Three years later

Beckett

“Beck, have you seen my snowshoes?”

Jeez. Will the woman not take a break? The fact is that I have indeed seen her snowshoes . . . as I was hiding them in the dryer.

Just as I’m about to shout an entirely made up answer, Jubilee swings around the doorframe and comes to a stop about a yard away from where I’ve got my feet propped up on an ottoman and am, ugh, reading.

“Did you hear me? Have you seen my snowshoes? I could’ve sworn I left them in the rack by the door when I came in yesterday, but they’re not there anymore.”

She’s all ready to go in some leggings, a vest zipped over a turtleneck, and her thick, shiny ponytail is sprouting from the top of her head, drifting over her headband. Her boots are all laced up, and she’s fricking adorable. Now if I could just get her to sit down instead of buzzing around like some lunatic penguin . . . No, wait, penguins don’t fly. Which is beside the point.

“I, uh, haven’t seen your snowshoes . . .” In the past ten minutes. “Why don’t you come sit with me? I made a fire and everything. It’s awfully cozy.”

As if to confirm my assessment, Tai rolls over and offers her belly for rubbing and Randy huffs. The dogs are taking up a bunch of room on the couch so they’d have to shove over to make room for Jubilee, but they’d do it. Grudgingly. They were my Christmas present from Jubilee last year, and they’re the best dogs. Even if she likes to tease me about how it’s hard to tell us all apart because our hair’s the same. Which, to be fair, is kind of true if you see us all from the back while we’re sitting on the couch. It’s not my fault we all look awesome.

Jubilee’s dark eyes narrow and her mouth thins into a line. “I don’t want to sit down. I am going to be doing plenty of sitting in the very near future. What I’d like to do right now is go tromping through the woods while I still can.”

She has a point, but I’m still not thrilled about it. We already went cross-country skiing this morning, and took a skate on the pond after lunch. I feel like that’s probably enough for the day. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but surely if anyone can understand that, it’s Jubilee, Lieutenant Colonel of Paranoia, though she’s settled some over the past couple of years, since I’ve managed to stay alive even after she admitted that she loved me. Took me three months after the first time she asked me to dinner to get her to let me kiss her, but then the physical stuff continued like a snowball. It wasn’t even a month later that I finally—finally—got to do my thing properly, and show her exactly how awesome I am at sex. Pretty awesome.

But back to dissuading my beautiful and talented but impossibly stubborn wife from taking a hike. “And what happens if you go into labor in the middle of the woods, huh? I know you’re a tough girl, but no one wants to snowshoe while they’re in labor. Especially if your water breaks. Then you’d be wearing, like, underwear-cicles.”

I didn’t think it was possible for her to look any more annoyed, but I was wrong. Her capacity for being irritated with me is impressive. Now suspicion’s been added to the mix, with a tilt of her head and her eyes like slits now. “You took them, didn’t you?”

Shit.

“Would I—” The way she plants her hands on her hips silences me.

“Would you take my snowshoes and hide them? Yes, yes you would.”

I can’t really argue with that since I did, in fact, take them. Also, if I lie about it and imply that it must be that she can’t remember because of pregnancy brain fog, she’ll just tear apart the house looking for them and once she’s found them will murder me in cold blood. The dogs don’t need to see that. Also it would be a real shame to leave our unborn child fatherless.

“Fine, I did, okay? But only because you’re like eleven months pregnant and I want you to be safe.”

And here come the eye roll and the heavy sigh. “Beck . . .”

I hold up my hands in surrender, because she’s right. I know she’s right. I just can’t feel it in my gut. All I do is worry about her, and the baby. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be some paternalistic assmuffin, okay, and I’ll tell you where they are, I just . . .”

