“I know.” Eden pressed her hand to his chest. “I don’t want to scare you, but this is something I’ve wanted for ages. I couldn’t admit it, because I thought it made me like my parents. And I wasn’t good enough to try, but I want to have a baby. I want to have our baby.”

Byron called his name. He ignored him. “Pretty girl... We can do that. Whenever you want, whenever you’re ready.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “You mean it? Even though I still want to go on tour?”

“Of course! Baby, I’m retired, and I’ve got money to burn! You get pregnant tonight and we can make this work. You can get on stage with a bump and go off like Ali Wong in Baby Cobra and—”

Byron clutched his arm in an iron grip. “Time to go, Sloan.”

“Okay.” Willow let Byron steer him backward, his gaze locked on Eden. “Yes. Everything. All of it. You and me. A baby. I’ll do all the feeding and the nappies and the putting the stroller together. Everything.”

Eden cupped her hands to her mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you too. As soon as this is over, I’m barebacking you.”

“Fucks sake,” Byron muttered.

Willow checked his watch. “Forty-three minutes. You get ready. I’m coming.”

Epilogue

Eight months later

Eden and Willow ran across the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh, hand-in-hand. Willow’s face was shining, his forehead screwed in concentration. “Goddammit, I swore we wouldn’t be late.”

“We’re always late,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but when you’re going on stage, it makes you look cool. When I’m blowing off my family, we look like assholes.”

She laughed. “Let’s run faster.”

Willow picked up the pace, his jaw set. He was probably more disappointed he was sweating than that they were late. He still worked out every day, and his body was a masterpiece, but it was impossible to maintain an AFL level of fitness on tour—something he’d been determined to ignore.

“You’d think we’d be on time at least once,” he panted. “Just by accident.”

“We’re almost there. Just a block to go.”

They were meeting Willow’s entire extended family at an Italian restaurant downtown. Eden’s tour had ended a week ago and she and Willow had returned to Scotland to decompress and spend more time with his relatives before making the twenty-four-hour journey back to Melbourne. She was slightly nervous about seeing the Williams clan again. They were lovely, but after twenty-five years of being ignored by her family, their unflagging interest in her was terrifying. The matriarch, Willow’s great Aunt Isla, had set the tone early when they first met.

“Sloan tells me you’re English,” she had said, laying out butterscotch biscuits. “That’s a shame. How do your parents feel about you travelling all the time?”