And with the girl who was born to pull me through an inevitable tragedy.

The moon peeks at us from the curtain of our beach house, smiling.

You made it, it says.

We did.

We have awesome windows where you can’t see anything from the outside, but we can see everything from inside of the house. We moved here six months ago, on the same day Vaughn packed his shit and moved to England.

People were surprised to find out we’d moved out of Todos Santos, but to me, it was the most natural thing in the world. I needed some time just with Luna before I tackled the real world—somewhere our parents and friends couldn’t drop by and interrupt us. We’re still only a short drive from Todos Santos—less than an hour when the traffic isn’t shitty.

“Knight,” Luna whimpers in my arms. “Faster.”

“But what if…”

“Faster!”

Her nails sink into my lower back and O-fucking-kay….

It’s settled, then. Pregnant ladies are batshit crazy. I thought Dixie was exaggerating. She’s been coming here every weekend. We have dinners and trivia nights and the entire Brady Bunch bullshit together. She was the one who warned me that Luna was going to go over a lot of hormonal hurdles.

I thought she mostly meant the spurts of crying every time she sees a dirty puppy or a lone mitten on the street. But no. Luna is also hornier than a moose.

Not that I’m complaining.

“I don’t wanna hurt the baby,” I moan, trying to keep it PG-13 somehow.

I can eat my fiancée until my mouth goes numb, but I’m worried I’ll hurt the baby with my massive cock. I’m not being arrogant or anything—it’s a genuine concern. I don’t want Knight Senior to poke its head or anything.

“Mommy, how come I only have one eye?”

“Well, son, Daddy poked it out while dicking me when I was pregnant with you.”

Can’t blame me for not taking any chances—especially as Vaughn has been having a fucking field day since the news broke. He called my fiancée a Teen Mom in the making when we Skyped with him (false, she is twenty), and when Luna admitted craving Ramen noodles, he replied that judging by the rush with which she got knocked up, he thought she had a particular taste for my dick.

And I couldn’t maim him.

I couldn’t even punch his face, seeing as he’s so far away.

“Well, I’m about to hurt you if you don’t speed things up. I’ve been on the edge of an orgasm for ten minutes now,” Luna growls, pulling me back to reality.

“What if I hurt her?”

“You’re not going to hurt her.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re not that big!” she exclaims, exasperated.

I pause, mid-thrust, staring at her with horror.

I know I am. I have statistics to prove it. We even used a ruler in the locker room back when I was a junior in high school. What kind of bullshit is this? Knight Senior doesn’t need this negativity from the love of its life.

“Take that back right now,” I warn, plunging into her so hard and so deep, I’m probably tickling her throat right now.

She is laughing. And coming. On my cock. And laughing some more. I really am the best partner in the world, if I may say so myself. Which I may. I mean, I just literally did.

Finally, the word literally said in an appropriate context. And I didn’t even say it—I thought it.

“Isn’t the second trimester supposed to be the most dangerous of all?” I ask as I continue to chase my own climax, thrusting in and out of her.

Luna seems pretty adamant that we’re not hurting the baby, and she knows stuff about stuff. Also, she is a health freak and already loves this baby more than I love life itself, which means the nugget is in good hands. And belly, for that matter.

“This is not how pregnancy works, Knight. We can have sex. The baby is secure. You, on the other hand? Jury’s still out on that, depending on how much you’re going to play me like this in bed.”

By the time I’m done with her ass, she can barely wobble toward the bathroom. I stay sprawled in bed, watching her naked figure moving around in the lit bathroom. Three months ago, when we found out she was pregnant, we were elated. Despite what a lot of people thought, the pregnancy was one hundred percent planned.

Yeah, yeah, I know. We both attend UCLA. We’re both students. I have a job coaching a Little League football team, which pays shit and I do it mostly as chicken soup for the soul, but Luna just finished a project that actually made some decent money. We broke the news by accident a month ago, at Daria and Penn’s much-belated wedding in Palm Springs. Luna wasn’t drinking. Neither was Daria. Didn’t take long to put two and two together.

“Our babies are having babies!” Melody Followhill proclaimed.

For some reason, it sounded accurately gross coming out of her mouth.

Our decision to have a kid wasn’t made lightly. It was just that even as we ticked all the boxes a happy couple our age should aim for—engagement, a house, a big, black Lab called Johnny, and an ugly, rat-looking white Husky called Rotten—something was amiss. That something was Mom, of course, and not just the lack of her presence, but lack of the notion that there was someone to take care of. To fight for. To be there with.

The thing about Luna and me is we’re caregivers by nature. I’m so used to taking care of her and Mom, and she’s so used to trying to save the rest of the world, me included, that we needed someone to give all our extra love to.

Dad almost killed me when he found out I’d impregnated my fiancée on purpose at age nineteen. Luckily, Dixie calmed him down.

Luna is humming a song now. “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode. There’s a little smile on her face. I wonder if the nugget is a girl or a boy. We keep referring to it as a she, because a part of us knows this baby signifies Mom somehow.

I wonder if the baby is going to have my green eyes or her gray ones.

If it will have her dark, smooth skin and my narrow, full lips.

I hope the baby will know we wanted a child before we even knew he or she was in existence. And that unlike our biological mothers, we would never let him or her go. And I don’t mean after birth. I mean possibly ever. Maybe not even for college. Straight up, we’ll be locking them in their room forever.

Okay, that’s not good parenting. Never mind.

“I thought you hated that song,” I call out to Luna, patting the bed to inform her that her five minutes out of it are officially over and it’s time for round two.

“I do,” she chirps, coming back from the bathroom and diving into bed gracefully.

Our place on Venice Beach is pretty neat. You can actually hear the waves crashing on the shore at nighttime, usually as a backdrop to the sound of tourists laughing and screaming, young people getting shitfaced, and the terrible music street artists play across from our balcony. I love the hustle and bustle outside, though. It reminds me how lucky I am, and that I chose well—staying with the quietest person I know.

“Then why are you singing it?” I pull her close, nuzzling my nose to her neck.

Our hot chests bump into one another. Mine, hard and muscular. Hers, soft and round.

“Because.” She smiles. “Edie loves it, and I love Edie.”