TWO (AND A BIT) YEARS LATER
THE SEATTLE SKYLINE is glowing beneath the warm, early evening sunlight. Dr. Andrews is running behind, but I don’t mind because it gives me a little longer to admire the view.
I sometimes miss the LA weather when I’m stuck in the rain, but right now, I feel perfectly content.
“Come in, Anastasia.” Dr. Andrews holds open the door for me. “I’m sorry for the delay.”
“Don’t worry,” I reassure him, pushing myself up from my chair. “My ankles are so swollen it’s nice to sit down.”
“Well, you’re definitely glowing if that makes you feel better.
Pregnancy suits you.”
“It’s sweat, don’t be fooled.” Taking a seat across from his desk, I run my hand over my bump, hissing when I feel a tiny foot in my rib cage. “We think she’s going to be a soccer player. She likes to kick.”
“I’m sure with a gold medalist for a mother and a Stanley Cup winner for a father, whatever she decides to be, she’ll be the best at it.”
“Right now, she’s the best at making me nearly pee myself.”
After I graduated and moved back to Washington to be closer to Nathan, I decided to start with semi-regular therapy sessions. Therapy doesn’t feel hard anymore, it makes me feel grateful. Recapping my feelings, things I’ve done, things I’m looking forward to, and even the things I’m nervous about. It all reminds me how much I have to feel lucky for.
By the time I’m driving home, Baby H is wriggling around, clearly as excited to see her dad as I am. Well, that’s what I’ll tell Nate, leaving out
the fact she started break dancing on my organs when I opened my second bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
When he bought me my Range Rover, otherwise known as the sorry I accidentally knocked you up mom-wagon, he filled all available compartments with snacks.
A wise choice since his child is hungry constantly.
Yes, I’m blaming my unborn baby on how much crap I eat when I’m sitting in traffic.
Pulling into our driveway beside my parents’ car, I’m not even fully out of the car before I can hear Bunny’s signature bark echoing from the backyard.
“Stop upsetting my baby,” I call over the barking, waddling over to where Nathan and my dad are shooting Bunny with a water gun.
“Mom’s home!” Nate shouts, causing a forty-five-pound bundle of wet, golden fluff to bounce toward me, tail wagging excitedly.
Knowing he was transferring to Seattle at the end of the season, Nathan promised me after the Olympics in February we could get a golden retriever. What neither of us planned for when we decided to become dog parents was my pre-Olympic debut anxiety causing me to vomit up my contraceptive pill.
I won gold in the ladies’ singles. We celebrated.
A lot.
On every surface we could get our horny little mitts on.
Six months later, I have a giant watermelon strapped to my stomach and the world’s most chaotic puppy.
Nate strides toward me, closing the gap between us, holding the water gun in my direction, a mischievous glint in his brown eyes. His shorts are low on his hips, the last of the day’s rays bouncing off his tanned skin. God, he’s hot. “Don’t you dare, Hawkins.”
“Welcome home.” He drops his weapon to the floor, narrowly missing Bunny, spinning around at our feet. Taking my face in his hands, he lowers his mouth to mine, making every single cell in my body hum happily.
Pregnancy has made everything heightened, so when I thought I was attracted to him before, I was so wrong. The fact my parents are here right now is the only reason I’m not trying to climb him like a tree.
“How are my favorite girls today?” Nate’s hands trail down my arms gently until they reach my stomach. She’s going wild like she always does when he’s near us. “You want me to do the thing?”
“God, yes. We’re good. We’re hungry.” He steps behind me, winding his arms around me until they link at the bottom of my bump, lifting to take the weight off me, and I instantly melt into him. “Oh God, yes.”
I always suspected Baby Hawkins would be one big-ass baby, but I’ve basically been showing since conception.
RIP my vagina in a few months.
I’m all bump and boobs. Gigantic boobs that make everyone stare at my chest. I visited Sabrina in New York with my mom, and she spent the entire trip checking me out and weighing up whether she wanted a boob job.
Mom appears with a glass of lemonade, and between the two of them looking after me, I wonder why I even bothered leaving the house today. “You all packed, honey?”
I nod. “Nothing fits, so I’ll just be wearing crop tops for a week.”
Nate kisses my cheek from behind. “It works for Winnie-the-Pooh.”
When Alex, JJ’s partner, offered to help plan our babymoon, I thought they were joking. But it turns out there is a whole host of baby-related things I’m yet to learn about. The ones that involve me getting gifts and trips are my favorite.
“Are the baby’s things packed up?” I ask, reaching down to scratch behind Bunny’s ears.
Mom sighs. “You do know you’ll have to stop calling him the baby when the baby gets here?”
My face instinctively scrunches. “No, I won’t. First born.” I point to the fluffy face intensely licking my ankle. I point at my swollen tummy. “Second born.”
She rolls her eyes, crouching to fuss him, and narrowly avoiding the huge slobbery tongue that heads toward her face. “Come on, little guy, you’re going on vacation too!”