It’s strange, this tightness in my chest, the rioting in my stomach. The programs we used to skate together were far more dangerous than anything she’s done since we found out she was pregnant, and I didn’t worry about her when we were competing. I mean, I did, but only in a way that made me careful and attentive. Not in a way that made me go off the deep end. Whereas Jubilee, who is usually the worrier, has been almost blasé about the whole thing. Growing a person inside me? No bigs. Ten million things that could go wrong and hurt me or the child I’m carrying? Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

I’m glad one of us hasn’t lost our senses, but I’m really more comfortable when she’s the one being paranoid. Lucky for me, she’s been kind about this, too. Which is further demonstrated by her shaking her head, but untying and toeing off her boots before unzipping her vest and tossing it on a chair. Instead of making the dogs move, she climbs in my lap, taking the book out of my hands.

She flips the tome to see the title and gives me that oh, Beckett look. I grab for it, but she holds it out of my reach and I’m sure not going to dump her on the floor to get it back.

“Why are you reading this? I thought I told you to stop reading this.”

It’s one of those Everything You Need to Know About Pregnancy and Labor books, and it’s true, she had told me to stop reading it after I spent weeks waking her up with the trillions of things that could go wrong.

“You did.”

“And did you listen to me?”

It’s now my turn to glare, though I’m nowhere near the professional she is. I do, however, beat her when it comes to gritting words out from between my teeth. “No.”

Still holding the thick volume of doom and death away from me, Jubilee drops a kiss on my forehead and then pushes off my lap and heads toward the fire where she deftly slips aside the screen and tosses the book onto the flames.

I’d protest, but that’s not going to do me any good. Some things I will go to the mats for. My wife is one of them. Her health, her safety, her happiness. Last year when her injuries started piling up and she wasn’t recovering from the stress fractures in her feet or her knee pain, I suggested it might be time for us to throw in the towel. To which she promptly replied with an instruction to go fuck myself. But when she shorted a double axel and fractured her wrist a few weeks later . . .

That was a hard time. For both of us. And then the woman told me just because she couldn’t compete anymore didn’t mean I couldn’t. Wanted me to find another partner. Uh, no. So I told her to go fuck herself. It’s possible we should clean up our language before the baby gets here . . . After the swearing, though, I told her I wouldn’t. Because I meant it when I said that it doesn’t matter what she can do, and it doesn’t matter what I can do, it only matters what we can do. And we couldn’t skate anymore. Not at the level of competition we were used to anyway. Bound to happen sooner or later, although we’d both been hoping for another shot at the SIGs.

It took a few more weeks of convincing, but we packed it in. Left Daphne to be fought over by pairs who want a shot at what we have. Bought a little house in Upstate New York that backs up to conservation land including a pond. We’re not far from a rink and we’ve already started coaching. It’s a good life. And Jubilee hardly ever throws my things into the fire.

“Really? I was reading that.”

She smiles at me and puts her hands on her hips, framing her belly. I’m sometimes impressed she can still stand upright, given that she looks like there’s a watermelon under her shirt. “Now you’re not. You need to stop driving yourself crazy.”

I wait for her to amend it to crazier, but she doesn’t. Instead, she walks over and drapes herself over my lap again, reaching out a hand to rub Tai’s still-upturned belly. After a minute, Jubilee sculpts her hand around my jaw and strokes her thumb over the scruff on my cheek. It makes the loud freaking-out voices a little quieter. It also makes Tai snort indignantly because she’s no longer being petted, and somehow Randy starts snoring louder. “You said it yourself. I’m going to have the baby any second now, so there’s no use reading up on pregnancy anymore. And if you can manage not to pass out, you’re going to be great while I’m in labor. Plus, you’re going to be an awesome dad. Really, you’re going to be wonderful. You already are wonderful.”

When Jubilee is earnest, it kills me. Like knocks - me - on - my - ass kills me. So I kiss her, and rest a hand on her stomach where the baby’s been kicking lately. Yep, there’s a kick. More like a push since there’s not so much space anymore. Over the gut-clenching panic floods a warm, sappy feeling. I love her, she loves me too, and now we get to start a whole new adventure together.

Jubilee lets out a tiny gasp against my lips, followed by a huff of a laugh. “Hey, Beck?”

“Yeah?”

She pulls away slightly, enough so I can see her teeth sink into her bottom lip. “I think I just had a contraction.”

Oh, shit.