A family.
Josie slipped her feet into the set of ice skates he’d brought. Thankfully, they were the right size. Frankly, he’d brought them for show, never imagining she would actually want to skate. As she laced them up, she looked out over the pond. God, she was beautiful. Tiny nose, sharp bones in her face, the kind of woman who would age gracefully and even at sixty look like she was forty. Not that he cared. She could look like an ogre’s pet boar for all it mattered.
She was Josie.
And they would have babies.
He walked to her, and plunked down on the ground, and put on his skates, the toes pinching a bit, making his feet feel swollen, but for an hour on the ice he could suffer. His ankles would take a beating, and his old failed ice hockey seasons—all of two, in middle school—gave him enough muscle memory to manage this.
Standing carefully, Josie balanced well and impressed him as she glided on the ice, taking care. Her ankles wobbled and she caught the toe of one ice skate on a bump in the very uneven ice, but soon was skating with decent control. Not circles or triple axles, but she could move with a level of grace that surprised him.
She could always surprise him.
His turn. Being well over six feet, close to seven, meant his center of gravity was far different than hers. BAM! His ass cracked hard against the ice, the moon laughing at him as he looked up.
The snick snick snick of Josie’s skates on the ice told him she was coming to his rescue. Or something like that. Her petite form couldn’t possibly pull him up without the two of them wrecking each other in a painful pileup.
“You need to talk to Professor X again,” she said, her face over his now, grinning. The moon spilled light over the back of her body, framing it like an aura.
“Why?”
“That superpower of yours needs to include better ankles.”
He slipped and slid, finally giving up and turning over onto all fours, ass in the air as Josie dissolved into giggles. Aching move by aching move, he toed his skates and pulled up to standing. He felt like a toddler wrapped in bubble wrap, trying to run.
Those two failed seasons of ice hockey came back to him. They had been a failure precisely because of this.
He couldn’t skate worth a damn.
At indoor ice rinks he could cling to the wall for help, but out on the open ice his only option was Josie, and he’d snap her like a twig if he used her to balance on.
CRACK! He was down again, helpless, like a turtle on its back. Alex wasn’t accustomed to this sense of impossibility. The ice was defeating him, and a simple matter of physics ought to have allowed him to figure this out. Millions of people, from tiny toddlers to elderly folks, could ice skate. Why on earth was this eluding him?
“You’re too big.”
“That’s what she said,” he joked.
Josie rolled her eyes as she looked down at him, then glided away. “Dr. Perfect isn’t so perfect at something,” she teased, her voice floating through the still night.
He blinked for what felt like one long minute, and then began to crawl to shore, her laughter twinkling like the stars.
When he reached the snow, he sat and watched her as he took off his skates, her face luminous, her body in rare form. Controlled. Hesitant and cautious until she got it right. But skating with abandon, navigating the new and uncomfortable, the ice as nature intended.
Pausing, he took her in, legs taut as she made a turn, her mind and body in complete harmony.
In that moment, he realized, he had no choice. The universe had made it for him. She carried his heart with her, encased inside, and whatever remained of his natural life was hers, and only hers.
The moon seemed to glow a little brighter, as if agreeing.
Dylan
If men could have PMS, then lately, Mike was the poster child for whatever drug the pharmaceutical companies would debut for it. Fucking hell. His moods had always been erratic, even as he used medication to chill.
That, and running until he destroyed a pair of shoes in six weeks. Too many miles.
Not that Dylan couldn’t keep up. If he wanted to. But why destroy muscle when you could lift and bulk up?
He thought about the gym. Hadn’t been there in forever. Same with the old firehouse. The grapevine told him Murphy’s wife was on the mend, and those volunteer shifts he’d grabbed for a while ended once Jillian was born. You stay up all night with a baby a few nights a week and you’re a complete wastoid when it comes to handling a twenty-four at the station.
Hell, he couldn’t manage a twelve-hour shift any more. Sleep when you can sleep. Jillian’s latest bout of teething meant the handful of weeks where she’d started to sleep through the night felt like a dream.
Mike and Laura came out of the bedroom a hell of a lot happier than they’d been going in, he noticed. Jillian had dropped off to sleep, and he looked on the counter near the coffee maker. Sitting at the tiny kitchen table, sipping a cup of much-needed Joe, gave him a rare moment to just think.
Sometimes thinking was overrated. But not when you felt like you never had the time to do it.
His cell phone and car keys were in their newly designated spot, the phone plugged in to charge. Training himself to put them there would take a few weeks, but it was better than the hack he and Mike had finally devised to get his cell phone out of the heating system.
He was telling that story to Jillian’s prom date some day.
Yesterday had to go down in the history of their entire relationship—his and Mike’s—as one of the weirdest. And that was saying a lot, because after Jill died, Mike turned strange. Then, again, after they thought they had lost Laura. He had this hidden ball of something badass deep down in the dark reaches of himself, and while most guys deal with it by being assholes, competing for who’s the bigger man, or just blowing it out through weightlifting or pickup basketball, Mike used running and meditation.
Dylan thought punching something was so much better.
He’d spent the afternoon in a haze in the Kid’s Korner of the lodge as Jillian found new ways to pull his hair and tug at his heart. Toddlers wobbled on new walking feet around her, and she tilted her head, wide green eyes following the movements of the kids, a drooly grin ever at the ready for whoever looked her way. He’d become accustomed to the other parents cooing at her and then looking at him quizzically.
“She takes after her mother?” they’d say, and something in his throat would tighten. Jillian had dark blond hair and green eyes, and looked like a blend, as if genetics really had somehow taken three sets of DNA, put them in a Vitamix, and poured them out into a live newborn.