30. EPILOGUE
PENNY
One and a Half Years Later
Afternoon light streamed through the windows at the far end of the pub as Penny slid into the corner seat of the bench. She was a bit tired from the night before. Baby Finn had refused to go to sleep on time, as usual. Petey, their new puppy from Trixie’s first litter, had barked and wailed until he was allowed in Finn’s room, where he finally settled down. And then there was the most demanding male member of the household, who’d kept her up until close to three in the morning for…other reasons.
Finn wasn’t an arm baby anymore. He’d been big enough to serve as the ring bearer at their wedding in June, carried to the arbor where they’d taken their (third) vows on his Grandpa Bran’s arm. The day had been so beautiful and brimming with the love of friends and family, including every Mayfield in the county, Jade as her Maid of Honor again, Jack’s cousin Matt and his little family, James who showed up alone, Serena Gardner, who also came alone, and Meghan (who would forevermore be referred to as Mortal Kombat after the fight). Dennis came too, and Squeeze with his fiancé Dax. It had been the most fun wedding Penny had ever attended if she said so herself. Jack agreed.
Finn had taken his first official steps days before the wedding, to all the assembled grandparents’ utter delight. Now, from across the space in the pub, he sat on his Nana Dierdre’s knee, looking around with his big, bright hazel eyes at the noisy patrons, some tourists but mostly locals. Every now and then, the waitress would pass by and fluff his wispy brown curls and tweak his cherubic golden-brown cheek until it was pink.
And who could blame her? Baby Finn was the sweetest, cutest, smartest baby in the universe if Penny said so herself. It had been a smooth pregnancy. The delivery had fucking hurt, but she’d be willing to do it again if they were lucky enough to have another one like him. She could spend hours staring at him and inhaling his sweet baby smell.
Penny waved at him and Dierdre before settling her banjo comfortably on her lap, only needing to tune its four strings a little before strumming with bare fingers. Before long, she was joined by Bran who sat next to her with his fiddle, then his friends on tin whistle, bodhrán, accordion, and mandolin. The same waitress brought over glasses of Guinness for them.
“Look at my grandson over there. Look at him!” Bran urged the others, smug with pride.
“Every time,” the drummer groaned with an eye roll. “We see him, Bran, we see him.”
“I can’t help it. I missed that little raggamuffin. I hadn’t seen him since June. The whole summer.” Bran shook his head sadly.
Penny grinned. “But you’ve got him fall, winter, and spring. Imagine how his other grandparents feel.”
“True, true.”
She and Jack, as they’d planned, had gone through with a top-to-bottom restoration of Ma Mabel’s house, courtesy of Owenville’s best interior designer, Sierra Smith (with input from Dierdre, of course). New additions had been made, including more ensuite bathrooms, a full soundproof gym for Jack, and a second soundproof studio for Penny. The house practically glowed. The summer in her hometown had been fun overall. She’d even managed to convince Jack to buy a Dodge pickup and drive it wearing a plaid shirt. Talk about hot in the country!
He’d left Valentine MMA in Charlie’s capable hands while they’d been away, hiring the best assistant coaches in the improved facility with the €25 million donation that had mysteriously shown up in the foundation’s coffers.
Now that it was September, they were back. Autumn was going to be busy. Her book had been very well received in music circles extending beyond the country/bluegrass/folk world. It was titled “At the Crossroads: A Musical Synthesis of Three Cultural Traditions.” The acknowledgments thanked her family, Squeeze and Dennis, each teacher and elder and musician she’d met or spoken with, and finally, her husband Jack and their then-infant son.
She’d asked Jack what he thought of the dedication before submitting it for publishing: “For Brendan, whose legacy will live on.”
Jack nodded and said, “I think he would have loved that.” And he’d held her and stroked her back for a long time.
Penny had done a few interviews on the book and had even been invited to guest lecture at small universities and music conservatories. It had been so encouraging she came to a decision about what she wanted to do professionally: get an advanced degree in ethnomusicology and then teach. She started classes in one week at Trinity College.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be with an orchestra playing your violin?” Jack had asked while they discussed it over dinner.
“Well,” she’d said after thinking. “I still want to play with other musicians. And I will.”
And here she was, about to play with Bran and the others in this old pub on the North side of the city, not far from home, when the door opened for two newcomers.
“’Tis my favorite son, Jack. Charlie, you old geezer,” Bran called out, his cheeks ruddy just from a few sips of his Guinness.
“I came here to listen to Jackie’s missus, not yer mouth,” Charlie grumbled back. Their little group laughed.
Jack nodded, saying “hello” to everyone, and served Penny a gorgeous grin while he took Finn from his mother and sat down beside her. Turning his attention to his boy, Jack kissed him on both cheeks and blew a raspberry on his neck until Finn laughed.
O w, her heart . Sometimes, just seeing Jack walk into a room made her desperately happy. That sensation doubled seeing Jack and Finn together. As a husband, he was fantastic, but as a dad? Top tier. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for Finn. He got up with him at night and took care of him during the day when Penny was tired or had other things that needed doing. Finn had a second playpen at the gym; he was there so much the students joked he was their hype man.
And speaking of the gym and Jack’s second retirement from the cage…
After the fight, he’d been rushed to the hospital in a medical van that Simon had prepped and ready. A second van had taken La Roque. Jack’s lung had been punctured by a fractured rib. He’d had a fast surgery to patch up his insides and was out of the hospital in under two weeks. It was nothing at all like the aftermath of the Vegas fight. His head was fine. After a few weeks of rest, along with plenty of babying from her and Dierdre, he was back on his feet.
