Epilogue
Three years later
Sydney, with a significant amount of effort, propped her feet up on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “I feel like a beached whale.”
“You’re beautiful,” Reese batted back immediately, scooting in closer and trying to wrap her arm around Sydney.
Reese had just gotten home from meetings in Boston with Stan, and Sydney’s parents had left about an hour ago after spending the day setting up the nursery—at their insistence.
“I want to hold you .” Tears were already welling in Sydney’s eyes for some unknown reason. There’d been a lot of that these days.
Maybe it was because she’d just thought about the nursery, decked out in shades of green with beautiful plants painted all over the wall, her dad’s excited contribution to their future children’s upbringing.
“Okay, baby. I’d like that.” Humoring her, Reese inched under Sydney’s arm, working to fit herself in between the back of the sofa and Sydney’s stomach, which in the last few weeks had popped to a laughable size.
“Twins,” Sydney said in a slightly disbelieving tone, like she’d done more times than she could remember in the last eight months.
Reese snuggled in closer and kissed the top of Sydney’s belly. “Serena and Venus can hear you, you know.”
Sydney would have laughed, but it was quite possible that she’d never get back into this exact position, and she was feeling more comfortable than she had all day.
Showing Reese around the nursery had worn her out like she’d just run a marathon.
“We really need to stop using those placeholder names or else they’re going to stick.
I cannot have our future children, who may or may not take an interest in tennis, being named after two of the greatest players who ever lived. ”
“May or may not?” Reese said dubiously. “I saw those tiny tennis rackets in their bedroom closet.”
Sydney should have known that nothing would get by her wife. “The rackets were too cute not to buy, but I promise I’ll do everything I can to let them follow their own paths.” She sniffled.
More tears. Again!
It was just that, when Sydney thought about her life, about Reese and their twin daughters, who would likely be coming any day now, she felt overwhelmed. With love. With anxiety. With excitement.
Reese managed to give Sydney another kiss, this time on the bottom of her jaw, which was the only place that her wife could reasonably reach given the position she was wedged in. “I know you will.”
The last three years of Sydney’s life had felt like they’d gone by at blink-and-miss-it speed. Sydney had proposed six months into their official relationship, but she’d never been more certain of anything in her life. She hadn’t wanted to wait to start living the life she wanted with Reese.
And once they’d been engaged, there was really no reason in Sydney’s mind to wait to get married. Even though Reese’s new venture, The Stoneport Group, had been taking off. And they’d been considering buying a home.
Nothing was going to stop Sydney from making Reese her wife, to solidify her intentions of making Reese the happiest woman in the world.
Sydney had rented out all the rooms at The Stone’s Throw, and they’d had a small, private ceremony that was exactly the right balance of raucously fun and intimately charming. Hallie had seen to that.
It was like, once Sydney had stopped pushing so hard to control her life, the pieces had all fallen into place better than she could have dreamt.
Which was how she found herself in this moment, snuggled up with her wife in a home they’d purchased together two years ago.
They’d spent the first year of their marriage wrapped up in one another.
In spite of that, they made time for Sydney’s career as a trainer at MTC, and Reese, in partnership with Stan, had launched The Stoneport Group.
Their expansion had happened about eighteen months ago, when Reese and Stan had purchased about half of the properties that became available when The Devereux Group folded.
Sydney wasn’t going to lie, that had felt good. Really good.
So a year ago, when Reese had come to Sydney and told her that she was ready, seriously ready, for them to start a family, Sydney had started crying tears of happiness.
And when she’d gotten pregnant four months later, it seemed like she hadn’t stopped crying since, constantly awash with emotions and endorphins for three now coursing through her.
“I just love you so much,” Reese said, burying her face in Sydney’s side. “You make me so happy. And I know that you’ll make our daughters so happy, too.”
“We can never tell them how we really got together,” Sydney mused as she wiped her face. “I need them to think of us as infallibly honest. ”
“You mean how we helped one another through a difficult time and ended up finding true love?” Reese challenged her as she rubbed Sydney’s stomach.
“I just don’t want them to think it’s okay to lie. Even for the right reason.” Sydney had started thinking about all kinds of things lately. How she and Reese had met. The place Sydney had been in emotionally and the circumstances that led to she and Reese finding their way to one another.
She could feel Reese scooting around, working to prop herself up.
When she was finally level with Sydney’s face, she felt the soft, warm touch of Reese’s fingers on her jaw.
Reese traced soothing patterns against her skin before she leaned forward and pressed a kiss against Sydney’s lips.
“Honey, I promise you, we can cross that bridge when we get there. But the most important thing for me is that, regardless of how we ended up here, there’s nothing about our love that’s a lie. ”
The End.