Rowan laughed out loud as he wrapped his arms tightly around his twin's waist, not even caring that she was about to cut off his air supply. Okay, so maybe he should care…
"Hey, sis," he said, his voice high, as he tapped her back lightly. "I gotta breath, Rhine… Air… World… going dark," he coughed dramatically, knowing that the fact that he was making a joke was likely to send somebody in the room – or a few people – into shock or labor, either one was likely enough after this morning.
Rhine jumped back from him, and then slapped him lightly on the arm, tears still sliding down her cheeks. Only when he laughed did Rowan realize that he, too, was crying.
"You're fine," Rhine protested, too choked up to better defend herself.
"You're absolutely right," Rowan said with another laugh, looping an arm around her waist just to make sure that she was solid, and here, and right beside him, and not a figment of his imagination like she had been so much in the past year. "I'm better then fine. This is one of the best moments of my year, actually."
Rhine laughed giddily, ordering Cecily to "scoot over" into Rhine's seat so that the twins could sit by one another.
Once they were all once again sitting down and relatively settled down, Rhine turned to Ella and Ava and asked, "You two are Jenna's sisters, right?"
Ava nodded.
"And you're Rowan's sister," Ella reciprocated.
Rhine nodded, grinning ridiculously at that statement, before Jenna burst out, "Wait just a second! I knew it!" she crowed, turning to Rhine. "I knew that those twin stories weren't fiction!"
Rhine grinned guiltily, before defending herself by saying, "Well, it's not like you or Cecily ever talked about your families either!" Rhine froze, saying slowly as she turned back to Rowan, "Hold on… Family?" Rowan didn't understand what his twin meant until she gestured to his wives lined up along one side of the table, clarifying as if in mild shock, "All of them are your family?"
Rowan nodded slowly, not bothering to hide his smile. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Pro-naturalists such as what he claimed to be believed that the human raise deserved to die out; they didn't go around marrying multiple women and impregnating every one of them. But then again, his wives had drilled a good dose of hope into him over the past months, and, truth be told, he didn't know if he would identify himself as a pro-naturalist anymore if anyone asked him.
"You're even a father?"
"I am," Rowan said with a proud grin in Frankie's direction. "And, believe it or not, I've grown to love it."
"You've turned into a family man," Rhine realized, shock that was only halfway dramatized making its way into her voice and expression.
Rowan shrugged, not about to deny it, since it was pretty obvious that it was true. "These past ten months have changed me a lot, Rhine – changed all of us in one way or another, I'd be willing to bet."
"It's true," Linden acknowledged. "And I think the plan of attack for today sounds like getting to know one another – for the first time and all over again – am I right?"
So that's what they did that day. The two husbands and all of their wives stayed mostly holed up in the sitting room on the wives' floor, unwilling to wander the extensive grounds in the middle of December. It was nine in the evening before anyone even thought to excuse themselves from the gathering.
Rhine and Linden were the first to go.
"Alright," Rhine said, standing languidly to her feet from where she had been sitting beside Rowan on the floor. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm about asleep on my feet, so I think that I'm going to go off to bed now."
"'Night, sis," Rowan said.
His gaze switched from his sister to his brother-in-law, who had been sitting on the floor on Rhine's other side, in time to catch the heat that started climbing into the other man's cheeks. Linden did a double take in Rowan's direction, realizing that he was being watched. Rowan arched his eyebrow in a silent question that he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to. Linden colored all the more and looked down at his lap before jumping up onto his own feet in one surprisingly fluid movement.
"I think I'm going to sleep too."
Cecily waited until the door had closed behind both Rhine and Linden before she said, looking pointedly at Jenna, "That wasn't suspicious at all..."
"I know, right?" Jenna said, scrambling to her feet and cracking open the sitting room door to peer out into the hallway. "Yup; that's what I thought."
"What?" Cecily demanded.
"They're finally going to do it," Jenna said with a knowing smile as she shut the door and turned back to the occupants of the room.
"How do you know?" Cecily asked.
"Didn't you notice how she pulled him aside after supper and they had this weird conversation that none of the rest of us could hear but made him blush like crazy?"
Rowan started begging the floor to swallow him as he fumbled onto his feet and started edging towards the door.
"Yeah, but it's not like you don't know what she wants to talk to him about," Cecily said cryptically.
At that, Rowan paused, having been long forgotten by the six teenage girls in the room.
"Yes… I know that," Jenna nodded. "But I also think that Rowan's finding her has made her very, very happy – not to mention severed the last reason why she might still want to leave Linden – and that fact, I have a feeling, is going to make Linden very, very, very happy tonight."
Rowan started towards the door again, trying to decide how best to get past Jenna when Ella looked over at her older sister and asked cheekily, "So, when were you going to tell us that I wasn't the only one of us who had lost her fertility issues?"
"What?" Cecily screamed happily.
"Shh!" Jenna demanded, blushing happily as she slapped a hand over Cecily's mouth and hissed, "I haven't told Linden yet, and don't any of you dare do it for me! I'm going to tell him sometime this week."
"I'm going now!" Rowan called out as he opened the sitting room door.
As he had intended, the sound of feminine laughter followed him out the door.
Hopefully you enjoyed this! Reviews make my day, if you feel so inclined to drop me one! Thanks!:)