The intense excitement I once experienced when traveling is less intense now I’m a bowling ball, but I do enjoy bossing Nathan around from a comfortable position with my feet up.
More than two-and-a-half years together and the man still can’t use packing cubes properly.
The journey from Seattle to Cabo is seamless, and we only get stopped for pictures approximately one million times. My favorite fans are the ones who don’t watch hockey, so they hand their phone or camera to Nate when they ask for a photo. He says he doesn’t mind people thinking he’s famous for being my boyfriend.
I can’t help but laugh when he says it because he seems to mean it. I said we can work on his public image before I win my next medal; maybe it’ll reduce how much he has to play photographer.
Our villa is less villa, more beach mansion, but Nate says the extravagance is necessary because he wants somewhere private where I can be comfortable.
Naked. Naked is what he wants me to be.
We spend the day on the beach, reading and napping, cooling down in the sea. Nate has made a Baby Hawkins–sized hole in the sand, the perfect size to fit my bump in, and for the first time in months, I’m able to sleep on my stomach. Bliss.
“Stas, you nearly ready?” “Stop rushing me!”
I hear him chuckle in the living room. “Well, can you at least speed it up a little? We have a reservation.”
Having had no choice but to wash all the salt water out of my hair, I made the critical post-shower error of sitting on the bed in my towel, with a bag of barbecue Lays and my phone. I’m now up to date with what everyone I’ve ever followed is doing, but I unfortunately have no clothes on and damp, frizzy hair.
Dragging my hair back into a sleek ponytail, I pull on a sundress, dab a small amount of highlighter around various points of my face, and add some mascara. The beauty of being on vacation is I can pretend this is the look I was going for, and nobody can tell me otherwise.
When I finally emerge from the bedroom, Nate is watching the Grand Prix with a beer. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”
His mouth opens and his head turns to look at me in disbelief. “I’m waiting for you! I’ve been waiting for you for so long!”
“That feels like an exaggeration,” I mutter, putting my phone in my purse. “Should we head out?”
Standing, he guzzles the rest of his beer, still shaking his head and cursing me under his breath. “Gotta check something, I’ll meet you
outside.”
“Hurry up, Nathan.” I fight to keep the smirk from my face. “We have a reservation.”
His eyes widen, then snap shut as he takes a deep breath. “I know. I’ve been telling you that.”
The walk to the restaurant is a short one, and they lead us through the main dining area and out the back to a private beach area. Rose petals have been used to create a pathway to a lone table on the beach.
Nathan helps me tuck in my chair, before moving to sit opposite me. “I’m going to eat everything on the menu,” I warn him. “It isn’t going to be attractive.”
“Everything you do is attractive.” “We’ll see about that…”
I don’t quite manage everything on the menu, but I make a significant dent in my meal, Nate’s meal, and the bread basket. I sit staring at him while he sips on his wine and people watches. He’s oddly quiet tonight, but sometimes he’s like this in his downtime. Being surrounded by noise and chaos all the time at work is tiring for him, and some of the most special times between us involve us silently being in each other’s company.
Sensing my eyes on him, his head turns toward me, eyes locking with mine, taking my breath away. The tip of his nose is pink from today’s sun, and his normally trimmed short stubble has grown longer. Every time I look at him my pulse soars and my heart hammers in my chest, and when I think I’ve reached maximum capacity for how much I love him, something proves me wrong.
Falling in love with Nathan Hawkins was not something I could have planned.
No planner, iPad, or freaking sticker chart could have prepared me for my future.
My imagination isn’t capable of dreaming up this level of happiness.
“You’re staring at me with that goofy look you do when you’re thinking too hard.”
Rolling my eyes, I chuckle at his rude interruption to my inner monologue. “I’m thinking about how much I love you.”
“That’s funny. I was thinking about you too.”
Pushing his chair back, he stands from our table, and I watch him curiously. “What’re you do—” He sinks one knee into the sand beside me.
“Oh my God.”
Reaching into his pocket, my heart slows down and a lump—big, but not as big as the diamond being held out in front of me—forms in my throat. Baby H is having a rave in my stomach, and tears preemptively line my eyes.
“Anastasia, you are the best thing to ever happen to me, and to call you the love of my life does not do justice to how much I love you. My existence doesn’t make sense without you by my side. For the rest of our lives, in the next life, in every alternate reality, I’ll be yours if you’ll have me. You are my best friend, my greatest gift, and Mila—and Bunny—are so blessed to have you as their mom.”
Okay, here are the tears.
“Will you marry me?”
Nodding frantically, I launch myself at him, nearly knocking him over into the sand. “Yes, yes, yes!” My hands shake as he slides the ring onto my finger, immediately taking my face between his hands and kissing the life out of me.
“Anastasia Hawkins. Wow. And here I was thinking this was just a casual, no commitment, no jealousy thing.”
He snorts, pressing his lips against mine one more time. “Shut up, Anastasia.
THE END
