Parker (The Stewarts of Skagway #5)

Quinn

I’m worried.

Why? Because Parker’s been “off” since her gran’s party.

Despite her promise to “fuck my brains out” after the festivities, once we got to her bed, she asked if we could just spoon real tight and go sleep instead. Of course I said yes, because one, I love spooning with Parker, and two, I’m not a total asshole.

But it’s been four days now, and while we used to have sex at least twice a day, we’ve only had it once since the party, and Parker seemed…jumpy. Distracted. She definitely wasn’t relaxed, and she didn’t seem as excited as she’s been over the last few weeks.

She left my place this morning, headed home for the day to help her gran pack up the serving ware, plates, dishes, and glassware that were used at the party, which leaves me alone in my apartment, dark thoughts swirling.

Is she re-thinking us? Is she having doubts about being my girlfriend? Maybe she’s not sure she wants to be with me.

Fuck, but these thoughts hit me in the solar plexus like a Mack truck.

I can’t lose her.

Not now, when we’ve come so far.

Not now, when I know what it is to love her, to hold her, to make love to her, to wake up beside her.

Part of me—and it’s not a small part—would rather die than try to get over her.

How do you get over someone you’ve loved all your life?

I’m supposed to meet her at her place later, but as these terrifying, unwanted thoughts descend on me, I can’t wait until tonight. I get dressed, hop in my truck, and drive over to Dyea. We need to talk. I need to know what’s going on with her and where we stand.

I find her in the lodge kitchen with her Gran and Paw-Paw, jazz music on the old CD player and a mountain of clean dishes on the center island. They’re wrapping everything back up so it can be stored in the basement until the tourists return in May.

“Quinn!” cries Gran, crossing the kitchen to give me a hug. “You come to help?”

I spin her around to the beat of a short trumpet solo. “No, ma’am. I came to steal Parker for a few minutes. Is that okay?”

“Sure thing. I could use a break. Two hundred plates, two hundred cake plates, three hundred cups and glasses. Whew!” She looks at her husband, who’s smoking a pipe by an open window. “Maybe we don’t do a big shindig next year.”

Paw-Paw laughs. “You always say that the week after, and we always have another big party the following year.”

Parker finishes placing a large serving bowl in an open box, then precedes me out of the kitchen, into the lodge’s great room.

“Is everything okay?” she asks over her shoulder, as the kitchen door swings closed.

God, I hope so.

“Can we sit and talk a minute?” I ask her.

She’s so beautiful, with her blonde hair braided, wearing a plaid flannel, jeans, and furry slippers. Please don’t break up with me. Please don’t say this is over. Please.

“Sure,” she says, her eyes soft and concerned. She takes my hand and leads me over to a sofa by the windows. Once we’re seated side by side, she turns to me. “What’s up?”

I look into her eyes, searching for a clue—and thank goodness, I don’t see rejection—but I still can’t account for the changes over the last few days. They have me worried. I need to know what’s up.

“Are we okay?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’re not having sex as much, and you seem…distant. And distracted. And maybe a little bit jumpy. If I’m not the cause, I want to be there for you. And if I am the cause, I want to fix whatever’s throwing you off.”

She nods, which I take as her acknowledgment that she’s been “off.” Then she looks up at me, her face registering nervousness. My heart skips a beat. I take her hands in mine.

“Baby, please,” I say. “You’re scaring me. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t—”

“You’re not losing me,” she says, her eyes wide and voice firm. “I’m not going anywhere, Quinn. I love—I love…being your girlfriend. I’m in this. I’m all in.”

Whew. “Okay.” I exhale lustily, pulling her into my arms. “Oh, man, I’m so relieved. I don’t know, Park. I was thinking that maybe you—”

“But something is up,” she says. “You’re not imagining things.”

I draw back quickly, still holding her, but looking into her eyes. “What? What’s up? Are you okay? Are you sick or something? What’s going on?”

“You just asked me if you were the cause or not the cause of whatever’s going on with me,” she says, “and the truth is…you are.”

“What? I am? Or I’m not? What are you saying?”

She bites her lip, looking down at her lap. Taking a deep breath, she raises her head and looks into my eyes, her expression resolute.

“Remember Vegas?”

“Every second.”

“Remember when we were having sex, and I asked you to stop—”

“Yes! Of course! You remembered you weren’t on the pill. You asked me to stop.”

“Right. And you pulled out.”

