going to have to refuse him the custom order,” Noah said with a smile. “Because I am the only one who deserves to wear such a special shirt.”

“Special is definitely one word for it,” I said, looking down at the pathetic-looking trophy stretched across my husband’s chest.

Noah hugged me closer. In a softer voice, he whispered, “But we’re having a baby. Isn’t that amazing?”

“It is,” I said, nestling my head against his shoulder, loving that our height difference always made it so easy to curl up against him. “You’re going to be such a great dad, too.”

“And you’re going to be the best mom,” Noah said.

“I hope so,” I said. “Though I might need to beg Hastings Industries to hire Maddie on the spot just so she’ll be close by to help.”

“I’m sure the billionaire CEO will do whatever we ask him to do,” Noah said with a wink.

I chuckled. And then for a moment, I had a surge of anxiety hit as I realized just how much a baby was going to change everything.

There was no going back now.

Noah must have sensed my thoughts because he said, “We’re going to be just fine. We’re in this together, and as long as we have each other, we can get through anything.”

“Even a colicky baby that doesn’t sleep through the night until he or she is one year old?”

“I doubt that will happen since us Taylors are famous for sleeping through the night right out of the hospital,” he said. “But yes, even then.”

“What if our baby is, like, a gigantic baby?” I asked. “Because you’re six-five and I’m only five-three. That might not work out so great for me…”

Noah smiled and lifted my chin with his fingers. “It’s going to be fine, Lexi. I was a normal-sized baby. And even if our baby is bigger than average, the doctors will know what to do.”

“You think so?”

He nodded. “It’s going to be great. And I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“So you weren’t too huge when you were born?” I asked, just to make sure.

“I was about seven pounds,” he said. “That was basically the only time I was average-sized.”

“Okay, good.” I sighed, feeling better with his reassurance.

“Although, my head was the size of a bowling ball…” he started to say, but when he saw the look of horror on my face, he chuckled and said, “I’m kidding. According to my mom, I had a very nice, cone-shaped head.”

“Well, your head looks normal now.” I ran my fingers through his soft hair. “So I guess that means our baby will be fine.”

“He or she is going to be beautiful. Just like their mom.”

I smiled. Noah really was the best husband a girl could ask for. He still teased me like he did when we were younger, but he was also the sweetest guy and always knew just what to say to make me feel better.

“I’m just glad we get to do this together,” I said, looking into Noah’s brown eyes.

“Me too,” Noah said. “There’s no one I’d rather go on this adventure with than you.”

And when he gave me a gentle kiss that still managed to bring butterflies to my stomach after all these years, I couldn’t help but agree.

Noah was my childhood-fantasy-turned-man-of-my-dreams. And as long as I had a say in things, he would always be the one for me.