Epilogue
Brand-New
Duke
“Good Lord, can everyone just slow the fuck down?” I motion to the truck that speeds through the intersection. “He’s gonna kill somebody.”
Wheeler chuckles from the back seat of my new king cab Silverado. It’s not a yacht in the Caribbean, but somehow it’s a million times better. Maybe because the truck is getting us through the kids’ very first ride.
“All right, grandpa. Most people don’t drive ten under the speed limit.”
“Well, they should. I’m hauling precious cargo today.” I glance in the rearview mirror, and my heart just about bursts.
Wheeler sits in the center of the back bench between two car seats. A blue ribbon is tied to the top handle of one car seat, and a pink ribbon is tied to the other.
While identical twins don’t run in families, apparently fraternal twins do. Turns out Wheeler’s grandmother was a twin, and so was her grandmother.
No one was more shocked than me when we discovered a second heartbeat at our twenty-week anatomy scan. It’s not common to miss twins at the first ultrasound, but it does happen.
It happened to us. And now here we are, bringing home a girl and a boy.
“How does it feel to be right but also wrong? About us having a girl?” Wheeler meets my eyes in the mirror. Hers are tired but happy.
Exactly how I feel after a stay in the hospital that was exciting but not exactly restful.
“Feels pretty dang great.” I smile. “How are you feeling, Mama?”
She chuckles quietly. “Still not over the fact that we have not one but two babies now. How lucky are we?”
“The luckiest. And also the most tired.”
“No kidding. Thank God we’ve got lots of helping hands.”
“Is there such a thing as too many helping hands? Because I think we might have that problem.”
“Definitely not a problem when you’ve got two newborns. Kudos to your mom for doing this with three other kids in the house.”
My heart twists. I really wish Mom and Dad were here. Not only would they love up on our babies, but I’m sure they would have some good advice for us. We’ve got plenty of help lined up, but it’d still be nice to get some wisdom on raising twins from people who’ve done it.
“She and Dad were rock stars, no question.”
Wheeler’s voice is soft when she replies, “You’re a rock star too, you know. Have been from the moment we met.”
My throat swells. I adjust my hand on the steering wheel, resisting the urge to honk at a guy who hits the gas through a yellow light instead of stopping. “I mean, I did impregnate you not once but twice in one night.”
This time, she full out laughs. “That’s not how it works.”
“Still gotta give my sperm some credit.”
“It did its job.”
On cue, our daughter lets out a wail.
“Aw, honey, we’ll be home soon,” I say, looking up into the rearview mirror again.
Wheeler has her hands inside the baby’s car seat, a sated smile on her face. “You’re cute when you coo.”
“You talking to me?”
“Pretty sure our babies can’t coo yet.”
“Isn’t ‘coo’ kind of a weird word?”
“When you say it this much, yes.” Wheeler’s laughing, and I’m hit by a surge of deep, almost painful gratitude.
This woman brought two babies earthside earlier this week after a difficult pregnancy. We’ve been through some shit—how unexpected this all was, her family’s disapproval—but we’ve still managed to laugh together through it all.
Wheeler was right. We really are friends.
Best friends. And turns out doing life with your best friend by your side provides exactly the kind of freedom I’ve been looking for.
This is life on my terms. Our terms. I’m able to be who I am and do what feels right because Wheeler and I value the same things.
Our relationship isn’t perfect. We had a messy start.
And I imagine life’s about to get messy in a whole new way with two babies in the house.
We’ve talked plenty about where we’re going to take the kids as they get older—the beach, Aspen, California—but it’s going to be a while before we travel again.
It will happen, though. And once we get over the hump of the babies being too tiny or difficult to go places, we’re going to have travel buddies for the rest of our lives.
I’m going to have Wheeler as the best travel buddy ever too. The connection we have is real and honest, and that makes me think we can find our way through any mess as long as we have each other.
We decided that we wanted to get settled at the cottage before everyone came over to see the babies, so I’m not surprised to see that the driveway is empty when I pull up a few minutes later.
I am surprised, however, to see a pair of signs shaped like storks in our front yard. One is blue and printed with our son’s name. The other is pink and printed with our daughter’s. A bunch of balloons in pink and blue are tied to the porch, and there’s a big bow taped to our front door.
“Aw,” Wheeler says thickly. “How cute is that? Had to be Mollie, right?”
I groan, even as my eyes smart. “And Cash. And Sally and Wyatt, come to think of it. And you gotta know Sawyer and Ava and the girls had a hand in the balloons and bow.”
“I love it.”
“I love you.” I cut the ignition. “Ready to start life as a family of four?”
In the mirror, I see Wheeler nod, a huge smile splitting her face. “I’m ready.”
Jumping out of the truck, I’m careful to close the door quietly behind me.
I’ve been practicing taking the car seats in and out of the truck for weeks now, just in case Wheeler went into labor early, so I make quick work of lifting our son’s car seat out of the back.
I hold out my hand to Wheeler, and she gingerly climbs out of the truck.
“Almost time for another dose of ibuprofen.” I give her hand a squeeze.
“You’re sexy when you stay on top of my meds.”
“But sexier when I’m on top of you, right?”
She shakes her head, but she’s still smiling. “I just had your babies. Two of them. Can you give me a minute to recover?”
“Take all the time you need, Blue. Just know I think you’re beautiful.”
Wheeler looks up and holds my gaze. In the thin winter light, her eyes shimmer with something I can only describe as joy. “Even when I look like, well, this?” She motions to her disheveled hair and rumpled pajamas.
