Amber
Everything was changing. Mum came back from her honeymoon glowing, and after a few more days, Zach left for Oxford. I’d be moving in with Luke for a few months before I left for uni. Mum’s glow wasn’t just from the tan.
She was so proud of her little bump it made me want to cry.
Then we all went to her twelve-week scan and saw the baby for the first time.
There was a limit on how many people could go in, so Zach and I stayed behind in the waiting room, flicking through outdated magazines and pretending not to be nervous.
But we got to see the picture before anyone else did—a tiny, grainy shape on glossy paper that somehow made the whole thing feel real in a way it hadn’t before.
I’m fairly sure Zach was only pretending to hate Luke at this point, since he’d stopped calling the baby the anti-Christ.
Then Luke bought me a new car.
That set Zach off again.
I tried to explain the car was a joint gift from Mum and Luke, but he wasn’t having any of it. He told me to return it, and I laughed so hysterically he never brought it up again. As if I was going to say no to a brand-new BMW.
He did pitch me some more scripture about obedience, delivered with a completely straight face, like he actually expected it to work on me at this point. I was beginning to understand relationships—or at least how to manage one with Zach specifically.
Since Zach had already outed our relationship status to the entire internet, Alisha’s accusations fell flat and never gained any real traction. She was too thick to become a proper stalker anyway. Mum’s stalker could’ve given her a few tips on commitment.
Luke had his people watching Sadie closely. But you couldn’t predict crazy, so Mum got a bodyguard too. Building a criminal case against a stalker wasn’t simple—the laws existed on paper, but they meant little if the police weren’t properly trained to handle cases like hers.
Mum was lucky Luke was loaded.
March made way for April. Spring was my favourite season.
Then there was the Easter break.
I stared at the selfie of all four of us, smiling into the camera.
What a disaster.
? ? ?
The tension in the room was palpable. Worse, even, than the day Mum found out about us. I glanced at my mum, who shook her head and rolled her eyes before returning to tapping away on her phone. Probably Rhea, or one of those mind-numbing matching games she’d gotten addicted to.
“Your grey hair must be impacting your grey cells, Dad,” Zach chuckled.
“Just pick a word already, Luke,” Mum said, without looking away from her glowing screen.
Luke glared at Zach, tapping a plastic Scrabble tile against the board with more force than necessary.
“You all want me to lose to the golden boy,” Luke grumbled.
“I didn’t say a word,” I protested.
“You were thinking it.”
“I’m regretting picking tonight’s game,” I mumbled under my breath.
How was I supposed to know these two would treat a game of Scrabble like a death match?
I yawned and stretched my arms out. It momentarily broke Zach’s gaze from the board, catching him staring at my boobs instead.
“Aren’t you tired, Mum?”
Her eyes flicked up as she assessed the situation.
“I am, you know. It’s hard creating a child at my age,” she said, slowly rising to her feet like an eighty-year-old.
Damn. She was good.
“No. Wait. Five more minutes,” Luke said, glaring at Zach.
“Victory shall be mine,” Zach said gleefully. “Move over, boomer. It’s time for the new generation.”
I hooked my arm through Mum’s as we walked out of Luke’s grand living room and into his equally grand foyer. His house had those twin staircases—the kind you only get, I assume, in case you’re in a bad mood with someone and want the option of taking your own separate route down.
We only made it halfway up the stairs when Zach and Luke joined us.
They could pretend all they wanted, but I knew Luke had been quietly discussing career routes with Zach, offering solid advice on progression and how to safeguard his trust fund properly.
I had no idea how Luke even knew about that—Mum didn’t even know about it. And Zach had actually listened.
I loved having Zach over at Luke’s place. He seemed to get a genuine kick out of sleeping with me under Luke’s roof. Their pettiness worked well in my favour, in that particular department.
We reached the top of the stairs, and Luke took my mum’s arm from mine.
“Goodnight, poppet,” he said, before whisking her away down the hallway.
My mum laughed at something he whispered in her ear, then turned back to wave at us, and I caught how genuinely happy she looked.
She’d never been miserable, exactly, but this was different.
This was content. Those quiet moments where she used to just vanish into herself, lost somewhere I couldn’t follow, were gone now.
We had five months before the baby came, and I’d already be at uni by then. That was going to be hard.
“I love seeing them like this—happy,” I murmured, as we climbed the next set of stairs.
“Yeah, he seems good for her.”
“Wow, high praise from you,” I said, turning to look at him.
“He grows on you,” he said, shrugging.
We reached my room and he opened the door. I paused when I saw the rose petals scattered across the bed. I stepped closer and spotted the small square box sitting in the middle of it all.
I felt him close in behind me, his hands settling on my arms.
“Marry me.”
It felt surreal. All those times I’d written our names together in my diary. All those childish fairy tales I used to spin in my head, back when wanting him felt like the most shameful secret in the world.
“Shouldn’t you be kneeling?” I whispered.
“Only if you’re naked.”
Fair enough.
I stripped off. I didn’t even need to see the ring, because I knew Zach.