Bonus Chapter—Sophia

Four months later…

I woke up to an empty bed and pouted as I sat up, the sheets sliding off my naked body.

“Bastard,” I grumbled, slipping off the bed. “You could have woken me up.”

I wasn’t really annoyed with him, though. I knew he had an important game today or he wouldn’t have woken up so early without me. I went to the bathroom for a shower, then hurried to get dressed. Picking clothes was becoming harder, though. For the moment, my dresses were still fine, but I knew I would have to buy some bigger clothes soon.

“You’re growing really fast in there, aren’t you,” I murmured, rubbing my rounding belly.

It had been a shock, finding out I was pregnant, for Mason and me both. It wasn’t something we planned, we just got careless with me missing my contraception, but when the news came, I wasn’t as against it as I would have thought. I had always felt uneasy at the thought of a little person growing inside me. Not so much because it would be uncomfortable or because I was worried about my figure, but because I was worried about how it would come out. It wasn’t a problem to either Mason or me, though.

I was nervous, but so very excited to see what a baby made by the two of us would come out like. We’d been to the hospital a few times already, and we’d done the ultrasound, but we both wanted the sex of the baby to be a secret until the day of the birth.

“Ugh,” I groaned to myself as I remembered. “Important day! I’m in a hurry!”

The bump was visible, but not so big that I couldn’t hide it under a dress. The weather was warm enough, so I picked a dress that wasn’t so tight around the abdomen and pulled it on, then found some comfortable shoes. I wasn’t so far along that I felt my stomach was pulling my gravity forward, but I felt an ache in my lower back sometimes. It might or might not have something to do with the baby, but I couldn’t handle heels. I didn’t really have flats, so I ended up in a pair of sneakers.

As I left the bedroom with my phone in hand and purse over my shoulder, I heard someone knock on the door. When I opened it, Emma was standing on the other side.

“Where’s Sebastian?” I asked, locking the door behind me, then hurrying with her out of the apartment.

“He’s got something, so he’ll come later. I came here to drive you so you can just come back with Mason later.”

“All right.”

We jumped into Emma’s car, then sped toward the school.

It had taken some time, some effort, and a lot of comfort and encouragement, but Mason had managed to do what he hadn't thought possible for him. He found something else to do with his life, and it tied in with the one thing he’d loved since he hit his teens.

Mason worked as an assistant football coach at the local college. It was a far cry from what he was before, a football star just rising to his peak, but it was a job that paid fairly well, and Mason got to keep his ties to football. He could no longer do the showing off on his own, but he treated the guys on the team as an extension of himself, and it was so funny when he acted proud of them like they were his kids.

It made me wonder what Mason would be like with a son. Or a daughter, even. Thinking about it only made me excited for our future.

“Do you know when the game is starting?” Emma asked.

“Um, around nine or ten? I’m not really sure, when he talked about it he always said too much, and I couldn’t catch all of it. He just said sometime in the morning.”

“Either way, we’re lucky. You didn’t get up too late; I thought I’d get there and wake you up then have to wait for you to get ready…”

The college wasn’t so far from the apartment, a less than half an hour ride, so we arrived pretty quickly. I didn’t have time for breakfast, but because it was a big event, there were some students walking around with food, and I noticed a few concession stands that were selling snacks, so we bought some before making our way to the field. Mason had promised to save us some seats at the front of the stands, and Emma and I made our way over there.

“Mason!” I called out when I saw him, smiling as I hurried forward.

When he saw me running, his eyes widened as he moved closer. There was a fence that separated the stands from the field, and that was where we met.

“Sophia, you shouldn’t run,” he said, frantic.

I laughed at him. “Silly Mason, I’m pregnant, but I can still run, you know? Wait until my stomach grows to the size of a beach ball, and I’ll make you carry me everywhere.”

He rolled his eyes at me, but there was no way I would do that. My stomach didn’t show that much just yet, but I had my weight checked with every hospital visit, and I had gained a lot in the past four months, and if my doctor wasn’t lying, I would gain even more. Mason could move around comfortably, he could even train as much as he wanted, though his regiment had to be applied with his hip in mind so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Making him carry me when I was growing heavier day by day would be counterproductive.

“How long until the game starts?” I asked.

“You guys made it just in time,” he said, waving to Emma who was already moving to our seats. “They’re just about to start.”

He looked over his shoulder at his players, looking worried, and I chuckled as I patted his hair.

“You guys will do just fine,” I said soothingly.

“They definitely will,” he said with that same pride you’d see on a parent’s face. “Anyway, I need to be on the bench during the game. Don’t leave early, okay?”

He left me with a smile as he jogged back to his players. I went to sit with Emma, and in another ten minutes, the game started. Mason looked very serious as he sent his players onto the field, but instead of pacing around like I knew he wanted to, he sat down to watch.

“He looks happy,” Emma said.

“Yes, he does,” I said with a smile.

People were starting to make noise at the start of the game, so our conversation was drowned out quickly, though I did hear her say one more thing.

“You guys have come a long way.”

Tell me about it.

It wasn’t easy getting to where we were. Even when Mason found out he could get into coaching, it wasn’t the easy fix that he thought of it today and he got the position tomorrow. It had taken months, and this was actually his first game as an assistant coach, so I knew he was super nervous about it.

He shouldn’t have been, though. If there was ever one thing Mason knew, it was football, and growing up with Sebastian and him having Mason for a best friend, I knew a thing or two about football myself. I could tell pretty early on that his guys played slightly better than the opposing team.

When the game ended in their win, Emma and I jumped up to cheer with the crowd.

“Hey, what’s happening?” Emma asked.

Only when she called it out did I notice there was something odd going on. The cheerleaders were moving around, coming closer, and Mason was going to meet them. I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering what he was planning. The cheerleaders surrounded him and started to do a dance, with Mason right in the middle.

No way. Immediately, my mind jumped to the worst conclusion. I knew better than to worry, though really, and then I got surprised when Mason suddenly turned and came toward us, with the cheerleaders right behind him.

“What are you waiting for,” Emma prompted, nudging my back.

In a daze, I stood up and moved to the barrier. Mason stopped at the other side of it, reaching for something in his pocket. My heart was thudding hard in my chest before he even pulled out the small, black box.

“I’m…not really good at this,” he admitted. “But I’ve been thinking for a while, that everything is finally great in my life, and I wanted it to be even more perfect. For the three of us.” With a nervous smile, he opened the box to show a silver ring with a small diamond. “Sophia, you make me the happiest I’ve ever been, and I hope I do the same for you. Will you marry me?”

Mason wasn’t the kind of person that could do something like this so easily. Even when he was asking me to go out with him, I could tell the difference between when he was serious or when he was joking, because when he was serious, he was always fidgeting. He was probably sweating right then, but my eyes had already blurred from the tears, so I couldn’t tell.

“Of course I’ll marry you,” I said, my voice thick as I wrapped my arm around him and buried my face in his neck. I told myself I wasn’t really crying; the pregnancy hormones were just making me more emotional.

Mason chuckled and wrapped me in his arms, the cheers rising around us as we held each other and reveled in our happiness.