Four Years and Eight Months Later

Katie

"Laura?"

"No."

"Sue."

"Nope."

"Paige?"

"Try again."

"Sierra."

"Why are you so dead set on naming our baby after someone we already know?"

A pause, a pensive look. "Elise?"

I can't help but laugh, following Seth's line of thinking easily. "You want to name our first child after a breakup song."

Seth continues tracing light circles over my swollen stomach. "A breakup song by our favorite band, though."

"Elise Clearwater?" My nose wrinkles. "Maybe. But probably not."

He chuckles, leaning forward to kiss my bump. "You're turning into Leah, you know that?" His words are filled with love, the gushy and bright kind.

He's been like this for, oh, about seven months now? Ever since we came back from Yosemite, me with a stomach bug that turned out to be a baby instead.

When Leah thought she was pregnant, she called me on FaceTime from her Seattle apartment, the Tuesday before Kim and Jared's wedding. She was too scared to look at the test. Her screen was shaking so much in her grip, I thought Seattle was having an earthquake.

The test was positive.

And at the end of last summer, she had to return the favor. Apparently, that's what Leah and I do – pee on pregnancy tests and talk ourselves out of looking at them.

Leah has sworn since Caleb was born that she's a "one and done" kind of mom, so it looks like it's up to me from here on out.

But I'd consider a baseball team of children after Seth's reaction.

My hands are shaking, my stomach doing flips inside my body.

After I'd hung up with Leah this morning, I emailed my boss and told her I needed to take the rest of the day off. She hadn't questioned it.

Working remotely has perks like that.

I work for Northwest Travel and Life, which is, you guessed it, a travel and lifestyle magazine focusing on the northwestern United States.

I'd stayed at the paper in Port Angeles for a full year two years after I graduated and moved to NTL about a year ago. They pay me to travel around the region and take pictures, which is my dream job. It's close enough that I don't ever have to leave home for more than a week at a time, and I can usually bring Seth along when he's able to get off work.

Our National Parks count is up to twenty-seven – we've seen almost the entire western half of the country.

And, true to our word, we still visit Yosemite every year, the same third weekend in June.

Our second summer there, I'd grilled Joey from the moment he arrived about openings for National Geographic. I hadn't even noticed he and Paige arrived together until Seth pointed it out. Then I switched to grilling them about that. Turns out, Paige has always wanted to live in D.C.

The third year, our group gained another member – a sixty-something woman named Marnie from Delaware set on doing everything on her bucket list before her cancer spread.

She didn't come back the fourth year. But Sierra and Reed brought their new puppy, choosing to name her Marnie on the spot.

This year, our fifth year, Paige didn't come either, which had me worried. Until Kenny got there, dropped his backpack, and socked Joey right in the nose.

"That's for knockin' up my sister, mate," Kenny said, and then pulled him into a big bear hug, the blood from Joey's nose pouring onto Kenny's shirt.

On our way home a few weeks ago, Seth and I had discussed going to Hawaii next summer (after our weekend in Yosemite, of course). But now—

"Hey, I'm home," Seth calls from the front of the house. He finds me pacing in my office.

"How was your—"

"We can't go to Hawaii," I blurt, my cheeks coloring instantly. Smooth, Katie. Really subtle.

Seth's still sweaty from work, and the smell makes my head spin and my stomach churn. Not again, please. I just got it settled.

His forehead creases. "What's wrong?"

"Seth, I—" Oh, wow. Hello, emotion. Tears sting at my eyes, and I squeeze them shut. I want to spit it out now in the safety of the darkness, but I have to see his face.

I wrench my eyes open, giving him a small smile and half a shrug. "I'm pregnant."

With one blink, he's standing in the doorway, mouth falling open. By the next, his arms are around my waist, gathering me into his chest and pressing his lips to my hair.

"Katie, baby—" his voice cracks wide open, and my heart does the same. "Really? You're sure?"

