Peacocks (Licking Thicket #5)

Epilogue

Jay

I put the finishing touches on the mural and stood back to admire the finished product. Bright, jewel-toned colors spread out in a fan across the far wall of the nursery. Lane was going to lose his mind when I finally revealed it to him.

Even though we’d only been married for eight months, we’d been together for two and a half years. It felt like longer in some ways, and in others, it felt like we’d only just met.

The way my stomach still clenched when he walked in a room, the look in his eyes when he noticed me staring at him in the morning—because watching the man sleep never got old—and the fact I still learned something new about him every day made it feel like we were still new together. But then there was the deep, long-term knowing that sometimes made me wonder if we’d been together so long it had spanned multiple lifetimes.

“You ever coming out?” Lane called through the closed door. “Because I just got a mysterious text from SaraCate.”

I quickly wrapped my wet paintbrush in plastic wrap and silently promised it I’d be back to properly clean it later. “Coming! Get away from the door, and no peeking!”

His muttered grumbles faded as he walked away. I took one last look at the giant pair of peacocks standing protectively over their tiny peahen before turning out the light and sneaking out of the room. All I had left was to put the furniture in place and accessorize before I could show Lane what I’d been working on.

“What’d she say?” I asked as I walked into our bedroom, yanking off my painting shirt. “She need a foot rub? Takeout?” I hesitated. “More pork rinds? Because if that’s the case, we’re going to have to say something. All that salt and fat cannot be good for?—”

I looked up and noticed my husband staring at his phone. He’d gone deathly pale. “She’s… she’s at the hospital.”

“Fuck, what happened? Is she hurt? Was she in an accident?”

Lane glanced up at me. “Babe. She’s having the baby! Our baby! She’s at the hospital having our baby .”

I stared at him. “But… it’s not time! We’re not due for two more weeks.”

He huffed out a laugh and started moving. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since moving to the Thicket, it’s that things happen in their own time, whether it’s peacocks mating, or us falling in love, or Memsy Blake finally taking down her holiday lights in July. It’s not SaraCate’s first kid. Maybe her body decided it was done, and it’s evicting our daughter. Maybe it’s a full moon. Who knows? But…” He spun toward me, eyes wide. “Jay, it’s happening. We’re having a baby!”

Poor Lane had been squawking and flapping his arms, running around in a circle between the dresser, the closet, and the nightstand but not actually packing anything. He reminded me of Disco Dave when we threw a handful of blueberries in his habitat.

“We already have a bag packed,” I reminded him, pointing to the backpack in the corner. “Grab that while I put on clean clothes.”

“How are you so calm? You’ve been panicking this entire time, and now that I finally need you to panic with me, you’re… chill? Babe, what the fuck?”

I wasn’t chill. Not one bit. Inside, I was worse than Disco Dave. I was a collection of drunken kittens, stumbling around but still happy as shit. But if my steady husband was panicking, the world didn’t have room for anyone else to panic too.

After yanking a clean shirt on and stepping into my running shoes, I pulled out my phone and texted SaraCate back on the group chat.

Me: On our way. What do you need?

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and reached for Lane’s hand. “C’mon. We gotta go.”

His hand was clammy with nerves. “We should have never done this,” he said breathily. “We… we’re not ready. We… we don’t know what we’re doing. They’re never going to let us take her home. We don’t qualify.”

I tried not to laugh. “Nobody qualifies, honey. And now might be a good time to remind you that you actually have a medical degree, which puts you a fair way ahead of the rest of us.”

“I know how to castrate a pig, Jay! I do not know how to keep a newborn’s head from falling off. And I sure as hell don’t know how to tell a girl what to do when she gets her period. What the fuck are we going to say? I am familiar with hemostatic dressings, not t-tampons.”

I stopped and turned to him before opening the back door. His pale cheeks were cool to the touch as I cupped his face. “Take a breath, sweetheart. In… out. There.” I leaned in and pressed a long kiss to his lips before pulling back. “We have a few minutes before we’ll need to know how to talk her through her first period. And we have a lot of friends who are very familiar with the care and keeping of lady parts.”

Lane’s eyes narrowed. “We’re not asking your cousin Kandi.”

“Oh, fuck no,” I agreed happily before towing him out to the truck. “After she brought boxed wine and a crowbar to the baby shower, she’s definitely off the list.”

“It was a nice crowbar,” Lane admitted. “I used it to get the lid off the feed bucket the other day.”

I nodded sagely. “She’s on the list of our go-to about handy tools, but nothing else.”