At home, he’d told her La Roque had come into his hospital room, and they’d had a talk about their “past.” Since La Roque had gotten the fight he wanted, regardless of the outcome, it was all squashed. She, in turn, told Jack what La Roque had said to her at ringside.
“He apologized. For all the things he said about me in public and for the tumble.” Penny waited for Jack’s reaction, but he’d only lifted his eyebrows. “If you’d known he’d apologized, would you have called off the fight?”
Jack had said, “I would not.”
La Roque had been super quiet after that, which did make Penny nervous. But a week ago, he’d popped up on SportZone for an interview with Atlas Walters, looking grungy as ever but a touch more pleasant in his arrogance than abrasive. He was looking for a new trainer and new management. He was there to call out McCready, the current reigning heavyweight champ.
“Good luck to him,” Jack had said, raising his glass to the TV. “That McCready is one fucking tough ginger.”
Now she waited for Bran to start the seisiún with the first notes from his fiddle. He drew the bow sharp and sweet, and then slowly, the others joined in, catching the drift of his melody and harmonizing with their instruments. It was a fast tempo and Penny let go of thought to join in, finding the rhythm and diving in.
While she played, fingers dancing along the strings, she tapped her foot to keep time and let her eyes wander. She took all of it in; the patrons eating and drinking, some of them clapping. The vibrations reached her through the floor when some of them stomped their feet. The old woman in black in the back corner of the pub lifted her glass to her lips and winked at Penny over the rim.
Well played . The voice echoed in her head.
Penny looked over at Jack, wondering if he saw the old woman. She’d asked him about the woman once when they’d lain outside in the back of their truck in Owenville on a hot summer’s night and looked up at the stars like scattered fireflies. He hadn’t known who she was referring to.
She saw a therapist once a week, a no-nonsense lady whom she saw to deal with the generalized anxiety muppet that still popped up from time to time. The counselor had asked if the woman in green and black was another aspect of her imagination, the part of her that had been trying to tell her she was finally ready for love.
“Maybe,” Penny had allowed.
But she also agreed with Jack, that there were no coincidences, that they’d been drawn together, drawn to loving each other, by something ancient and stronger than them both.
Jack still didn’t seem to notice the woman. He was busy clapping to her music with Finn’s tiny hands between his own. His gaze was on her, and it beamed with pride.
After the seisiún was over, they walked Dierdre, Bran, and Charlie out.
“Dinner at our house on Sunday?” Dierdre asked, kissing Finn on the cheek. From his perch on Jack’s arm, Finn smiled big at her with all four of his teeth. “You precious thing. Sure I can’t keep him?”
“Get your own babe,” Jack told her, feigning a scowl.
“I had my own babe.” Dierdre reached up to pat him softly on the cheek while he turned red with embarrassment. “See youse Sunday.”
“Awww,” Penny crooned after they continued on their own down the street. “Your mommy wuvs you!”
“Stop,” Jack mumbled with a wince.
“She’s not the only one. Although I don’t love you like that .” Penny reached up to kiss him with a soft smacking sound, and he kissed her back.
“I like how you love me. I like it a lot.” The warmth in his eyes, beautiful brownish-green in that awesome afternoon sunshine, stirred up those butterflies again.
When he said it, he picked at something on the lapel of her shirt. “What?” she asked.
“Just a piece of fluff.” He flicked it, and the fluff danced away, snatched by a breeze.
“I like how you love me, too.”
They were on the same block as the café that Penny frequented. She hadn’t been in there all that often since Finn was born. She missed that, being able to come in and have her coffee and people-watch all afternoon. But here on the other side of that window glass, it wasn’t so bad.
A woman was sitting in her old spot. Late thirties, dark-skinned, and pretty with a head full of gorgeous locs. She was sipping from her cup and staring wistfully out the window. The woman’s eyes moved and fixed on her, Jack, and Finn, still with a glimmer of longing. Realizing she’d been caught staring, she looked slightly embarrassed until Penny nodded at her with a grin. The woman nodded back with a slight raise of her cup.
Nope. It wasn’t bad at all on this side of the glass.
Later that night, after dinner, bathtime, and pleading with Finn to go to sleep, Jack stretched out on the couch beside her with a worn sigh.
“That little chiseler…why does he fight sleep? I don’t understand. When you’re tired, you sleep,” Jack complained.
“Are you tired?” she asked, squeezing his trim waist. He wasn’t quite as tight as when he was deep in his crazy revenge workout regimen, but still trim.
“Well…yeah.”
She laughed. “So go to bed. Why are you fighting it?”
When he growled, leaning over and nipping at her throat, she laughed. “Because I’ve got things to do and miles to go before I sleep.”
“What things, Robert Frost?” Penny murmured, then moaned when his kisses along her cheek turned into a bite of her earlobe.
Jack pulled down her yoga pants and panties with one fluid move, then pushed off his sweats. Penny ran her hands over him, admiring the beauty of his scars and his softening eyes, every part of him, all the broken, jagged pieces fused into a man she couldn’t live without.
She thought of how far they’d come since she first saw him crossing the street, coming to meet her. Her man, her king, her greatest love. With his soft, wicked smile, Jack gazed into her eyes with an adoration that made her melt, looking at her like she was pure magic.
He was already fully hard, and she grasped his delicious length and slowly, slowly began stroking him. Leaning back against the couch cushions and groaning, he patted his thick, muscled upper thigh.
“Sit on me lap, and I’ll show you,” Jack said with a breathless grin.
“You don’t tell me what to do.”
But just this once, Penny was happy to comply.
The End