A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

August 5th 2020

Chapter 218
Their Surprise From Time

Neither Maya nor Lucas ever had to worry that the drive to or from Houston would lack in conversation between the two of them. That being said, returning home that night after their dinner with their friends, they almost had too much material for them to scour through. Maya was at the wheel, swapping over from when Lucas had taken the seat for the previous drive, and her fingers kept a near steady beat on the steering wheel as they went. She couldn't keep them still if she tried.

"Maybe I should have been the one to drive," Lucas teased as he looked on.

"No, no, it's all good," she waved this off with a smile. "I'm just all… good-place happy."

"I know the feeling," Lucas nodded.

"Sam is going to freak out," Maya laughed as the image came to her mind. Lucas wasn't far behind, once the scenario was shared with him. "I can see his face already, like…" Maya mimed it, eyes still on the road, fueling her husband's laughter.

"It's uncanny," he judged. She grinned.

"It'll go alright for them, right?" she went on to ask.

"Why wouldn't it?"

"I don't know, but with everything Nadine and Zay have been going through, I'd hate to see more of our friends struggling for this."

Months onward from them starting the process of adopting, the Babineaux family remained in wait. They knew it could take a while, just as it could happen very fast, but it was hard not to look at the time going by and wonder if maybe there was a reason they were still waiting, especially after their close call.

Shortly after the fall festival, they had gotten a call. A young woman wanted to meet with them, and before they had ever been able to arrange anything, she'd gone into labor. The next thing they knew, Zay and Nadine were flying out to where she was, in Minnesota. The rest of them back in Texas, and in New York, had waited eagerly for news. The baby was born shortly before they'd made it to the hospital, it was a boy, a healthy baby boy.

The next day, Zay and Nadine were flying home alone. The mother had changed her mind. She would keep her baby. She had been so sorry for making them fly out for nothing, and both Nadine and Zay had shown nothing but understanding, wishing them both well. The return home had been a quiet one, from what Maya and Lucas heard. They had known something like this might happen, but it had been difficult for them not to feel a sudden flash of those two losses they had suffered to even set them down this path.

Now, they continued to wait, and wait, and even though life went on with plenty of happy days and good memories, the absence felt more and more like a sucking void, trying to pull them in.

"It won't be like that for them," Lucas promised her. It was easy to hear his voice and trust it, call the whole thing a done deal and go forward in the assumption that everything would work out for Sophie, Chiara, Asher, and Ray. But then they had all been forced to evolve and step into this chapter of their lives that came with just… a whole lot of twists and turns they could not have prepared themselves for. All they could do now was to try and navigate it all together as best as they could, to learn it all as they went.

When Maya mentioned how she had told Sophie and Chiara about attempting to sketch their potential children, depending on the combinations with the guys, Lucas laughed.

"I'm serious," Maya laughed along.

"Never doubted you were," he assured her. "I'm just trying to picture what they would be like. I mean, Chiara and Ray already…"

"Right? We really need to get that out of our system, otherwise that kid is going to have so many complexes," Maya shook her head.

"How can you tell what they'd look like?" Lucas wondered.

"Oh, well, I need to do some research, but I've been wanting to do it for a while, to really just improve on my sketching skills in different ways." She paused. "Plus, if I don't do theirs, I'll just end up trying to do ours, and that is just… that is a slippery slope," she shook her head, face rising into a smirk at how it made him laugh.

"See, you say that, but I know you're going to do it anyway, and well… I'd kind of like to see it, too," Lucas admitted.

"Well, in that case…" she hummed. "I need to focus on the road here, this is not helping. Give me something else to think about, anything else."

"We'll be decorating for Christmas soon?" he offered, and she shook her head. "Too soon?"

"No, please, I've been ready since after Halloween," she pointed out. "It's too much though, I'll start thinking about twinkly lights, and garlands, and ornaments, and my classroom… Oh, it's going to be so good…

"Okay, okay, you've made your point, not Christmas… Hey, are you guys doing an album this year?"

"Lucas!" she 'scolded,' and his laughter was too much to keep her from joining in. "Please, just give me a nice, road safe subject of conversation?"

"How much my mother is going to freak out when they tell her?" he suggested, passing on how the guys were headed out to dinner with Tom and Melinda, and they should be there, too. The way the smile came over her face at the thought was nothing short of amazing.

"You know, back when Asher and Ray got married, I heard her talking with Zay and Nadine about the adoption and how that was all going. I'm pretty sure now that she wanted to pump them for information, too, for the guys."

"I can see that," Lucas nodded. "I don't even have to try that hard, and I don't think you do either."

She really didn't. As much as she might have been digging around on whatever ways existed for Ray and Asher to find themselves with a child, when it came to Lucas and Maya, it wasn't so much about digging, no. It was just a lot of nudging, and dropping hints the size of boulders.

They had sort of figured that it would start to happen, especially after the wedding, as though the moment they'd said 'I do' they had also said 'I will provide grandchildren as soon as possible.' Sure, Melinda had not flat out said it. She didn't have to. Almost every single time they spoke, either in person or on the phone, there would be some element dropped into the conversation and hidden about as well as an elephant behind a telephone pole. She was so ready to be a grandmother, and they weren't sure she was actually trying to be discreet about it.

"Maybe we should tell her about the waiting," Lucas stated, as they drove on. "At least she'd know we have a plan… sort of a plan… part of…" Seeing the twinge of a smirk on her face, he had to ask. "What's so funny?"

"You are so your mother's son," Maya told him, laughing. "You're doing it to me, too, asking without asking."