I nod against his chest, tears splashing on the cotton of his work shirt, sprinkled with pine-scented sawdust. "I took three tests."

I came off birth control two weeks before we left for Yosemite. I don't think either of us were expecting anything to happen so quickly.

We probably should have figured it out sooner, the whole pregnant thing. Seth hasn't been able to keep his hands off me since we got back (it's a wolf thing), and although we ate the same things the entire time, I was the only one who was sick.

Then he's picking me up, spinning me around, whooping and hollering and laughing so loud I think Leah will be able to hear it all the way in Seattle.

And we're kissing each other, holding each other, crying together.

He stops suddenly, the change in momentum making my stomach burble. I'm already over that.

"You're not cooking tonight. Whatever you want, I'll get it." His hands rest on my stomach, tentatively at first and then more secure. Protective. "Do you even feel like food?"

"Pizza sounds good," I say suddenly. "But no pepperoni or pineapple. They give me heartburn."

He nods fervently. "Got it. What do you want instead?"

"Anchovy."

We both freeze, but Seth recovers faster than I do. His face lights up with a wide smile. "Have you ever had an anchovy in your life, Katie Kat?"

I shake my head. "Nope." And then I'm grinning too, leaning up on my toes to kiss the underside of his jaw. "Get extra, please."

"It's okay," I say to Seth. "We still have a month. I'm sure we can decide something before she gets here."

Hopefully. Carlisle warned me petite women can go into labor earlier than expected.

As I place my hand on top of Seth's, I catch sight of my latest tattoo on my left forearm – an arrowhead, the interior filled with a tree and mountains and twenty-seven little stars. I'd wanted to get a memento for each national park we visited, but Seth assured me I'd run out of space before I was finished.

This was a compromise.

As much as I love this little girl in my womb – nameless as she may be – I'm excited for her to be here already. I want to hold her, show her how amazing the world is, how amazing she's made mine just by existing.

Seth and I have already decided she's traveling with us whenever feasible. I can't wait to show her Yosemite.

Also, if she could stop kicking my bladder and other vital internal organs, that'd be great.

"Gotta pee again," I grumble, pushing myself off and waddling to the bathroom.

Being pregnant hasn't been easy on my body. My hips and back hurt all the time, and my two moods are hungry and cranky. Seth calls Carlisle in Chicago constantly, asking him questions after hours, or when we think we've annoyed our doctor here beyond our daily limit.

I'd imagine Carlisle's sick of answering pack-related pregnancy questions. Nessie and Jacob just had their second baby last month – William, after Billy. And Kim and Jared's son, Miles, is already almost three months old.

Baby Girl Clearwater is going to even the score again for boys versus girls, but I'm not sure this game will ever end. Last I heard, Embry and his wife Bethany are thinking about having one soon, too. Quil's going to have to draw the line somewhere for his betting pool.

When I return to the couch and lower myself down (because really, my stomach is of beach ball proportions, and I've still got a month to go), Seth eases my swollen feet into his lap.

His skin has cooled since he left the pack, but he'll always feel warm to me. My skin will always tingle where he touches me.

His thumb brushes the raised skin of my Do life scared tattoo gently, and I know we will always be in love like this, too.

Mentally, things haven't always been this good. After we came back from our trip that first summer, I started to slip into my old ways of thinking.

Certain sounds and phrases – windshield wipers streaking on the windshield, I'm crazy about you, that damn song that was playing when I crashed – sent me right back into a spiral. Sometimes when Seth would touch me, it wouldn't be Seth's hand.

It took a lot of therapy and patience and time, but I'm okay now. Good, even.

I don't know what ever happened to Jordan. I've never seen or heard from him again. Once, a few years ago, Dad brought it up over Christmas, then immediately regretted it, started backtracking. I was okay, though.

It's a part of my past, and in that sense I'll always carry it with me. But the most purchase I plan to give it is in the words etched on my foot.

