I will always love you <3

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟑

Crockett's POV:

That feeling. That little thump. One I haven't felt in forever. It's kicking. Our baby is kicking. I go quiet and completely melt on the inside. All I feel is the hand of the love of my life, and my dear baby kicking.

Once it's stopped, Natalie giggles. "Look at you all scared" her giggle turns to laughter, "how scared are you gonna be once I'll go into labour" she says. Her continues laughter is so contagious, I can't help it but join. "Shut up" I say and push her over. Natalie can't stop laughing "I keep on seeing your face" she inhales shakingly "you should've seen your face" she says and laughs. All of a sudden her face drops. She grabs my hand and gets a worried expression " Cr-Crockett" she says. My heart drops again, and I don't know how to react. Right before I want to ask her, calm her, talk her through whatever will happen she smirks. That smirk instantly turns to her face filled with laughter. "Got you again" she says. I drop my jaw "That's not fair!" I say and start tickling her, "you can't play with my emotions like that! I could get a heart attack you know" I say. "Not true!" she says, but can barely speak because of how hard she's laughing "you're young". "Oh am I?" I say, "I'll show you how young I am" I grab her and tickle her more until she has the hiccups.

"Ok, ok, you win, I surrender!" she says and hiccups, "I gotta go pee". My laughter turns to a big smile, "told you I'd show you" I say with a smirk. I give Natalie a little push since she seems to have a little trouble getting up, as that is not enough, I get out of bed and walk to the other side to pull her up. "Someone's getting big huh?" I say as I help her. She inhales "Yep, and this little ones been getting my back to hurt" she says and and frowns at her stomach. I chuckle at that, "Just two more months to go" I say as I'm still holding her hands. She smiles and kisses me "Yep, can't wait" she says, "ok, but now I really gotta pee" and her face turns serious. "Go on then" I say, and return to bed.

After a while, once Natalie's fallen asleep, I turn around and face her. I just can't seem to fall asleep, I'm way too excited. About the baby, and just the general fact that I will be able to spend my next Christmas with a family. It almost feels weird saying family, as it's been years since I've had one. Just thinking about the merry times to come, compared to the years before, I want to shower Nat with kisses, gifts, anything to show her how grateful I am. After what feels like ages, I manage to fall asleep, still thinking about all the joyful things to come.

The next morning

Natalie and I try and hide our enthusiasm as much as possible, but sometimes I just cannot resist giving her a quick kiss. The first few times she startled, but later in the afternoon,  she manages to see it coming and returns the kiss. I always blush if she does that, and she always asks me the same question "what made you think of it?", most times I don't have an answer, but once it was because of a patient.

Since it was mid-November, the hard core Christmas fans are already completely in the spirit, and they reminded me of my train thought from the other night. This family had alos brought by a basket of nicely decorated Christmas cookies, so around 4, I see Natalie standing there hesitating.

"Can't choose which cookie?" I ask and stand behind her, looking at the same basket. "Actually I know exactly which one," and she points to a cookie decorated with a candy cane figure on top, "I'm just not sure if I can take them. I'm not sure if Ethan wants us to divide them, or wait until the end of the day so that we can all enjoy them..." she says, turns around to me and frowns. "Oh just take it, I'm sure Ethan won't mind. I mean, you are eating for two, aren't you?" I smile "and if need be, I'll cover for you, I got you" I say and take the cookie she wanted.

She gives me her little smile and quickly takes the cookie from my hand and starts nibbling on it. "So, did you tell Maggie yet? I really wanted to, but I wasn't sure, since Maggie's your best friend and-" she stops me. "I have not" she swallows her bite "but we can do it now" she says, smiles, takes my hand and pulls me to Maggie.

Once we've updated Maggie on our current situation, she gets so excited she calls the entire staff to us and shortly exposes our entire private business. Since we all feel like we practically live here, and everybody seems to be happy for us, we don't mind. 

At the end of the day, after Natalie and I've changed, I intertwine our fingers and take her outside. As the doors open, we both notice that it's started snowing.

"Could this year get any better?" Natalie asks as she kisses me, and the snowflakes slowly fall on us.

A/N: First of all sorry for not uploading for so long, I didn't have that much motivation/ideas, so I hope you'll like this one! Also sorry if there are any parts of the story that seem to be similar to ones from older chapters, cuz since it's been so long I'm not sure what happened exactly in the last chapters...