Epilogue
“I’m getting motion sickness,” I tell Conrad, holding a hand over my mouth in the passenger seat of the souped-up minivan we bought last Christmas.
It’s gorgeous, with heated leather seats, room for up to five car seats in the back, a moonroof, and SEVENTEEN whole cup holders!
Best royal princess carriage ever. “I’m going to throw up. ”
“You’re not going to throw up,” Conrad says, squeezing my thigh…before plopping the planter pot we keep in the vehicle for such occasions on my lap.
“How much longer?”
“Almost there,” he says with a smile in his voice.
He always sounds like that these days, even when I get mad and raise my voice instead of going quiet and stuffing my feelings down when he accidentally hurts them. I don’t always get it right, but I try, as I promised all those years ago. My days of jumping to conclusions are long behind us.
Leading me by the elbow once we’ve parked, careful that I don’t trip over the curb or run into a pole, since a fall this late in my pregnancy with our second child would be seriously dangerous, Conrad finally comes to a stop.
Huh. That sure was a short drive and walk. Too short.
“You can take your bandana off now,” Conrad says, brushing a kiss along my lips before he steps back.
I slide the green bandana up my forehead, smiling first at our red-headed, chubby-cheeked Andrea—Drea for short—holding her daddy’s hand and beaming up at me.
As much as I looked forward to and loved my first pregnancy, nothing could have prepared me for how difficult and uncomfortable, to say the least, it would be after I developed preeclampsia.
That and the bizarre out-of-body feeling of being numb from the waist down from my epidural when I had my C-section.
But it was all worth it, and the day I gave birth to Drea was one of the happiest days of my life.
Thankfully, it’s been so far, so good on the preeclampsia front with this pregnancy, since I’ve been one of the lucky ones—fingers crossed it continues this way—to not develop it a second time.
“Supwise,” Drea says, throwing a hand out like Vanna White in a rerun of Wheel of Fortune that Mom and Sondra like to watch when they babysit her, Drew, and Tally for the weekend.
Kidnapped, more like. A coordinated heist, with Sondra sneaking into our homes with the house keys she stole and copied while Mom distracts us with one of her tricks, all so they can steal our kids like jewelry thieves. It’s terrifying, but so sweet. But mostly terrifying.
My good mood starts to sink, and my smile slowly fades as I look up the wide concrete stairs to the double doors of our small county courthouse.
I’d been dropping hints for the past three months that I wanted to return to the cabin in the mountains where we honeymooned after Conrad and I renewed our for-real vows soon after we found out we were pregnant with Drea.
This is so not the shuttle to the airport.
Conrad digs through the extra-large, green floral, quilted diaper bag with our last name embroidered in gold thread on the front. I can fit half the nursery in that bad boy and still have room left over!
He hands me a large manila folder with a twinkle in his eye and a wide, sexy as sin smile beneath his backwards ball cap. “Happy anniversary!”
I flip open the folder and am greeted with the worst thing imaginable. “You want a divorce?!” I cry out.
“God no,” Conrad says, taken aback.
“Then what the hell is this?” See how good I am at sharing my feelings now? I wave the folder in the air with the documents petitioning for a divorce now that our mandated three years are up, my cheeks burning as tears burst out of me.
“Daddy mean!” Drea starts to wail, shaking off Conrad’s hand to throw herself at my legs, which threaten to crumple beneath me as our world falls apart.
How many times has Conrad told me—lied straight to my face—that we were forever? That three years with me would never be long enough? Had he been hiding his true intentions all along so as not to hurt my feelings? He promised he wouldn’t.
“How could you do this to us?” I hurl the folder at him like a baseball with as much force as I can and bend to heft Drea up onto my hip. I sob into her hair, turning away and duck-shuffling down the sidewalk.
I still have some lumber left over in the garage that Conrad hasn’t gotten to yet, having started up whittling gorgeous frames to go with the custom portraits I illustrate and now offer to print and ship to our customers.
I have just enough to board up the doors and windows to keep him out—and me in—for as long as it takes for the urge to murder him to pass.
Sure, I could go to prison and try out being on the opposite side of things, a prisoner randomly assigned to marry some civilian.
But then I might end up back at square one with another Lying McLiarson. I’d rather not.
“What did I tell you?!” Mom yells, flying through the courthouse doors and down the stairs with Garth on her heels.
She slaps the back of her hand against Conrad’s shoulder before she grabs and turns me in her arms, since I hadn’t gotten very far.
