All I Want For Christmas Is You - Penelope Ward Page 0,58
all gone, leaving me alone with the woman that had no clue just how far gone I was for her.
“So you have a thing for me?” she teased.
I grinned. “I have a really big thing for you.”
Her eyes sparkled with mirth as she glanced down at my crotch. “Well, I have a place for your really big thing.”
I burst out laughing and pulled her into my arms, laying a soft kiss onto her lips.
When I pulled back, I reached into my back pocket where I’d stowed her gift as we were coming inside, and swung it around to hold in front of her.
She looked at it with wide eyes.
“I got you a present,” I said as I held out a box for her to open.
She stared at it curiously.
“What?” she asked as she ripped it open. “And I didn’t get you anything. I feel kind of bad now.”
When she opened the box, she all but doubled over in laughter when she saw the shorts that I’d gotten her, all just as funny as they are the same ones she’d ordered to wear to her first CrossFit workout.
“Now everyone will know that you’re mine,” I jeered.
Because on those shorts that would fit her like a glove was a photo of my face pasted onto the fabric in a bunch of different directions.
There would be no way that someone could mistake her for anyone’s but mine.
“Will you do me the honor of becoming my girlfriend?” I teased.
She looked up at the mistletoe above her head and grinned widely. “Of course.”
Then she kissed me, and I kissed her right back.
OCD. Obsessive Christmas Disorder.
-Coffee Cup
Soren
Four years later
“Daddy.”
I blinked open my eyes to see a child’s eye only inches from my own.
“Yeah?” I croaked.
“Baby,” my wife of three years said. “Daddy just got home. You’re going to have to let him sleep a bit longer.”
“But Santa came!” Tessa cried in her cute, cherub-like voice. “He left me so many presents!”
I groaned and rolled over, dislodging the little girl so that she fell between her mother and me, then reached for Nola.
“If you make coffee, I’ll go get the other one.”
The other one being our son, Liam, who turned one yesterday.
The funny thing was, all of our important days landed solidly during Christmas holidays.
We first met the week before Christmas. We became officially an item on Christmas. We got married on Christmas a year after we made it official. Our daughter, Tessa, was born on Christmas Day. Our son, Liam, was born on Christmas Eve.
Honestly, we didn’t keep trying to make things happen on Christmas, or around Christmas, but it kept happening that way. So we were going to cherish it.
“I don’t want to get up,” Nola grumbled.
“If that was the case, why did you blame it on me?” I bent over Tessa, who was laughing now being squashed in between her mother and me, and pressed my lips to Nola’s.
Nola giggled and cupped my cheek with the hand that wasn’t stuffed underneath her pillow.
“Because it’s easier than saying that I’m so tired I’m about to pass out again, and I’ve had eight hours asleep while you’ve only had forty-five minutes,” she murmured sleepily.
I nuzzled her cheek. “Well you are very, very pregnant.” I pointed out. “And past your due date by a week.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I know.”
“Think it’ll happen today?” I asked as I moved my hand to rest against her big belly.
On cue, the baby in her belly kicked out against my hand.
That was my favorite thing about her being pregnant.
Not the pregnant sex and the hormones that controlled her. Not the growing and the stretch marks. Not the crazy mood swings.
But the way that the baby felt while inside of her.
She was gorgeous pregnant. But the miracle of feeling that life growing inside of her was something else.
“I think that I should’ve gone with the scheduled induction that the doctor recommended I take four days ago,” she grumbled. “Who was I kidding?”
I laughed and stood up, groaning when all of my aches and pains made themselves known.
“We’ll open presents, then go workout,” I said. “Maybe that’ll kickstart your labor.”
She groaned and rolled out of bed, standing up and stretching her arms up high over her head.
Since we’d met, she’d been attending CrossFit classes with me. Sometimes they didn’t happen with any consistency—because having two kids and a booming practice sometimes didn’t allow for consistency—she still went and enjoyed it.
She was the cutest pregnant CrossFitter I’d ever seen.