Page 136 of Loving Wild

“Do it,” Zac shouts.

“Good luck, man. Check back later and let us know how you go. We’re gonna celebrate either way,” Coop calls out.

“Do me a favour though, don’t say a word to the girls. Can we just keep this between us till we know what we’re doing and that everything is okay with the babies?”

“You got it,” Coop replies.

“Go wife your woman,” Zac adds.

I end the call, and pull the truck back out of my drive, and head the short distance to the carpark at the beach.

I find Lauren staring out at the water. The sun’s shining, and the water on the bay is like glass this afternoon.

“I know we already have a lot to think about . . .” she turns to look at me as I start to speak. Her hands at her chest, and I realise she must’ve been so lost in her thoughts that I’ve startled her.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to make you jump, I was just . . .”

“Can we do this? Have we got it in us?” she interrupts me and asks. I step towards her.

“Little Bird, together we can do any-fucking-thing we set our minds to.”

“I’m gonna be big. I always blow up when I’m pregnant. I got big in my twenties, and that was just having one baby at a time. In my forties, twins? I’m gonna be like the back of a bus. A big red double-decker bus.”

“You’ll look beautiful. You always look beautiful. Pregnant with my babies, you’ll look amazing.”

“I won’t feel amazing. I’ll be tired and uncomfortable. My feet will swell up, and the stretchmarks? I’m gonna have stretchmarks on top of stretchmarks. I’ll just be one great big stretchmark.”

“Good job I fucking love stretchmarks,” I wrap my arms around her and say, grateful that she wraps her arms around my waist in return.

“What about all the drinking I’ve been doing? I’ve consumed so much alcohol lately, what if I’ve damaged them in some way . . .”

“You’re overthinking all of this, lots of women drink before they realise they’re pregnant.”

“We have to think about all the genetic stuff as well. I’m old, Gabe, if they find there are issues, I’m old, and I’m not going to be around forever to look after them.”

“Let’s not go into this thinking that way. Let’s go into this feeling we’ve been blessed with something fucking amazing. Something perfect. If, down the track, we find out that’s not the case, then we deal with it.”

She looks up at me as I speak.

“You won’t leave me when I’m fat and puffy? You won’t want to run off with the tall, skinny blonde from the car showroom when I can’t even see my swollen feet, let alone my noonie anymore?”

“Who wants tall and skinny when I’ve got you? The bigger you get, the more of you there’ll be to love. And you won’t need to know where your noonie is, I’ll know, I’ll always know. It’s part of you, and no matter where you are, I’ll always find you.”

She doesn’t respond to that, and because the moment and location are perfect, I change my plans, slide down her body, and drop to my knee.

“Gabe,” she says my name like she’s telling off a child, and weirdly, I like it.

“This isn’t how I was gonna do this, but you look so fucking beautiful right now, I have to.”

Her jaw and lips begin to tremble, and she looks from me, out to the water. I follow her gaze. There are a couple of paddleboarders out there who’ve stopped to watch us, but I seriously couldn’t give a fuck.

“You are so much more than I deserve, but somehow, through a set of circumstances out of our control, you landed in my life and suddenly became my world. These past months have been manic and insane. You flipped everything that I thought I wanted on its head, and I never want to go back to how it was before you. I want you, us, this, everything that we’re building and creating together, I want it forever.”

Turning her gaze from the water to meet mine, I watch as she tucks her hair behind her ears and smiles down at me.

“Yes,” she says quietly.

“I haven’t fucking asked you anything yet,” I tell her with a grin. She shrugs.