Epilogue #2
Hours ago, our home was bursting with love, laughter, and joyful chaos alongside our loved ones who gathered to celebrate the birth of my little boy.
It was much needed after the year it’s been.
However, everything we’ve endured as a group has brought my brothers and Jase’s siblings together in a way we’d never expected.
There’s so much to unpack, between Jase and me being married, to becoming parents, and seeing that soon for Nash and Bailey, but it’s nice to be just the three of us again. It’s quiet and peaceful, though it surely won’t last long as we now have a newborn around.
Thankfully, Atlas has been such a good boy.
The dishes are washed, thanks to Billie, who made everyone take part in the cleanup. The balloons hang deflated, and everyone has gone back to their homes for the night, with a promise to return first thing in the morning.
Seeing my brothers become uncles has been incredibly heartwarming. The way they carried Atlas like a little football, his tiny body in their huge hands, was truly beautiful. Or, as Raven so casually put it, ‘instant ovary explosion’.
She’s not wrong. There should be a warning label. Hot guy with baby—side effects may include swooning and ovary overload, because watching Jase as he lies on his back in bed, shirtless, with Atlas curled on his bare skin, is surely making me eager to have another.
Atlas’s tiny hands are fisted in Jase’s necklace, his mouth open as he dreams whatever babies dream.
The dim lamp illuminates the shadows of his muscles along his chest, and oh God, Jase looks at peace in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
Their breathing falls into the same rhythm, a slow, steady pace, their breaths soft and even in sleep.
His hand keeps moving in slow, unconscious strokes over our son’s back. Our protector.
I watch them from my side of the bed, propped on one elbow, my heart so full it almost hurts. I never imagined it could feel this good to have someone at my side through life’s most joyous events. But I’ve never been happier. I can’t look away.
My boys.
My chest aches, because for the first time, I think I understand why I had to survive all of it.
All the nights I cried myself to sleep waiting for a mother who never came back, the birthdays that passed without a call from my father, the years of pretending I didn’t care when people left, or when my brothers stayed away.
Grief brought me here. To this bed, and this moment with a man who refused to let me run anymore.
Who made a promise to show me what it would be like if someone stayed.
Time brought me a child who has no idea how much he’s already healed me just by existing. I think about the girl I was before him, fierce on the outside, brittle on the inside, and I want to hold her and whisper, ‘It’s all worth it’.
Jase shifts slightly, murmuring in his sleep, and Atlas stirs, snuggling closer into his chest. My throat tightens, tears spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. This is my family, and for the first time in my life, I don’t feel broken.
I press a kiss to Jase’s shoulder, then lie back, my hand resting over both of them. My husband and my son. My entire world. Everything I lost led me straight to this, and I wouldn’t change a single broken piece of who I was or what I became.
A few minutes go by before Jase’s fingers thread through my hair, his mouth up against my forehead in a tender kiss.
I glance up at him through wet lashes, watching his lips curve slowly. “We made him,” he whispers.
“We did,” I murmur, brushing a fingertip down Atlas’s impossibly small arm. “I still can’t believe he’s real.”
“He’s perfect,” Jase says just as I lean up to kiss him.
Our kiss is gentle and conveys so much of the love we both feel.
There’s no urgency to consume because we know we have our entire lives to do just that.
This kiss is about more than our attraction and desire for each other.
It's a vow to love each other until we’re gone, dead and buried—and even after that.
“Do you realize what we’ve done?”
He nods, his voice a low rasp as he tries not to wake Atlas. “We built a life. We didn’t even mean to, but we did, and I can't imagine things being any different.”
My eyes sting, happy tears exploding along my cheeks. “We still have so far to go.”
He kisses me again. “I know. But we’ll go together.”
Atlas stirs, tiny lips parting in a sigh, and Jase’s big hand covers his whole back, protective and gentle all at once.
Here they are. The careless boy who once broke my heart and the loyal man who put me back together, holding the little boy who will carry it forever.
“He has your nose,” Jase says, tilting his head back as he admires me.
I have no makeup on, and am still terribly swollen, but I feel like the most beautiful girl in the world when he looks at me.
“He has your scowl,” I reply, watching how Atlas's nose scrunches softly.
It’s both terrifying and beautiful to see ourselves stitched together in him. Jase strokes a hand over Atlas’s back, eyes hooded but tender. I see the way his jaw softens when Atlas nestles closer, the way he bends his head as if he can’t stop breathing him in.
I don’t doubt his love, because I know this kind of love is exactly what he deserves and what I was denied. Jase needs his parents, not to learn how to raise a baby, or tell him how to be the father he’s already proving he was made for, but he needs them to see the man he’s become.
The man I unconditionally love.
I want that for him, even if it’s complicated. Even if it means standing in the same room as Magnolia King, trying not to shrink under her judgment. Because we all deserve more than the broken pieces of our past. Atlas deserves grandparents who learn to apologize and learn from their mistakes.
I press my hand gently over Jase’s. “He’s you,” I whisper, “and he’s me, but most importantly, he’s better than both of us put together.”
Jase looks up at me, eyes shining in the dim light, and in that moment I know he hears me. We need to be the bigger people to ensure the cycle ends here with us.
“I’ll call them,” he says, understanding what I haven't said. “Tomorrow. Tonight it’s just the three of us.”
“I love you,” I murmur against his lips.
“I’ll always love you, Moonshine.”
THE END