Page 68 of Fated to Forever: The Fate Series Collection

“We’ll be over in the morning,” Winter says, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

It’s my year to host Christmas. We switch off. If the drive wasn't so short from their house to ours, I’m sure they’d be staying over, but it’s only half a mile. It’s nice that we live so close. It makes the girls closer than cousins. They’re pretty much sisters. We all do everything together.

“She’s out. I’ll carry her in,” Ace says when we pull into the garage. “You go get ready for me.”

“We have Santa duty,” I whisper to remind him.

“Babe, I got it.”

“Right.” I lean over and kiss him. He is always three steps ahead.

“She’s out like a light,” Ace says when he enters the bedroom. “I can’t wait to see her in the morning.”

“Because you bought the whole store?” Not only that, the man drove six hours last weekend to get a dollhouse. It was the last one left. He’d been a man on a mission, only his missions are different these days.

“I got something for you too.” I laugh, already knowing what it is.

He scoops me up into his arms, carrying me into the bathroom. This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. I always joke that our tub is a mini pool. He sits me down on the counter.

I watch as my husband draws a bath for us, adding all the extras that I like in it before he starts to get undressed. He tugs at the tie of my robe so that it falls open.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous.” His fingers trace down my side and over to my round stomach. I let the robe slip the rest of the way off. Ace picks me up and carries me over to the tub, stepping in and sitting down so that I’m straddling him. “How are you feeling? It was a long day.”

“It was, but I loved every second of it.”

“How’s my other girl doing?”

“She’s good.” I place my hand over his on my stomach. “I was thinking… Now that we know it’s a girl, I thought of a name.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Destiny.” His eyes fill with surprise. It’s his mother’s name. “It fits perfectly with Fate too.”

It is, after all, because of Destiny that all of us were brought together. A woman driving through a town with her two sons, telling them how much she loved it. That it would be the perfect place to live.

“This family is going to be overrun with girls,” he says with a giant smile on his face. I lean down and kiss it.

People think destiny is a matter of chance happening. It's not. It's a matter of choices you make in life. It's not to be waited for... it's to be claimed.

---