Page 8 of We Drank the Dawn

Without breaking our kiss, I moved her into the shower and she hissed when the water hit her back.

“Too hot?” I murmured.

“No. Kiss me.”

I guided her beneath the water again, and we got lost in each other.

“They have really pretty sunrises here. Should we just stay awake?” Sarah, naked under the covers, whispered against her pillow.

We’d gotten a second wind, and what I estimated taking thirty minutes took more like ninety. Worth every minute of lost sleep.

Lifting my watch, I tapped the backlight. “Dawn won’t be for another couple hours. I don’t think I can stay awake that long.”

“I realized long ago that the only way I’ll ever get you to watch a sunrise with me is if you pull an all-nighter.” She yawned.

“Those aren’t my good hours.” I’d never been able to drag myself out of bed that early. I marveled that the world's most chronic night owl married the world’s earliest bird.

She gave a soft laugh, patting my bicep. “Trust me. I know.”

“I will one day. I promise.”

“We might not have one day, Peter. We know that better than anyone.”

Boy, did we ever.

I shifted, pulling her into the little spoon position. But even as we fell silent and her breathing evened out, Sarah’s joy at the hospital nagged at the corners of my mind. I wanted her to hold a baby of her own. It was one of her biggest dreams—prioritized on her list.

“Sarah,” I whispered, “Are you happy?”

“Mmhmm. Very.” She snuggled in to prove her point, probably misreading my question.

“I meant in life. Like the way we are. With me.”

“Yes, Peter. Of course.”

Considering Sarah and I had been together since we were fifteen, I had an incredibly patient wife. I graduated college late, bought a house late, married her late, and started this conversation far too late.

Honestly, I didn’t deserve her.

When I looked back on the path of my life, it could have only been Sarah. She had sat through not one, but two rounds of leukemia with me—loving me as my hair fell out, playing video games on my hospital bed, and wheeling me around the hospital floors. I couldn’t even remember those days without a lump rising to my throat.

She survived the long nights and prayer vigils when I scraped close to death—holding my hand, waiting with my family, and talking to me when I couldn’t even hear. And when I was diagnosed with adult-onset epilepsy, she faced it with me—head high with no regrets in her rearview.

Throughout the years, I’d dealt with fears—incapacitating fears. Yeah, I went to therapy and talked it out, but when decisions needed to be made, I delayed. I didn’t want to make the wrong one. Our life together had been a nauseating rollercoaster of highs and lows, and day by day I worried we were catapulting into a low without realizing it.

It’s why, no matter how much I wanted to, I struggled to pull the trigger on kids.

IVF was no joke. And it was the only way for us to conceive due to chemotherapy. Thankfully, my parents had the wisdom to preserve that option for me all those years ago.

But Sarah’s perfect lips kissing the top of Wren’s fuzzy head played on repeat in my memory.

My sister wasn’t exactly “ready” for Wren, but no one could deny she was now at peace with her baby’s arrival. Maybe I wouldn't be ready for a big change until I had to be.

Sarah’s happiness was worth the risk, wasn’t it?

Theoretically, yes, it was.

“But you would be happier with a baby.” I whispered the words, disbelieving I’d said them.