Four Years later

Saint Majella. Patron saint of expectant mothers. And the island on which all of this started.

It was ridiculous how close it was to the mainland, when you really looked. Because of its size, it wasn’t shown on most regular maps. Though it was only an unassuming 12.4-acre hunk of ground in the middle of nowhere, it had actually taken up much, much more room in my mind. My mother and sister were horrified when I told them our plan to return. They’re superstitious thinkers, though. I’m not.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I announced, and went into the cabin bathroom to heave a little. I came back up, hand clamped over my belly. Todd looked concerned.

“We can anchor here and wait a little? Till the nausea passes?” he said.

I shook my head.

“No, let’s keep going. I want to make it there before noon.”

He nodded and turned again to the wheel, looking like he was born to sail small watercraft out on the blue yonder.

The ocean below was a jeweled blue, and chopped through with waves and soft undercurrents that made it look like shattered but still intact glass. The sky up overhead was equally elemental – far up and unconcerned with us below. It had been four long months to plan this trip. Todd already had some yachting experience but he first needed to get a proper license. Then we needed to rent and insure little ‘Honeybee’, get special permits to visit the island, and then get prior approval to make sure we weren’t pitching up on the island during seal pupping season.

We had both laughed hard at the conversation we’d had with the environmental protection bureaucrats. A surly woman had informed us, “you have to think of the seals… it’s one of their breeding grounds. Of course they’re not always there.” Without skipping a beat Todd had replied, “Yes, I know that, there weren’t any seals last time I was there” and she gave us both a doubtful look. “Sir, it’s a highly-protected island, with restricted access. When did you possibly visit it?” Cheery Todd had replied “When I was training to be a seal” and man, we had laughed for days about the look that came over that surly woman’s face just at that moment.

But all the paperwork was done now, all the boxes were ticked and the fees paid, and now we were allowed to hunt out this tiny, obscure little patch of island that had once been our home for three long, strange days. And we couldn’t have chosen a more perfect day. The sun was warm but not hot, and seagulls wheeled silently in the clear breeze, a pleasant wind that also blew into the sails and stretched them taught, like giant canvas lungs.

Todd was busy and completely engrossed, so I had time to perch on the edge and feel the ocean spray kiss my legs. There was still no sign of it. In fact, we had to hit the GPS coordinates just right if we expected to find this little speck. Todd was shirtless and lost in his work, as he always was when something required his hands. That’s one of the things I loved about him – the fact that he was somehow at his most still and calm when he was in motion. He wasn’t a man built to sit on the sidelines and watch. He had insisted on learning to sail this boat and, remarkably, he had picked it all up pretty quickly.

I looked down at the ruffled hem of my skirt whipping and rippling in the wind, and smiled. It wasn’t happiness I felt, but something like a slow, quiet contentment. It was the knowledge that the thing that was meant to happen was happening.

“Todd …am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”

I shaded my eyes with one hand and pointed to the horizon with the other. Hands on his hips and his feet spread wide, he glanced over then grinned at me.

“Of course it is, did you think I wouldn’t get us there?” he said and laughed.

“Not for a second,” I said and turned my squinting eyes back to the faint snatch of brown in that uniform blue landscape. From this far away the whole place looked meager and bedraggled. The trees seemed to be clinging to the place like they knew they were surrounded on all sides by salt water. The whole place had a ramshackle feel about it.

Todd was expertly hopping around the deck, busying himself with ropes and grabbing hold of the rudder in his strong hands. We were heading right for it. I’m not a very practical woman, I’ll be the first to admit it, but it’s times like these I can see exactly where Todd was coming from. There was a simple, noble beauty to the whole expedition. Using nothing but wind, water and brainpower to navigate the wild and hone in on the single precise thing you desired. If you could know the pleasure in that humble activity, you’d also know everything you’d ever need to about a man like Todd.

It took us at least twenty minutes more to approach land, and I watched in a dozy, half-meditative state as the speck of brown grew and grew on the horizon and eventually expanded to cover all of it. We were only a few yards out when Todd dropped anchor, lowered the steps into the water and invited me, smiling ear to ear, to step down.

I hobbled a step at a time. He had fought me on it, but I wasn’t going to bring my prosthetic with me. Not for this trip. It was silly, I know, and a little stubborn, but it felt right. It was like confronting an old bully or someone from your past I never quite forgave. I wanted to meet the island as I was: one foot less but in every other way, much, much more of a person than the first time I had stepped foot here.

