Miles Ever After (Miles High Series)(33)

Kate’s happy place.

I make my two cups of coffee, put my gum boots on and head off in search of my girl.

I trudge down the hill and pass our goats on the top paddock, we have a family of four now. Gretel and Billy have been busy and blissfully quiet, it seems regular sex will keep even the naughtiest of goats well behaved. He’s a new man…goat.

I keep walking down the hill, it’s so cold that when I breathe, puffs of fog fill the air. I put the cups down on the steps and roll open the huge heavy door and smile, I stand for a moment and watch her; she’s working on a huge painting and my god…is it beautiful.

Kate is my favorite thing on earth and her paintings are my second favorite, the fact that one makes the other is simply incredible.

She catches me from the corner of her eye. “Hey.” She smiles.

“Good morning. Missed you this morning.”

She walks over and kisses me. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

I pass over her cup of coffee and smile up at the painting in awe. “I thought Sunday was a rest day.”

“It is, but this isn’t work, is it?”

“My god, Kate. It’s perfection.” I sigh dreamily.

She flicks her unruly hair out of the way. “You like it?”

“I love it.” My eyes roam over the huge abstract, she’s been working on it for weeks and every time I see it, it gets better.

“I love you.” She smiles. “I’ve been thinking.”

I sip my coffee. “About what?”

“I think I want to go off the pill.”

I frown. “What?”

She shrugs. “I think it’s time.”

My eyebrows rise in surprise.

“What do you think?”

“That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

Her face falls. “Oh.”

Sensing her disappointment, I put my coffee down and take her into my arms. “I just found you, call me selfish, but I want you to myself for a while.”

“You didn’t just find me.” She smiles. “We’ve been married for eighteen months, El.”

“And what a perfect eighteen months it has been, it isn’t that long, is it?”

“It is.”

“Feels like a minute.” I exhale heavily, I knew this conversation would come one day and to be honest, I’ve been dreading it. “Don’t you like our life as it is?”

“I do.”

“So why change it?”

“I know you want children.”

“Maybe not.” I shrug. “Who knows what the future brings?”

She frowns and pulls out of my arms. “What?”

“I don’t know, I feel complete. I want for nothing; my life is perfect how it is. We travel whenever we want, we do whatever we want. We have no ties and I love the freedom of it being just us.”

She stares up at me.

“You won’t be able to just pop down here and paint for ten hours, having a baby would change ours and especially your entire life, and you need to really think about this.”

She nods. “You’re right.”

I kiss her softly. “I don’t need to have children. It’s not a must-have bucket list thing for me.”

She stares up at me as she listens, this is the first time I’ve been honest with her on this subject.

“My life feels complete, the day I married you everything clicked into place and I got a sense of finality.”

Her face falls. “You don’t think we are going to have children, do you?”

My heart sinks, I don’t.

“I’m not sure,” I whisper softly.

“What brought this on, is this your gut instincts telling you this?”

I stay silent.

She stares at me and then frowns. “You think that we won’t be able to have a baby and have made peace with it already, haven’t you?”

I stare at her, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

“Sweetheart, isn’t our family of two enough?” I ask.

She twists her lips, seemingly annoyed.

“We don’t need children to be happy, we’re already happy.”

“I know.”

“And just because having a baby is the normal for everyone else, it doesn’t mean that we have to do it.” I brush the hair back from her forehead as I look down at her. “Life is perfect as it is.”

She nods and stares into space, and I know I’ve lost her. Her mind is off on a tangent.

Or maybe she’s just pissed….

“We go to Paris tomorrow,” I remind her.

She smiles and nods. “Yep.”

“Why don’t you come up to the house and I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“I’m not really hungry.” She kisses me softly. “I’ll be up later.”

“Okay.”

She goes back to painting and I stand at the door and watch her with a heavy heart.

I want her to have everything in life that she’s ever wanted, but for some reason and I don’t even know why, my gut tells me this is the one thing we won’t get.

I can’t watch her suffer throughout the process; it will kill me.

I make my way up to the house; I’m going to make her breakfast anyway.