“I’m going to marry you,” I say, pulling back and sliding in again.
“I know.” She arches beneath me, her nails raking down my back.
“I’m going to wake up next to you every morning.” I thrust harder, watching her breasts sway with each movement.
“Yes.” Her voice breaks on the word, trembling with each roll of my hips.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
She pushes herself up, and I lean down to claim her mouth, swallowing her moans as I drive into her. We move together, skin slick with sweat, her body gripping me with every thrust. The wet sounds of our bodies meeting fill the room.
I slide a hand between us and press my thumb to her clit. “Come for me, querida.”
She shatters. Her back bows off the bed as her walls clench around me.
The sensation drags me over with her. I bury myself deep and come hard, moaning against her neck.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, her head on my chest, my hand on her belly.
“We should get married as soon as we get back,” she says.
“I agree.”
We talk until the sky lightens outside the windows. About wedding details and nursery colors and names we haven’t settled on yet. About the future that stretches before us, terrifying and wonderful and ours.
When Jasmine finally falls asleep, I stay awake watching her. My fiancée. The mother of my child. The woman with whom I’m going to spend the rest of my life.
The baby kicks.
“Soon, minha filha. Soon you’ll meet your mama and me. And we are going to love on you.”
I smile in the darkness. The warmth of Jasmine’s skin seeps into my chest, and her breath rises and falls in a rhythm I’ve come to know better than my own.
Outside, the sun begins to rise over the Maldives.
I close my eyes and let myself dream about our future.
Epilogue
Labor is nothing likethe books describe it.
Twenty-seven hours. That’s how long it takes for our daughter to decide she’s ready to meet us. I spend most of it convinced I’m dying, then convinced I’m not dying but wishing I were, then too exhausted to care either way.
My husband never leaves. Not once. He holds my hand through every contraction, feeds me ice chips, and tells me I’m strong when I feel anything but. At hour nineteen, I call him a bastard in Portuguese, and he just laughs and kisses my sweaty forehead.
“You’re doing so well, querida.”
“I hate you,” I tell him. “This is your fault.”
“I know.” Antonio kisses my sweaty forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry enough.”
He doesn’t argue.
At hour twenty-three, I tell him I’ve changed my mind about the whole thing. Motherhood isn’t for me. Someone else can dothis. He brushes the hair from my face and says, “Too late. She’s almost here.”
At hour twenty-seven, she arrives.
