Epilogue – Chelsea
“How long do we have to wait?” Zane asked as he bounced Tommy on his knee on the edge of the bathtub. Tommy was trying to reach up and grab his beard like he always did when he was this close to his dad. He couldn’t keep his hands off of him. He was at that age where everything we did was the most fascinating thing in the world to him, and he wanted to be in the middle of all of it.
But right now, for once, Tommy wasn’t my focus. No, it was the pregnancy test sitting on the sink in front of me, the test I had just taken that would let me know if we were going to bring Tommy’s sibling into the world sometime soon.
I couldn’t believe this was all happening again so quickly. But more than that, I couldn’t believe how much I wanted that test to come back positive.
Tommy was just one and a half now, and as far as I was concerned, he was the most perfect little baby in the entire world. Sweet, loving, full of laughter, and always curious, he had tumbled into our lives after a crazy-quick birth and shown me a love that I didn’t even know I was capable of until I held him for the first time. I could still remember when the doctors placed him in my arms for the first time, the way he gazed up at me with those big green eyes, like he was saying hello.
And, more than that, how Zane had reacted. When he’d held Tommy for the first time, I had seen something shift inside of him, something changing, like he had finally settled into himself, finally understood what his purpose was.
And he had proved every day since that he was born to be a father. Every day, when he was done with the Dogs, he came racing home to spend time with us, giving me a few hours of my own every evening to work on my business. I loved hearing them in the next room, playing together, Tommy’s joyous laughter filling the air.
And though my business was still pretty new, it was starting to take shape. I had pitched it to a few possible investors, and there was some interest from a major advertising brand who wanted to invest to help me reach my goals. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I had long since learned that nothing in life worth doing was. Juggling motherhood with my professional goals was tough, but when I laid down in bed next to Zane every night, I knew I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
As for Zane, he had proved himself a hundred times over this last year and a half—to me and to everyone around me, too. I knew people had their doubts about us when they heard how we ended up crashing into each other’s lives in the first place, but his hard work with the Dogs to clean up Atwood matched with his doting adoration of his son, who he showed off every chance he got, seemed to soothe any questions anyone might have had. My dad was always the first to defend him when people had questions, and knowing how tight the two of them had become in the last eighteen months meant the world to me. They were both my family, and I knew now that nothing mattered more than the people closest to you.
I chewed on my lip as I stared at the test. We hadn’t exactly been trying for a baby, to be honest about it, but we had hardly been able to keep our hands off of each other, and I guessed it was inevitable that it would happen again eventually. He'd become even more attractive to me when I had seen what an amazing dad he was, like my body was kicking in and telling me to have as many babies as possible with this guy. Not that I would have minded...
Finally, the results showed up. I picked up the test, my hand shaking as I stared down at it. And then, I busted out laughing, clapping a hand over my mouth.
“What is it?” Zane demanded, craning his neck to get a look.
“It’s positive!” I shrieked, spinning around to hold the test out to him. “Look!”
“It’s positive?” he exclaimed, grabbing the test from me. Tommy reached for it, sensing the excitement in the room and clapping his hands together.
“We’re having another baby!” I told him, and he gazed up at me with the biggest grin on his face.
“You hear that, buddy?” he told Tommy. “You’re going to have a little brother or sister!”
He pulled me into his lap and wrapped his arms around both of us, squeezing us tight against him. As he pressed his face into my neck, I could feel him smiling, and I slid my hand around Tommy’s little back, feeling his heartbeat, the heartbeat of my family, right there beneath my palm.
“I love you both so much,” Zane whispered.
“All three of us now,” I reminded him, gesturing to my stomach. His smile looked as though it was going to split his face in two, the joy coming off him in waves, palpable.
“All three of you,” he corrected himself. “I love you.”
“We love you, too,” I promised, and I closed my eyes and leaned against him. My lover, my partner, the father to my children—my family.
My everything.