Ripped - Cassia Leo Page 0,6

both or you don’t find out at all.” She wags her finger at me. “I like you.”

Lindsay sighs. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

I lean over and kiss her forehead. “I love you, baby.”

She suppresses a smile. “Love you more.”

“We’ll see about that,” I reply, turning to the tech. “So what’s the answer? Are we getting a boy and a girl?”

She moves the transducer around a bit more, pressing harder in certain areas as she types some stuff on the keyboard. It seems like forever before she finally announces, “Sorry. They’re fraternal, but they’re also the same sex. The good news is that you only have to buy one color of everything. Are you sure you don’t want to find out now?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I reply immediately, then I turn to Lindsay. “I have to focus on the tour. You can find out at the second ultrasound. You can even schedule that one for when I’m in Portugal so I don’t have to see it.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “There’s almost two months between Portugal and Pipeline. Are you trying to tell me you’re going to pretend like you don’t notice me buying a bunch of blue or pink stuff… for two months?”

“Maybe the addition will be done by then, and you can hide all the stuff in there.”

She rolls her eyes and turns to the tech. “Can I go pee now?”

The technician allows Lindsay to relieve herself halfway through the ultrasound, then she finishes by taking various measurements and photos before she sends us off to another room, where Lindsay will have blood drawn for a quad screen—a preliminary test to determine if amniocentesis is necessary.

Fifteen minutes later, we’re in the truck and back on the highway, heading toward Carolina Beach to pick up the kids at Lindsay’s mom’s house. I’m in the middle of telling Lindsay a story about something that happened while I was getting a massage from Edie earlier in the day, when she interrupts me.

“I really wanted to know the sex of the babies,” she complains. “I don’t want to have to schedule the baby shower for after Portugal. Then I’ll have, like, six weeks to get everything ready for two babies. Do you know how insane that is?” She shakes her head. “We have to tell them to finish that addition on the house sooner. We can’t have two babies sleeping in the same room with us.”

I grit my teeth as I realize she’s right. “Fuck. Why couldn’t we just wait to add on to the house until after the baby was born?”

“Babies,” she corrects me. “And that’s exactly why we couldn’t wait. Now we’re paying for an addition on a house we’re going to have to move out of in just a couple of years, when the twins are older and they can’t share a room anymore.”

An asshole in an Audi blares his horn, then he changes lanes to go around me. I’m driving too slow. Yeah, well, you’d be slowing your roll, too, if you realized your whole life is careening toward a dead end and you have no idea how to stop it.

Fuck. In five months I’ll be retired, with four kids, at the age of thirty-three.

“Can you please not tell anyone about how I’m thinking of retiring?”

“Thinking of retiring?” Lindsay replies, but I don’t even bother looking at her to see what kind of dirty look she’s casting in my direction. “Your words to me were ‘I’ll retire.’ That sounds pretty definitive to me. I didn’t realize you were still thinking about it. Maybe I should think about fucking my vibrator tonight.”

I turn to her, my mouth agape. “Can I watch?”

She smacks my arm. “I hate you.”

I laugh as I grab her hand, lacing my fingers through hers to prevent further assault. “You can’t tell anyone I’m retiring because it has to be done in an official announcement. If it leaks before the Hurley Pro, my sponsors will shit bricks. Especially Andy. And you know that. So don’t test me on this, okay?”

She nods. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just really happy about the idea of you being home with the girls more often. You know how happy it will make them.”

I swallow the lump in my throat as I realize she’s right. Again. My girls mean everything to me. I need them as much as they need me. If they’re going to be in Wilmington full-time, so am I.

We arrive at Lillian’s house in Carolina Beach at a