Epilogue
Four months later
“Uncle Chrissy,” Luna says, coming down the stairs as soon as I walk in the door, “Mom says I can’t take five dolls with me on the vacation.”
I scratch the back of my head. “First of all, hi.” I walk to her and pick her up, kissing her cheek. “And second, five dolls is a lot for vacation,” I tell her.
“But they are going to be sad,” she says.
“What if we got a camera and put it in the room so you can talk to them from the vacation?” I ask, and her eyes light up. “That way, they won’t be sad.”
She squirms out of my arms. “Can we?” she asks like I just told her that Santa is going to come over for lunch tomorrow.
“We can.” I nod at her. “Where is Mom?” I ask, and she points upstairs, so we walk up the stairs toward the bedroom.
“Mommy.” Luna happily walks in front of me, going past the bed and to Koda’s closet. “Uncle Chrissy said I could take one doll.” She holds up a finger, and I lean against the doorjamb. I see Koda packing things in her suitcase, her head bent, the hair falling around her face. “And we will get a camera in the room to watch them.” Koda’s eyes come to mine, and I can tell this is going to be another discussion about me not giving in to everything that Luna wants. “And when I’m at the beach, I can watch them and talk to them.”
She stands. “Is that so?” she asks, and Luna stands there with one foot on her other. “Well, go choose which one you’re going to take.”
“Okay.” She turns and skips out of our bedroom. My eyes go to the frames she’s added next to our bed. One is with Koda and me, her in front of me, my arms around her as we stare into the camera. It was taken the day my family came down to welcome her. The one beside it is of the four of us sitting in her family room right after we ate. The frames are in my bedroom or what is now called our bedroom. We started with dinner there a couple of times a week when I was in town and then had sleepovers. Slowly, but surely, they brought more and more things over. Her house is now being rented out by a rookie on the team who got traded and needed a house for him and his family.
“Really?” Koda looks at me. “A camera in her room?”
“Yeah, sort of like those baby cams.” I walk in and around her suitcase, grabbing her hips and pulling her to me. “Hi, by the way.”
She puts her hands on my chest, and I look down at her bare hands, knowing that my ring will be on her finger after this holiday. “Hi.” She smiles as I lean down to kiss her.
“I guess I should thank you for not giving in and letting her bring five dolls.”
“Well, if she hadn’t told me you said no.” I wrap my arms around her, pulling her to me. “I probably would have.” She shakes her head, chuckling. “How was this afternoon?”
“Well.” She walks away from me, my hands falling to my sides. “One, are we going to talk about the fact you left when you knew Eddie would be here?”
“Nothing to really discuss,” I tell her as she raises her eyebrows. “Eddie was coming to see the girls.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “And it wasn’t my place.”
“Do you not live in this house with us?” she asks, and I try not to roll my eyes. “This is your house; how could it not be your place?”
“You know what pisses me off?” I point a finger at her. “This is our house. Do I need to remind you again?” Her cheeks get pink as she thinks of the last time she called this my house. I waited for the kids to go to bed and then ate her out on the couch for an hour, never letting her come until she said what I wanted her to say.
“Christopher,” she hisses out my name.
“It’s the first time since he’s been back from Florida. I thought it would be good for him to have time with the girls and not feel like I was breathing down his neck. I did it more for the girls than anyone else,” I admit finally. “How was he to you?”
“He was fine. Cordial, the way I wanted it to be. He looks like he’s aged ten years.”
“Well, his son died,” I point out, “and the way we found out he’s been dealing with it for a while, the guilt will sometimes push you even lower than you think you are.”
“I can’t imagine.” She takes a deep breath. “But that’s Eddie’s journey.”
“It is.” I watch her. “But whatever his journey is, it’s going to be the girls’ journey also.”
“It will be part of their journey,” she agrees. “A very, very small part of their journey, you know why?”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“Because we are going to make sure the rest of their journeys are filled with so many things that it won’t matter. It’ll always be their journey that their dad died and there will always be memories of before Dad died and after Dad died. But there will be so many more journeys and memories after he died that they’ll fill up all the gaps and all the holes. I know this because you’ll make sure we do it together. Me and you.” I’m about to tell her I love her when she holds up her hand. “And by the way, I love you.” I laugh. “I said it first.”
I can’t help but shake my head. “Fine, you said it first today.”
“To me that’s called a win,” she says. “Did you pack?”
“I’m packing tonight,” I tell her, and she gasps.
“The flight is literally at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“It’ll take me ten minutes to pack. I need shorts, shirts, and a couple of pants.”
“How insane will the next two weeks be?” she asks of my family’s annual vacation.
“It’s going to be over the top. The girls are going to be spoiled to no end. We are going to have crazy, wild vacation sex.” I smile at her. “It’s going to be fucking glorious.”
“We still have the girls,” she reminds me, “and I think there are two beds in one room.”
“Never.” I shake my head. “I got us a two-bedroom suite.”
“Of course you did.”
“The girls have two beds. We have one very big bed.” I wink at her. “I made a list.”
