Page 107 of Chasing Blue
Three kids. Three daughters. He wants three. What if I can’t give him any?
“Stop overthinking it, Blue,” he calls out as the shower turns on.
“I’m not.”
“I can hear the wheels turning inside your head from here.”
I flip him my middle finger.
“Saw that as well. Get the plates out and dish up the food,” he orders.
I grab the plates and cutlery, but I don’t dish up, instead, I go over how happy I am. I’m at a level of happiness and contentment that I’ve never known, and it’s all because of him, Jack MotherFucking Cole. The boy who broke my heart so many years ago has been the one to fix it. A large part of our journey has been spent apart, but now we’re back together, and I can’t wait to travel these next twists and turns with him by my side.
EPILOGUE
Jack
Taking the seat offered,I watch Gabe as he sits on the opposite side of his desk.
“How’s Scarlett,” he asks as he leans back in his chair.
“She’s good. Exhausted, but she’s doing okay.”
“How long she got left?”
“Three weeks. They’re taking her in two weeks early to induce her.”
He nods slowly.
“How you doing?” he asks, and for some reason my stomach knots. Except by Scarlett, I’ve rarely been asked that question through all of this.
“Terrified, already tired.” I shrug as I attempt to come up with the right words. “I’m just glad we’ve got to this stage. I’ve been through some shit in my life, but I won’t lie, this has been fucking hard.”
“I bet,” he says still nodding. “I was talking to Finn on the weekend. Do you know how similar our lives have been?” he asks.
“In what way?”
“You’ve got two older brothers and a younger sister, right?”
“Yeah.” I nod, my brows pulled down in confusion as to where he’s going with this.
“You lost your mum when you were all young.” I nod again.
“You work construction, run your own business, you were a single dad. I mean, I didn’t raise Ava on my own like you did Finn, but yeah, I was single for a long time,” he shrugs as he explains. “Then we both get knocked off our feet by a couple of curvy little redheads,” he says with a wink and a grin. “Who both happen to be interior designers. Now I’ve got twins, and you’ve got twins due in a couple of weeks . . .”
“What? Why?” I pause. Totally baffled. “So, you invited me here for an episode of This Is Your Life?”
“No.” His grin grows as he shakes his head. “How you gonna cope, Jack? The construction side of things, the bar, newborn twins?”
I let out a long, slow breath and rub my palm over my jaw, which is covered in five days’ worth of stubble because I’ve been too tired to shave all week.
“I don’t exactly know,” I finally admit. “My dad and brother have moved down. Nate’s helping Finn, and my dad’s helping out at the bar, but we’ve got more work than we can keep up with.”
When we opened the bar and restaurant eighteen months ago, everything just exploded.
We were featured in a couple of magazines which led to us being booked out for months. Scarlett picked up work because of her designs for the interiors, and every job she quoted on, she gave out a business card of mine for any building work her clients might want to do. We’ve both been flat out ever since.
On top of that, our plans to get pregnant hadn’t gone the way we hoped, and we’d had to take the IVF route. The first round was a complete failure, with no viable eggs retrieved. It was rough, so we took a break, regrouped, and had success with round two. Out of the fourteen eggs fertilised, only three embryos were considered of good enough quality to transplant. After a quick conversation, we opted to go with all three. We knew it was a risk, but our specialist backed us because of the low number and quality of the eggs they’d been able to retrieve, and now we’re very pregnant with twins. Twin girls due in just a couple of weeks.
