Epilogue Lily #2
I rolled my eyes.
We all piled into his truck and stopped for a fast-food breakfast, to the delight of his children.
Barrett took a turn and then instructed us to close our eyes.
Dutifully, I did as I was told, smiling when he curved a large hand around my thigh.
“Maggie,” he said in a warning tone. “Close ’em.”
“I did. Sort of.”
He chuckled, and the sound of it made me shiver slightly. His hand squeezed, like he knew what I was thinking.
The truck came to a stop and when Barrett shifted it into park, he let out a slow breath. “Okay. Open your eyes.”
Second Leash Animal Sanctuary
My mouth fell open. Maggie screamed.
“Are we getting a dog?” Bryce gasped.
Without waiting for an answer, Maggie hurled herself at her dad, uninhibited by the fact that we were still in the truck and she couldn’t really get into the front without kicking me in the face.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she said, peppering his face with kisses.
“Really?” I asked, smile spreading as I watched the unleashed joy in front of me.
He held Maggie to his chest and nodded, eyes warm on my face. “Really.”
The kids were over the moon, even though Barrett gave them a steadying talk about how it might take time to find exactly the right fit.
But in the end, it took less than five minutes.
Maggie stopped at the first kennel, oohing and aahing over what she found there.
Bryce looked carefully, slowly walking a bit farther than his sister, then stopped at one a few kennels down, crouching with a soft expression on his face. “Lily, look.”
While Maggie and Barrett fawned over a wriggling black dog with white spots on his chest, Bryce read the sign in front of him, eyes darting back and forth between that and the dog inside the kennel.
He was skinny, with the coloring of a hound and massive floppy ears. Legs too big for his body. And he had big brown eyes that looked right into my fucking soul.
When I crouched down next to Bryce, the tip of the dog’s tail started thumping against the ground. Then he edged forward to sniff us, his tongue darting out to swipe over Bryce’s fingers wrapped around the metal links on the door. Bryce and I smiled at each other.
“What’s his name?” I asked, smiling gently when the dog did the same thing to me.
Bryce nudged my shoulder. “His name is Larry.”
My heart turned over.
“Of course it is,” I whispered.
Barrett squeezed my shoulder as he came up behind us. “And who’s this?” he asked.
“I think this is our dog,” I told him.
We did the grown-up thing and met four adult dogs and two puppies, spending time with them in a fenced-in yard area as patient shelter volunteers brought us each one, telling us their stories and helping us make the decision for our family.
To no one’s surprise, it was a unanimous decision—all four of us fell head over heels in love with Larry Jr., who we decided to call Junior, lest the original owner of the name think he’d been replaced and get pissed off up in doggie heaven.
In truth, they were nothing alike.
Junior wasn’t grumpy, and he didn’t growl. He was sweet and shy and loved to climb into our laps, even though he was long and gangly and wouldn’t fit by the time he’d fully grown into his frame.
When we brought him home that night, the kids fought over who got to sleep with him, but in the end, we found Junior curled up in my and Barrett’s bed.
My fiancé sighed as he wrapped his arms around me from behind and we stared down at the newest member of the family.
“Am I gonna regret this?”
“At least three times a day for a while.”
He laughed, the sound warm and rich at my back.
Slowly, I turned in his arms. “Thank you,” I told him.
“For the dog?”
I smiled. “No. Well, yes. But no.” He traced his thumb underneath my bottom lip while he waited for me to figure out what I wanted to say. He was so good at that. “For knowing what we need. The kids. Me. You always seem to know.”
“I didn’t always,” he admitted. I kissed his chin, snuggling against his chest. “Not until you. That’s when I really started getting things right.”
“Good thing I’m marrying you, then, huh?”
“Good thing.”
Barrett laughed, and I pressed my face closer to the sound, my eyes falling shut at the feel of it against my skin.
We got married that spring, a year after Griffin and Ruby’s wedding.
Despite his twin brother’s offer to do it, it was Pearl who officiated the ceremony in front of Barrett’s family and a large gathering of players and front office staff. In the second row, Bridget wept unabashedly.
Maggie stood up for me, and Bryce for his dad. Tied to my bouquet with a blue satin ribbon was a tiny framed picture of my family.
My wedding dress—a simple ivory satin number with a high neck that draped over my body in one long column—couldn’t really hide my bump, but we weren’t trying to keep it a secret either.
The entire town of Buffalo seemed to know as soon as we’d announced it to our family, and sometimes I’d get people congratulating me in the grocery store, wishing us well as we added to the roster.
Turned out, even though I wasn’t sure I fit the mold of perfect coach’s wife, they all loved me.
Barrett held my hands in his just before we said our vows, his thumbs brushing over my knuckles. I’d tattooed a small crown just underneath the ring he’d given me. Seemed fitting since my last name would be King.
I went into labor three weeks early, and even though Maggie made a valiant effort to be in charge of names, we settled on Jacob Aaron. Two minutes later, his sister, Julia Kathleen, was born.
Barrett wept openly when he held them for the first time. I’d never loved him more.
The first day we were all home from the hospital, four days after they were born, we found Maggie and Bryce sitting on the nursery floor while the twins napped in their basinets, Junior stretched between them.
“You guys okay?” Barrett asked the kids.
Maggie nodded, unable to tear her eyes away from the twins. “Just being happy.”
The sweetness of it was almost more than I could bear. I leaned in to Barrett as he wrapped his arm around me, resting his cheek on the top of my head while we stared at our perfect little family.
“And you?” he whispered, nudging my chin in his direction with a gentle tap of his thumb to my jaw. “You okay?”
It would be so easy to think about how I might have missed all this. How I almost let fear deprive me of the best family in the world, the one meant to be mine.
But I didn’t. And I wouldn’t.
I gave him a lingering kiss, sighing as I pulled back to smile.
“Just being happy.”