Page 22 of Promises on the Mountain
Knowing I get to spend every night of the rest of our lives wrapped up in her warm curves while my grumpy shit-head brother has nothing waiting for him at home but a chameleon and a couple of half-dead houseplants helps with putting up with him these days.
Walking into the house from the garage, I pull off my muddy boots and leave them on the mat. Then I drop my keys in the bowl by kitchen door and head for the shower.
April changed her hours after we got married, she wanted the extra time in the morning for the longer commute. Her old place was right in town, within walking distance to the cafe, but our house up in the Gulch is a solid twenty-minute drive in good weather.
That means she works a little later in the afternoons, especially when the weather gets warm like now and more people want to hang out on the porch later in the day.
I don't mind. It means I get a chance to shower before she gets home and gets me dirty again.
Eventually, my early hours will come in handy when we start filling the spare rooms up with kids.
We started off just hoping it'd happen, but it never did. For the last few months, we've been trying. Really trying. Which is a lot of fun...most of the time-- but we're about to the point where we're ready to start doing the testing in case there's more working against us than just impatience.
Stripping down as I go, I crank the knobs in the shower to right temp and jump in, grateful I put in the instant hot water so I don't have to wait.
I'm pawing through the bathroom cabinet a few minutes later, swapping out deodorant for cologne, then working a bit of product through my hair after getting it about as dry as I can with the towel, when I see something sitting on the edge of the sink on April's side of the vanity.
They've become a pretty common sight over the last few months. She takes one about twice a month. I figure she must have left it there while it processed.
When I pick it up, it doesn't look the same as the ones we've waited on before though.
There's a second line on this one. Two pink lines. I stare at the pregnancy test in my hand blankly for a minute, it doesn't look right to me. I know sometimes there's a line that shows up in the wrong place, meaning the test didn't work right, and I'm about to toss this one in the trash when I realize what I'm looking at.
Holy fuck. This is a positive test. I'm holding a positive pregnancy test in my hand. We did it, we're pregnant.
Maybe I should call her. Does she know? Did she leave it here for me to find? Fuck, I have to get to town. I have to get to April.
I'm dressed and in the truck in seconds, I couldn't be moving faster if the gulch was on fire. On my way to the main road, I pass the little lane that winds back to the open meadow where Zephyr's cottage is.
She's going to kill me.
After she found out I'd been raiding her greenhouse to pick flowers for April, my sister made it very clear that the only thing saving my balls was because she liked having a sister.
Fuck it. She'll get over it.
I gas it to the back of the property where Zeph's prize greenhouse sits with one side facing the south. She wanted her cottage built here because of the meadow that allows the sun to hit the greenhouse. And I guess it does the job because Zephyr's greenhouse is always full of flowers in bloom even when there's six feet of snow on the ground.
You'd think I'd have memorized some of the names of the things, but I haven't. I grab handful of the greenery that Zeph already has cut and make quick work of adding some of those tiny little white flowers that kind look like popcorn, and some of the purple ones that April always loves when they bloom in our yard, then I pull out my pocket knife and cut entirely too many of the two-toned daffodils for Zephyr not to notice. I'll buy my sister new plants, whatever she wants.
Before I leave, I see some pink flowers that are just starting to bloom and add them to the mix and then I'm back in the truck, gunning the engine into the town.
"You better not have been in the greenhouse!"
Something something in my sister's voice yelling at me as I run up the steps and into the cafe. Hopefully I set the parking brake when I shut the engine down. If not, I'll pay Gran back for the damage to the building.
No one's inside except my wife. My wife and our baby. Holy fuck, I've never seen her look so fucking gorgeous as right now.
I've jumped the counter a thousand times since that first day. April's a pro now at knowing exactly where to be standing so I don't have to take a single step to pull her lips to mine.
Her hand blindly accepts the bouquet, her other arm snaking over my shoulder and around my neck as I push us behind the swinging door to the back room that's still empty.
"Wait, what's thi--" April feels the hard plastic wrapped in the flower stems with the rubber band I found on Zephyr's potting table in the greenhouse.
"Raine, what is this?"
To be fair, I'm not giving her much of a chance to see what it is, I'm still too busy kissing her. My hands are all over her, which she's used to by now, but not like this, with my palms spread out over her belly like I'm willing it to grow faster.
"Did you leave before you saw the results this morning?"