Not Quite Forever (Not Quite #4)(51)
Author: Catherine Bybee

“I want to believe that.”

He hated that she didn’t.

“What did my dad say last night? Wait . . . on second thought, I don’t want to know.”

Walt smiled. “Your dad is just looking out for you.”

“Unlike my mom. Lord, what was I thinking? You’d think I was thirteen and you were a high school dropout strung out on crack.”

Walt turned down a narrow road, following the signs to the first stop on his path to redemption. “You don’t think she’s just worried about you?”

“My mother worries about herself. About her image.” Dakota blew out a breath. “I know she cares but she has a hell of a time showing it. I really hope I won’t be like her.”

Cars pulled alongside a dirt lot with families jumping from them. Walt pulled into a spot, turned off the engine.

“In some ways I think we are destined to be a little like our parents. I think the parts we despise the most will be the ones we know to avoid. I won’t manipulate our child to go into medicine, and you won’t chastise them for writing.”

The warmth he’d grown used to seeing in her eyes started to return. “Is it that easy? We just make a decision not to parent a certain way and that’s it?”

“I don’t know if it will be easy, but yeah . . . why not? What possible profession can our child pick that we wouldn’t approve of?”

Dakota blinked a few times. “Porn star.”

He laughed. “Prostitution and all things sex trade we both agree to deter Junior from. We can add hired assassin or thief to the list.”

“Those things are easy to agree on. What if our child wanted to be a nude model or a nun?”

Walt lost his smile. “Neither one of us are Catholic. Chances are that won’t happen.”

“Still could. Could we handle our son or daughter posing in the buff for others to get off on?”

For the first time in his adult life, Walt thought about the skin magazines he’d picked up in his youth and actually considered that all those women had parents. “I don’t know how I’d handle that.”

Dakota stared out the window. “I don’t know either. What if we suck at being parents and we screw up our kid?”

He reached over and took her hand.

Her eyes met his. “We’re going to be awesome . . . and we’re going to screw up. I’ve delivered a few babies in my line of work and none of them come with an instruction manual.”

The smile on her face warmed him.

“I’m scared, Walt.”

“Thank God I’m not alone in that. We’re going to make mistakes, Dakota. As long as we love and take care of our child, they’re going to be amazing.”

“I hope you’re right.” She looked out the window again, stared up at the big orange balloon. “So, why are we in front of a pumpkin patch?”

“Halloween is only two weeks away. Pumpkin carving and costumes are important.”

He pushed out of the car and moved around as she opened the door. Walt took her hand after closing the door and didn’t let it go.

The pumpkin patch was also a petting zoo, a farmers’ market, and a craft zone for little kids. Walt pulled her to the first patch of jumbo pumpkins and spread his arms wide. “Now this is a pumpkin.”

“It would take a chainsaw to carve it.”

“But think of all the seeds.”

The thought of salty food made her mouth water. “I do like roasted pumpkin seeds.”

“Just salt, nothing fancy.”

She licked her lips. “Do you know how to roast them?”

“No. Do you?”

“I’m sure we can figure it out.” Dakota moved to a patch of smaller pumpkins. “Tall and skinny or short and fat?”

Walt rubbed his chin. “One of each.” He walked over to a parking lot of red wagons and pulled one next to the pumpkins. They debated size and girth, moved to the extra-large monster pumpkins, and hauled one into the mix. They rolled the wagon around, found mini pumpkins and gourds that Dakota knew her mother would like to have as an addition to her fall centerpiece.

Dakota found a bale of straw to perch on while Walt stood in line at a popcorn stand.

A little girl, probably around three years old, walked behind her mother with a pumpkin half her size in her arms. Dad was close by, clicking pictures.

A tiny towhead with chubby cheeks sat in overalls as he tried to stack the small pumpkins on each other. He didn’t look old enough to walk without help.

Walt sat beside her, offered the hot popcorn, and followed her gaze.

After a couple of bites, she interrupted their silence. “Did you ever think about having kids?”

“I didn’t dwell on it. I figured it would happen someday.” He grabbed a handful of popcorn and asked, “What about you?”

“When I was younger, I worried about having a baby. I’d stress about not taking the pill within an hour of the one the day before. I’d worry about a condom breaking. Then somewhere after twenty-five I just didn’t think about it. The more my mother asked when I was going to settle down, get married, and have babies, the less appealing the idea became.”

“Yet you write about happy endings as a day job.”

The chubby-cheeked toddler pulled himself up onto a pumpkin only to fall back on his padded butt. He pursed his lips and tried again.

“The ultimate contradiction. I believe in happily-ever-after. But I know it’s a lot harder to find than how I fictionalize it in a book.” Dakota looked up to see Walt watching the little boy with a smile.

A shadow passed over his face.

“Finding the right person to spend forever with shouldn’t be easy. When things come easily, the relationship ends up being temporary.”

“Like with you and Vivian?”

He didn’t stop watching the child when he reached for her hand. “I knew Viv was going to die. I loved her, but not the way a husband should love his wife. We both knew that if she made it out alive, a divorce was inevitable.” He turned and smiled at her. “There’s a difference between forever and not quite forever. Viv was the latter. When I get married again, it will be forever.”

Walt let go of her hand long enough to place his on the side of her face. She leaned in and accepted his lips on hers. Her fractured heart started to fuse together as his tender kiss reminded her how complete she felt in his arms. How empty she was when he wasn’t there.

When Walt pulled away, he ran a thumb under her right eye to collect the moisture that dropped from her lashes.