I took the first step, took the second, then plunged to the waist into the cool blue, Todd holding out his hands down below to support me. I lifted up my skirt high and was momentarily glad I had slipped my bikini on underneath everything.

The coarse sand sieved through my toes as I walked up and towards the land, legs in slow motion through the water. The ocean had a way of doing that: of slowing everything down, whether you liked it or not. The landscape before us was still alien to me: after all, I had only woken up on this island long after all the main drama had passed. For me, it had been the neatest scene change. I had blacked out on the ship, and come to, right on these sands.

But not Todd.

I scanned his face to try and read what he was feeling, to find any little sign of recognition. But he was simply engrossed in the task at hand, and held my hand firmly as we walked over to the dry sand.

Once we set foot on land, I lowered my skirt hem and took a full breath. The wind took it up again and played with it, as it did my hair, and all the strange yet almost familiar smells of salt and fish and rock introduced themselves.

“So this is it,” I said.

“This is it.”

Soon, life would whirl around on its axis again and everything would change forever. Both Todd and I were entering into a new life stage together, and so coming here to say goodbye to this place was a now-or-never deal. Hadn’t we both dreamt of this island frequently for the past five years? Hadn’t we both laughed and smiled whenever someone ask where we had met, and cast sidelong glances at the other? It was now time to move on. Time to get the ‘closure’ I had tried in vain to explain to my mother and sister.

“Can I take that for you?” he said and gestured to my backpack.

“It’s OK. I want to hold it,” I said.

“Did you… did you want to do it now?”

I thought for a moment.

“Yes. Let’s do it.”

After we had both taken our fill of the views in all directions, we walked in silence deeper into jungly part of the island. In my memories, the trees had seemed so much denser and foreboding than they seemed now. They just looked like aging, non-threatening versions of themselves. It was cooler in the shade as we walked on.

“What about here?” he asked.

I looked over at the big palm tree he was standing beside.

“Yes. That looks good,” I said.

I told myself I wouldn’t cry. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down hard to gather myself for a second. I slid off my backpack, unzipped it and reached inside. I took out two things as Todd watched me solemnly.

The first was a little wreath I had made from willow branches and flowers. A ribbon with the letter ‘A’ painted on it was tied to the top of the wreath. The second object was an envelope, and inside that envelope was a letter that I hadn’t ever read.

Hands trembling, I opened the envelope and took it out. Todd reached out to help but I waved him off. This was something I had to do myself. I opened the folded letter, smoothed it out and set it aside. Then I put the wreath at the base of the tree, and cleared my throat. I tried my hardest to hold off on my tears. I wasn’t sad. I wanted to be here, and I wanted to do this. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

“Do you need me to go?” Todd said quietly.

I shook my head.

No. He was a part of this too. I had been told that when the others were recovered from the island, Anthony had been rushed onto the rescue boat and immediately asked for a pen and paper. He had begged Charlie to write down everything he said, and to swear that she would find a way to get the letter to me. By the time they had all made it to shore, though, he had already gone.

Charlie took a few months to reach out to me after that, but I had avoided her and sent her off after she tracked me down, then stashed the letter into a bottom drawer, knowing I didn’t have the heart to read it. And there it had sat through five years, one job change, several house moves and a marriage.

But I would read it now.

I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand and looked down at the old, yellowing paper, creased heavily down the middle. Todd stood somberly beside the tree and waited.

The handwriting was unfamiliar and done in a cheap black ballpoint, scratched in sloping lines. I wasn’t superstitious, like I said, but it was hard not to feel that something was happening now. I would release Anthony, and release myself. They were unspoken words about unfinished business. Whatever it was that he wanted me to know, I knew that by the time I reached the end of the letter, I’d be ready to move on and forget everything.

I began to read.

“Dear Ellie. Life is so much more fragile than I thought. I won’t see you again, at least not in this world. Please listen to every word that I write here and try to understand it. I’m in so much pain. I’ve never meant anything more than I mean this. Ellie, I have done everything wrong. All the things I held onto meant nothing in the end. For me, Ellie, please don’t hold onto things like I did. I cannot describe what it feels like to know that you’re dying. But I am soothing myself right now with the thought that you can do better than I did. Please be happy, Ellie. It’s all that matters. I couldn’t, but you can. Please be happy, Ellie.”

By the time I reached the final few lines, my voice had broken into a sob and the tears dripped down onto the page. I choked them back, carefully folded the letter up again, and held it in my hands for a moment. I then went to the palm tree, dug a little hole in the soil in front of the wreath and placed the letter inside it, before covering it over again with damp soil.

