Epilogue
Lauren
I woke to Aiden singing a lullaby, his voice low and soft. My eyes fluttered open, and I found him sitting in the chair beside the hospital bed with the baby swaddled in his arms. When he saw me, he smiled. The baby let out a little cry, and I quickly propped myself up.
“I was trying to let you sleep,” he said, laying the baby gently in my arms.
I glared at him. “You nurse when the baby is hungry. You know this.”
He placed a lingering kiss on my forehead and all my irritation melted. “I also know you pulled an all-nighter in the delivery room.”
The baby let out another cry as I lowered my hospital gown and positioned us to nurse.
“That’s a solid latch,” Aiden said, nodding his approval.
I tried not to laugh. “Did you ever think you’d say something like that while staring at my naked breast?”
“After last time, yes,” he said, running his hands through his hair. It still caught me off guard sometimes when I saw his wedding ring. When I was a girl, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined myself happily married to anyone, let alone someone like Aiden O’Malley.
It had taken a while for me to agree, not because I didn’t love him, but because I didn’t want anything to change. I reasoned having a child together bound us tighter than a few words and a piece of paper, but eventually, I realized those words meant something to me too. That I was his forever, and he was mine.
We stared at the baby together, falling in love with every eyelash and sweet feature. Dark circles bloomed under Aiden’s eyes. He had to be exhausted as well, but the smile hadn’t left his face since he held the baby in the delivery room.
“That is a good latch.”
“You’re a pro,” Aiden said, leaning closer to us both.
“She isn’t.”
He smiled at me. “She has an excellent teacher.”
Not a day went by when Aiden didn’t reassure me I could handle whatever challenges motherhood threw my way. “What time is Cammie coming?”
“Any minute now,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the closed door. “When the baby started fussing, I knew you’d be up soon and texted her.”
“I’m so excited. And nervous. What if Logan doesn’t like her?”
Aiden shrugged. “He won’t. Not all the time. And that’s perfectly normal.”
As usual, Aiden soothed my anxiety with a few words. It took two years before I was comfortable enough to consider having another child. It only took Aiden a month to get me pregnant again.
“So,” he said, taking the hand I wasn’t using to hold our daughter. “We should decide on a name before Logan meets his little sister.”
“I know it’s your grandmother’s name, but Siobhan is so hard to spell. Imagine her as a preschooler trying to write that out. I doubt Logan could even pronounce it.”
“Look at that latch. Our girl is a fast learner. She’ll master all those vowels in no time. And so what if Logan can’t pronounce the name now? I love when he messes up words, don’t you?”
He had me there. Three-year-olds had the best interpretations of things. “What’s Grams’s middle name?”
“Caoimhe.”
“Um, no. Sorry, My Love.”
He laughed. “Well, we could name her after the best mother I know.”
I nodded. “Amanda works, but isn’t that Mandy’s full name? Having the same name as your cousin doesn’t feel right.”
His eyes softened, and he gave my hand a squeeze. “I meant you, Princess.”
The universe had really delivered with this man. It got easier and easier to pay the good karma forward as I settled into my beautiful life with him. Difficult spelling aside, Aiden’s grandmother would adore having a child named after her, and though I knew he’d accept whatever I suggested, Aiden loved the name. “Siobhan Lauren. That way, she could go by Lauren if she wants.”
The baby gave a contented sigh, which made Aiden and me both giggle. Guess that settled it.
Aiden flipped a burp cloth over his shoulder and reached for the baby. “Let me burp her before she goes into a milk coma, so you can try her on the other side.”
I’d already fallen for Aiden before Logan was born but watching him be an amazing father deepened my love. Who knew watching a burly guy make baby food could be a turn on? Siobhan let out a gurgling sound, and Aiden glanced over his shoulder.
He handed me the baby and took a deep breath.
“Did she even spit up?” I asked, moving the baby to my other breast. Aiden’s weak stomach remained his only paternal kryptonite.
“No, but that sound.” He shuddered.
Unfortunately, my HG had made an encore appearance with this pregnancy. Aiden and I had both lost a considerable amount of weight during the first trimester.
“You handled spit up fine with Logan,” I said.
“Eventually. Give me a week, woman. I just need a little exposure therapy again.”
A soft knock sounded on the door and we both yelled, “Come in.”
Cammie stood in the doorway with a pair of tiny hands wrapped around her leg as my little guy hid behind her.
“Hey buddy,” Aiden said, crossing the room. Logan immediately let go of Cammie and ran to his father, his light brown curls bouncing with every step. “Ready to meet your little sister?”
Logan nodded. I kept my eyes glued to him while they approached the bed. The baby was still nursing, something Logan understood well from watching Rowan with her infant daughter Dahlia.
I’d prepared for him to be shy, even fearful. But the look of pure love on his face when he saw his little sister for the first time took my breath away. Aiden lowered Logan onto the bed, and he quickly nestled in beside me.
“I missed you so much,” I said, kissing the top of his head and breathing deep the smell of his tear-free shampoo. I didn’t think my heart could love anyone else the way I loved my son, but one look at my daughter, and I understood love wasn’t finite. It didn’t have to be given in scraps and fragments. It could grow and compound beyond anything I ever thought possible.
“She’s pretty like you, Mommy,” Logan said with a huge smile that looked so much like his father’s but with my dimples.
“Her name is Siobhan.”
“Sissy,” Logan said, leaning closer to place a gentle kiss on the baby’s forehead.
“That works,” Aiden said, winking at me.
“Oh my gosh,” Cammie said, putting down her phone and wiping tears from her eyes. “That was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, and I got it all on video.” She walked closer, her face full of warmth.
Siobhan had no idea yet how much love surrounded her. She had so many cousins, both by blood and friendship, that she’d always have someone to play with. She’d bounce from home to home not because she was placed there, but because everyone in her life would open their doors to her with the same love and acceptance as Aiden and I opened ours.
“When can I have a brother?” Logan asked.
I shot Aiden a glare, and he held up his hands. “I swear I didn’t tell him to say that. You know I’d like to fill every bedroom, but we can’t even try for six weeks.”
I gaped at him. He couldn’t be serious. We’d never actually discussed how many children he wanted. I’d asked him to let the universe guide us as we went, and he agreed. “Four kids?”
He smirked at me. “Nah, kids don’t take up much room. Eight ought to be enough.”
If I wasn’t holding our children and still sore from giving birth, I’d have gotten out of the bed and into his face for the mother of all arguments. Which usually led to exactly the thing we couldn’t do for six weeks. Sometimes, I think he nettled me just to get us revved for makeup sex.
“You do make really cute kids,” Cammie said. “And Poppy’s due in five months. If you got to it, they’d be in the same class at school.”
Really, Cam? “Spoken like a woman who’s never pushed out a nine-pound baby.”
She shrugged. “If anyone could do it, you could.”
And despite how I started in life, and how hard it was for me to accept being a mother the first time, I believed her. I still wasn’t having eight kids.