Nobody had been more surprised than us when we found out about the baby. But nobody had been more overjoyed either.
We were seeing a counselor too. We wanted to heal from our past and move forward with the tools we needed to succeed. I taught my students that knowledge was power. Not because you could rule with it, but because it prepared you for the future and equipped you for whatever was to come.
I had taken that advice to heart and applied it to our marriage. We were growing closer and closer together every day, but there was still a lot of work to be done and neither Nick nor I knew what the future would hold.
We wanted to be prepared.
We wanted to be ready to stand side by side and face whatever the world threw at us together.
Sometimes I wondered if I fell in love with him for all the wrong reasons. But I also knew I had wanted to leave him for all the wrong reasons too.
The only thing that mattered now though was that I wanted to stay with him for the right reasons.
That we used those reasons to choose to love each other and choose to stay together no matter what obstacles we faced.
I loved him.
I would always choose to love him.
And he would do the same for me.
“What are you smiling about?” His voice drifted in from the doorway, where he leaned against the frame watching me.
“You,” I told him honestly. “Us.”
He walked toward me, a slow, prowling gait that gave me butterflies in all the right places. “Those are good things to smile about.” He reached me, swooping down to kiss my hands that rested on my belly. When he stood up again, his eyes shimmered with adoration, “That’s a good thing to smile about too.”
I leaned into him and wrapped my arms around his waist. His hands held me to him, one of them rubbing a soothing pattern over my back.
“Are you going to miss this place?” he asked gently.
I nodded against his chest. “Yes, eventually. But I’m going to love staying home too. At least for a little while.”
“I’m going to love you staying home too,” he chuckled. “You can make me lunch every day and iron my clothes.”
I pinched his nipple and made him yelp. “You can make your own lunch,” I scolded. “I will iron your clothes, though. It’s cheaper that way.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “It’s true. I get tired of buying new shirts every time I ruin one.”
“You’re a smart man, Nicholas. I don’t know why you can’t figure out an iron.”
I felt his smile when he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “It’s just one of the many reasons I need you, Katie. Don’t ever leave me.”
I lifted my face to meet his gaze. “Never,” I promised.
He squeezed me tighter to him. “I love you.”
His words were powerful. So powerful I felt them in my very core, in the very heart of me. I felt them as something permanent and lasting. I felt them as an oath, an unerring truth… as the conviction I lived my life with.
He was my husband.
He loved me.
He would always love me.
That was reason enough for me to love him back.
“I love you too.”
He kissed me slowly, lazily and so not appropriate for school. Then he helped me pack up nine years of teaching and we drove home to start the next chapter of our lives.
Together.
Look for Rachel’s next contemporary romance, The Opposite of You, coming January 26, 2016!
Acknowledgments
To God. For creative words, thoughtful moments and messy females. For loving the broken ones.
And to Zach. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I respect you. And I surrender. Every single day.
Mom, for the example you set. For being the wife that you were. For being the mom, the grandmother and the friend that you will always be.
To Carolyn, thank you for your endless work. Thank you for being unfathomably strong. For editing through cancer. For not hating me for asking you to. You are my hero.