Like He Never Left

chapter 17

Have fun with this one, and please don't kill me for it being a while. This one is a little shorter, coming in at just above 2800 words, but I needed to get this up for you guys.

--

Colt's POV

I looked out of the windows in my office, the sun hitting the heaps of snow on the ground and reflecting onto the barren branches on the trees, thankful that I wasn't outside in the freezing weather. It was the dead of winter, January, and had been two months since the proposal. 

 We'd taken engagement photos—of course, Johnny starred in a great deal of them—and sent out most of the wedding invitations. A few of them, Brooke suggested, should be given in person. We'd also decided to stick with our engagement photographer for the wedding, so that was one thing crossed off the to-do list.

June twentieth of next year. That's the date she'd picked out. I couldn't believe how quickly she'd already known when she wanted the wedding, but I was on board. A summer wedding would be beautiful with her. Frankly, I didn't care when we got married, I was just thankful that it was going to happen at all. 

I was heading home early today, just putting the final pieces together for another case that I was working on before packing up and calling it a day. I sit back down at my desk, trying to finish up quickly so I can see my fiancee. She said she had a quick surprise waiting for me when I got home from work, and by the giddiness of her voice over the phone, I could tell that she was jumping up and down in excitement for whatever it was. 

The sharp shrill of my office phone breaks me of my train of thought, and I nearly fall out of my seat. 

Rushing to grab it to shut it up, I knock my lamp over in attempts to get to it. 

"Colt Rob—" I start, but my answering line gets cut off by an excited burst of energy on the other side of the line.

"Twins! We're going to have twins!"

I blink, stunned.

"Tommy?" I ask stupidly, though I don't need to because I would know that voice anywhere. 

"Cole?" he asks, and I can practically see the quirk in his eyebrow as he makes sure he's got the right number. 

"Holy shit!" I yell in disbelief as I fly up from my chair. "Congratulations! How did you find out? When did you find out? Boys or girls or both?"

"I just found out! I had just got home from work and SueEllen and Josie came home from the doc's office and, holy shit Cole, I'm going to have twins!" he bursts enthusiastically. There's a pause from his side of the phone line. "Holy fucking shit, Cole, I'm going to have twins," he stammers, like he's just realizing that twins means not just one, but two babies.

I try to redirect his anxiety somewhere else other than how many kids twins are and get him to talk about other aspects of what this means for his family.

"How did you find out?"

I pick up a pencil and start playing with the eraser nub.

"Oh my god, Cole, let me tell you by saying how stupid I am," he groans, and I chuckle, interested to see where this is going. "SueEllen, Alan, and Josie got back to the house a little after I did. They were going to find out the gender of the baby and all that. I couldn't take off work, so obviously Josie was the next best thing, and Sue comes home and hands me this chalkboard with 'Turner Family Math' at the top. There were five stick figures drawn and labeled as me, SueEllen, and Alan, plus two other stick figures that were nameless. One was drawn to be a boy and one was supposed to be a girl. There were plus signs in between each figure, and after the equal sign was a five. I looked up at SueEllen and asked if we were adopting Josie," he wheezes out in a fit of laughter.