28. Christopher
“The water is getting cold.” We’re sitting in the outdoor bathtub and have been for the past couple of hours. I’m leaning back against the tub with Dakota in my arms in front of me, her back to my chest, her legs tangled with mine. The waves crashing in the distance fill the air as the sun slowly moves toward sunset.
“Do you want to add more hot water?” I ask softly as I trail kisses up her shoulder to her neck. Her hair is tied up on top of her head.
“Do you want to get out?” I kiss her naked shoulder, not moving my arms from around her. “We are all shriveled up.” She holds up her hand.
“There is one thing that isn’t shriveled.” I kiss behind her ear.
“Oh, trust me, I know.” She turns her head toward mine. “I’ve felt it digging in my back for the past five minutes.”
“Well, if you sat on it, then it would not be in your back.” I smirk.
“I’ve sat on it twice already since we’ve been in this tub.” I lean forward to kiss her smiling face. “Once facing you, the other not facing you.”
“Hmm,” I moan as I slide my tongue into her mouth. “I might need you to refresh my memory.”
She laughs now, her laughter filling the balcony. “You are funny.” She kisses my lips, then buries her face in my neck.
For the past two days, we’ve been here and have never left the room. We’ve either been having sex, sleeping, or eating. All done either naked or with the robes that came with the room.
“Are you hungry?” I ask as I slide my finger with hers in the water, picking it up and kissing her fingertips that are really shriveled. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Are you asking me to suck your dick?” she asks, and now both our chests shake while we laugh.
“No,” I finally say. “When I want you to suck my dick, I’ll just say suck my dick.”
“Glad we got that talk out of the way.” She turns in the tub to face me, moving farther away.
I take her foot in my hand, and I can see she has something on her mind. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“I know that we are, you know—” she says and then looks down. I stop moving my fingers until she looks back up at me. I just stare at her, at her beauty, at everything she is. “You know we are having?—”
“Sex,” I fill in the blanks.
“Yeah, we are doing that. But I was wondering if, you know, we are just”—she points a finger at her chest, then me—“are we just having sex with each other?”
I sit up. “Are you saying you want to have sex with other people?” My heart pounds.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I’m asking if we are exclusive.”
“What kind of question is that?” I almost snap.
“Well, I don’t know, we never defined this.”
“Didn’t we?” I tilt my head to the side. “I think I remember saying I’m yours, and you’re mine.”
“Was I there for this conversation?” She smiles, and I can see she’s happy with the direction of this discussion because her eyes light up. I also know I’m going to marry her. I knew before I was in for the long haul. Now with her sitting in front of me, her face pink from us fucking, her body with my marks on it, the way I feel when I wake up with her in my arms. I know no one else in the world is supposed to be by my side for the rest of my life.
“I think you were there. Baby, whatever you want is what we do.” Her eyes lighten even more. “I don’t care what you call me. I just know that I’m yours and you’re mine. Also, FYI, there is no fucking open relationship,” I snap, and she giggles. “I don’t know how much clearer I need to be.”
“I think you are pretty clear.” She’s about to come to me when we hear a phone ring from inside the house.
I can see the worry hit her face right away. “That’s my mom.” Jumping out of the tub, she grabs the towel near us and runs into the house. I get out and grab the other towel, following her inside.
“How high is her fever?” she asks as she sits on the bed, her eyes coming to me. “That’s really high,” she states, grabbing the robe and then slipping it on before she presses the FaceTime video. She sits with the phone in her hand. “Hi, baby.” She smiles. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m sick,” Luna says, and then she coughs, “and my throat hurts.”
“Oh, baby, I’m going to try to call the doctor to see if he can see you today, but if anything, Grams is going to take you to the doctor tomorrow.”
“Okay, Mommy.” I sit next to her and see Luna lying on the couch, her cheeks pink and her eyes drooping closed.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says to the phone and then hangs up.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“She has a fever of one hundred and two. Her throat hurts, and she has a little cough. I think it’s probably strep.” She puts her phone to her ear. “I’m going to see if I can get her taken into the emergency pediatrician.” She listens to whatever is being said on her side. “Shit, they are full for today.” The worry fills her face as she presses something on her phone. “I have to make an appointment online.” Her fingers go crazy over the phone. “Got it. Tomorrow morning at ten thirty. It’s the earliest appointment I could get.” I nod at her before I grab my phone and call my sister Abigail. “What are you doing?”
“Calling my sister. She’s a nurse,” I reply, and before she has a chance to say anything, Abigail picks up.
“Eww,” she hisses, “why are you calling me naked?”
“I’m not naked,” I say in my defense. “Listen, Luna has a fever of a hundred and two, her throat is sore, and she has a cough.”
“Okay,” Abigail says, confusion on her face.
“What can we do?”
“Well, for one,” she states, “give her acetaminophen for the fever. Then you take her to the doctor.”
I roll my eyes. “Could it be strep?”
“It could be, but you won’t know unless she gets a throat culture.” I nod.
“Okay, bye.” I hang up the phone on her as she’s about to ask me a question. I know what she’s going to ask me, and I’ll get back to the gossip later. It takes her a second to send the text, and I think about not answering it, but I know it’ll just get worse if I don’t.
Abigail: Are you on vacation with Koda, or did she call you?
Me: Later.
Abigail: I’m calling Mom and Dad.
Me: Snitches get stitches.
Abigail: I’ll tell my husband that, and you can deal with him.