As we pulled out of the driveway, the fading sound of peacock squawks wished us luck—not just from Dave and his bros but from the four peahens we’d purchased (“because Dave deserves a harem for bringing us together,” Lane had insisted) and the several clutches of chicks they’d hatched since then.

Somehow, the sound of the Proud as a Peacock flock brought home the reality of what we were doing.

“We’re having a baby today,” I said in wonder as we drove past the camellia that Tucker and Dunn had given us as a housewarming gift and the elaborate mailbox stand wrapped in woven wisteria vines.

Lane sighed. “We’re having a baby today.”

I glanced over at him. “You’re going to be an incredible father. You’re smart, caring, and kind. I wouldn’t want anyone else to be my kids’ father, Lane.”

He turned to me with suspiciously moist eyes. “Stop it.”

I smiled as I turned back to watch the road. The silence sat heavily and expectantly between us.

“Jay?”

“Yeah, baby.”

“Thank you for believing in me. And thank you for loving me. You’re going to love our daughter so well. I feel just as lucky. I’m just…”

“Scared.”

“Terrified.”

I pulled up our joined hands and kissed the back of his. “I’ve heard it’s normal. Half that baby shower advice journal was basically people saying we’re going to fuck up, and that’s all part of it.”

He took in a ragged breath and let it out. “Yeah. ‘You’re fucked, but you’re in good company’ is not as reassuring as they probably thought it was.”

It didn’t take us long to get to the hospital, and when we finally got into the maternity ward, Lane seemed shocked by the crowd in SaraCate’s room.

“Why have they let all of these people in here? The woman’s in labor, for God’s sake!”

I squeezed his hand. “Babe, you’ve met the Winchell family. They’re a little…”

Pete sidled up to us. “Unbearable? Overwhelming? Gauche ?”

“Spirited,” I insisted. “And obviously incredibly generous. Your sister especially.”

Pete dragged in a long-suffering sigh. “Agreed. But let’s not forget this situation is helping her follow her dream.”

Lane waved a hand in the air. “Sending her to art school is nothing compared to the gift she’s giving us. She’s an angel on Earth.”

“Get the fuck away from me,” a familiar feminine voice snapped. “You’re not putting a needle in my spine. I’d rather shove a bowling ball out of my?—”

“Sister dear,” Pete sang in a loud voice. “Your baby daddies are here.”

“Oh, thank God. Lane, tell me you brought pork rinds.”

Lane flicked a startled glance at me. I shook my head and stepped ahead of him. “Know what we brought? Our Lamaze breathing techniques and strong hands for massaging?—”

“Fuck breathing,” she said in a strangled voice, grasping her giant belly with one hand and holding out the other to Lane. “Give me screaming. Give me cussing. Give me a fucking hand to squeeze, damn it!”

Mrs. Winchell, SaraCate and Pete’s mother, stood to the side, wringing her own hands. “I really think you should let them do the epidural, honey. Remember last time you wished you’d?—”

“I know what I’m doing, Mama,” she gritted out, shooting me a pleading look. We’d talked about how she might come to a point of needing family intervention on account of her “daddy’s delicate temperament.” Sure enough, Tony Winchell sat in a recliner in the corner, staring at his daughter on the bed as if she had aliens for arms and honeysuckle vines growing out of her ears. His eyes never blinked, and his lips appeared to be turning a little blue.

In high school, their daughter had learned accidentally she was pretty good at being pregnant. She’d also learned she was not at all interested in becoming a mother until “the sun set over… wherever the hell the sun never sets.”

“Alrighty,” I began, plastering on a big fake smile. “It seems like any minute now, Nurse Erin is going to pop her head up and force everyone out, so why don’t we all go ahead and say our goodbyes?”

Tony bolted up and dropped a kiss and a “good luck, darlin’” on SaraCate’s forehead before making a beeline for Kentucky. Or at least as far as he could get on his own two feet. Mrs. Winchell sighed and approached her daughter. “You’re going to do great, honey. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

I could see my husband’s hand turn white under the hard squeeze from SaraCate’s grip. “No, thanks, Mama. The boys are gonna help, and this is their show.”

Lane and I knew this was part of the script we’d agreed on earlier, but I still felt guilty. In actuality, she wanted to save her family from bonding with the baby right away and make sure the first time they met her, she was in our arms instead of SaraCate’s. We’d given her every opportunity to set her own terms, and she’d decided this was for the best.

It didn’t make it any easier.

Once everyone but Pete was gone, he walked over and brushed her hair back from her forehead before meeting her eyes. “You’re the strongest woman I know, and fuck you for doing this for them before you could do it for me.”