“Absolutely. Just as soon as you asked.”

“Quinn…” She bites her lip again. “It wasn’t soon enough.”

“For what?”

She gulps. Audibly. Then she takes one of my hands that’s resting on her back and moves it to her belly. She lays it over her stomach and places one of her hands on top of mine.

I stare at her face, drop my eyes to our hands, then jerk my gaze back up to her face.

“Wh—What are you—What is—”

“It wasn’t soon enough,” she repeats softly.

“It wasn’t…” Holy shit. “I didn’t pull out soon enough?”

She slowly shakes her head, gently increasing the pressure of her hand over mine. Over her belly. Over our…baby.

“You’re pregnant,” I breathe, the words a prayer, a plea, and a promise.

A tiny smile tilts her lips up. She nods. “ We’re pregnant.”

“Parker! You’re having my baby?”

Her smile blooms. “I am.”

“How long have you known?”

“I went to the bathroom at Gran’s party, after Tanner and McKenna’s announcement, and I don’t know…I just realized that I hadn’t had a period in a while…and I texted Harper, and asked her to run to my cabin and grab the pregnancy test she’d left there when she moved out…and…and…”

“And it was positive?”

“Yeah. It was positive.”

“Parker!”

Her smile is the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen, but I can hardly see it because the whole world is blurry. My eyes are filled with tears of joy, and there’s nothing I can do to make them go away. I pull her into my arms.

“Aw, baby, I love you so much! I’m going to be the best dad ever! The best partner! Oh my god, Park, the best husband!”

“Wait. What?” Cue the sound of a record scratching. She yanks herself out of our embrace, looking up at me with straight lips and wide eyes. “H-Husband?”

Without thinking, I drop to the floor on one knee and ask,

“Will you marry me, Park?”

She continues to stare at me, her expression… not happy.

“No.”

“What?”

“No. The answer is no! I’m not going to marry you, Quinn. Not now. Not yet. We’ve only been dating for a month.”

“But we’re having a baby.”

“…who’s coming whether or not we’re married.” She pushes against my chest. “Oh my god, are you crazy? Get up. Stop this now.”

I slide back up to the couch, feeling confused…and a little rejected. As though she senses this, she reaches for my face—for my red, hot, embarrassed cheeks—and forces me to look at her.

“I’m crazy about you,” she tells me. “And one day, I may very well say yes. But that day isn’t today, Quinn. Not now,” she repeats. “Not yet. And not like this.”

I lean forward and kiss her. “Did you just say you’re crazy about me?”

Her expression relaxes a little. “Guilty.”

“And you’re having our baby.”

She pats her tummy. “I already love this little nugget.”

“Me, too,” I tell her, leaning forward to kiss her again.

I pull her into my arms, holding her tight, with our child safely nestled between us.

When the time is right , I silently promise myself and my child, I’ll ask her again. I’ll ask her right. And, god willing, she’ll say yes.

***

The rest of February, March, and April fly by in the blink of an eye, with snowy days occurring less and less, until the spring sun melts all the slush away. That same sun rises before six o’clock now, and sets after eight. Longer days means the first wave of seasonal workers arrive in Skagway. We’re all getting ready for the summer.

And Parker Stewart wakes up next to me every morning in my—wait! No. Our apartment.

When we looked at her cabin and my apartment objectively, it wasn’t much of a contest about where we wanted to live with the baby. Her almost four-hundred square foot cabin had a living room-kitchen combination, one small bedroom and a bathroom. My over-the-garage apartment had eight hundred square feet on its own, including a real kitchen, a separate living room, and two bedrooms with a bathroom in between.

Not to mention, when we shared our news with my parents, who were overjoyed at the prospect of their first grandchild, they told us that they’d build a new garage on the other side of their house, giving us their blessing to renovate the lower eight hundred square feet of space into anything we wanted.

“It’s a house!” Parker had chirped, standing in the grimy, dank, uninsulated garage with a giant smile on her face. “I mean, that’s what this is! Two floors in one building, right? Sure, it needs work, but they gave us a house!”

An architect down in Haines drew up some plans for relocating the kitchen and living room downstairs and making the current living room-kitchen into a master bedroom on the upper level. Ivy pulled the permits over at town hall in less time than it takes to tie your shoes, and my dad hired some guys out of Whitehorse to get started.

Our new house should be done by the beginning of July.

