Epilogue #4
“Sorry I’m la—“ Rush started to say, coming to a stop at seeing Dusty sitting there, giving her a grateful smile. “Good,” he declared, nodding.
“Did you call her?” I asked, straightening, offended that he might have gone behind my back.
“Baby, no,” he said, snorting. “I wish I had thought of that. But my brain is a little fried,” he admitted, walking over to rub the top of Kade’s head, but not taking him from his aunt, coming instead to sit next to me, pulling me onto his lap—breastmilk stains, greasy hair, and all.
“I’m Tuesdays and Thursdays in the mornings,” Dusty told him.
“Someone else is going to take a night a week so you two can reconnect. Be humans and husband and wife instead of mom and dad. It’s good for you,” she insisted.
“Why don’t you guys go be humans and partners?
” she suggested. “Go get some food. Take a drive.”
Rush turned to look at me as my neck craned to look up at him.
“Nap?” he asked, giving me a tired smile.
“Oh, thank God,” I said, sighing out my breath. “I was worried you would want to go do something,” I admitted as we both untangled, moved off of the couch.
“I barely have the energy to walk to the bedroom,” he admitted, rubbing a hand absentmindedly down my spine.
Rush was a great dad.
Attentive to a fault.
Even when I was up with Kade since I was the one with the milk, he would get up too, get me snacks, adjust the blankets, bring the changing stuff to the bed so I didn’t have to get up, take the old diapers away, then come back and pass back out with me.
I loved him for doing it even though I knew on a rational level that if he slept while I did the feedings, that he could take Kade when he was awake or just fussy so I could sleep.
“This feels like a vacation,” Rush said as we both climbed into the sheets.
I didn’t remember the last time they’d seen the inside of the washing machine.
The next time Helen offered to do the laundry, I was going to let her.
Dusty was right, I had this whole tribe, there was no reason to push them away when I needed them most.
“Remember eight hours of sleep?” Rush asked, pulling me in to his side, arm going around me.
“Not really,” I admitted, a big yawn escaping me.
“Just think, in thirteen years, we can wake him up at six a.m. on a Saturday morning as payback.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed.
“But for now, sleep.”
“Yes, sleep.”
Parenthood was harder than I’d been prepared for, despite all the warnings I’d gotten. But there was no one, no one, in the whole world I would rather go through it with than Rush freaking Rivers.
Rush - 4 years
“Nope, leave Mom alone,” I said, snagging Kade on his way toward Katie’s closed office door.
“Mama!” he whined as I snagged him around the waist, hauling him up, tucking him under my arm like a football, getting a little squeal out of him.
“I know. I miss her too, bub, but she’s got to work. She’s bringing home the bacon.”
“Bacon.”
“Yep. The good stuff,” I agreed, walking him through the house and into the backyard, knowing Katie couldn’t think straight if she heard Kade whining for her, and she was on a strict deadline.
It was funny how life worked.
She’d never set out to change careers.
After Kade, we just figured she would work part-time if she wanted to, helping out Fee’s ever-growing business. But we never thought there would be any major life change.
But then one of the girls from For A Good Time, Call… messaged her out of the blue, asking if she would be willing to edit a book she was going to be publishing for her, knowing that Katie did, eventually, finish her degree. Even if life did make it take much longer than it should have.
She’d done it as a favor to an old friend.
But that old friend started to get a readership, kept pumping out more books, started recommending Katie around.
Eventually, Fiona got on the case, building Katie a social media platform, automating her web presence, showing her how to build a brand.
And, before we knew it, Katie was living out a dream she’d told me about years before, one she never truly believed she would fulfill.
That said, it meant long hours of necessary silence. And, well, we had a kid. And another on the way. So Katie tended to take to the office for a couple hours late at night and a good chunk of the days on the weekends.
I missed having her around, but it also gave me some one-on-one time with Kade. He was a momma’s boy for sure, but he also loved going out, kicking a ball, swinging a bat around. Rarely ever at a ball, mind you, but kids would be kids.
“Comet!” he squealed, holding out his arms when our old dog came barreling out of nowhere.
My stomach tensed. Comet was a big brute of a dog and not one prone to gentleness either. He also had a big thing for Kade, which meant he ran up to him at full-speed, knocking the kid over, then licking every inch of his face.
Luckily for me—since Katie would be pissed if I let him get hurt—Kade was a rough and tumble kid. He took a fall like no other kid I’d met.
