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“Yeah? So?” I mumble. Birthdays aren’t something I celebrate. I’ve almost always been alone on my birthdays. Though I usually treated myself to a half gallon of ice cream with a dollar store candle stuck in the middle.
“So?So?” He throws the blankets off me and I finally surrender. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
I shower quickly. Too excited to bother finding something to wear, I throw my nightdress back on before going down the stairs. As soon as I hit the base of the steps, four voices yell, “Happy birthday!”
The living room is covered with banners and balloons, and the coffee table has a pile of presents on it.
“This is for me?” I ask in a shaky voice. “This is all for me?”
“Of course!” says Fox, coming over and sweeping me up in his arms. “My birthday isn’t until July, so we had to celebrate something.” He winks at me, and I burst into tears.
“Hey, hey,” he says, slightly panicked as he lays me down on the couch. “I didn’t mean it! Your birthday is important too, just as important as mine! More important! Like,way more important.”
“It’s not that.” I hiccup. “I can’t remember the last time I celebrated my birthday. This is too much.”
“It’s not too much,” Thane says in his deep voice, taking a seat next to me on the couch. “This is only a tiny bit of what you deserve out of life. From now on, your birthdays are going to be celebrated like they should be.”
I try to say thank you, but a muted sob comes out instead. Thane pulls me to his chest, rocking me and brushing his hand over my hair until I am calm enough to speak.
“Presents!” Levi calls out, throwing a package at me. Thane catches it before it hits me in the face, and glares at Levi.
“What? Presents make everyone feel better. This one is mine.”
I open it quickly and find a framed snapshot of the two of us, lying in the nest upstairs. It’s the night before the cervus trial began, and though I look pale, I’m smiling widely. Levi is pressing a messy kiss to my cheek in the photo, and I’m caught in a half-giggle.
“It’s perfect,” I whisper, tracing our silhouettes with a shaking finger. “I love it.” It shows our past and how happy we were, even if we didn’t know what lay ahead for us.
“My turn,” says Miles, bringing his present over instead of tossing it like Levi and then kneeling in front of where I sit on the couch. “I hope you like it.”
I tear the paper open and find a leather bound journal with beautiful gold writing on the front.
“It’s so gorgeous!” It looks like something out of a medieval fantasy novel, not from a modern shop at all. I inspect the linen-like pages and see that it’s been hand stitched. The leather worked by hand. Perfectly imperfect. It must have cost a fortune.
“I found an artist who does custom binding,” Miles says shyly. “I’m going to use her again once your book gets published so we can bind it in something that’ll make it extra special.”
“It’s perfect,” I say, throwing my arms around him and kissing him. He kisses me back, his hands tender on the sides of my neck, over the bonding scars I’m showing proudly in my skimpy nightdress.
“All right, all right, enough mushiness,” says Fox. “Here’s mine.” He does toss his at me, but I catch it this time.
“Huh,” I tease, feeling the package. “This is rather familiar shaped. I wonder what it is?”
Fox rolls his eyes. “I know, I know, there aren’t a lot of creative ways to wrap a football. Just open it.”
I open it, and the brown ball falls into my lap. The dark leather is covered in signatures, all done with a silver paint pen. On the very top is Fox’s name in huge letters because, of course, it’s Fox.
“That’s from the championship game,” he says. “It was just as big a day for you as it was for me. I thought this would commemorate it.”
“The whole team signed this?” I ask, amazed that so many people contributed to such a sweet gift.
“Yeah. And I had them all write you something nice, too. It was like pulling teeth, but they did it.” He glances over at Thane.
I notice where some of the team wrote things like ‘happy birthday’ or ‘Fox is lucky to have you’ and grin even wider.
“I love it,” I say, hugging it to my chest. “Thank you so much.” Fox blows me a kiss and then looks expectantly at Thane, who is looking expectantly at the front door for some reason.
“Thane?” Miles asks, poking him in the leg with his finger. “Your turn.”
Thane jolts, and to my surprise, he looks nervous. His gaze darts back to the front door before meeting mine.