And thank God, because Parker’s due in late-September, and I want for summer to be a relaxing time for her, nesting in our new digs, baking our first baby.

“Does it bother you?” I asked her. “To live so close to my folks?”

She had shaken her head. “Nope. I’ve always liked your mom. She’s so chill. And our new place is a ten-minute walk from Harper’s house. I’m not going to know what I’m doing, Quinn. Your mom and Harper? They’re everything. I’m going to need their help.”

“You’ll also have me,” I’d reminded her.

“Yes. And I adore you. But I’ll need them.”

At the time, I told myself not to be offended by her words. She adores me , after all. And of course a young woman needs other women to help her with pregnancy and motherhood.

But worries lingered in my head. When you have hurt a woman, but somehow—by the sheer grace of a good and kind God—managed to win back her favor? You don’t fuck with it. You say ‘thank you,’ and stay vigilant.

Which is why I buy a ring—a big, beautiful diamond ring, set in yellow gold—from my friend Stan Renfro at Borealis Shine, right around the first of May. I keep it in my sock drawer, waiting for the moment to ask her to marry me.

And then, one day, the sun shines into the nursery you’re painting together…

“Are we sure mint green is the right way to go?” she asks, wearing a face mask to protect her lungs from fumes. Somehow—likely because I love her so much—it looks cute on her.

“Are you sure you don’t want to know the gender?”

“Wow!” she chirps. “Interesting segue.”

I’m carefully edging the border around his or her closet. “I mean…it’s not that I need to know. I’d just like to know.”

“Don’t kill me,” she says, “but…”

“Spit it out,” I say, pausing in my work.

“I have it. The gender. I haven’t looked, but I have it.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I went to Juneau for the 20-week ultrasound, Dr. Isaacs gave me a printout of the baby and wrote the gender of the nugget on the back. I have the picture in a sealed envelope.”

“So…you know?”

“No! No way! I’d never do that without you! I haven’t looked yet,” she says.

“Parker…” I put my paintbrush back in the tray and stand up. “I’m dying to know.”

“Me too!” She giggles. “Let’s get out of here.”

We leave the mostly painted nursery and cross the hall to our huge master bedroom, with a brand-new bathroom en suite. Parker takes off her mask, opens the bureau, and takes out an envelope from the back of her lingerie drawer.

“Sure you want to know?” she asks, sitting on the edge of the bed.

I walk over to my sock drawer and pull out a small box, shoving it into my back pocket as nonchalantly as I can.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m dying to know.”

“Positive?” she asks, her smile blinding.

“Tell me.”

She rips open the envelope at the same time I drop to one knee.

“Wait!” she cries. “What are you doing?”

“First, look at the picture and tell me.”

“Quinn!”

“Parker! We need to know.”

She flips over the picture, looks at the gender of our first baby, and smiles at me.

“Now I know.”

“I know you know.”

“Ask your question first,” she says, looking into my eyes with a love so big, I can’t believe it belongs to me.

I take the ring box from my back pocket and hold it out to her.

“Parker Katharine Stewart, I started loving you when I was five. I knew for sure that I’d never love anyone else when I was eleven. And when I was twenty-one, you finally gave me a chance in Vegas. You’re my dream girl. My best friend’s sister. The love of my life. My whole life. Through dark nights and bright days, and anything else life gives us, I promise to love you. I want to stand beside you for the rest of my life.” I don’t want to cry, but the pounding in my chest means that my eyes water on their own. “Will you marry me, baby?”

“It’s a girl,” she says, showing me the picture. “And yes!”

Sliding the ring on her finger, I smile down at my fiancée before kissing her sweet lips.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she says. It’s the first time she’s ever said it, and they are the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.

And with her words, in a weird and wonderful way, I’m reborn. I’m new. I’m hers. I belong to her until the end of time—these and any to come and any others beyond. She is mine, and I am hers, and we are having…

“Wait! It’s a girl?”

“Sure is!”

“Holy cow. We’re having a daughter.”

“Hey,” she says, “would you mind if we named her Emily Anne? After my mother?”

“I would love it,” I tell her, remembering Mrs. Stewart’s kind smile and hoping that our daughter will have one just like it.

We fall back on the bed together, face to face, and nose to nose.

“You know what?” she asks, her belly big and beautiful between us, with our daughter, Emily Anne Morgan, safe inside.

“Tell me, Park.”

“What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas, Quinn.”

THE END