It's my life. And doing it scared is the biggest suck it I can manage.

My phone dings with an email, and without asking, Seth leans forward, swiping it off the coffee table so I don't have to get up again. I'm in the comfy zone right now, having just settled all of my appendages, and it's dangerous for everyone in the vicinity if I have to move.

The email pops up as a banner on my screen, and my heart splutters in my chest as my eyes skim the preview. I sit up as I read the message.

And then I gasp, and my phone clatters to the ground.

"What? Is it time?" Seth yelps, patting my lap. "Did your water break? Is she coming?"

I shake my head, my eyes wide and glassy. "National Geographic wants my national park photos."

His eyes go wide too. "What? Which ones?"

I can't answer for a long time. When I finally do, it comes out on an exhale. "All of them."

"All…of them," Seth repeats slowly, chewing the words to see how they taste.

As calmly as I can manage, I nod. "They want to buy them all. And pay me to keep taking more."

He scoops my phone off the floor, skimming the email. His mouth moves over the words, emphasizing the same ones I had – impressive, talent, compensation. 'You come highly recommended from renown photographer, Richard Weiss, and one of our senior publishing agents, Joseph Rutledge.'

"Joey?" Seth asks, eyebrows shooting toward the ceiling. "Joey did this? You're going to work for National Geographic?"

Hearing Seth, my husband and travel partner and life partner and best friend, say the words aloud… I go dizzy, reality swirling down around me in the best possible way.

"I'm going to work for National Geographic."

A few days later, when the dust settles after a call with Joey to thank him into oblivion, Seth and I are curled up in bed.

We moved a few months ago in preparation for the baby. This house is slightly bigger, a little closer to Sue and Charlie, and has enough room for a nursery and an office.

I don't know how this career woman slash mom thing is going to work out for me, stress wise. But I know Seth is behind me a hundred percent, supporting me.

Currently, he's literally behind me, supporting me. Who needs one of those fancy pregnancy pillows when you've got a husband who bends over backwards for you?

"So what does Miss National Geographic want to name our baby girl?" he murmurs into my ear.

"That's Mrs. National Geographic to you," I say cheekily. "What about something nature-y?"

Seth groans. "I've told you, Katie. We're not naming our daughter Sage. Or Rose or Dawn or Flora or Fauna or any other crazy thing you could come up with."

I'd been mostly joking with those, but I did like Sage. "What do you suggest, then, Mr. National Geographic?"

"This is hard," he says. "How dare Jacob and Nessie just know what they're going to name their children."

I look over my shoulder at him, study the lines of his face. The signs of his aging only make him more attractive. His smile lines stretch toward his jet-black hair, little white canyons cut into the smooth planes of his sienna skin.

Wait.

"What about Sienna?"

A noise of contemplation floats up to me. "What's that?"

My heart thumps clumsily in my chest – yet another thing I'm not enjoying about pregnancy. "Well, it's a color." I pick up Seth's hand. "This color." I trace the lines of his tattered knuckles.

"It's like the clay in—"

"Canyonlands," I finish for him.

Canyonlands was part of the trip we took after my accident. We sat on the edge of the overlook and talked about where we wanted to be five years later. Ten years. Twenty. Fifty. We stayed up so late, we watched the sunrise there, too. It was one of the best nights of my life.

"Sienna Clearwater," he muses. "I really like it. What about a middle name?"

"Does Leah have a middle name?"

Seth snort-laughs so hard it shifts me out of the comfy zone, but he's so amused by whatever he's thinking I don't fault him for it.

"You're not going to believe it," he says.

I flop over to face him, tangling our feet together since my stomach prevents us getting any closer. "Try me."

"It's Joy. Leah Joy."

I snort too, because if there's one thing Leah isn't, it's joyful. Soon, Seth and I are laughing, gasping so hard my stomach contracts.

"Maybe it is that easy," I say, settling down in hopes that my stomach cuts that out right this second. "Sienna Joy."