Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
“No.” I sit down next to her, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her to me. She holds the coffee cup above her head, laughing as I tug her over my lap and she straddles me. I bury my face in her neck as I wrap both arms around her waist. I close my eyes and my heart starts beating normally now that she is in my arms. “How am I supposed to make you breakfast in bed for our anniversary if you leave the bed?”
She leans the side of her face on my head. “Happy anniversary,” she responds softly. “I think you gave me my gift this morning, at like three, when I got up to use the bathroom and came back to bed, and you mauled me.”
“I didn’t maul you.” I smile. “You were just wearing too many clothes.” She laughs. “What time did you wake up?”
I finally let her go. She sits back on my lap, brings the cup to her lips, takes a sip, and then offers it to me. “This is cold,” I retort when I take my own sip. “How long were you out here?”
“A little while,” she replies softly and avoids looking at me, instead she turns her face to the side. “Was just sitting here thinking.”
“Yeah,” I ask, knowing something is up with her, “and what were you thinking about?”
She shakes her head and puts her hands on my chest, right where my heart is beating. “I was just…” she trails off. When she looks up at me, I see tears in her eyes, and everything inside me freezes. “I was thanking Jennifer.” I lean over to the side, putting the coffee mug on the table before giving her all my attention.
“Autumn.” My voice comes out in a whisper.
“I know, I know,” she starts, wiping her tears off of her face, “but I was just, I don’t know, thanking her without trying not to feel guilty about having you.”
I hold her face in my hands. “I believe in my heart this is where we would always be.” My thumbs catch her two tears. “That regardless, this right here with you and our son is where I would have been.”
“You can’t say that.” Her bottom lip quivers. “You don’t know.”
“You’re right. I don’t, but what I do know is that my life with you, with Landon, it’s not something I would trade, for anyone, ever.” I kiss her lips, our foreheads connected
“I’m pregnant,” she reveals softly. My eyes fly to hers, and my heartbeat speeds up, listening to the words, blinking a couple of times, wondering if I’m hearing things or not. But the smile on her face, the way her eyes light up, I know. “I’m three days late. I woke up this morning and took the test.”
I bring her face to mine, sliding my tongue out and into her mouth, her hands roam up my chest to around my neck. Pressing her into me, I’m about to carry her to bed when the door opens, and Landon comes out with tears running down his face. “Mama,” he cries out, coming to us, wearing his tractor pj’s, “I thought you left me.” He uses his palm to wipe the tears from his face as Autumn turns and holds out her hands for him.
“I would never leave you.” She moves back on my lap, turning him and sitting him down between us. “Never, never.” She kisses his head, my arm holding them to me.
“We would never leave you.” I look at my wife. “Do you know what today is?” I ask him and he rests his head on Autumn’s chest. “It’s the day Mommy and Daddy got married.” He looks up at me. He looks exactly like me, minus his eyes, which are just like his mother’s. The mirror to his heart, like hers.
“Do you love her?” Landon looks at me and then his mother, then back at me with a smile, and I give him the same smile back. “He loves you,” he tells Autumn, who just laughs at him.
‘Yeah.” She nods her head. It’s something that started when he was two-years-old and I walked into the house one day and said, “Landon, you know what? I love her.” Then I kissed her lips, making him laugh. So ever since then he asks me every single time I get home, “Daddy, do you love her?” She kisses the top of his head before looking at me. “I love him too. How about we go and get breakfast going?” she asks him and he jumps off of me and runs toward the door, and we watch him run into the house.
“Thank you, baby,” I tell her, and she turns to look back at me, tilting her head to the side. One hand goes to wrap around the side of her neck, and the other goes to her stomach. “Thank you for taking my shattered dreams and making them real, mending them so they are so bright they’re hard to look at.”