Epilogue #3
Arlo shrugged when I glanced at him. “I’m allowed to celebrate how I want...and he always buys good liquor.”
“Ugh, I might be slumming it by being married to you, but like hell am I buying bottom-shelf liquor,” Ward said, looping his arm through Arlo’s.
“Mm,” Arlo said, clearly amused. “I like how anything less than two hundred dollars is bottom-shelf to you.”
“Man,” Milo said. “We should have taken you to a frat house party when we had the chance.”
“Let’s not kill the man,” I warned. “He might be able to tolerate the poor liquor we use at the hotel, but anything that low might make his blue blood burst into flame.”
“Indeed,” Ward said amiably. “Like holy water to a vampire. You don’t want to be responsible for widowing your brother, do you?”
“If anyone is going to commit murder, I demand first dibs,” Mason growled, appearing behind us with a scowl on his face.
“God, what did Jace do this time?” Dom asked, his eye roll saying that Jace could have done anything from being an asshole to breathing funny around Mason.
“Oh, no, he’s great. Hell, this morning he did this thing with his tongue that—”
“Child,” Kaylee said, glaring at Mason, who looked respectfully chastised.
“He’s fine,” Mason said, and then couldn’t seem to help his smile. “Actually, he’s already cried today. He said he wasn’t, but bless his heart, he was. I don’t get to see him in this good a mood unless we’ve…” He glanced at Kaylee and Donovan, “had a perfectly polite but loving hug.”
“Don’t you have a kid to worry about?” I wondered, glancing around.
“She’s with her grandparents, but probably talking to the boy she definitely doesn’t have a crush on,” he said with a chuckle. “She’s going to be such a handful when sex starts rearing its head. Jace is already fighting that outdated daddy’s girl mentality. It’s going to be so much fun.”
“Didn’t you say that when she hit puberty, you were going to drive down to San Francisco to see the sunrise from the bridge before jumping off?” Eli asked wryly.
“Did I? I don’t remember.”
“It was two days ago.”
“Ah, well, you know, a fit of pique, that’s all. Love her to death and all that.”
Moira came marching back, and everyone stiffened except Kaylee and me. “What are you doing? Get to your seats?”
“We’ll get them there,” I said, looking around the group. “You heard the woman, get moving, or I’ll let her tear your throats out and tell Matty you died in an unfortunate cougar incident.”
“Moira, honey,” Kaylee said. “Come on, let’s get to the bathroom. Your eye makeup—”
Moira blinked. “God damn it. Micah just...I’ve already cried twice.”
“On the way here,” Mason said, and then rolled his eyes when I gestured to the doors.
Everyone followed suit, meeting Kayden along the way as he waited patiently near the bathrooms. He grinned when he saw us and waved enthusiastically, pulling out a flask from inside his suit jacket and tucking it away.
I didn’t know how he did it, but he was always happy, even when Moira was on the warpath.
Maybe because when she was, he was rarely the target, and he could get away with corralling her without risking a limb.
“I love how you’re the last one to join the family, but you’re the one she trusts to herd us,” Dom said with a snort. “She doesn’t even trust Arlo like that, and he’s easily the most responsible of any of us. Even her.”
“True, he didn’t get knocked up,” Mason snorted.
“Child,” Arlo warned when Ward opened his mouth, stopping the obvious comment. “Thank you. And she knows Levi is just as responsible and efficient as she is...she also knows he’s the only one in the family who possesses knowledge of torture techniques as a viable threat.”
“I’m still not a fan of joking about that,” I said as we entered the large room and found Matty, Marcus, and Jace waiting for us.
“It would make your life easier if you just accepted it,” Eli said. “Come on, I want the seats behind Moira, so she can’t see us.”
The rest of the group converged on the other three, and I came to a stop, standing off to the side as they began chatting and arguing over who would sit where.
Matty slapped Mason’s hand when she caught it sneaking toward Jace’s ass, and Marcus grinned as he took Donovan in his arms. Ward was talking to Milo and Eli, and I suspected he was giving them hints on how to smuggle booze, among other things, into venues that weren’t supposed to have it.
Moira and Kaylee breezed past, smiling at us before reaching the group.
Jace looked startled when Moira wrapped an arm around his and then smiled when she said something I couldn’t hear.
“Okay?” Dom asked, standing patiently beside me.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling a wave of disbelief washing over me. “Just...this has to be real.”
He watched them with me as Moira slapped the back of Milo’s head, making him scramble over a seat and fall out of sight while Eli ignored him.
Arlo had taken Donovan, smiling as the boy tried to grab his hair, while Ward watched with an expression that made me wonder whether we wouldn’t be seeing another kid added to the family soon.
Marcus was talking with Jace, making the second man give one of his rare laughs at something he said, while Matty gave them a dirty look.
Mason was talking to his sister, both looking serious and a little wet in the eyes, while Kaylee and Will stood off to the side, looking happy and madly in love.
“It’s real,” he said. “Five years of this, and God knows how much more to go. No more Los Muertos, no more Family, no more goddamn, literally cocksucking, blackhearted, twisted Augustine, may he burn like a tire in hell when his time comes.”
I laughed. “Safe and happy. The very thing I never dreamed of, so it’s real.”
“Real,” he repeated. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
So we sat among them as the rest of the crowd filed in, and a handful of people took the stage.
Milo, of course, was scolded for talking too loudly, and Mason was threatened with grounding when he made a joke no one should make in public.
But we listened to the speeches and heard the names being called.
And when Micah came across the stage to accept his diploma, I didn’t think there was any other graduating student who had a louder and more obnoxious cry that went up.
He looked like the bashful but happy version of his father as he stood there, red in the face as we all cheered for him, even Arlo.
If anyone cared, we didn’t mind, and if anyone judged us when most of us took shots from different flasks with another cheer, even Moira was coaxed into taking one from Kayden, then we ignored them.
Because they weren’t real, I thought, feeling Dom’s hand close around mine.
We were.