“Let’s have a baby, okay?” Barry whispered against my hair.
“Okay,” I nodded. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 38
LITTLE FOREVER
The baby entered the world with a loud cry, one that shocked and thrilled me. The nurses delightedly pointed out the head of hair, dark like Barry’s, and told me I did so great.
A baby. A literal baby. My body grew a human, accomplishedbirth,which was almost more absurd than the growing of the baby in the first place. Barry cut her cord with shaking hands, and I was weeping before they even put the tiny thing on my chest. Barry smoothed my hair and kissed my head, his own tears falling on my skin.
She cried bigger than I thought she would, and we both marveled at the sound from her little body curled up against my chest before she calmed. This made me cry, too.
“She’s so tiny,” I kept saying. I couldn’t fathom it, her fingers were so small, balled into fists.
“I love you,” Barry kept saying. He kissed her head, too.
They determined that she was in good shape, oxygen right, breathing solid, and they’d keep an eye on her, but Doctor Ramirez didn’t think she’d need to spend any time in the NICU. She was a little thing, though. Six pounds, but she had all ten fingers, ten toes, a beating heart, and two strong lungs. Her upper lips were the sweetest thing I’d ever seen and holding her against my chest made me as new a person as the stories said it would. I couldn’t stop crying, holding this tiny miracle. We didn’t mean to make her, but we were meant to love her with everything we had.
After ensuring we were both good and stable, they left us foran hour for skin-to-skin time, and Barry kissed her head again, gave her some of his tears, too.
“Is she our Frances?” he asked, like if she wasn’t our Frances, another baby one day would be. I pulled my neck as far back as I could to get a good look at her.
She was, I could tell. Of course, I never knew what my grandma was like as a baby, but if she was here, she’d have loved hearing that loud cry. Would’ve laughed and winked and leaned close to my ear to tell me that our little one was going to grow up to be a fighter. That we’d have our hands full, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Our Frankie.
I kissed her crown again.
“Yeah, she is.”
“Hi, Frankie,” he whispered, and I smiled, giving a snotty sniffle.
“What should her middle name be?”
Barry sat back in his chair and thought about it for a long minute. I didn’t mind the wait.
“How about Hannah?” he asked finally. I laughed, lightly shaking the baby on my chest, but Barry didn’t take it back. He just smiled, eyes so full of warmth and love, full of our whole future, him and me, Junior and Frankie Hannah, for the rest of our little forever.
CHAPTER 39
REALLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY
Six Months Later
After a rare night out with just us, Barry pulled the car into the garage and parked, and I wasted no time yanking him by his tie toward me until I could basically attack his mouth with mine. No preamble, no grace. He gave a muffled yelp, but was quick on the uptake, sliding his fingers through my hair and kissing me back with as much single-minded focus as he did everything.
It was still like this, always like this.
When I felt like I was going to maybe explode from wanting him so bad, I pulled away and crawled into the back seat, squirming between the front seats instead of using the door. Jeremy had the car seat, otherwise this maneuver would have been impossible.
Barry snorted and lightly slapped my ass when it was right next to his face.
“Come on,” I whispered, and he sighed but followed me, bending his long limbs to get into the back seat the same way I’d just come, nothing coordinated about it.
“Why aren’t we going inside?” he asked as I crawled onto his lap.
“Because my brother is babysitting for another twenty-seven minutes, and if we go inside now, he’llleave.”