She huffed out a laugh. “You said you never wanted kids. In fact, you said hell would freeze first.”

He shrugged. “I don’t particularly… but what if I meet the man of my dreams and he does?”

“ Peter ?”

We all spun around at the sound of Dr. Nolan Burch’s deep voice as he froze in the doorway to the room.

Pete stared in shock at SaraCate’s ob-gyn. Then, without saying a word, he bolted past us, past Dr. Burch, and down the hall.

Lane murmured, “At the rate he’s going, he might just catch up to his dad.”

“How do you know my brother?” SaraCate asked breathlessly after coming off another contraction.

Dr. Burch frowned, glancing back over his shoulder before proceeding into the room to check his patient. “Peter’s your brother?”

SaraCate blew a hair out of her eyes. “Yeah. We have the same name. It’s not that common.”

“I, ah… I never knew his last name.”

Before any of us could ask him why he was being so strange about it, SaraCate screamed with another contraction. The doctor scrambled to check her progress, and within moments, she was pushing.

I quickly moved around the other side of the bed to give SaraCate another hand to break.

“You’re doing amazing,” Lane said, focusing on her face and encouraging her with a calm voice despite his nerves. “Deep, slow?—”

“ Hee-hee-hoooooo .” She ignored his advice and panted shallowly. The doctor encouraged her to keep doing what she was doing. Meanwhile, I nearly fainted from trying to control everyone’s breathing by modeling good behavior.

My head spun, and my face heated. “Babe?” Lane asked, glancing over and catching sight of me.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, trying to believe it. “Gonna be okay.”

“One big push, SaraCate,” the doctor urged. “That’s it.”

Suddenly, SaraCate’s giant groan was followed by a long, drawn-out moment of silence that was pierced by a baby’s wail.

“She’s here,” Dr. Burch said with a smile, plopping the messy bundle of newborn on SaraCate’s chest. “You did great.”

SaraCate’s eyes filled with tears as she looked back and forth between us and the baby. Then she gave us a tremulous smile. “She’s here. Your daughter’s here. I did it. I kept her safe for you.”

Warm tears streamed down my face as I watched the world’s most incredible miracle take place in real time. SaraCate reached out for my hand to put it on the baby’s back and then urged Lane to do the same. The three of us held on to her together as she squirmed and blinked.

“What’s her name gonna be?” SaraCate asked softly.

“Abigail,” Lane and I said together, locking eyes.

I cleared my throat. “It means ‘my father’s joy.’”

After a while, when SaraCate was somewhat recovered and I was sitting shirtless in the recliner with Abbie on my chest, visitors streamed in. Everyone had brought gifts for SaraCate and generally celebrated her generosity. Lane and I were thrilled to see everyone pamper her the way we’d been doing for months and planned to keep on doing as long as she’d let us.

Lane came over and propped himself on the armrest of the recliner, leaning in to put his arm around me and place his other hand on our daughter’s little round bottom. “She’s gorgeous.”

“She’s got a pair of lungs on her. Did you hear earlier?”

“Of course. She sounded like her daddy when the Bovines are down a couple points at the end of the game,” Lane said.

I laughed. Bless the man for trying, but he was not a football fan. If he was, he’d know the Bovines hadn’t been just a couple of points away from victory in a decade. “And did you see the side-eye she threw at the nurse when they wanted to put the hat with the bow on her? Our baby girl has opinions…”

“Yeah,” Lane sighed.

“…like her papa when it comes to the love life of our tenant in the apartment over the garage.” I gave my husband a look.

Lane rolled his eyes even as he cuddled closer. “I’ll have you know, matchmaking is a time-honored Thicket tradition, Jaybird. And is it such a bad thing to want everyone to find love and happiness like we did?”

“Not at all.” I wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him down to press our lips together. “No regrets, then?” I teased, already knowing what his answer would be since Lane had never given me a single reason to doubt it.

“Regret Entwinin’ myself to the best man in the universe? Regret working at a practice where I’m making a real difference? Regret moving to a town I love and that loves me back?” He shook his head. “Not for a single second. I found more in the Thicket than I ever dreamed.” He traced Abbie’s head with one gentle finger. “My life here is…”

“Perfect?” I teased.

He grinned. “Better than perfect. It’s just right.” He kissed me again. “And it’s ours. Together.”

Want more Licking Thicket romance? Turn the page for a sneak peak of Hijacked and get ready to head out on a hilarious, action-packed adventure with the men of Champion Security !

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