Page 132 of Stand Your Ground

When I pulled back, I was shaking my head, taking in the beautiful creature bound to me by blood. “You don’t have totorch your wedding day for me. I… I don’t want you to have to lose our parents, too.”

“I’m not torching anything.” She squeezed my hands. “I’m choosing you.”

It was such a simple sentence. It hit me in a place I’d barricaded behind credentials and jewelry and the right lipstick and control, control, control. Pain I’d had chained inside my heart for so long loosened, and it spilled out as tears I didn’t bother to wipe.

“Okay,” I whispered. I nodded, and the nod kept going, gathering steam like a train. “Okay.”

“Okay you’ll be there?” she asked, eyes wide and shining.

“Okay I’ll be there,” I said.

And I meant it. For her wedding, for her life, for everything.

I had my sister back.

Nothing mattered past that.

Because I Said So

Carter

“Move in with me.”

Livia paused, a forkful of beef-flavored Maruchan ramen noodles halfway to her mouth. She looked at the food, back at me, and then shoved it all in and chewed on it along with what I’d said.

And because that left some silence, I, of course, had to fill it.

“I know it seems fast,” I said, rubbing her calves in my lap. “But to be fair, this whole thing has been a little expedited given your condition.”

“Okay, Bridgerton.”

“I know you love your condo. You’re close to work, it’s a luxury high rise, and I just live in this tiny little house on the water.” I gestured around to said house.

Then, as if I’d paid him, Zamboni leapt onto the couch, burrowing himself between where we sat and the back cushions. He had to wiggle us a little out of the way to fit and we both chuckled.

“But look! It comes with a built-in dog!” I said, scratching Zambo’s head. “And in exchange for the slightly longer commute, you get a blank slate of a house to do whatever you want with.” I swallowed. “And me.”

I had come to measure my life differently than before. I used to mark the passing of time by the months or years, perhaps theweeks of the season. Right now, we were dipping our toes into the playoffs, and all my focus when I wasn’t with Livia was there with the team. Maybe that’s what I should have been measuring my life by at the moment, how far we were into the playoff season, how many games we had to go, how many wins until we could fight for the Cup.

But I now marked the passing of time by the size of the tiny human growing inside Livia.

Today, they were the size of a grape. Livia was twelve weeks along.

She was feeling better and better every day, her nausea almost entirely gone and her headaches fewer and farther between. She was still tired a lot, though, which made sense. I’d learned a lot about pregnancy in the last two months, like that she was not only creating a life but also building a whole ass new organ to sustain it.

And maybe it was the fact that we were near the end of the first trimester, that the reality of our situation was hitting me more and more each day, that I couldn’t keep those words trapped inside me any longer.

“If you hate this house,” I continued. “We can buy another. We can live wherever you want, Liv. You can pick everything about it. But I want to hold you when I’m falling asleep at night and have you there in my arms when I wake up. I want to feed you and bring you ice water, rub your feet and make it so you don’t have to lift a finger once you’re home from work.” I swallowed. “And I want to be there the first time our baby moves. I want to make a nursery together and fill a house, any house, with baby toys.”

Livia set her bowl of pasta aside, now nearly empty, her eyes softening as she listened to me. I grabbed her hand in mine.

“Is it too much to ask if I ask for everything?”

Her smile knocked the air from my chest, just as much as the sight of her on my couch like that did. I loved her like this — sweatpants and one of my shirts, her hair in all its natural beauty, face clean of makeup. She was a fucking knockout, and I cherished when she got dressed up for me, but it was this that I felt most honored to witness.

“First a collar and now this,” she mused, squeezing my hand playfully. She paused a moment, her eyes searching mine, and then answered with one simple word. “Yes.”

“Yes?”