Me: I’m more scared of Gabriella than I am of Tristan. I’ll call you tomorrow.
“What are you doing?” Koda asks from beside me as I start to implement my plan.
“I’m getting us a plane, then I’m getting us a doctor who is going to go see her now,” I say, pulling up the phone number to the private plane we took down here.
“What?” she asks, her eyes wide.
“You aren’t going to be able to relax here when she’s sick,” I tell her, “and frankly, neither will I, so we’ll cut the trip short.”
“You would do that?”
“I don’t see any other option, do you?” I ask, and she shakes her head. “It’s a good thing we didn’t unpack.”
She laughs while I get on the phone with the private plane company. It takes an hour to get everything situated. We are strapping ourselves in when I look over at her. She’s wearing exactly what she wore two days ago and so am I. “We should land at around nine,” I tell her, and she nods.
“It’s my mother,” she announces when her phone rings right as the flight attendant closes the plane door. “Hey.” She puts the phone to her ear. “Wait, what?” Her eyes fly to mine. “Okay, we will be home in five hours,” she tells her mother. “Kiss them for me.”
She hangs up the phone as the plane starts heading down the runway. “Did you send a doctor to the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Just yeah,” she says breathlessly, “just like that?”
“Well, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.” I look into her eyes. “I may have overstepped, but the thought of her being sick and not getting help until tomorrow is unacceptable. So I called the team doctor, who knew a friend who did me a favor.”
Her hands come up to cup my face. “I’m going to need you to stop being so perfect.” She sniffles back tears.
“I’ll try, baby,” I say as she kisses my lips.
For five hours, she sits beside me with her head on my shoulder. “I owe you two days,” she whispers.
“You owe me nothing,” I tell her, kissing her head. “If anything, I owe you.”
When the plane touches down, we rush to the truck and head straight to her house. Her mother comes out of the living room. “Hey,” she greets us, “they are upstairs sleeping.” She points upstairs, so Dakota rushes up the stairs toward the bedrooms.
“I can’t believe you flew back so fast.” Her father comes out of the living room.
“It was easy to get a plane,” I lie to them. I had to beg a pilot to take us back home and pay them double. But I would have done whatever it took to get her home.
Her parents go to the door, grabbing their jackets. “We are going to head home.” Her father helps her mother put on her jacket.
“Are you sure?” I ask, looking up to see Koda coming back down the stairs.
“Yes,” her mother affirms, and Koda comes over to hug them both and thank them for coming.
I shake her father’s hand, and her mother hugs me and squeezes my arms. I walk out with them, grab her bag from the trunk, and then return inside. I see she’s not there, so I place the bag on the carpet. “What are you doing?” she asks when she finally comes down the steps.
“I’m going to head out,” I tell her, and she shakes her head, coming to stand in front of me.
“No, you’re going to come upstairs and get into bed with me.” She puts her hands on my chest.
“The kids—” I start to say.
“The kids are sleeping, and they will be just as happy to see you as they will to see me.” She gets on her tippy-toes. “And I don’t want you to go home.”
“But—” I start, but she wraps her arms around me.
“But nothing. Stay with me. I’m not ready to let you go yet.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, knowing I would do anything for her.
“More than sure.” She smiles at me. “We just can’t sleep naked.”
“Then I can’t stay,” I joke, and she laughs. “I’ll go get my bag.”
“You packed pj’s in your bag?” she asks, and I shake my head.
“But I have shorts.” I rush back out to grab my bag, coming back in and seeing her waiting for me by the door. I grab her bag and my own as I walk upstairs to her bedroom.
I put my bag on the chair in the corner of her room and take her bag to her walk-in closet. “I’m going to go check on the girls one more time,” she whispers, and I nod.
When she returns, she walks over to her closet, and changes into her pj set. I have my basketball shorts on with a T-shirt. “What side do you sleep on?” I ask nervously.
“Any side you are on.” She winks at me, making me laugh. I slide into bed, and she rolls into me. “It’s not the same.” She looks up from my chest at me. “I like the skin to skin.”
“You aren’t the only one who likes skin to skin.” I roll toward her as she cocks her leg over my hip. “Go to sleep, baby.” I kiss her lips, then she buries her face in my neck as I turn over on my back.
I barely drift off to sleep when I hear Luna crying. Koda stirs from my chest, getting up. I blink my eyes open and get out of bed to follow her. “You are hot,” Koda says, touching her cheek to Luna’s forehead. “I’m going to go get your medicine.” Luna just nods at her.
“I’ll stay with her,” I tell Koda as she walks downstairs to the kitchen.
“Hey there.” I walk over to the side of her bed and sit on the twin-sized mattress. “I heard you weren’t feeling well.”
“I’m hot,” she whines, and when I lean forward to touch her forehead, she slides into my lap.
I turn to put my back against the headboard as I cuddle her, rocking her back and forth. “Mommy is going to make you feel all better,” I say. When Koda comes back into the room, I’m about to get up when Luna shakes her head.
“Here, take this,” Koda urges, holding a syringe filled with red liquid in her hand. “You’ll feel better after this.” Luna opens her mouth and takes it all, then asks for water.
She hands her the water bottle, and I feel like I shouldn’t be here, but I also know I don’t want to leave. I’m about to do the handoff to Koda when I look up at her, and she looks at me as if I’m the only person in the world. Her eyes are soft, and she smiles at me as Luna lays her head on my chest. “You’re incredible,” she says softly. “I hope you know that.”