Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Krisney originally wanted to try to breastfeed, but with the anti-rejection medications she was on for the donor liver and kidney, she hadn’t been able to do so.
Now, the boys were completely on donor milk from a multitude of sources, a vast majority of those being from my brothers’ wives.
“Babe?”
I looked up from my boys to my wife.
“I need to talk to you.” I sighed.
She frowned. “Is it about that phone call you didn’t want me to overhear?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah.”
“We should probably put some sort of soundproofing in the walls for later on.” She grinned, but it quickly fell. “When do you leave?”
“The twenty-second.”
She sighed. “Dammit.”
I walked around and sat on the ottoman. “My thoughts exactly.”
***
One week later
I shouldered my bag and looked down at my little family.
The rest of my family was standing off in the distance, watching me say goodbye to Krisney and our kids without interrupting.
“Baby?”
I grinned down at Kris.
“Yeah, honey?”
“Are you okay?”
I nodded, suddenly nervous.
“I have something to tell you before I go.”
Her eyes suddenly took on a shade of nervousness.
“Do you…”
I shook my head and pulled her in closer to me. I knew what she was thinking. She thought that I was saying a ‘just in case’ kind of thing. In case I died over there like the last doctor almost had.
I wouldn’t be doing that. I would be coming home.
“No, baby. That’s not what I was going to say.”
Relief flooded her tightly-strung body.
“Shit.”
I wrapped both arms around her, being mindful of the babies that I was somewhat squishing to get the hug, and pressed my lips to her forehead.
“I love you, Kris,” I told her. “I want you to think about something while I’m gone.”
Her head tilted up to allow our gazes to meet.
“What is that?”
I pulled back, then dropped my mouth to place on the baby’s forehead that was riding on the front left side of Kris’s body. Moments later, I moved to the one on the right.
Once I’d gotten a good inhale of their scents, and gave them one more kiss each, I pulled away, and reached for the box in my left front pocket.
“How much I love you.”
Her eyes went soft.
“I know that I’ve been an ass,” I said. “I know that I’ve done things, said things, that weren’t always right. But there was always one constant thing in all these years that’s separated us. When I get back, I want to have that honeymoon we always talked about. Until then, I want you to read the letters I write. I want you to remember that I love you with my whole heart, and there’s not one single thing that I regret about anything since we got back together. I’ve loved every single second of having you in my life, and I’m glad that I got to experience it with you.”
I reached for her hand and brought it to my mouth.
After placing a single chaste kiss on her hand, I turned and walked away.
I got all the way to the door that would lead me to the airplane that would be taking me half a world away from my little family when Kris called out, “I love you, too, Soldier Boy!”
The necklace I’d bought her dangled from her fingers. On it were three words in my messy doctor’s script: I love you.
Chapter 25
Every corpse on Mount Everest was once an extremely motivated individual. That’s why I love my couch. A couch has never killed anybody.
-Krisney to Hennessy
Krisney
Both of the babies were in slings—one on my chest and the other on my back—while we waited for Reed’s flight to land.
He’d been gone for three months, and our babies had changed so much.
I was practically giddy to tell him my answer.
He’d left, and I’d been here, burning to tell him yes.
When he’d been informed that he was being deployed to replace a doctor that was hurt it’d been with only one week of notice.
Before I’d had time to come to terms with him leaving, only six and a half days after our wedding, he was boarding the plane that would take him to a layover. Which would then take him to Germany.
Now, two months and eighteen days later, he was on his way back.
I wouldn’t lie and say that the last two months and eighteen days had been easy, because they certainly hadn’t.
Not only did I have to deal with two babies who were young and in need of so much attention, I had to sell my parents’ house.
Luckily, I’d made quite a whack off the money since a new development was coming to Hostel, meaning that they gave me top dollar for my parents’ house, only to have them tear it down a week after I sold it to them. With the extra money that I’d made, I’d told the dentist whose practice I’d previously been about to work for to go ahead and move on without me, and I stayed at home with my children and enjoyed their first two months of life without multiple things attached to various parts of their bodies.