“He’s all you,” Katie would tell me, watching him hanging off the edge of the couch, completely unconcerned with the hard floor beneath him.
He definitely had a lot of me in him.
But he loved to help Katie in the kitchen. He would go running down the hall when she asked if he wanted to read some books.
There was some of her in him too.
A good mix of the two of us.
I couldn’t help but wonder what our daughter would be like.
We would be finding out in a couple short months.
That was why Katie was busting ass now, to get ahead of work, so she could take some time off after.
“Mama!”
“We’ll see Mama when she’s done with work, bub,” I reminded him.
“Mama!” he called again, smiling big.
He saved that smile for his mother, making me turn, finding her walking out onto the back deck, a big cup of tea in her hand, giving us a smile.
“Hey, buddy,” she called. “Were you good for Daddy?”
But he wasn’t paying attention. Because Comet had found a spot to dig and was going hard at it, making Kade walk over, dropping down on his diaper-clad butt, digging with his bare hands.
“We can clean his nails later,” I reminded Katie, reading that horror on her face.
“You can scrape his nails later,” she said, shaking her head. “He screams bloody murder when I do it.”
“Are you on a break, or did you finish?” I asked, moving up onto the deck, moving behind her, pressing a hand to her belly.
“I finished. You’ll never guess who just emailed me, though.”
“Who?”
“Remember that book that inspired our tufted headboard?” she asked.
“Yeah. Went off the radar since.”
“Well, until now. She has a new one coming out. And she wants me to edit it.”
“No way.”
“I know, right?”
“Does it sound good?” I asked, wrapping my arm around her.
“It sounds really, really steamy.”
“So then… yes,” I concluded, smiling down at her when she smirked up at me.
“But nothing blows up and no one goes on any car chases.”
“I’m always down for a good bed-breaking session,” I told her. “And not only because we broke ours making this,” I told her, tapping my fingers on her belly.
“God, that was humiliating to have your brothers over to help you cart it out.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said, chuckling. “It was one of my proudest moments.”
“You would—Kade!” she called, making my gaze follow hers.
Comet was relieving himself on a bush.
And Kade thought it was a keen idea.
“If it’s any consolation, girls don’t tend to pee on bushes,” I reminded her as she let out a mom whimper.
“This is true,” she agreed. “Oh no,” she said, lurching forward when Kade fell forward and let out a shriek. “You don’t think he’s…”
“Covered in his own, and the dog’s, piss? Yep, I do,” I said, sighing.
“Go get him. I’ll run the bath,” she said, half frustrated, half amused.
This life shit, it wasn’t always glamorous.
But there was no one else I’d rather wash dog pee off our kid with than Katie, that was for damn sure.
Kate - 12 years
“Hello?” I called, trying to balance the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I folded warm towels from the dryer.
“How was your day?” Rush’s voice asked, making my brows knit together as I moved to the doorway out of the laundry room, looking at him sitting on the couch in the living room, legs propped up on the coffee table.
“Ah, it’s the same as it was when you asked me when you came home twenty minutes ago,” I told him, smiling because he was being weird.
“A little stressed, huh?” he asked.
“I mean, we have three children. So I’m always a little stressed.”
“I can take that away for you, baby,” he told me, making my lips curve up higher as an old, familiar wobbly feeling moved through my core.
How long had it been since I’d felt it, since we’d done anything even remotely sexy?
A couple weeks?
God, a couple months?
I was pretty sure it was a couple months, right before the stomach flu ripped its way through our family, leaving everyone feeling depleted and awful for a full two weeks afterward.
I mean, droughts happened.
I think after Kade was born, we didn’t have sex for like four months. We were too damn tired. Even with all the help.
But we didn’t have the new baby excuse now. Or even the ‘everyone is getting over being sick’ one either.
In fact, we had no reason not to since the Mallick crew had just swooped by to take our mongrels to the movies at the beach.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, tossing the towel back into the dryer, moving into the doorway, watching my husband as he sat there pretending I wasn’t just a few feet away.
“You know what would make you feel better?”
“What’s that?”
“If I buried my face in your pussy and make you come until your legs won’t hold you up anymore,” he told me, making my thighs press together as the need started to grow.
It didn’t matter how long it had been, when Rush started his dirty-talking, I was right back where we first started, in my old apartment, fantasizing about a man I was sure could never be mine.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he asked, tone getting deeper, huskier.