Page 143 of Loving Wild

Gabe finishes what he’s eating, retrieves his beer from the table, then slides onto the sun lounger behind me. His arms slide around my waist and he pulls my back to his front.

“Thank you for this,” he says into my hair.

“For what?”

“For organising all of this, for this life, for replacing the bad with more of the good.”

I reach up and lace my fingers through his where they rest on my belly. Tilting my head, I turn and smile up at him.

“It’s what we do,” I tell him. “It’s crazy, and it’s unconventional and complicated,” I throw my arm out towards my seven-year-old son, sitting next to his thirty-three-year-old brother and seven-year-old nephew. “But it’s ours, it’s what we created.”

“Total honesty, Ren, I wouldn’t change a fucking thing.”

“Not even my stretch marks and wobbly bits?”

“They’re the things I love most.”

I have no answer to that, instead, I lean back against my husband, and we watch as more good memories are made to replace the bad.

The End!