Todd stared hard at the ground with me, the twitching tendons in his neck telling me how torn up he was, too.

On my knees now, I patted down the cool soil, then stood. Was I relieved? I don’t know. But strange, deep feelings washed over me as I realized that Anthony had moved on a long, long time ago, and it was only me who had been the ghost, clinging to the past, unable to let go.

I had taken my lost foot as proof that life was punishing me for what I did to him. But now I could see that Anthony didn’t hate me. He hadn’t cursed my name with his last breath and he hadn’t wished me dead for what I’d done to him. In fact, the letter had contained a medicine that I hadn’t known I’d needed until I tasted it: forgiveness.

We stood for a moment more looking at our modest memorial, before Todd took my hand and guided me away. Walking out into the bright sunshine of the beach again felt like a cleansing. Tears still on my face, I somehow found a way to smile.

“I feel better now,” I said, and it was an understatement.

Todd’s hand went gently to touch my lower belly. It was sweet, protective little gesture that he had started doing ever since I had found out I was pregnant. It was only a small curve, but I knew full well that it’s often the smallest things that take up the most space in your life.

Todd kissed my neck and then wandered off, sensing that I’d need to be alone for a while.

I had forgotten one massive detail about this place: how quiet it was during the day. When the wind stopped streaming through the trees for a moment, the island was washed over in a kind of loud silence that felt impossible to ignore.

I sighed and took a walk along the beach, examining here and there for signs of …anything, really. Was I looking for evidence that we had changed this place as much as it had changed us? Did I want some proof that we had been here at all, and all those memories were not just images that came to me late at night to torment me and keep me from sleeping?

The truth was there was nothing.

And I felt nothing.

Nothing remained of the days we had spent here – how could it? – and the island was just as bare and cruelly indifferent as it was the first time we laid eyes on it.

I wandered over to the gradual slope where the water’s edge stroked the shore. Endless, rhythmic waves came again, left again, came again. Hypnotic, and a little senseless. Time just marched on here, to its own slow, elemental rhythm. For this island, five years was nothing. I bent down to look at the sand granules and wondered which of them had even been here five years ago. Wasn’t an island just a naked part of the ocean floor, a high piece that peeked up over the water level? In time, I guess even this island would be ground away and float off.

I had had enough. I stood, dusted the sand from my knees and scanned around for Todd. He was far out over to the other end of the beach, wading in some rock pools. I walked off towards him.

“Feel like some mussels?” he laughed when I reached him, then waved a glinting blue shell in my direction.

“Oh my god, don’t even joke,” I yelled back.

He was like a little kid, bent over and investigating the sea creatures that lived in the pockets of water between the rocks. I hopped onto them as best as I could, being unused to walking without my prosthetic, and went over to sit with him on the rock’s edge. He was more robust than I was, that much was true.

“Weird, isn’t it? Being back here?” he said.

I nodded.

“Are you sure this is even the right place? It feels so much …smaller,” I said.

“I know what you mean. But this is it. Santa Majella.”

“Not much going on here, huh?”

“No, not really.”

We both laughed.

It had been so important to me, coming back here. It had felt like the closure I needed. Now that I was here, I had mixed feelings. There was nothing special about the place, only about all the things that had happened here.

Todd was important.

The baby was important.

But this island?

I hadn’t expected to, but I started to feel like I was ready to leave, even though we’d only been here a short time. There was nothing left to do. Well, maybe there was one thing…

I reached out and placed my hand on his knee. He put his hand on top of mine and continued staring out at the horizon.

“Todd, let’s head over to those trees under there… I want to lie down for a moment before we head out again.”

He instantly got to his feet, helped me up and we went over in silence to the shady grove of palm trees behind us. The sand here was powder soft and gave way like a cushion as we sat on it. Todd settled his weight down and invited me to sit between his legs and lean back against his chest. It was the wide blue sea in front and Todd’s warm, supportive body behind.

We sat in silence, his fingers playing in my hair and then finding their way to my neck, along with his lips which gave sweet, light kisses on my shoulders. His other hand was softly around my waist.

“Todd, do you think I’m getting fat?”

His kisses turned into playful nips.

“Don’t ask me that again or I’ll go for your jugular next time,” he breathed and I laughed, trying to squirm away.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Your body is perfect to me.”

