I wake up on the sofa again, groaning when my stiff neck resists me turning my head. But then I see Emma standing over me, holding out a steaming mug of coffee. “Can we talk,” she asks.
I bolt upright, shooting out an arm to drape over her shoulders, and remember that we’ve been fighting. I draw my arm back and nod, sinking back onto the sofa. She starts to cry. “I’m sorry, Thatcher.”
“Hey.” I risk putting an arm around her, and I sigh in relief when she lets me. “Em, I’m right here. And you have nothing to be sorry about.”
“What are we going to do?” she asks, and I think about the past few weeks, making sure I enter this conversation in the right place.
“Why don’t you tell me what you need,” I say, and she looks over at me, wide eyed. I pull her in closer to me, loving that she’s letting me give her some affection. We’ve been distant and cordial, but haven’t really had any big talks. Emma has had a few appointments with her medical team—it’s been hell trying to schedule the neurologist along with the high-risk OB, but once we had our big meeting, they both reassured her that things seem very stable. She’s not even risky enough to stay with the high-risk OB, which gave me a lot of relief even if Emma said she wanted to stick with the higher level of care. Just for reassurance, she said, and I admit I feel safer knowing we have a baby expert on our team.
I don’t know how to help Emma feel less frightened about growing our baby, but I keep looking on that app to see what size fruit our little Stag compares to, and reminding her that her body has magically produced bones and organs and skin. Emma ditched wearing jeans a few weeks ago when they got too tight, and I wish like hell she’d let me run my hands over her growing stomach.
But I know that will come. I just need to be patient.
After I decided to tell her dad about my courthouse stunt, he pulled out a bottle of whisky from his desk and we got drunk in his office, talking about how poorly the Cheswick women handle uncertainty.
He’d said, “Emma likes to plan everything,” and I told him how I foolishly tried to rush into a plan so everything would be tidy, taken care of.
“Hey, Ems,” I say, tucking her red hair back over one shoulder and running it through my fingers. “Remember that time you helped me babysit Petey?” She nods and smiles as I recall his epic diaper blowout, and how we’d had to call poison control when he somehow managed to eat some diaper cream in all the mayhem. “You stayed so calm while all that was going on,” I say. “I loved that about you. Even before I really knew that I loved you, I loved how you took action and did what had to be done.”
Her eyes dance back and forth as she listens to my words. I tell her, “You know that you’ll be an amazing mother, right? What you don’t know, you’ll research the hell out of until you do.” I kiss the tip of her nose. Her breathing is ragged.
“I just…this isn’t how I envisioned my life,” she says, holding up her hands and gesturing around our apartment. “I mean, maybe this is. I don’t even know what’s going on in my head, Thatcher.”
I hold out my fingers. “Let’s see,” I say. “You’ve got a hot fiancé.” I grin. “You’ve got a ferocious best friend, an amazing job, an award-winning feature series.” I open my palm and drop it to her belly, feeling a tingle through my core as I wrap my hand around the firm little bump. “And you’ve got your health under control, Emma. With people helping you keep it that way.” She nods, letting me rub her stomach, explore the life blossoming inside of it. “You know,” I tell her. “The Royal Baby will be born before ours, so you don’t even have to worry that you’ll pick some lame name that matches some duchess.” She laughs, and I know I’ve got her with me, even if it’s just for a minute. Even if it’s just for right now.
“Maybe I want the baby to have a lame name,” she jokes. “Maybe I want to name it Prince. Prince Stag.”
“I was thinking more like Duke Stag,” I counter. We share a laugh for a few minutes and she curls toward me.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch,” she says. I kiss the top of her head.
“That’s not what you’ve been,” I assure her. “I came on way too strong at the court house,” I tell her, remembering how Tim basically did the same thing when Alice got pregnant. Tried to drag her up to his penthouse and plan everything out without consulting her. I think about the plan I had in place to try again to get Emma to marry me. I had had this whole elaborate scheme to ask her in front of my family at Tim’s house tonight, make a public display of my devotion to her. But that suddenly doesn’t feel right, either.
I’ve got the box with my mother’s ring on top of the dresser in my room, but I don’t want to break contact with Emma to go get it, scared the moment will slip away if I leave this couch for an instant. “Chezz,” I whisper, twirling her hair around my finger again, nervous.
“Hm,” she grunts, seeming to almost drift off in peaceful sleep now that we’ve chipped through the top layer of our baggage.
“I still want all those things I was muttering that day at the market,” I tell her. “I still very much want to be your in case of emergency person.”
“Thatcher, I changed the paper—“
I cut her off with a finger to her lips. “Let me finish. I want to be your partner. I want to make a life with you, no matter what. I want to figure out communication skills together and learn how to manage my temper with you and maybe even figure out your temper someday…”
I shift my weight around, pivoting my arm out from behind her shoulders so I can kneel on the floor between her legs. She inhales sharply and meets my eyes. “Emma Cheswick,” I say. “Will you marry me? For real and forever and preferably as soon as you feel comfortable?”
She giggles a bit and nods. “Not good enough, Chezz. I need you to say it. Please?”
“Yes,” she laughs. “I will marry you.” And then I kiss her, softly and deeply, trying to tell her all the words of my heart through my connection with her body. She groans and puts her hands on her stomach. “I guess it’ll have to be soon if I want to wear the dress I got.”
“What are you talking about?”
She stands up from the couch and walks down the hall to our room. I follow her as she starts chattering how Nicole took her to the mall for maternity pants, but Emma got too overwhelmed to buy any and was feeling like a jerk for shutting me out when everyone knew we were going to eventually work it all out and get “actually married.”
“Babe, you’re rambling,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. She rolls her eyes at me and opens the closet.
“As we were leaving, I saw this dress.” She pulls out a pale green dress. It’s frothy and layered, with some iridescent bits that catch the light and look like rainbows. “It reminds me of…you know, the sculpture you made.” I smile, remembering my Emma sculpture I’d made after I saw her standing in the sunlight once.
“A goddess,” I say. “Rising from the sea.”
She nods and gestures toward the dress. “I thought maybe I could wear this when we get married.”
I jump up from the bed and grab the ring box. I kneel in front of her again, holding it up. “Ems,” I tell her. “This belonged to my mother.”
She gasps, pulling out the emerald-cut sapphire set sideways in a platinum band. “It’s very important to my family, Emma, and so are you.” I pause to take a breath, overcome by the weight of what I’m asking her. “My brothers both decided they’d very much like for you to have it,” I tell her, “If you’d do me the honor.”
Tears start to creep down her cheeks as she lifts the ring from the box. “Oh, Thatcher,” she says, sliding it on her hand. I had it sized based on another one of her rings when Tim gave it to me the other week, so it fits her perfectly as she stares down at it. She whispers, “I’d be a real Stag.”
“You’re already a real Stag,” I tell her, standing up and pulling her into my chest. “You’ve been a Stag ever since you wouldn’t make out with me at the botanical gardens. You just didn’t know it yet.” I grin at her and she folds herself into my arms. “Come on,” I urge her. “Let’s go eat Christmas food with my brothers and you can show everyone your ring.”
Emma starts peeling off her leggings and shakes her head. She grabs hold of my belt and says, “Before we do that, you need to help me work up an appetite.” And then time stands still for a few hours.