“God, Will.” My lungs stuttered with each inhale and exhale. “I don’t even know what to say…”
“Melody Marco, I’m in love with you,” he said and, like a drum, my heart made itself known inside my chest. “I don’t want anyone else. Just you. Beautiful, brilliant, perfect you. I know, without a doubt, that I’ll never love anyone the way that I love you.”
Each one of his words touched my heart, and like a thread, they slowly sewed the wounded pieces back together.
“You’re everything to me,” he continued. “You’re the one and only person I want to wake up to every morning and the one I want to hold while we fall asleep at night. When I see you, I see forever, and I don’t want a life without you in it.”
I didn’t want a life without Will either.
I wanted him. I wanted us. And I wanted forever, too.
“I love you,” I whispered through my tears. “So, so much.”
“Yay!” Georgia squealed, but Will didn’t seem to notice.
He closed the space between us and enfolded his arms around my body until he lifted me off of my feet and wrapped my legs around his waist. “I love you, Melody. I love you so fucking much.”
I burrowed my face into his neck and inhaled his scent—clean laundry, his soft cologne, Will. God, I’d missed him, missed this, missed us. The mere thought of thinking I could have lived a life without him made my breath come in short pants.
I’m finally home.
I leaned back, and when my teary gaze met his, he asked, “So, are you going to accept the position to run the clinic?”
I giggled through my tears. “I guess it’d be a little weird if Melody Marco were working somewhere else, huh?”
A soft smile slid across his lips. “Those patients need you, Mel.”
“And I need those patients,” I stated and wrapped my arms tight around his neck. “But there’s something else I think I need even more.”
“What?” I almost laughed at the fact that he looked genuinely confused, until I remembered that that doubt was doubt I’d planted there.
I leaned close and put everything I felt into one word. “You.”
He brushed his nose softly against mine, excitement making his limbs flex into me. “You love me?”
I nodded. “I love you.”
“Thank God,” he muttered and melded his lips to mine. The kiss started out slow and tender, until we both felt the electricity of our special bond spark to life. Will’s lips became more persistent, and mine followed suit as I kissed him hard and deep and without concern for where we were or who might have been watching.
“Aww!” Georgia cheered and clapped her hands excitedly.
Her voice brought us both back to the present, and I giggled against Will’s mouth.
He pulled his lips away from mine and met my gaze. “I think it’s time we got the fuck out of here.”
“Uh…yes, please,” I agreed on a laugh, and he smiled.
Just then, Kline came sliding in the door at a run, his long fingers reaching out and grabbing the doorjamb to help slow himself down. “Georgie?” he asked, concern stark in his features.
Will and I bugged our eyes out at each other at the same time. Completely in sync.
Georgia just smiled. “Hey, honey. Guess what? I finally got good at lying!”
Kline was a smart guy, so it never took him long to catch up. Plus, he couldn’t have missed how unconcerned with Georgia Will and I were.
“I take it you’re not really in labor?”
As Georgia shrugged, I turned my attention back to Will and got lost in his smile.
Georgia and Kline could work out their own problems from here. I wanted a reunion. “Take me home, Will,” I whispered into his ear, but it didn’t spur the instant, on-the-move action I’d hoped for. Instead, he paused, and his blue eyes locked with mine.
“You are my home, Melody.”
Swoon. Yeah, those words were way better than anything else I could’ve imagined in my head. Even, the dirty, naked types of scenarios I’d started to picture…
God, I love him.
I pressed a gentle kiss to his lips and whispered against his mouth, “Ditto, Doc.”
“No.”
“Come on, Mel. You have to realize how cool this would be for me,” I explained, and my wife snorted in laughter as if it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
Yes, folks, you heard that right, we are officially married.
Mr. and Mrs. Will Cummings, or if you ask Mel, Mr. and Mrs. Melody Marco.
It only took me one year after she took me back to get her to walk down the aisle.
And it’d only taken another another six months after that before she got pregnant.
Believe me, I already know.
I’m the luckiest bastard in the free world.
My beautiful wife and I had been having the same conversation for the past two weeks.
I wanted to deliver our baby and she thought I was out of my mind and needed to deal with the fact that I would only be there as “support at the head of the bed, not face first with her vagina and guiding our baby into the world.” Her words, not mine.
“I do,” she responded with an exasperated smirk. “What I’m not realizing is what gave you the impression you’re at all important in this scenario.”
It sounded bad, but in reality, I was surprised she wasn’t saying worse. After all, she was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, and I’d been persistent in telling her that I planned to deliver the baby myself and have someone stand in for me as coach.
“I’d say I played an important role in the making of the baby.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “In implanting the baby with a chromosome. I made this baby. Fed it and housed it for nine fucking months. My feet are swollen, my bladder is destroyed, and I’ll never sneeze without peeing again.”
“Mel…” I said, smiling so big I thought my face might split in two. She was very nearly miserable, but she was still as lovable—and beautiful—as ever. And she was all mine.
She huffed, melting just a little in the sweet heat of my smile. “If you deliver the baby, who’s going to be my coach? And don’t you dare say Marlene.”
I laughed. “It’s going to be kind of hard for Marlene to be your coach when she’s busy being your nurse.”
In a surprising turn of events, once Melody had taken over the position of running the Women’s Clinic, she’d hired Marlene to keep the younger nurses on staff in order.
I’d had my doubts when she’d told me of her plans to hire the world’s grumpiest nurse in America, but somehow, the two of them were just the right amount of sweet and gruff to keep the clinic running like a well-oiled machine.
Their outreach and charitable successes had far exceeded anyone’s expectations, and to Thatch’s delight, had made the men behind the big investment look like the saints of New York City.