I wanted to take her gently.

She wanted me to take her hard.

Every time I entered her, it was like a bloody war, leading to the most intense orgasm for both of us.

And yes, I finally came inside her.

To say it didn’t change my world would be an absolute understatement.

Switching my thoughts from sex to the kids acting, I swiped on the camera app only to see a blaring reminder on the screen not to forget Estelle turned twenty-seven at midnight.

I’d pretended I hadn’t seen, and after everyone went to bed, I snuck out, careful not to disturb my sleeping birthday girl, and spent the entire night carving a wooden heart with the words, ‘You’ll always be mine,’ by moon and firelight.

It was the truth.

She would always be mine.

No matter what happened in a few months.

No matter if our baby survived or died.

Estelle would never be alone again.

Chapter Forty-Nine

...............................................

E S T E L L E

......

There comes a time when life doesn’t listen to what you want.

It ploughs ahead, confident that you can’t jump off the journey it’s decided on.

I wish there was a way to change my destination.

Was I charging toward death?

Was I running toward motherhood?

What would happen when this was all over?

Taken from the notepad of E.E.

Final inscription.

...

OCTOBER

“G, I DON’T want you to do this.”

“Estelle, we’ve been over this.” Galloway refastened the vine tying his long hair back. A few months ago, we’d used the Swiss Army knife to cut all our hair. Me, Pippa, Conner, and Galloway.

The brittle, salt-tarnished lengths had been too straggly and annoying.

But it seemed the Fijian heat made everything grow faster, including our hair.

“We’ll be okay, Stelly.” Conner carried the crudely made oars to the sea edge. “We’re just going to test it. Make sure it floats.”

My heart hadn’t left my throat since Galloway announced he wanted to test the life raft.

After my birthday, when he made me a delicious dinner of smoked fish, flax seeds and minted taro, and presented me with the most precious wooden heart, he’d delivered the news that if we were going to leave, we had to leave now.

I was five months pregnant.

Already, my stomach had grown and heartburn was a daily nightmare. The acid racing around my chest made me snappy, and poor Pippa was in charge of steeping concoctions, sampling the leaves we knew were edible in different preparations to see if any had antacid properties.

We had (totally by fluke) found that a small fuzzy plant helped with blood clotting and decreasing inflammation. Galloway had once again injured himself on a stupid forage into the forest with no flip-flops and stood in a patch of this furry plant while chopping down a palm tree. Instead of the wound being infected and swollen, it’d remained free of flowing blood and healed in half the time it normally would. Which was just as well because cuts on our feet lingered for months, seeing as we lived in the ocean and the salt turned the wound to sea ulcers.

We’d experimented over the course of a few months and found that boiling the leaves and using as a poultice increased its effectiveness.

We had no medicines. No antibiotics. No painkillers.

But we did have a small chance at dealing with superficial cuts without issue.

However, all of that was beside the point.

Galloway was leaving.

Leaving me and my waddling fat body to bob idiotically on the bay.

“You’ll never get past the breaking waves on the reef.” I hated how pessimistic I sounded, but the thought of leaving (while halfway through my pregnancy and irritable) was not on my top ten things to do.

Along with heartburn, the tiniest flutters of my evolving baby kept my thoughts turned inward. I knew I’d ignored Galloway a little the past few weeks, but that was natural...wasn’t it?

My body was cooking a human.

It was only right for my mind to mature and prepare, too.

Galloway slid the bamboo raft onto the water, leaving it to float innocuously on the surface.

How many times had we swam in the tide and made love? How many times had Galloway carried my pregnant ass into the waves and washed my hair or massaged my back or kissed my lips as if I would smash into a trillion tiny pieces.

I loved him.

I love him.

He couldn’t leave me.

“Please, Galloway. Don’t.” Tears pricked my eyes. Along with my thoughts becoming quieter and more obsessed with what happened internally, my emotions were on the knife-edge of intensity.

I bawled for no apparent reason.

I blew up over the slightest infraction.

I couldn’t stand myself, let alone understand what it was like to live with a she-monster like me.

“You’re only doing this because I’m annoying you and you want to run away from me.” My bottom lip stuck out.

I shook my head at my dramatics, rolling my eyes at this weepy, manipulative creature I’d become, but I couldn’t stop it. Whatever chemicals drenched my blood turned me from rational to insane.

Grasping his hand, I tugged him into my bulging belly. “G, I’m sorry. I won’t moan anymore. I won’t snap. I won’t do anything to annoy you ever again. If only you’ll stay. Please, say you’ll stay.”

Galloway’s arms looped around me, holding me gently but firmly. The adoration in his blue, blue eyes threatened to send me into hysterics at the thought of never seeing him again.