Epilogue #3
She told me she loves me. She told me she wants to meet her grandchild. She told me she still doesn’t understand how I can think I love two men.
I told her I don’t expect her to understand everything right away.
Then I told her the truth.
“I don’t think I love Mason and Brookes, Mom. I love them with all my heart. There’s a difference.”
The silence on the other end of the phone had been long. So long I thought she might have hung up. Instead, she whispered, “Then I hope they’re worthy of you.”
I looked across the kitchen at Mason, who was gripping the counter as if he were physically restraining himself from taking the phone and making promises directly into it. Brookes stood beside him, eyes locked on me, his face full of quiet devotion.
“They are,” I told her. “They're more than worthy.”
Knowing I may never have the kind of relationship with my mother that I once longed for still hurts. But we’ve taken one small step forward, and the weight of her constant expectations no longer sits on my chest.
I feel lighter now.
Floaty.
Free.
The waitress delivers the burgers, and Little C cheers loud enough to make half the diner laugh. Mason cuts my burger in half without being asked because he knows I like it that way. Brookes steals a pickle from my plate, then immediately gives it back when I glare at him.
“Sorry,” he says gravely. “Forgot who I was dealing with.”
Wade lifts his glass. “To babies, scandals, and surviving Rockwell Ridge gossip.”
Joelle raises her water. “To love that doesn’t ask permission.”
Brookes lifts his soda. Mason lifts his coffee. I lift my milkshake.
“To family,” I say.
Everyone goes quiet for a second.
“To family,” they echo.
I look around the booth at my best friend, her family, and the two men who have chosen me without hesitation. Two men who love me differently, completely, and without asking me to cut myself into smaller pieces so the world can accept and understand me.
Mason is firm as the land beneath our feet.
He’s strength and heat and a love that makes me feel held even when he isn’t touching me.
Brookes is tenderness wrapped in stubbornness.
He’s laughter in dark moments, a hand reaching for mine under the table, a promise kept again and again until I finally believe it.
And me?
I'm no longer the perfect daughter.
I'm not the woman trying to earn love by being easy to approve of.
I am Janey Marie.
Loved.
Chosen by two cowboys, carrying a baby who will never have to wonder whether they were wanted, because they always were, despite the fear.
I’m still a vet, but I’m doing it for myself now. It’ll take time to build a business, but I’m happy to take the time. I want to be around for the baby, and Mason and Brookes are happy to earn most of the bread while I nurse for a year.
To be honest, they’d support me if I said I never wanted to work again, but that isn’t me. I love my job and the satisfaction it brings, but I’m content for it to take up less of my life while I focus on starting a family.
The road ahead won’t always be easy. There will be stares, whispers, and difficult conversations. There will be forms with only one blank for “father,” and people who think love should fit inside the lines they were handed.
But there will also be mornings in our kitchen with flour on the counter and Mason’s hands on my waist. There will be evenings on the porch with Brookes’s head in my lap and the baby kicking beneath my ribs.
There will be holidays crowded with too much food, too much noise, and more love than any of us knows what to do with.
There will be lullabies.
Tiny boots by the door.
Two cowboys learning how to braid hair, build forts, or soothe nightmares.
A baby sleeping against Mason’s chest.
A toddler riding on Brookes’s shoulders.
Me, watching them both and wondering how I ever thought I had to choose between the two halves of my heart.
Mason kisses my temple, lingering there. Brookes lifts my hand beneath the table and presses his mouth to my knuckles.
I lean back, tucked between them, surrounded by laughter and noise and the sweet, certainty of the life we’re building together.
For the first time, I don’t feel like I’m running from anything. I’m exactly where I belong.
I was bred by two cowboys, claimed by a life I never saw coming, and brave enough to choose the happiness waiting for me.
And now, with our baby growing beneath my heart, and both my men beside me, I finally understand what happily ever after really means.
***
Thank you for reading Janey’s story. I hope you enjoyed her happily-ever-after ending with Brookes and Mason.
If you’d like to read more, click HERE for a bonus chapter.
Check out the other two books in the series here: Wild Rides Series
Keep reading for an excerpt from Claimed by the Cowboys, the next book in the series.
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