“I like it,” Travis said, mimicking Carina’s move. “There’s Chloe too.”
“Charlie’s cute, and Chloe’s sweet too,” Rusty said. “Or Cadey?”
Carina smiled. “I love all of them.” She passed Travis his marshmallow and blew the fire off hers. It was a black, melting mess, but that’s the way she loved it.
“You know we don’t have to have a C-name,” she added.
“We know,” Travis replied with a mouth full of the marshmallow. He swallowed and asked, “Have we just agreed on a few names?”
“I think so,” I said with a chuckle. “We can always wait to meet Peanut before deciding on the final one.”
“How can we agree on names in thirty seconds but struggle to pick a color for furniture?” Carina muttered.
I shot a look at Travis, and he grinned. When he’d been out, he’d dropped off a key to Kamirah. She’d picked up the last of the decorations for the nursery and had set it up while we’d been at the game.
“About that….” My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out, read the message, then blinked. I reread it. “Mom and Dad are coming to Thanksgiving,” I murmured. “Holy shit, they’re coming.”
“That’s wonderful,” Carina said, her smile genuine. But I could see the hesitance playing on her face. She was already worried that if she went into labor early, we wouldn’t have the nursery set up. Now, knowing Mom and Dad were coming, I imagined she’d worry that they would think we weren’t serious.
“I think we should head inside,” Travis said.
“Me too,” Rusty added and stood up, then held his hand out for Carina to grasp before helping me up too.
Carina started picking up the mugs, but I stopped her. “We’ll come back for them and to put out the fire.” I grasped her hand, and Rusty wrapped his arm around her waist. Travis did the same to me, and we walked into the house, Zeus following and trying to jump up as we went.
Travis held the door open, and Rusty led Carina inside to the bedroom next to ours. The door had been closed for a few weeks now as we decorated it. I’d suggested to Carina that we use another bedroom down the corridor for the nursery, but I knew she’d had her heart set on this one.
“You know that furniture you picked,” I started and closed my hand over the doorknob. “We didn’t like it—”
“No shit,” Carina retorted and giggled. “There wasn’t a single one we agreed on.”
“That was because of me,” Rusty explained.
I opened the door, and Rusty flicked on the light. The lamps were dimmed to low, and the shadows cast over the room added to the ambiance. The walls were jacaranda purple with a raised mural of a tree in full bloom along one side. In the middle was the crib Rusty had made, whitewashed oak timber with white sheets and a pale purple blanket folded at the foot. On the other wall was the changing table and a chest of drawers. The brightest prints we could find of painted emus, kangaroos, koalas, and wombats were hung above. The windows already had blinds, but Kamirah insisted on softening them with white gauzy curtains, and it looked perfect with the lavender-colored rocking chair by the window. In the middle of the floor was a pale purple rug, and by the door was a height chart marked in centimeters.
Carina gasped as she looked around. Her hands went to her mouth, and she blinked, tears filling her eyes. “Oh my God, it’s perfect,” she breathed. “You chose all this?” she asked Rusty, then ran her hand over the pale timber of the crib.
“Hemadeit, beautiful,” I clarified. I was so damn proud of my man. He didn’t have any official qualifications, but he’d spent years honing his skills with a dedication borne of perfectionism and a need to escape into something he could destress with.
Her breath hitched, and she moved to the mural. “How?” she asked. “When?”
Rusty shrugged and smiled. “I closed the website down for commissions a couple of months ago. I haven’t had any orders—I’ve been working on these.”
Carina cupped his face and pressed a kiss to his lips. “It’s perfect. I… I have no words. It’s more beautiful than anything I ever imagined.”
“Those words sound pretty damn perfect,” he murmured as he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her.
When they broke apart, she reached for Travis and me.
“Thank you, all of you, for doing this.” She huffed out a laugh and blinked, tears spilling over her cheeks. “I thought we were going to fight over it. I was stressing so much, and then you said your parents are coming, and my first thought was that they were going to think I’m hopeless because I can’t even organize a nursery.”
“Darlin’, we’d never fight over this,” Travis reassured her. “You need to know that we’ll give you anything and everything you want.”
“I know that now.” She laughed and looked around again. “We’re having a baby,” she whispered, then her eyes widened. “Give me your hands.”
We placed our hands on her belly, and I could feel Peanut moving. There was a strong kick, and I looked at Rusty, Travis, then Carina with wide eyes. The sense of awe I had every time I thought about Peanut never dimmed. We’d made them. We’d created a life that was growing in Carina’s belly. We were going to be parents. I was going to be a dad.
No matter what happened on the ice, win or lose, coming home would always give me the biggest thrill. This, here, these people who I adored and our baby, were my home. They were everything.
