Page 37 of Room 1003

As Shane blew out a long sigh, trying to catch his breath, I kissed the back of his neck and whispered the words I’d been holding onto for months. “Marry me.”

He froze, and for a split second, I worried he was going to turn me down, then he shouted, “What?!” He didn’t sound angry, which was good, but I couldn’t see his face from here to know what he was thinking. He tried to wrench his body around, but with my knot still locking our bodies in this position and his stomach making twisting around impossible, he grumbled in annoyance. “You ask me that now? I can’t even look you in the eye while I say yes.”

“You’re saying yes?” I gasped, my heart stuttering before soaring. I had hoped, but I didn’t know for sure how he would feel about getting married a second time. I wouldn’t have blamed him for saying no.

“Of course I am, silly!”

I propped myself up on an elbow and tried to lean over him to get a kiss, but I wasn’t exactly a limber man either, and we both ended up laughing at our pathetic attempts at sideways kisses. “Now I’m wishing I waited two minutes. Sorry, this could’ve been more romantic. I just couldn’t keep it in anymore.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s perfect.” And it was. Nothing about our relationship had been graceful, following set rules and plans, so why should my proposal be any different?

As we held each other, I tried to be patient, but I desperately wanted to get home so we could share the news with the rest of our family, and it seemed that Shane had the same idea, as he said, “I can’t wait to tell Kit.”

“Oh, he already knows,” I told him.

“He does?”

“Of course! I had to ask his permission to marry his dad first, obviously. He is the man of the house, after all.” While that last part wasn’t strictly true, it had been important to me that Kit have a say in what role I got to play in his family, and he had wholeheartedly embraced me as his dad. He and Zack were currently decorating the house for a celebration.

Shane’s body began to tremble, and it took me a moment to realize he was crying. “Are those happy tears?” I asked worriedly, trying to brush away his tears without accidentally poking him in the eye.

“You’re amazing,” he said through sniffles, wiping his cheeks on the pillowcase. “I can’t believe you did that for me. For Kit. You are already such an amazing father.”

At long last, my knot loosened enough that he was about to free himself, and with a little effort, I helped him roll over to face me. He cupped my face between his hands and kissed me with the utmost tenderness. “I love you, more than words can ever say. For me, for our son, for our unborn child—you are perfect.”

We didn’t often speak about Embry, maybe partly because Shane was still hurting or that he didn’t want me to feel like I was the runner-up, but it wasn’t like that at all. I took a moment to send out a message to the universe for Shane’s first husband, wherever he was.

Thank you, I whispered into the ether.I’ll take the best care of your family for you, and I’m forever grateful you entrusted them to me.

23

Shane

Thedoorwasclosed,and it was driving me nuts. Ben and Kit had been locked in that room for two weeks now, and I had been instructed to keep out. They told me it was a surprise. The thing about surprises, though, was that as much as I loved them, it was only after the reveal that I could appreciate it. Right now, I was in the itchy, need-to-know phase. It was FOMO—fear of missing out—that needled at me. They were having fun without me, but I tried to relax; I knew this bonding time was important for them.

I pressed my ear to the door, listening, but there was nothing obvious to tell me what they were up to. Dmitri sat at my feet and meowed up at me. He wasn’t allowed in either, and he was just as curious. “I know, right?” I said to him, bending carefully to rub him behind the ears. I would’ve picked him up, but he was too heavy for that. I’d been put on light duty, and he was over the weight restriction.

Finally, the curiosity got to me. My entire body felt poised for something to happen, tensed up and jittery. I needed to know, like an itch I couldn’t scratch, and pacing back and forth down this hallway wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t very well go back to the painting I was working on, not when I was so distracted. I knocked on the door softly, but as promised, I didn’t open it. I heard frantic shuffling and whispering, then the door opened no more than an inch, and I looked down to see just one of Kit’s eyes peeking through the crack. “What’s the secret password?”

“Um… ‘peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,’” I said with as much confidence as I could muster.

“Wrong. Guess again.” He was toying with me. He hadn’t given me a password, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that a password even existed. Either way, though, I knew there was no chance that I would be admitted into the room.

But that didn’t stop me from trying.

“Is it… ‘Ben is a massive tease’?”

“Nuh-uh,” he said, doing a poor job of stifling his giggles, and I could hear Ben’s rumbly chuckle from the room beyond.

I tapped my chin, pondering what silly words I could come up with, when there was a sudden squeezing sensation in a band across my stomach. When I shifted to try to ease the pressure, I felt a trickle of fluid down my thigh.

Blinking dumbly for a moment, I said, “Is the secret password ‘my water just broke’?”

Kit started laughing at the absurdity, but he quickly tapered off in confusion. “I don’t get it.”

Just a beat later, the door swung open. If I’d been prepared for it, I might’ve tried to peek into the room, but Ben filled the doorway so thoroughly that I doubted I could’ve seen a thing.

“The baby?!” he gasped, his eyes a bit wild. “Are you kidding?” Before I could answer, he took in my body position where I was hunched over slightly, an arm curved protectively around my stomach, my pants darkening as they got soaked through. “You’re not kidding.”

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