Leaning in, I press a tender kiss to her mouth. “Especially when you look like this. You’re a miracle worker. Literally. Now let’s get you comfortable inside, yeah?”
I carry both car seats into the house. A scent hits me—something pretty, fresh. Wheeler is ahead of me, and she draws up short with a gasp.
My stomach plunges into a bucket of ice. “You okay?”
“Duke.” She points to the family room. “Look.”
Turning my head, I see several bouquets of flowers are set out on the mantel, the coffee table, and the console behind the sofa. Each bouquet is topped with a card.
I don’t need to open those cards to know who sent the flowers. It was everyone in Hartsville.
We get the babies settled in their bassinets in the family room, and then I help Wheeler go to the bathroom. It’s currently a two-person job. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at making the “padsicles” Wheeler uses to help with pain and swelling.
She says she’s hungry, so after I get her settled on the couch, I head to the kitchen and open the fridge.
I scoff, my throat closing in.
“What?” Wheeler calls from the family room. “Everything okay in there?”
“Yep. Just—we got a fully stocked fridge.” I mean that quite literally. There’s not an inch to spare inside the fridge or freezer; they’re packed so tightly with all manner of containers and bottles of wine and stacks of yogurt cups that I wonder if I’m going to be able to close the doors.
I grab the Post-it stuck to a foil-covered casserole dish on the refrigerator’s top shelf. Hi Mom & Dad! Feeding two babies is going to make y’all hungry. Here’s my riff on the grilled cheese y’all love so much! XO, Patsy.
A drawing of a unicorn is stuck to a Tupperware dome that appears to contain a cake. I smile, sniffling, when I imagine Ella and Junie helping their parents frost the cake in Sawyer’s kitchen.
“Your family moves fast,” Wheeler says. “I love them.”
Closing the fridge, I rest my forearm on the door and try to gather myself.
Actually, fuck that.
I let myself cry. It feels good.
Being loved this way, cared for this way, feels really fucking good.
Wheeler and I dig into some enchiladas Wyatt made, eating on the couch while staring at our sleeping babies, because—ugh, I truly cannot get enough of them.
“He looks like you,” I say.
Wheeler nods. “She looks like you.”
“Funny how that works.”
We both look up at the knock on the door.
“Don’t hate me,” I blurt.
Wheeler frowns. “Why would I hate you?”
“I know we said no visitors today, but…”
She sucks in a breath through her nose. “Duke.”
“I promise you’ll like this one.”
Her lips twitch. “Okay.”
“That was easy.” I rise from the couch with a groan.
She lifts a shoulder. “I trust you.”
My chest puffs out a little, the way it always does when Wheeler tells me that. Her trust isn’t easy to earn, and I know what a big deal it is that she’s given it to me.
I’ve barely opened the front door when I’m pulled into a hug.
“You look like hell,” Haines says in my ear. “I’m so happy for you!”
Laughing, I reply, “Nice to see you too, brother.”
“Oh.”
“What?” I pull back to look him in the eye. “Do you not like—”
“I love when you call me that. Don’t be silly. I guess I’m still mourning the fact that it’ll always be ‘brother’ but never ‘boyfriend.’”
“Haines Michael Rankin.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I smile when I see Wheeler standing in the hall, arms crossed over her chest.
“Are you trying to steal my children’s father away from me?”
“Yes.” Haines moves around me to hug his sister. “You’re officially a mom! Can you believe it?”
“No.” Wheeler’s laughing and crying all at once, and suddenly, so are Haines and I.
We bring him into the family room.
“Haines, allow us to introduce Margaret Rose”—Wheeler gestures to our daughter—“and Robert Haines Rivers.”
Her brother’s eyes go wide, his hand landing on his chest with a thud. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, Haines, we seriously named our baby after one of the best, most stand-up men we know.” I clap him on the shoulder. “Thank you for being so good to us. We love you.”
Haines wipes his eyes. “Let’s hope little Robbie here takes after me in the looks department too.”
Wheeler gently elbows him. “He already does.”
Ryder is the next to visit. He comes over the next morning, bearing gifts of lattes from the Caffeinated Cowgirl downtown and a pair of kids’ cowboy hats.
“For later, obviously,” he says, blinking away the moisture in his eyes. “When they get older and follow in our family’s footsteps. We’re always looking for more cowgirls and cowboys.”
Too choked up to reply, I just give my twin a tight hug.
“Can’t breathe,” he gasps.
“I love you,” I grunt.
I startle at the sound of a car door being slammed. Glancing across the room, I see a familiar truck parked in front of the house.
“Colt Wallace?” I look at Ryder. “Did you—”
“Invite him?” A pink flush works its way up Ryder’s neck. “I didn’t. No clue why he’s here.”
I follow Ryder out to the front porch, where Colt is waiting. He has one hand on his hip. In the other, he holds up a small, rectangular object.
My stomach plummets. I’d recognize that pocketknife anywhere. The slight arc of the handle, the dark grain of the wood. Why does Colt have Dad’s—Ryder’s—knife? And why does he look like he wants to kill someone?
I turn to look at Ryder, hoping for answers, but he’s staring straight ahead, his face a mask of…
I don’t know what. Fear? Defiance? For the first time ever, I can’t read my brother’s expression.
“What are you doing here?” Ryder asks.
Squinting against the morning sun, Colt spits out, “Care to tell me why I found your pocketknife on my sister’s nightstand this mornin’?”