Chapter 24
CHANCE
Over the next few weeks, everything settles into a weirdly beautiful rhythm. Life with three men and one pregnant woman under one roof is chaotic in ways none of us anticipates, but it becomes strangely familiar and warm.
I wake up every morning looking for Roxie without even thinking about it, checking for the sound of her humming in the kitchen or the scent of whatever lotion she’s stolen from Dillon’s bathroom that day.
Boone hovers like a proud guard dog while Dillon analyzes every vitamin label like he’s prepping for a medical exam. And me?
I watch. I notice. Every tiny shift in her energy. Every variation of her smile. Every time she tries too hard to pretend she isn’t scared.
When her first prenatal appointment rolls around, there isn’t a question. We’re all going.
As always this time of year, the drive into town feels like something out of a postcard. Snow powders the rooftops and crews string lights across Main Street, wrapping garland around the lampposts. A giant wreath hangs on the diner’s door, and holiday music drifts out of every store.
“Oh, wow,” Roxie murmurs from the backseat. “It’s already the holiday season?”
Boone shoots her a grin in the rearview mirror. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“I can’t believe I’ve been here this long already,” she says, leaning back and turning toward the window. “I thought I was only coming for a couple weeks. Tops.”
Personally, I can believe it’s been this long either. I feel every day how she’s becoming part of us in ways I can’t articulate without sounding like a lovesick idiot.
At the doctor’s office, a soft instrumental Christmas carol spills out as Boone pulls the door open.
On instinct, I look around the office, scanning for any trace of a threat even though I doubt Caruso’s men are hiding behind Pap smear pamphlets or whatever else they keep in here.
A small, lit tree stands in the corner, decorated with tiny, knitted ornaments, and the air smells faintly like cinnamon tea.
Roxie hugs her arms around herself. “This feels, I don’t know, real, doesn’t it?”
Boone slides his hand down her back. “It is real, sweetheart.”
She smiles up at him, leaning into his side like she’s taken to doing when she needs reassurance.
We only wait a few minutes before the nurse pops her head out. “Roxanne Hamilton? You can all come on back now.”
Once we’re inside the sterile space that’s much too small for all of us, the nurse dims the lights a little and pulls up the ultrasound machine. Roxie climbs onto the table, tugging her shirt up with trembling fingers.
I step closer and take her hand. She doesn’t say anything, just rests her palm against mine, squeezing lightly. I can feel her pulse racing, but the nurse gives us a friendly smile. “Doc will be right in.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly, stuffing myself into a corner next to the bed to make space for the others, and the doctor, who walks in a minute later with a cheerful smile.
“Good morning,” she says without missing a beat at the sight of three huge men in her exam room. Instead, she just flicks her green eyes to each of us in turn and smiles again. “Are we ready to meet the little one?”
Boone makes a noise that’s somewhere between yes and I might throw up. Dillon stands so still he could’ve been carved out of stone. I just nod.
Meanwhile, the doctor gets on with things without gawking at us. The wand touches Roxie’s belly, cool gel glistening on her skin, and the screen flickers to life.
A grainy gray image swirls into view, and the doctor angles her head. “There we are. Hello, tiny human.”
She points at a blotch and smiles as she clicks a few buttons. The view on the screen changes, and suddenly her eyebrows shoot up. “Well, it looks like we’ve got a surprise.”
My heart slams once, so hard it hurts. “What kind of surprise?”
She points at the screen. “Two heartbeats.”
Roxie jolts. “Wait, what?”
“Twins,” the doctor announces, beaming at us. “Congratulations.”
For a second, nobody breathes. Twins. Two babies. Two.
Boone is the first to move, letting out a stunned laugh, breathy and disbelieving at first, then cracking into something softer. He drops his head into his hands.
Dillon whispers, “Holy shit.”
My throat closes up completely. I stare at the screen like I can memorize every pixel and every flutter. Two tiny flickers. Two lives. Two miracles we somehow made in one unexpected, unbelievable afternoon.
Roxie’s eyes fill instantly with tears. “Are they okay?”
“They’re perfect,” the doctor assures her as she clicks more buttons. All sorts of lines and crosses appear on the screen, and she doesn’t seem concerned. “So far, they seem strong and healthy. Everything looks wonderful. Here let’s listen.”
The doctor turns up the dial and the sound of fast, whooshing heartbeats fills the room.
“Nice and strong,” the doctor says.
After a few more minutes, the doctor prints a string of pictures, hands them over, and sends us off to make our next appointment. We walk out of her office together in a communal daze, into snow falling and carols playing, Christmas lights blinking above the street.
Even with the grainy gray images now stuck to our fridge, it still takes a while after the appointment for any of us to fully realize the implications of having twins. Those weeks blur into something that doesn’t even feel like real life.
At least, not any version of life I’ve known before Roxie. Everything slows down in this peaceful, domestic kind of way. A protective lull. The calm before… well, twins.
We spend our days running the business and keeping Roxie safe, and our evenings spoiling the hell out of her. If she so much as sighs too loudly, three grown men snap to attention like she’s royalty.
Boone takes over all the heavy lifting around the house. Dillon structures her vitamins and meal schedule like he’s prepping for NASA. I hover shamelessly, my eyes almost constantly on our security monitors while I formulate backup plans for our backup plans.
