Epilogue
Kannen
Yesterday we celebrated a year of marriage with dinner at The Outlaw Barn.
I gave Stormy flowers and then said we could go to the movies or do something else, but she’d refused.
Then she smiled that smile she has that always gets me and said she wanted to be here at the ranch where it’s just the two of us.
Whatever she wants is fine with me. I’ll always support her decisions. When she decided she didn’t want to go back to a career in journalism but wanted to write novels instead, I turned one of the rooms into an office for her. I believe in her. I believe in her dreams.
But last night, there was a reason she wanted us to be alone.
I’m still thinking about that, about her on her knees slowly drawing my cock between her lips. I think about the way she swallowed, then licked her lips. I hit my thumb with the damn hammer and get up to walk it off. Shit, that hurts.
I’m glad I’m almost through with this task. I haven’t been able to keep my mind off how much my wife turns me on. And as the hammer proved, that’s an issue.
I can’t concentrate on anything. When I’m in the barn, I want her. When I’m on my horse out on the land I can’t wait to get back. The more I’m with her, the more I want to be with her.
I want to talk with her. Share the day. Make love until I collapse from the effort. Then wake up and do it all again the next day.
Working side by side on house projects the way we’ve been doing isn’t easy for me.
She’s good at it but when she wears those jean shorts and a low-cut tank top, my brain turns into lusty mush. I can’t even figure out the marks on the measuring tape.
Right after lunch we started putting down hardwood flooring in the bedroom and I suggested she go take a break.
“I’m not tired,” she’d said.
“You take a break and I’ll work on the tits…trim, I mean.”
She’d grinned. “Ah. I get it.”
She left me in the room alone and now I’m putting in the trim pieces. I hear her moving around in the kitchen getting something to drink.
Then she gags.
I jump up to see what’s going on. As soon as I step into the kitchen, the strong scent of the fried onions from the steak dinner leftovers we brought home hits me.
Stormy clutches her abdomen and races to the half bathroom off the kitchen.
I hurry after her. “Are you sick?”
She straightens from where she’d bent over the toilet and braces her hand against the sink. “No…I have nausea.”
Nausea? “Do you think…” I begin.
“That I’m pregnant?” She finishes my sentence.
We’d both agreed that after a year of marriage, we’d start thinking about expanding our family. But we’re always all over each other and sometimes a condom is the last thing on our minds.
I open the bathroom cabinet and take out a pregnancy test.
“You really weren’t kidding when you said you’d studied how to be a good husband. You’re prepared for everything.”
“I just want to take the best possible care of you,” I say as I rip open the test box and hand it to her.
“Okay, give me a minute.”
I step out to pace the hallway since there’s not enough room to do that in the bathroom and I’m too nervous to stand still.
“I’m done,” she says and washes her hands.
We both wait, her biting her nail, me still pacing until it’s time to check, then we both cautiously approach to peer at it.
“It’s positive,” she says, holding her hand against her stomach and looking at me with wide eyes.
“It’s positive,” I whisper, too choked up to say more. I’m a husband. Now I’m going to be a father.
Stormy begins to cry. “Before you I thought love was a bad thing but look at us now. Love is powerful and with that power, it gave me all this.” She motions to me, and then the test.
I pull her into my arms, this beautiful woman, the only woman I’ll ever love. “That’s because love knew where you belonged.”
“It did. Well before I even knew it myself.”
“But I was able to convince you after saying thanks.”
She teases, “You thanking me for sex was almost the last time for you. You were on thin ice, cowboy.”
“I don’t mind when you tease me,” I tell her, hooking my fingers into the top of her shorts. “In fact, I enjoy it very much.”
“Really?” she gasps, putting her hand to her lips in fake shock. “I never got that impression.”
“Well then, come here and let me impress you.”
She swats my hands away. “We need to tell your family and mine that we’re going to have a baby.”
“For now, it’s important that you rest.” I lift her up.
“What you have in mind isn’t resting,” she says.
“Wow. Only a year of marriage and you know me so well.”
She laughs. “Fine, cowboy. Let’s go rest and we’ll tell our families we’re expecting tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. That word is almost as sweet as the I love yous she says to me all the time. Tomorrow means another day, another chance to be with the woman who’s the center of my world. And that’s all I’ll ever need.