Epilogue
LEXI
Five years later
Happy laughter floats through the summer air, making the smell of ripening blooms that much sweeter.
My eyes lift instinctively, immediately landing on the source of the sound.
Blaise. Our son, now three, scoops sand with a toy bulldozer onto his cousin Axle’s legs where he sits next to him. At four and a half, Axle is the oldest of the male cousins, but still young enough to giggle at things like sand and dirt.
After decades of jokes that my heart was frozen over, it feels awfully damn warm these days as I watch them.
Setting my phone down on the only table out here big enough for adult asses like mine, I decide the vendor email I had been replying to can wait.
With Heights Bites having just passed the five-year mark, it’s busier than ever. We even had to put in a to-go window in the brick wall out on Main Street so we can meet the demand with grab ‘n’ go orders.
But tonight, business can take a backseat. It’s one of our twice-a-week family nights, on the land right between the border of Wyatt and Rory’s and Weston and Amelia’s properties.
Satisfied that Blaise and Axle are safe, if not a little dirty, I let my eyes roam around some more.
Next to the sandbox is a wooden playground, built by the Grady brothers, with some help from Wilder along the way.
It’s still small, low to the ground to suit the kids’ ages, but I’ve heard them talk about plans for the future play space and camp site like it’s going to be a castle by the time the dads are done with it.
Beyond that is a covered patio, where, beneath string lights softly glowing in the late afternoon light, sits little Laura Lee, who we usually call LL, or “Ella” as Axle dubbed her as soon as he could talk. The nickname has stuck.
Prim and proper in a spotless dress, Ella sits at a colorful kids' table, drawing with crayons. Across from her, crouched down into a seat smaller than one of his feet, is her dad, who she’s had wrapped around her little finger from the day she was born.
Wyatt leans forward over the tiny table, pointing to the drawing. From the way Ella is nodding and moving her lips, he must be asking her questions she’s answering about her artwork.
A smile spreads across my face, which isn’t unusual these days. I think my cheeks have had to grow new muscles these past few years, with how happy I’ve been.
Stalking across the endless expanse of open green space that stretches the acres and acres of Grady property, comes the reason for so many of those new muscles.
Arms open wide, my husband grins at me from across the lawn, a baby carrier strapped to his thick chest. Our daughter Poppy, just one and a half, is probably a bit too grown for the front sling at this point, but those two are so obsessed with each other, every time I try to suggest anything else, they both stare me down with matching pouts until I give up.
I’d say she is the biggest daddy’s girl I’ve ever met, but Ella might have her beat.
As two of the loves of my life stroll past the patio, Poppy points at her cousin and looks up at her daddy.
He must know what she wants, because he unclips her from his chest and places her on the ground, where her little feet take her straight to the table to start coloring with Ella and her uncle Wyatt.
I grab a crispy Diet Coke from the icy bucket of drinks on the table as I watch them, holding the can to my cheeks to cool me down in the warm sun.
When Wilder finally makes it to the hand-crafted table the guys made for our family gathering space, he leans down, down, until his 6’5” frame is low enough his lips brush my ear as he whispers to me.
“You’re looking way too good over here to not be on my tongue right now, Mrs. Amante.”
Turning my head to meet the intensity of his black gaze, I blush under his stare, but lean in to kiss him quickly, then push him away with one hand so he doesn’t turn it into more. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s forgotten we’ve had an audience.
Unfazed, he smirks at me and lifts one leg over the bench seat to straddle it, so he can face me as he sits.
“I mean it,” he says. His right hand, the one that says FREE across the knuckles, comes down on my thigh and squeezes gently.
“Tomorrow night,” I tell him. “We can ask Grandpa Duke to babysit.”
He shakes his head just once, with enough meaning that my stomach dips down low.
“Not waiting that long.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Chef.”
“I want you to let me eat my wife.”
“I’m not complaining about that plan,” I tell him, lips lifting again.
“The second the kids are asleep,” Wilder threatens, eyes flicking to Blaise in the sandbox, who’s now using blocks of wood to build a fort with Axle that he’ll probably run down in the next thirty seconds.
I snort. “So, never?”
His intensity doesn’t flicker for a beat. “You let me handle it. As soon as we’re back home, I’m getting them to sleep. Then I’m getting you all to myself.”