"Alright, maybe a little," he admitted with a sheepish smile. "Can you blame me right now? Everywhere we look, our friends are out there, starting their families, and I get why you want us to wait, I'm completely on board. I just… I'd like to know when, just sort of… ballpark figure… we might be giving it a try."

"I've been thinking about it, too," Maya revealed, which made him perk up to attention. "Easy there, it's not happening right now," Maya laughed.

"That would really not be 'road safe,'" he agreed, making her laugh some more.

"Right, well, this is what I'm thinking. This whole time, we have been trying not to get pregnant and, despite a couple of false alarms, we have been successful at that," Maya started. Lucas nodded. "Once we do start to actually try, we don't know how long it's going to take. It could be very fast, or it could take months… or longer than that," she breathed out, thinking of Nadine.

"It could," Lucas nodded along.

"So we can only plan so much, and if we put too much stake in a specific time frame, we could end up putting ourselves in for some disappointments."

"Yeah." He did not want to put any pressure on either one of them, didn't want this time to start feeling like something other than what it was, when it was meant to be this next step for the two of them, this step to become the three of them.

"Ideally, I would not want to have to leave in the middle of a school year, so I would have to aim to deliver somewhere about August at the earliest, that way I wouldn't so much go on leave, I'd just be going on summer holidays, and then the year after that… either I skip a whole one, or maybe half of one, I'm not sure."

"So, August," Lucas breathed. "That would mean it would have to be…" he counted back, stopped and blinked as he came to the answer. "November… that's…"

"This month? I know," Maya could only steal a peek at the almost giddy look on her husband's face. "Which begs the question… I know we both said we're ready, and we want this, so… Does that mean we're really ready? All systems go, let's make a baby?"

Lucas knew she had to have been thinking this through a lot, more than he already had. This was not something they could take on lightly, he realized that. Faced with some actual timeframe, he had to stop and do some math of his own. August, maybe September or October, if they went under the assumption that they succeeded in getting pregnant soon enough… He would be starting his last year at school, and they would have a newborn at home. He wouldn't get to lend too much of a hand for a lot of that time, what with him sprinting toward the finish line of his education before taking on the job at Sullivan Stables.

There was no set date for him to start the job, and Juliet would not rush him, if he needed to spend time with Maya, with the baby, but school… School would be an hour drive to and from every day, plus assignments and tests, and those definitely have deadlines he'd have to respect…

They both wanted this so much, but wouldn't it be more important for them to do it right? What was an extra year if it meant getting what they wanted and getting to appreciate it?

"So, next year?"

He'd been so caught up in his thoughts that, for a moment, he thought it had been in his head, his own thought. Instead, blinking, he realized it had been Maya who said it, out loud as she drove.

"Yeah, maybe, I mean…" he gave a light shrug.

"No, I get it, I do," Maya told him at once. "It's the right call… even if it means your mother is going to have to hold on to her Nana horses a little while longer." Lucas laughed a while at this before looking at her again.

"So, next year, November," he stated, and she smiled, sighing dramatically.

"What do you get a girl on your eleventh anniversary?"

When they arrived back home, they found Sam and Rosa waiting, watching a movie together with all the dogs either on the couch with them or at their feet. They had the movie on with the Italian dubbing, as Sam had asked Rosa to help him learn the language. She was making him repeat words now, and barely managed to do so with a straight face, as stumbled his way over the letter R like it came up to smack him in the face every time he tried to say it the way she did. This was Sam though, and he just kept trying, no matter how many times he fell.

"Maybe you should give it a rest, Sammy, go get some water?" Maya addressed her brother, making both he and Rosa – and the dogs – turn to attention. Half the pups scampered over to say hello. Crowley practically did a somersault, tripping over his feet and landing on his back before Lucas picked him up.

"Hey, we saw a couple of your brothers tonight," he smiled. Sophie and Chiara had brought Shadow along, the little dog running off with brother Bod once they'd arrived at Asher and Ray's.

"So, how did it go?" Rosa asked, once Sam had walked off toward the kitchen, still saying the words to himself. The way she'd watched him go and waited until he was out of earshot, it was all too clear that she knew what they were supposed to have learned that night, and now she wanted to hear about it.

"How are you such a sneak?" Maya squinted, leaning over the back of the couch.

"Depends on the occasion, I guess," Rosa shrugged, looking ridiculously proud of herself.

"How was it tonight?" Sam returned, and the trio shared a look before turning back to him. "What?" he asked, in that very 'I feel cornered and observed' way of his.

"They are… having a baby," Lucas was the one to get to say it.

"Who is?" Sam asked, very confused.

"All of them," Maya nodded. "The four of them. Well, hasn't happened yet, but soon." Sam still looked like someone had handed him a puzzle and played keep away with half the pieces. Lucas explained it simply enough, until Sam caught up.

"Wow… That's great," he finally stated, moving to sit back on the couch with his water.

"You can't tell anyone right now, okay? Especially my parents," Lucas told him.

"Only reason we told you was so the rest of us wouldn't have to whisper about it and have you go off thinking we were the ones having a baby," Maya added, pointing to herself and Lucas. "That's not happening for another year."

"Wait, it's not?" Sam turned around now, more surprised than he'd been about the other news.

"Yeah, well, you know, it makes more sense that way, with him finishing school soon and…" Maya explained.

"Yeah, but so am I," Sam cut in, and his big sister understood his surprise. This all meant that he would have graduated by the time it all went and happened, and he wouldn't be living with them anymore. He had wanted to be here, with them, when they had their first baby. As she so often did, Maya was now left with the urge to hug her little brother.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners