She curls out her pinky, like we used to pinky promise when we were young. Laughing, we hook them together. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad. They’re desperate to see their grandchild and are flying over as we speak,” she tells me.
“Nobody has to know about the video. But they must have been thrilled to hear your voice on the phone.”
With new, curious excitement, she signals at the door. “So what are you guys going to call the little thing?”
I grin at her, ear to ear, and whisper, “I have no idea, so I hope the dad does.”
HIS NAME IS Racer.
Racer Dumas Tate.
Because he was racing to the finish line, before we even set up camp.
The nurses say he’s a big boy, for a preemie, even though Remy and I think he’s so tiny.
God, he is perfection. Ten tiny fingers. Ten tiny toes. Pink little mouth. Little button nose.
He’s needed the incubator for four weeks now, but apparently he’s almost ready to go home. He doesn’t need a tube to be fed anymore, and he now weighs eight healthy pounds, which impresses everyone who can’t believe he was a preemie. Then, of course, they see the father and understand why this preemie is kind of big and healthy.
Remington spends the day training for next season while I hang around the hospital, determined to feed him my own breast milk so he’ll get all the nutrients and immune system benefits he needs. I’d also read about a “kangaroo method” where the nurses set the baby against the mother’s bare skin to strengthen and mature all of his systems. I love reading about all the scientific evidence of what skin-to-skin contact can do.
So once a day, the nurses bring Racer out to me, where I open my shirt and feel our na**d little baby on my bare skin. Sometimes Remy is here, and he spreads out behind me, so he’s my kangaroo, and then I’m the baby’s kangaroo—as the method is called. But no. Remy doesn’t feel like a kangaroo behind me; he’s too primal for that. He nuzzles my collarbone and peers down at our baby while I feel him on my skin, and it’s exactly today, as we are doing this, when Racer finally opens his eyes to look up at us. And they are blue, an achingly familiar pristine blue, and I fall in love for the second time in my life.
WE’VE BEEN DISCHARGED from the hospital, and the three of us are in Seattle, playing house at last.
Today is the fortieth day after labor, and tonight Remington and I will finally be able to have sex. Except he’s determined that the first time he takes me again . . . I be completely his. So, at noon, we’re off to city hall.
God, I am. Dying. To have my way with my baby’s sexy daddy.
“He’s asleep,” I whisper, from the chair in the living room where I sat to feed Racer this morning.
Remington is still in his pajama bottoms and bare-chested, and he comes over with such a proud, protective gleam in his eye, I die at the look on his face.
“Come smell him,” I whisper with a big, besotted smile.
He comes and takes a big whiff from the top of Racer’s head.
“He smells good, right?” I say.
“As good as you,” Remington gruffly whispers, and as I smell the baby, he scents me.
We laugh, and he slides his hands under my body to scoop me up and tells me, “Hang on to him.”
I do. He lifts me up while I hold the baby and carries us to the bed. “Diane is so excited about him—they all are. Is she here yet?” I ask.
“She’s on her way,” he says.
I nod eagerly.
Our iPod speakers are playing “Kiss Me” by Ed Sheeran. The song seems familiar somehow, but the familiarity of it really hits me as I set Racer down on the small cradle on my side of the bed, and Remington wraps me in his arms and starts kissing me. I want to do the girl thing and complain about my stomach. It’s still not completely flat, but he likes it, he kisses it. I want to complain with all these hormones in me, but I feel precious, treasured, and so lucky, I don’t even have words to say how much I wish this for the people I love. I know what it means to Remington to have a family now. He never lamented not having one. But now that he has one, I know he sees the difference. I know he sees what he was missing. Now he has a family to take care of, and one that takes care of him.
The knock on the door breaks us apart, and when Remy opens it, Diane steps in, beaming as she sees me in Remington’s red robe and him in his pajama bottoms. “I thought you two would be ready already!”
He kisses me roughly and excitedly, his eyes burning with a sheen of fire. “Go get ready. I can’t wait. To make you Mine.”
“I’m yours already!”
He scrubs his thumb down my lip. “I’ll be making you Mine your whole life.”
Running into the bathroom where I’d set my clothes out, I slip into them with fast, eager hands.
I can’t really leave Racer for more than a couple of hours, and our appointment is at twelve, so I didn’t want to torture myself with complicated attire. So I choose a plain but pretty white skirt and lacy white top to wear. Remington told me he’ll give me a big church wedding later, that he just can’t wait to make me his. I told him I don’t care about that, I just want the man!
The butterflies he gives me flutter full force as I pull my hair back in a bun that looks careless but pretty; then I try to perk up my face a little bit by pinching my cheeks so that nobody can tell Racer wakes me up so often at night.
When I walk out, my guy is already in the living room. Every single hormone in my body threatens to crash in on me and give me the weepy baby blues when I look at Remy in his black suit. Tall and broad-shouldered, he’s perfectly sculpted, his spiky hair all mussed as always, his blue eyes twinkling with love and excitement, and his dimples . . . he is all man, all boy, and all mine.
Before I know I’m crying, he comes over and he wipes my tears with his thumbs, laughing softly at me for being so emotional. Then he licks the corners of my eyes, sweeps me off my feet, and carries me out of our apartment.
The entire gang crowds city hall, everyone except Diane and our precious Racer, who we’re not supposed to expose too much until he gets stronger.
There’s Melanie, Riley, Coach Lupe. Coach even holds up a five-by-eight picture of a smiling Diane, telling us, “She wanted to be in both places at once, so I offered to bring her picture while she takes care of the future champion!”
My parents laugh by his side. My mother has tears in her eyes, and my father is beaming with pride. Pete and Nora stand by them, holding hands, since they’re trying to make a relationship work now that we will be in Seattle for a couple of months during the off-season. And Jo. She’s here, too, with that pert little grin and that army stance.
The excitement I feel bubbles in my chest and burns inside me as Remington and I walk up to where we will sign, my hand linked to his—to this tanned, callused, huge hand that I will never let go of.
And then we’re officially signing, getting married. He takes my hand in both of his, his blue eyes twinkling and liquid and entirely proprietary as he slips a ring on my finger.
The ring is platinum. “The white diamond is you,” he says in a terse whisper, lifting my hand up to my line of vision. And to the right of the central white diamond is a blue diamond, and to its left, a black diamond.
“You’re the other two,” I say, and the depth of my feelings nearly choke me as I frame his hard jaw between my small hands and kiss the hell out of him. “I love you.”