I smiled, grabbed his arm and guided it further up, so it cupped my breast. He seemed reluctant at first, but then teased lazy circles around my hardening nipples. I took hold of his other wrist and guided it down, so that the tips of his fingers just grazed the valley between my legs. I wanted him. Here, and now. And there. I twisted back and offered him my lips, which he dutifully kissed. I never got tired of how good it felt to taste him like this, to feel his tongue caressing mine.

He stopped me though, and pulled back to look at me with concern.

“Ellie, are you sure you want to…?”

I kissed him again, hard, to stop him from talking. I could feel the smile on his lips.

“Well, you’re the one parading around all day without your shirt on, it gives a girl ideas you know,” I said and playfully bit his lower lip. He took my head in his hands and searched my face.

“Just be serious with me for a second, will you Ellie? We came here for a reason. Is this what you really want? We’re not coming back here ever again…”

I sighed.

We had talked about this every evening for the last two weeks straight. I knew what he was asking. He had been patient. But he had also hinted strongly that he was ready to move on, ready to forget about this whole place and everything it came with. And he deserved a real clean start. We deserved a relationship that wasn’t a sequel, wasn’t a closing scene, wasn’t a conclusion to some other tragic story but the beginning to a much better one. A relationship that stood in its own right.

“I want it.”

It was all I needed to say. His body closed around over mine again and his lips once more found my collarbones, my neck, my shoulders. I moaned and tilted my head to the side, enjoying the goosebumps, and that amazing way he knew just how to tease my nipples so they tightened and sent hot little sparks all through the rest of my body.

After all this time together, we had our own carnal shorthand, and he knew exactly which buttons to press to have me squirming in no time. My body knew him, knew his touch, and wasted no time playing its part.

I loved the way I could feel his chest rise and fall underneath me as his breath deepened. I loved feeling that familiar hardness in his pants, and knowing what it meant. It felt naughty, being out here like this. The chances of another living soul seeing us were beyond remote, but then again, it was hard not to feel like we were breaking a taboo by being so flagrantly outdoors like this. His hands were moving more urgently over my stomach now, and when he slipped his flat palm over that soft swell, my hips instinctively rose to meet him.

Tired of kissing him over my shoulder, I swiveled round and faced him, on my hands and knees, and kissed him so deeply it sent him backwards a little, throwing his hands back out behind him to support himself. I couldn’t stop my hands as they hungrily took in every knot and bulge of his well-developed torso. He smiled and let me have him, looking down at me with amusement plastered on his face. Me being so desperately horny during early pregnancy had been a pleasant surprise for both of us.

I had soon shimmied up the hem of my dress to allow me to straddle him and then I set to work trying to greet every inch of his belly with a kiss.

“Hm, you really do want it,” he purred, and leant back even further.

I did. I couldn’t explain it, but somehow this was the missing piece, this was what I had come here to do. It was a big middle finger to this hellish island. It was the last word in the whole story, and I was going to have it, right here and now.

I pushed him back so he fell flat onto the sand and reached down to lift my dress high overhead. I tossed this aside and with as much abandon as I could muster, and then did the same to my bra. I couldn’t be bothered to take my panties off – I didn’t want to miss one second straddling him. Instead, I fell forward for another deep, juicy kiss and let my hips wander over that thick bulge I could now feel at his crotch. Lips still locked into his, my hands went to work unzipping him and releasing that meaty monster of his. I had fucked Todd in every position, in every room in our house. I had fucked him fast and I had fucked him slow. We had had angry sex, and playful sex and cute, sweet sex and serious sex and rushed sex. But no matter how well-worn that path, no matter how many times our bodies had come together like this before …I always wanted to do it again.

His cock bounced swollen and purple from the slit in his trousers and I left it just like that. It looked hot, seeing just that most delicious part of him poking out through his sensible, practical clothing. I slowly stroked the damp spot on my g-string against the veiny length of him, relishing the thrill of nothing but that flimsy strip of fabric between us. I played here with the friction for a moment but eventually the craving to have my bare skin against his bare skin was too much and I reached down, slipped the lacy material to the side and pressed against him again, kissing him now in two places.

There’s something truly extravagant about pregnant sex. It has its own kind of gluttony, filling up a cup that’s already full, drinking when you’re already intoxicated… It felt like a joyful excess, to keep begging to be filled with his cum when it had already proved so potent.

His hands reached up to pull me down for more kissing, but I was getting impatient. His other hand grabbed a firm handful of my ass and pinned me down, rocking and grinding my hips against that stiff rod. I usually loved letting go and giving Todd reign over me.

