Noah

 “So, Gabriel,” the interviewer said, flashing pearly white teeth at the camera, “Have you decided on a name yet?”

Everyone looked at us expectantly, waiting breathlessly for an answer.

The papers had been running polls, we knew from Zara’s daily updates, where readers would vote for what they thought we would name the baby. Bookies were making a fortune from people betting money on the baby’s name, and it was all beginning to resemble a circus more than a high-profile pregnancy.

Of course, I’d forced Gabriel to secretly bet quite a lot of money on our actual pick, so even if we somehow lost the title and all our money, the money we’d make from this bet would pay for our baby’s college education quite easily.

“I don’t know if we should tell you, Cynthia,” Gabriel said, playing coy. “We might not be ready—and the country seems to be having so much fun betting on us! It seems like it would almost be a shame to deprive you all of this entertainment.”

The audience booed and screamed and clapped. Apparently, they wanted to know the baby’s name.

“We’re not kidding about how badly we want to know this!” Cynthia yelled over the din.

She waved at the audience to be quiet. “Now, you need to let the man speak or we’ll never know!”

“All right, all right,” Gabriel said, laughing, “We’ll tell you! Calm down!”

He put an arm around me unthinkingly. His Mama had said the other day that we looked so comfortable around each other, and I hadn’t thought much about it at the time but her words kept intruding on my thoughts.

Gabriel touched my arm when he walked by me, he cradled my neck when we kissed, he gripped my hip possessively when we fucked. Touching had become a whole vocabulary for him. He was a naturally tactile person. I wondered how many people had been with him long enough to find this out about him, and to be touched affectionately and—sometimes—not entirely sexually. We were a couple that had been together long enough to grow into each other’s space, to creep into each other’s thoughts, and to know each other’s coffee preferences.

It made me feel a strange, warm glow.

And I knew that Gabriel felt the same way as well. It was evident in every line of happiness on his face when he looked at me and my swelling belly. He would stroke it tenderly at night when we were cuddling in bed together, and read it poetry to make the baby smarter, and talk to it when he thought I was asleep.

He sounded so utterly convinced that they were having a conversation that I was almost surprised when a voice didn’t issue from my stomach, answering his questions.

“Go ahead, darling,” I said, smiling.

“We’ve decided to call our baby Nathan Alexander,” he said proudly. “Nathan, for Noah’s dad, and Alexander for mine.”

“That’s a wonderful name!” Cynthia gushed enthusiastically. “And so non-traditional too, isn’t it? Most people thought it would be Alexander Phillipe after your father and grandfather, Gabriel. What does the Queen think about this change?”

“She loves the name we both chose for our baby,” Gabriel said, stressing the word ‘both’.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. We’d had a fight about it just a week ago. And by ‘we’ I meant Gabriel and his Mama. I wouldn’t dare try to interfere in royal family politics.

Strangely, it was Gabriel who had fought for Nathan to be our baby’s first name. ‘It’s your dad, our son needs to remember him’, Gabriel had insisted. That, more than anything else, I took as proof of his devotion, because he was putting the baby and I over the interests of the royal family.

“And we hope you’ll support our decision, whatever the outcome is of the bet you placed,” I added, to which a few people laughed sheepishly, Cynthia included.

The rest of the interview went off smoothly. I talked a little about pregnancy-related weirdness like swollen feet and ‘hilarious’ brain fog, while Gabriel talked adoringly about all the things he was looking forward to teaching our son, and how gorgeous and irresistible he thought I looked in my several months pregnant state.

“Someday, that is going to grow old,” I muttered to him as we left, still smiling at the horde of paparazzie that was waiting to ambush us outside the studio.

“You love it,” he said unrepentantly, with his arm around me protectively.

Suddenly, someone came rushing up to us really fast and my heart reflexively jumped into my mouth. I stood stock still, frozen with fear as a random paparazzo shoved a giant video camera so close that my nose almost bumped against the glass.