“Let me think about that,” I tell him, tapping one finger to my chin.
Let my husband put the kids to bed on his own, then feast on me until my head spins? Yeah, I accept.
Wilder’s left hand pinches my chin in his fingers, where the word LOVE jumps out at me, somehow made bolder by the black band on his ring finger, and he leans forward to nip at my mouth, capturing my lower lip between his teeth.
When he releases it, he pulls back and murmurs, “Say yes and I’ll make it worth losing sleep over. ”
“I already said yes to you,” I remind him, trying to keep my face serious, but the playful tone in my voice betrays me. “You remember that day?”
“Damn right I do. And I’m going to keep you screaming yes every night, wife.”
One hand comes down to my stomach, and I rub it, staring at Wilder. “Another seven months and I’m going to be screaming mostly curse words at you for knocking me up again as I try to push another watermelon-sized child of yours out of me.”
A mischievous smile spreads across his face for a flash, before he gets that intensity about him again as he asks, “Are you ready to tell them?”
I answer before I can think about it, nodding. “I can’t do this again without them.”
It’s true. Rory and Amelia are my lifelines on most days, but during both of my pregnancies?
I don’t think I could’ve made it through if they weren’t so sure I could.
Our group chat popped off at all hours with life-changing advice, and other times one or the other of them would show up at my door to help when a text wasn’t enough to keep me sane through it.
Especially my second pregnancy, when I had an infant in the house while Wilder was working overtime at the restaurant, me being too sick to show up much of the time.
Rory would just appear at my house, hand me a bag of candied ginger, then take Blaise, entertaining him, changing him, whatever I needed, without ever asking.
Amelia would have Axle in tow when she came over, and she would play with the boys so I could take a shower, answer work emails, or pick up the disaster zone that seems to just appear wherever my son is.
I shudder to think what the third pregnancy will be like, now that it’s not just one child in the house while I grow another.
Wilder leans in to kiss me once more, and then he’s lumbering off the bench, opening the rolling cooler we brought with us, full of food for tonight.
He talks to me as he sets it all out on the table, pitching me on new dishes he’s been experimenting with.
I wonder if he knows by now I’d let him put anything he wants on the menu?
He sure acts like he thinks he has to sell me on every single one.
Like he isn’t as much the owner as I am, and our success hasn’t been so explosive because of his culinary wizardry.
But I listen along, arguing back where I’m supposed to, giving him a chance to feel like he’s earned it, so the approval is that much sweeter for him.
My gaze bounces between them all: Wilder, setting out the food he prepared for tonight, Blaise, ramming his toy truck into the fort they built to knock it down, and Poppy, still drawing with Ella not one hundred feet away.
It’s hard to believe I got so lucky. For so long, I didn’t know this kind of joy was possible.
But my heart expands further when I see who is coming across the lawn now. Rory, carrying another child. There’s nothing peaceful about this one. The closer they get to us, the more the kid wriggles and kicks, clearly impatient.
When they’re on the other side of the ground that was cleared for the play spot, Rory leans down and sets the girl down.
Immediately, she starts running for our table. “Mommy!” she screams, heading for us. Holding my arms out for her, I smile, letting her run to me.
Except, wild child that she is, she trips on the uneven ground and topples down. Instantly, howling cries that peel at my insides start. I’m already up off the bench, but Wilder is halfway to her before I’m standing, those long legs of his giving him a hell of a cheat.
Axle has also dropped the dump truck he was playing with and has started for his cousin as well. “It’s okay Sage,” he tells her, where she’s in her dad’s massive arms, as he crouches down next to her.
Sage rubs an eye and looks at her cousin when he gets close to them. Axle hands over a toy, and Sage immediately plops down into the dirt and plays with it. Tears dry, the event over.
While Sage might be the same size as Poppy, the same age, and okay, they share every feature as identical twins, in personalities? They couldn’t be more different.
Where Poppy is softer, quieter, more angelic, Sage has a different approach to life. She runs straight for it, even if she falls down time after time. Poppy gives us peace, and Sage teaches us patience. It’s about balance, really.
We didn’t sign up for twins, but I wouldn’t trade my family for anything in the world.