Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Cato had Seeley and Levee as his groomsmen.
It was a small bridal party.
But it suited us.
“Ready to do this?” she asked.
Amazingly, as someone who never saw herself married and ‘settling down,’ I was. Because it was Cato. Because there was no one else in the world I’d rather spend forever with.
“Absolutely,” I agreed, taking my bouquet of red roses, and following her out.
Cato - 4 years
“I feel like this is a bad omen,” Rynn said, shaking her head in an exaggerated sadness.
She looked really fucking amazing for having spent the past sixteen hours trying to get our baby out of her body.
“That’s it,” she had said down to her belly as the nurse rolled her wheelchair up toward the maternity ward, “This is your eviction notice, dude. Like I love you and all, but I want you the hell out.”
She’d had a very up and down pregnancy.
From almost the moment the stick gave us the news, she’d could be found almost constantly with her head over the bowl.
She couldn’t eat anything down until eventually even the thought of food made her sick.
And this was Rynn.
Food was one of the most important things in her life.
So, yeah, you can imagine she was miserable for the first four months.
She lost weight. She got thin. She could be found staring daggers at me in a very ‘You did this to me’ sort of way.
But the second trimester had given her a reprieve. She stopped getting sick. Her appetite came back. Doubled. Tripled. Fucking quadrupled. She was so ravenous that even Eddie struggled to keep her full.
That was the honeymoon period.
She nested, decorating the nursery with an almost obsessive focus. She bought clothes and strollers and dragged me to the dealership to pick out a ‘safe but not completely hideous’ family car.
Oh, but then… then she got really, really pregnant. Which brought on acute back and shoulder aches and charley horses that kept her from sleeping at night. Her feet and ankles swelled, making wearing shoes almost impossible, and walking of any sort painful, so she pretty much spent the past three weeks with her legs propped up, eating ice cream, and telling the baby that it was lucky she loved it because she was miserable.
“What’s a bad omen?” I asked, turning back from the window with our baby in my arms.
“Oh, come on,” Rynn said, rolling her eyes. “What day is it right now?” she asked.
Then it dawned on me.
She’d gone into labor on Christmas Eve.
Which meant the baby’s birthday was on Christmas day.
“Listen, if you wanted a spooky baby, you should have jumped me in February instead of April,” I told her.
“I jump you constantly,” she shot back, making a nurse who’d come in to bring another blanket that Rynn had requested laugh. “It’s your swimmer’s fault for being especially motivated that day,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess I have to learn to be as into Christmas as I am into Halloween,” she declared. “Why are you keeping my baby from me?” she asked. “I’m the one with stitches in her hoo-ha. I get all the baby snuggles.”
I moved over, lowering the arm of the bed, and climbing in with her, moving the baby into her arms.
“She’s perfect,” Rynn decided as she looked down at her.
She came out a chubby eight-and-a-half pounds, full of rolls and a shocking amount of dark hair.
“She is,” I agreed. “Takes after her mother,” I added.
“She better. I did all the hard work,” she said, leaning her head into me. “Though I wouldn’t mind if she got your pretty eyes. And maybe your patience. Lord knows I am lacking in that particular quality.”
“We will have to let her Uncle Eddie teach her how to cook, since neither of us are any good at that,” I said.
“And her Aunt Josie will teach her how to fall in love with books,” Rynn agreed. “Uh-oh. She’s squirmy again,” she added, shifting our daughter slightly so that she could expose her breast. “Hey, at least she gave me big tits for all the headaches she caused in utero,” she said before guiding the baby to nurse.
“One of the many good things she’s going to bring to us, I’m sure,” I agreed, unable to stop myself from reaching out and stroking my finger down her impossibly soft skin.
“Oh! I figured it out!” Rynn said, eyes round.
“What?”
“Our first family Halloween costume,” she declared.
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“You get to be Wesley. I’ll be Princess Buttercup. In the red dress, not the blue. And she can be an R.O.U.S!”
“The fuck is a R.O.U.S?” I asked.
“A Rodent of Unusual Size,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.
“You want our baby daughter to be a rat?” I asked, laughing.
“Oh, she won’t even know what she is. We have to do the fun stuff before she’s old enough to decide it’s not cool to do family Halloween costumes anymore.”