“Noah!” he yelled, “Noah, what do you say to rumors that Gabriel’s paying you to be his lover?”

In the confusion somehow Gabriel’s hand had slipped off my shoulder. I felt dazed and lost and scared. I turned around, trying to find a gap in the crowd to get some air, but there were people pressing around on all sides, and the paparazzo wasn’t letting me dodge him either.

“Sorry,” I murmured, trying to sidle by him, “Sorry—I just need to go now—“

“Hey man, I’m not letting you go without an answer!” he yelled, matching my movements as I twisted to the left and right. Oh god, where was Gabriel?

“Get the fuck off him!” came a furious, unmistakable growl, and with a quick, vicious punch to the jaw the paparazzo tumbled to the ground, looking startled. A bruise was starting to bloom on his jaw.

It was Gabriel. Of course it was Gabriel. But he wasn’t done. He broke the guy’s camera by brutally throwing it on the ground, and stamped it for good measure.

He turned to me, pale and worried. “Sweetheart, are you all right?” he asked, running a hand quickly over my body to make sure I wasn’t hurt.

“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “I just want to get away from here…”

Gabriel carved a path through the mad rush of photographers and onlookers, and kept close to me by grimly holding on with a vice grip. We made it to the car in record time, and I finally felt like I could breathe.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Gabriel kept asking, low and worried. He was rubbing my cold, limp hand between his palms. I stilled his movements and pressed our hands together.

I leaned forward so my forehead was flush with his neck. The beat of his pulse thrummed against me, calming me down.

“I’m fine,” I said finally. “I’m fine. I just couldn’t see you for a minute there and that guy was just getting up in my face and I was panicking a little.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding angry with himself and a little heartbroken, “I’m so sorry I left you like that. It wasn’t my choice. One minute my arm was around you and the next, someone shoved me out of the way and I couldn’t get back to you. I was terrified,” he admitted.

“Hey, I was scared too,” I reminded him, rubbing my cheek against his collarbone.

He brought his hand up to cradle my neck tenderly. “I wasn’t scared of getting hurt,” he whispered to me. “I was scared I’d never find you again, or you’d been hurt, or something had happened to the baby while I was away from you. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. It was the single most terrifying emotion I’ve ever felt in my life, Noah, when I thought I lost you both. You know I wouldn’t be able to live without you, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said, “Because I feel the same way about you and the baby.”

“I’m going to make you a promise now,” he said, still sounding shaken, “As long as I’m alive, I’ll never leave you or our baby. You’re the most important things in my life. And if you ever feel like you can’t do this—be a royal consort, I mean, if it’s just too much pressure or you hate the publicity and the constant attention—just say the word, and we’ll get out. We’ll move somewhere quiet, with a—a beach, and we’ll get a boat and we’ll live quietly and nobody will ever bother us again.”

“You’d leave your Mama? And Lucas?” I asked, stunned.

“They’d understand why I was doing it,” Gabriel said softly. “They know how I feel about you. It’s a one in a million kind of thing, you know? What were the odds of us meeting? Nothing’s worth living without you in my life. Not the palace, not the money, not the goddamn throne.”

“But the private jet’s nice,” I said, hugging him. He chuckled.

“Yeah, I gotta admit, letting go of the private jet would be rough. But I’d still do it. I’d fly economy the rest of my life.”

“That’s a huge sacrifice,” I said, mocking him but genuinely moved. “But I don’t think we need to think about that right now. I think we’re fine.”

“If you ever feel differently, just say the word,” he said fiercely.

“I will,” I said soothingly, “I will.”

My initial terror had faded, and I was no longer feeling the rush of fear and adrenaline. In fact, I was feeling quite relaxed, because I believed that nothing would ever happen to me when Gabriel was around.

Somehow, I realized, we’d become the most important people in each other’s lives.

Which, since we were going to spend the rest of our lives together and raise a child, was the best thing we could have hoped for.