I loved trusting that he’d know exactly where to lead my body and how, and I could simply melt into it all. But today, I felt differently. I squeezed my knees tight against his trunk and held my hands at his biceps, playfully holding him down and letting my long hair graze his chest. He seemed sweetly taken aback, but only smiled softly, and he held my gaze and didn’t do a thing to protest.

“I feel like we’re the only two people left alive here,” I whispered as my hips kept up their teasing rhythm over his shaft. His smile was dreamy and distant.

“Like we’re just two wild animals, lost, forgotten, and we only have one another to rely on… for everything,” I moaned.

He raised an eyebrow at me. I usually wasn’t very chatty during sex either.

“And like animals, like savages we need to fuck to keep our species going, to keep one step ahead of danger at all times, to survive…”

He propped his hands behind his head and cocked his head at me.

“Are we ever going to get to all this savagery or are you going to keep telling me stories?” he asked, then yelped when I lurched forward to nip his shoulder with my teeth.

“You’d better watch out, mister, I’m the alpha female here, and you’re my chosen mate.”

I felt his cock bounce against me.

Still holding one another’s gaze, I shifted my weight onto my knees and knelt back, arching my ribcage to display my chest to him fully. I grabbed each breast and squeezed, rolling and teasing the nipples to points, still grinding wet in his lap. I tossed my hair so it fell over my shoulders and down my spine, then let my head fall and imagined that it was all true – that for this moment, we lived in a simple world. A world made only of sand and sea and wind and flesh, a world so close to death it was thrilling, so near to primal, unspeakable longings that there was nothing left to talk about, nothing to think about.

There was only doing.

Only fucking.

When I squeezed his engorged head into my pussy, it took my breath away for a moment. I tried to register how intensely thick and solid he was, how the sensation of being firmly opened by him sent little waves all through my hips. I was only three months pregnant but already I felt myself changing internally, shifting to become deeper and juicier. He groaned and arched his back to bring his hips up and deliver another slow inch into me, and then another.

We liked to draw this part out. Draw it out so slow that every inch of him deserved several breaths, till every part of him was deep and settled inside me, the perfect fit. I swear I could feel him grow bigger even still, crammed completely inside, his body expanding to take the shape of mine.

He tried to put his hands again at my hips but I firmly removed them, placed them back where they were and let him know with a stern look that I would be controlling things from now on. He bit his lower lip as I rose my hips off him, letting that gorgeous cock glide slickly out of me, then at the tip I lowered again, finding that sweet inside place once more, wiggling down to get even the slightest bit deeper. Just having him inside me was enough to drive me wild. Just the weight of that thick, heavy cock spreading me open inside had my pussy streaming wet onto my inner thighs. My body knew well what pleasures were coming, and knowing they were coming was half the pleasure itself.

The beach sand was cool and damp under my knees, and the trees whispered silky above our heads, casting down their mottled shade on our bodies. Far inside me, in some invisible place, something quivered with hunger. Something that only he could sate. I settled my weight over him, hovered parted lips close to his ear and began to slowly fuck him. My rhythm was inspired by the wistful rise and fall of the waves off in the distance.

Cheek to cheek, I pleasured myself on his body and he responded keenly, tilting his hips up to fill me, to move with me as I stroked that delicious spot inside and found myself inching closer and closer. When I began whimpering, his lips went to my cheek and planted dozens of tiny, soothing pecks there, encouraging me, daring me to go harder, go faster.

But I didn’t need any encouragement. I raised my body and arched my back again, throwing my full weight down on his cock and swirling my hips over him, then, still not satisfied, lifting and dropping onto him with a juicy slap, a feverish tempo that I didn’t want to stop for anything in the world. His clenched jaw told me he was right where I was. Right at that quivering precipice where going any further would mean surrendering to it all… and so we went for more, together.

All at once, his ab muscles crunched hard as he lifted himself up and sent me jumping off his lap.

“Get on your hands and knees,” he barked.

It’s not like I could have resisted, even if I wanted to. I obeyed and savored how a damper, darker sand was hidden just underneath the white beach sand, there when I clawed at the ground to stable myself for what was to come.

It was beautiful soil. Cool and deep and rich, fed from the ocean underneath it, half water and half earth, some perfect blend of hard and soft, yielding in my fists as I sunk my fingers into it.

I lowered my chest and raised my hips up, collarbones nearly grazing the ground, my hair falling into the sand and shells. This hair he grabbed in a fist and yanked back to bring my head back up again. I let my eyes fall closed as I felt him admiring me…

“I just want to remember this moment,” he said when I turned to gaze at him. He had torn off his trousers and was fully naked now.