She throws her head back and laughs but grabs my T-shirt on the sides with both hands. “We are never going to get to the end of our list.”
“Good,” I tell her, grabbing her face. “That means we have a lot of dates in our future.” I kiss her lips. “I love you, by the way.”
Her forehead hits my chest. “Always has to one-up me.”
“Keeps you on your toes, baby.” I tip her chin up with my fingers and bend my head to kiss her. My tongue slides into her mouth, and she melts in my arms.
“I got it.” Luna comes into the closet, and I pull back. “I’m going to bring this one.” She holds up her white-and-pink bear.
“That’s a good one,” Koda praises, wrapping her arms around my waist. “You can pack that in your backpack.”
“It doesn’t fit,” she tells her and looks away from her mother, who disconnects herself from me.
“What do you mean, it doesn’t fit?” She puts her hands on her hips. “It was empty.”
“I added things,” she explains, twirling around in the closet, pretending she’s dancing with her bear.
“What things?” she asks her. “Let me go and see.” She walks out of the closet, taking Luna with her. “You.” She turns and points at me. “Pack your stuff.”
Luna smirks at me. “You’re in trouble, mister.” She smiles and then is ushered out of the bedroom.
The kids are so excited for the trip the next day that when my parents show up to take them out for ice cream, I give a sigh of relief. I quickly run upstairs to take a shower, walking out with a towel around my hips, and one in my hand as I towel off my hair, seeing the bed empty but my closet light on. “What are you doing?” I laugh, making my way over to the closet.
I stop at the entrance in my tracks when I see her wearing one of my T-shirts, my luggage open that I started earlier but then pivoted when the girls asked me to go for ice cream.
She turns to me, the black ring box in her hand, and tears running down her face. “Baby,” I say, taking a step into the closet, my heart is about to come out of my chest for two reasons. One, she found the ring and hates it, or two, she doesn’t want to actually marry me. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
She looks at me and then down at the ring. “I wasn’t snooping,” she whispers. “I just wanted to finish packing for you so we could go to bed.”
“One, I don’t care if you snoop in my clothes,” I say softly. “I have nothing to hide from you.”
“I know.” She looks down at the box in her hand. “The last time I went through his jacket, I found?—”
“Baby,” I say, my heart breaking that this is the memory she has. “I love you,” I tell her, my heart beating in my chest because I know what I’m doing. I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m doing it, and it’s nothing like I had planned. “Are you happy?”
“You have no idea.” She shakes her head and smiles through the tears. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before.”
“Good, that means my job is done for the day.”
“Christopher.”
“Are you going to marry me?” I just blurt it out, and the shock on her face is right away. “I asked you a question.”
“Um,” she stutters, “um…”
“So you don’t want to marry me?”
“Are you serious?” she whispers.
“Well, I planned on doing this on vacation with roses and champagne, but it seems nothing with us will ever be conventional.” I walk to her. “I’m sorry that you found it while you were packing my bag.” I grab the box from her and get down on my knee in the middle of my closet, with a towel around my waist and her in my T-shirt. “But this is where it’s going to happen.” She puts her hand to her mouth. “I know we didn’t find each other the way normal fairy tales are written.” She smiles. “But I don’t give a shit because this is our story, and we get to write it.”
“Yes,” she says, and I stop talking, “you asked me before if I was going to marry you.” She walks to me, holding my face in her hands and bending down to kiss my lips. “I love you. You make me happy. You make the girls happy. You put us first every single time. With you, I never have to doubt my worth. With you, I never have to doubt if you love me. With you, I feel like I could take on the world.”
“You could have taken on the world before me, baby, because you’re that warrior.”
“See, right there is another reason I’m going to marry you.” She kisses my lips. “Now, can we go to bed?”
“Oh, yeah,” I agree, getting up and tugging her around her waist, “but I want to make love to you with my ring on you and nothing else.”
“Ohh.” She looks at me. “I think I have a list of what I want to do with my hand with your ring on it.” It’s me who laughs as I put her back down and open the black box, showing her the oval ring with an extra band on the top and bottom. “The top band is for Rain, the bottom is for Luna,” I tell her, and she gasps when I put it on her finger. “It’s the three of you.”
“Christopher.” She looks down at the ring. “It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.” She looks at me. “And that you included the girls.” She shakes her head. “How did I get so lucky?”
I grab her face. “No, the question is how did I get so lucky?” I’m dragging her to bed when my phone starts ringing on the bedside table. “Ignore it,” I say, getting into bed with her. The phone rings again and again.
“You should maybe answer that,” she says, and I huff, turning and grabbing the phone. “It’s Dylan.”
“This better be fucking good,” I hiss into the phone.
“Have you checked your texts?” he asks.
“No, I’ve been busy,” I tell him, looking back at Koda, who is admiring her ring. “Why?”
He laughs. “Stone is losing his mind.” He can’t stop laughing. I don’t know what I’m expecting him to say, but it’s not what comes next. “Zoey just sent a picture of her and Nash at their wedding last night.”
* * *
Are you ready for Meant For Love coming July 26th?