Every night, one of us ends up massaging her feet while we sit on the couch with some holiday movie playing in the background. Apparently, the entire world has decided it’s Christmas despite the calendar insisting it’s still a month away.
“It’s not Christmas,” I protest for the third night in a row. “It’s barely November. People need to calm the hell down.”
Boone doesn’t look up from assembling some complicated rocking chair he refuses to admit is defeating him. “It’s festive, man. Let people have joy.”
“Joy has a date,” I shoot back. “It’s in December.”
Roxie curls against my shoulder, eating pickles, then nudges me. “You’re the only person in this house acting like the Grinch. Joining us would be much easier because you aren’t gonna beat us.”
“I’m not a Grinch,” I grumble.
Dillon snorts from where he sits cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by eight open baby-care books, three laptops, and at least twenty tabs of best crib mattresses of the year open. “Dude, you’re two complaints away from living in a cave and yelling at carolers.”
“I don’t yell,” I say.
Roxie raises a brow. “Baby, you absolutely do yell.”
I glare at all of them, but the next thing I know, I’m grinning.
I can’t help it, because the truth is that I like the lights and the music.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had any reason to look forward to the holidays, but this year, it feels like everything we’ve ever been missing is finally within reach.
As the days tick on, the nursery becomes our collective obsession. We aren’t ready to paint yet, but that doesn’t stop us from having very intense, deeply stupid arguments about color palettes.
“We need something classic,” Boone says firmly. “Like navy and white. There’s a reason it’s always been popular.”
“No, what we need are cognitively stimulating colors, like soft greens and neutrals,” Dillon says. “I’ve read at least three articles about how color psychology can determine the twins’ entire personalities.”
“You’re all wrong,” I say, crossing my arms as I stare them down. “It should be yellow. A nice, bright sunshiny yellow.”
“Yellow is too aggressive,” Dillon says without looking up from a developmental chart.
“It’s not aggressive,” I fire back. “It’s happy.”
“It’s blinding,” Boone adds helpfully.
Roxie sits on the rug, folding the tiny clothes she ordered online that were delivered a couple of days ago. “You’re all insane. Besides, we don’t need to make the decision today.”
As she says it, she’s smiling like she loves us all the more for it, and I stride over, bending down to plant a kiss on top of her head.
“Yeah, we know, but it’s a nice distraction, don’t you think?
Also, might I remind you that you’re currently folding clothes you ordered for babies that won’t be here for another six?
We’re not the only ones jumping the gun. ”
She laughs, her eyes sparkling as she glances up at me. “Sure, but I’m going to be the size of a whale by then, and I probably won’t be able to sit and fold them by then. I’m being practical.”
“And we’re not?”
She arches an eyebrow at me. “You ordered three cribs because no one could agree.”
“But we only kept two and returned the other one.” I wink at her. “Unless Boone stashed it in the basement just in case.”
Aside from the nursery, Dillon joins six different parenting forums under fake usernames. Boone helps him assemble an unnecessary number of baby gadgets while pretending he knows what half of them are. I read baby books when no one is looking.
Every night, as I lie beside Roxie with her back pressed to me and her belly warm under my palm, I feel that same tight, glowing in my chest that isn’t fear or nervous anticipation. Instead, it feels like hope.
I’m not complaining about it, even though I keep loudly insisting that the town putting up wreaths in November is borderline illegal. Christmas really is coming, though, and for once, I’m actually excited.
I’m feeling pretty damn good when I leave the house to go grocery shopping. Roxie has been glowing, Dillon has finally stopped lecturing us about sleep cycles, and Boone has let me win an argument about crib placement.
Small miracles everywhere.
The town is fully decked out now with twinkling lights on every lamppost, wreaths with big red bows on just about every doors, and plastic reindeer on half the roofs. I shake my head as I walk across the snowy parking lot of the market, juggling too many bags of groceries.
Approaching my truck, I glance up and instantly go still.
Tucked into a row of salt-stained pickups and beat-up SUVs is a car that does not belong. Sleek. Black. Untouched by snow or gravel.
It’s the kind of vehicle that doesn’t come from around here. Hell, it doesn’t come from within a hundred miles of here. It’s too polished and too expensive. Just wrong.
Every instinct I have snaps awake. My heartbeat slows. My senses sharpen.
Someone sits inside. I can’t make out a face, just the silhouette of a person watching the street.
I don’t move at first, just set my groceries gently in the back seat of my truck and shut the door like nothing’s wrong. Then I pull out my phone and text Boone.
Got eyes on an unfamiliar car in town. Too fancy and new to be local. Gonna stay here a bit, see if they move. Heads up: we might have trouble.
My thumb hovers for half a second, then I add:
Keep Roxie inside.
I slip the phone back into my pocket, turn toward the market window so I can watch the reflection without turning my head, and let my breathing settle into that cold, steady readiness I haven’t needed in a long time.
Everything has been perfect since we found out about the pregnancy. Peaceful. Safe. But we’ve always known it wouldn’t last. Just looking at that car, I know it’s over. There’s no way whoever is in there isn’t a threat.