“I want to remember what you looked like right before I made you come all over my cock.”

The kick of pleasure this sent through me was enough to make me want to come there and then. I shut my eyes and offered my ass up to him again.

We were the last two souls alive, who was to tell us what was right and wrong? What we could and couldn’t do to one another?

“Do it,” I muttered low under my breath, daring him.

He was swift. His hips came banging hard into mine, bringing the full, fat length of his brutal cock into me. I swallowed down a yelp and let the waves pass through me. Again he thrust, his now bare skin slapping against mine, and again he thrust, and again, till I could barely breath. His cock burrowed deeper into me with every pulse, reaching even those furthest parts in my body, those parts that made my whole body tingle and go limp from pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” I groaned.

His pace was strong and unrelenting. He knew that when I was this turned on, he could be as rough with me as he liked. Turns out, what he liked was to be pretty rough… He had me firmly by the hair, so that I couldn’t resist or squirm away from his fucking even by even one inch. No. I was to receive every part of him, to the full, right in my deepest, most tender parts. When I felt myself starting to come I could barely sputter out a cry. Because he didn’t stop, because he kept fucking me straight through, I came long and hard, each thrust drawing out my syrupy pleasure like taffy. I screamed long and loud when I couldn’t stand any more, and the bliss exploded right through me. He kept fucking me until he came too. Fucked me hard until I could feel his hips bump and shudder as he dug into me one last time and delivered that wet load of cum inside me, his hands clasping onto my hips for dear life.

“Fuck yes,” he growled and I felt his cock twitch and bounce inside me. I moaned and clenched around him, milking him, my cheek now flat on the cool ground as I came down from my own thundering orgasm. We both collapsed down onto one another, covered in sweet and sand, giggling at how disgusting beach sex turned out to actually be.

“That was fucking incredible,” he said, chest heaving, whacking the sand off his knees.

I turned to give him a mischievous smile as he settled down beside me. What could be more perfect than laying here nude on a beach, freshly fucked by a man that I loved, filled to the brim with the juiciest, most perfect part of him? What could be more perfect than watching the palm fronds sway and dance over us, first showing the blue of the sky, then hiding it?

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked all at once, and propped up onto his elbows to stroke the wild hair from my face. I shook my head. He kissed me. We were like two exhausted sprinters, celebrating after the finish line, muscles still twitching hard.

“Want to go for a swim?” he said eventually, and got to his haunches.

“Absolutely.”

We raced each other down to the shore, naked as the day we were born, but wiser.

And happier.

We kicked up the white foam as we splashed into the waves, laughing madly. We dunked under the water and let the cold wash over our hot bodies. It was the most delightful feeling in all the world. Todd let go of my hand and dunked under again, coming back up with a drop on each little spike of his hair. He shook it off and beamed at me, then fell backwards into the water to float on his back. I joined him, dissolving into the weightlessness of hovering just on the surface, the soft water lapping at my nude breasts, and slipping over the mound of my belly.

My ears went deaf for a moment and I stared up at the blue. The water drops in my eyelashes caught rainbows as I gazed up at the blazing sunshine, blissful. I could still feel him inside me. Could still feel the aftershocks of coming, as he said I would, all over his juicy cock.

I smiled.

After we had washed ourselves in the salty waves and I had twisted my hair back up into a knot on the top of my head, we walked out and back to shore to retrieve our clothes. Todd was strong and noble-bodied. I was a little more inelegant, and I hobbled after him, my little stump well healed over but still gnarled and angry looking. None of that mattered to me now, though. This body of mine was a miracle. All the life that had been poured into it was a miracle; it was big enough to hold me, and beautiful Todd, and the new little one that would be here any day now…

We made our way back to the boat, salt-sticky and feeling wiped out, but happy. We had a few hours to make our way back to shore now, and I would let this island heal up like a wound, let the ocean close up over it in my mind and never think about it again.

I will never know why any of it happened in the first place. I will never know why the storm hit us, and why we had survived. But what I did know was the lesson it had taught me. Never again would I take any day for granted. If I didn’t feel like I was happy to leave my life at any moment, content with the choices I had made up to that point should death come looking for me again one day …then I didn’t want to make those choices. I only wanted those things I knew could withstand any accident, any calamity, any swift change in course.

I was older now, a little slower, a little more cautious. My heart had healed, even though the scarred parts were still gnarled and angry looking. I was one foot down, sure, and worse for it. But I had another foot. And hands. And a heart.

And best of all, I was alive.