Page 91 of Parker

“I have it. The gender. I haven’t looked, but I have it.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I went to Juneau for the 20-week ultrasound, Dr. Isaacs gave me a printout of the baby and wrote the gender of the nugget on the back. I have the picture in a sealed envelope.”

“So…you know?”

“No! No way! I’d never do that without you! I haven’t looked yet,” she says.

“Parker…” I put my paintbrush back in the tray and stand up. “I’m dying to know.”

“Me too!” She giggles. “Let’s get out of here.”

We leave the mostly painted nursery and cross the hall to our huge master bedroom, with a brand-new bathroom en suite. Parker takes off her mask, opens the bureau, and takes out an envelope from the back of her lingerie drawer.

“Sure you want to know?” she asks, sitting on the edge of the bed.

I walk over to my sock drawer and pull out a small box, shoving it into my back pocket as nonchalantly as I can.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m dying to know.”

“Positive?” she asks, her smile blinding.

“Tell me.”

She rips open the envelope at the same time I drop to one knee.

“Wait!” she cries. “What are you doing?”

“First, look at the picture and tell me.”

“Quinn!”

“Parker! We need to know.”

She flips over the picture, looks at the gender of our first baby, and smiles at me.

“Now I know.”

“I know you know.”

“Askyourquestion first,” she says, looking into my eyes with a love so big, I can’t believe it belongs to me.

I take the ring box from my back pocket and hold it out to her.

“Parker Katharine Stewart, I started loving you when I was five. I knew for sure that I’d never love anyone else when I was eleven. And when I was twenty-one, you finally gave me a chance in Vegas. You’re my dream girl. My best friend’s sister. The love of my life. Mywholelife. Through dark nights and bright days, and anything else life gives us, I promise to love you. I want to stand beside you for the rest of my life.” I don’t want to cry, but the pounding in my chest means that my eyes water on their own. “Will you marry me, baby?”

“It’s a girl,” she says, showing me the picture. “And yes!”

Sliding the ring on her finger, I smile down at my fiancée before kissing her sweet lips.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she says. It’s the first time she’s ever said it, and they are the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.

And with her words, in a weird and wonderful way, I’m reborn. I’m new. I’m hers. I belong to her until the end of time—these and any to come and any others beyond. She is mine, and I am hers, and we are having…

“Wait! It’s a girl?”

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