Their Little House Colter (Five Little Roommates #1)

Epilogue

Colter

“It’s crooked.” Dallas tilted his head, squinting as he ate the cake. “It’s definitely crooked.”

“Then we need to add more frosting and even it out.” Problem solved-ish.

It wasn’t going to be beautiful like the kind they had at bakeries, obviously, but we wanted to give Daddy a special birthday. He was always doing so much for us, and if we were able to do that for him—well, that would be perfection.

The plan sounded like a good one: add more frosting, even it out. But it was like a little kid who cut their hair and kept trying to even it out until they had no hair left. Only, in this case, by the time we were ready to cry uncle, we had no frosting left.

The cake still didn’t look good.

“Sprinkles!” I ran to the cupboard and dug through until I found some from Christmastime. It wasn’t Christmas, but that was okay. It wasn’t like sprinkles were actual food. They didn’t expire…probably. Second-guessing myself, I tried one, decided it was fine, and poured a bunch onto the cake.

“It’s still—” Dallas’ infectious smile was turning upside down. I couldn’t have that.

“I have an idea.” I put the cake carrier lid on then dragged Dallas to the door. “Let’s go.”

We ended up at the party store, in the aisle where all the birthday candles were. I had no idea there were so many options. Sure, there were the little normal ones, but they also had some that were like pop-up books, taking up most of the top of the cake, with the candle in the middle and playing a song when you lit it.

It was twenty dollars, which seemed ridiculous for a candle.

“We need this one.” Dallas pulled one off the rack that had two onesies on it, both in blue. The song was a lullaby, hardly “Happy Birthday.”

“You are a genius.” I grabbed it from him and put it in our cart. Dallas was right—it solved all of our problems while at the same time symbolizing us.

Safe to say, we got a little carried away from there, getting streamers and whistles and birthday crowns. The next thing I knew, our cart looked more like a little kid’s birthday party than a daddy birthday party. But, in a way, that was sort of perfect.

He was in court all day, and we wanted to have everything ready when he got back. There was now a lot to do. We gave up the notion of having it be a grown-up, elegant party pretty much immediately and instead headed to the playroom, decorating it with streamers and balloons and little rubber duckies we picked up at the register.

The playroom was one of the first things we did when we moved in, and it was our favorite place. We still went back to the little house and played with our friends—they would always be part of our family—but this…this was home. I’d never been happier.

“Okay, since we’re doing this, and we obviously gave up the whole let’s be romantic and old school thing, how about we get dressed for him?” Dallas bounced on the balls of his feet the way he did when he was over-the-moon excited about something.

I loved the idea, and the two of us went to our room, digging through our things until we found an outfit we had been saving for the little weekend that was coming up.

Daddy didn’t even know about these.

We loved being twinsies sometimes. Today was one of those days. There was something really cool about having the same things or dressing the same. When we heard about the little weekend, we’d ordered matching outfits online—both of which featured the same duck as the one on the beanie I saw Dallas wearing when I first moved into the little house.

We paired that with matching light-up sneakers because I had managed to bring Dallas over to the dark side on that one, and some knee-high socks with Daddy’s Boy printed all over them.

“We look so stinking cute. I can’t stand it.” Dallas pulled me in for a kiss before I could agree.

“Where should we wait? In the playroom or the bedroom? Or at the door? What should we do?” For some reason, I was suddenly nervous.

Thank goodness, we didn’t have time to figure it out before the front door opened.

“I got out early,” Daddy called. “Where are my sweet boys?”

“Excellent!” Dallas squeed. “He’s already here!”

We ran to greet him, all sense of a plan out the window.

In each of his hands, he held a gift bag. Wasn’t it his birthday?

“Happy birthday, Daddy!”

We threw our arms around him, and he nearly toppled over.

“Hello, sweet boys! Don’t you look adorable—twinsies, even.”

“We definitely are twinsies! And we made a party! And it’s in our playroom, and you should come! We made the cake ourselves! It’s really good—or maybe not good, but it could be good!” Dallas was even more excited than I was, based on the way he rambled.

“I’m ready for a party. Daddy even brought you presents.”

He handed us each a gift bag.

“But it’s your birthday, Daddy! The presents aren’t supposed to be ours.”

“See, that’s the thing—what I want for my birthday is in these bags.” He winked.

“I’m opening up mine at the party!” I took the bag and bolted to the playroom.

A few seconds later, Dallas and Daddy joined me. I sat in front of the table with the cake and the present we got for Daddy, eagerly ready to open my own.

“Look at this, my sweet boys. What a beautiful party.”

“We wanted you to have a happy birthday, Daddy,” I said.

“Oh, don’t you see? It already is—because I have you two.” He kissed each of us on the top of the head then took a seat. “Now, open your presents.”

“But we have to have cake first!” Dallas pointed to the disaster of a confection we’d made. The more I looked at it, the worse it appeared. Although, it was made with love, so that covered a lot of the flaws.

“Nope, presents first,” Daddy insisted,his gaze flitting from one to the other as we reached in and each pulled out a smaller box. I wanted to see what Dallas had just as badly as I wanted to see mine. As I pulled the lid off, I was watching him, and his face bloomed into a huge smile before he tackled Daddy.

That was when I looked down and noticed that mine was a ring.

“Is this, Daddy…is this what I think it is?” Dallas peppered his face with kisses between his words.

“It is—”

I joined them, and Daddy was now in a puppy pile of overexuberant littles—although I had a feeling that was exactly where he wanted to be.

“Does that mean you guys are choosing me forever?”

“Yes, Daddy, yes!” I wanted nothing more.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Daddy, put my ring on.” Dallas held his hand out and pushed up onto his knees, and I did the same, allowing Daddy to get up.

He slid the rings on our fingers at the same time. “I love you both and am honored you chose me to be your daddy, your lover, and your partner.”

I joined hands with Dallas, looking down at the rings he gave us. So much for the fancy new headset we bought him being the best present ever. Having our daddy for always blew it away.

“There’s more in the bag.”

“More? This is everything, Daddy!” That didn’t stop me from racing over and pulling out a piece of paper. “I don’t understand…”

“Right now, we can’t legally get married—and that’s okay.” It didn’t sound like he believed that, but there wasn’t anything any of us could do about it. “But I want to make sure you guys are protected.”

He didn’t say it, but I knew—he didn’t want us to be left the way he was left when Marty died. Death couldn’t be outmaneuvered, but making sure we weren’t left not being taken care of? That he could do. In so many ways, that was even sweeter than the notion of getting married.

“Daddy, this is supposed to be your birthday,” Dallas said, his voice cracking, tears falling down his cheeks. “How come we got the best presents ever?”

“Don’t you see? I’m the one who has the best present ever. I have the two of you.”

“Nope. I’m the winner here. I have both of you,” Dallas insisted.

“You are both wrong. It’s me. I’m the one who got everything I never knew I wanted with the two of you. I love you both, so much.”

And they loved me, too. I was the luckiest little in the entire universe.