“I told you she would jump to conclusions like any sane person would!”
“Yeah, like any sane person would!” I echo, because this totally doesn’t count as a strike against my jumping-to-conclusions scoreboard.
“But no! You’re as stubborn as her,” Mom finishes, rubbing my back and turning her nose up at Conrad. “So not cool.”
“You just had to go and learn your lesson the hard way instead of learning it from me,” Alisa says, rising with Brad and my niece and nephew from behind a gigantic white dually parked on the street.
She drops her hand with the phone she’d been using to record one of the worst moments of my life. “This family sucks at surprises.”
“I’m sorry!” Conrad drops the diaper bag on the sidewalk, then presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I thought it would be romantic.”
Mind boggled by his thought process, I yell, “To give me divorce papers?”
Sondra steps out from behind a fat trunk of an old pine tree and hustles closer, sandwiching Drea and me between her and Mom.
Conrad chases and catches the papers taking flight in the hot breeze blowing in from the west. Thumbing through them, he finds the one he wants and tries to hand it to me. He sighs, regret heavy in his eyes when I jerk away from his approach.
“I don’t want that!” I tuck my wet face into Mom’s neck.
“Please, princess, it’s not what you think.” He’s close to tears himself when he shakes the paper, then jams his finger at the section where we’re both supposed to sign the petition. “Read it.”
I turn up my nose but can’t help cutting my eyes to the signature that threatens to blow up my whole life.
Over my dead fucking body will we ever get a divorce. You’re mine for life, princess.
Your husband until the end of time,
Conrad O’Byrne
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “I’d rather have gone on vacation, but this ok, I guess. Thanks,” I say flatly, blowing Sondra’s bushy hair out of my face when she leans forward to read the paper.
“Happy anniversary!” Tripp yells excitedly, turning the corner at the side of the courthouse, and he pops the tube he’s carrying, spraying us with glittery paper confetti.
He straightens his back, his face falling.
“What happened? Did she actually sign it?” Tripp—the man who ended up being the sweetest and most doting father-in-law—points the empty tube at me.
“If we have to choose, we’re keeping you in the divorce.
You know my nephew, Derek, has always taken a shine to you and would happily pull a Brad move. ”
Brad coughs into his hand, his cheeks turning pink, abashed.
Conrad growls, “No one is getting a divorce, and I will feed Derek his own eyeballs if he so much as looks at my wife again.”
“You’d go back to prison,” Tripp says, rolling his long sleeves up to his elbows like he’s itching for a fight with his son for upsetting me.
“She’d wait for me,” Conrad says, then flicks his gaze to me. “Right?” he asks in a low voice, vulnerability peeking through. He knows he royally fucked up.
“I don’t know,” I say haughtily, shifting Drea higher up my hip. “I might pull an Alisa move.”
“God, this family is never going to let us live this down,” Alisa says, throwing her hands up and slapping her jean-clad thighs when they drop. “I’ve said I’m sorry about a million times!”
“I haven’t. It was worth it, my love,” Brad says, yanking her to him and sweeping her into the kind of kiss you only see in movies…
or in my bedroom, once upon a time. I can hardly catch my breath with Conrad’s monster-sized baby currently jammed up into my ribs, playing footsie with my lungs.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Alisa ends up in the same condition within the next few months after the blazing-hot look Brad gives her when they come up for air.
“Dangit, we’re late again,” Bridget says, her hair a tangled mess, running stiltedly toward us from the parking lot.
She’s dragging one red stiletto attached only by the ankle strap behind her, along with her husband, Harding.
They met, married, and fell in love all on the same day at the second annual, wildly successful prison marriage release. “Traffic was terrible!”
“Sure, yeah, traffic in this one-horse town. That’s believable,” Harding says to her with a deep, bone-chilling chuckle.
His tattooed muscles ripple when he yanks Bridget back into his chest, nipping her neck with his teeth, which have been shaved down to sharp points.
As scary but nice as he is, I’m glad Mom handpicked Conrad for me instead of leaving it to chance, even if Conrad’s idea of “romantic” is seriously questionable.
“Ok, let’s start over.” Conrad tears off the strip of paper with his note and signature to stuff it in his pocket, jogs to a large trashcan positioned by the stairs, and discards the rest of the divorce petition.
Back by our sides, he tugs Drea and me out of our mothers’ arms and circles my waist. “Mirabeth O’Byrne, I love you so much that I’d risk going to prison for the rest of my life for kidnapping and holding you hostage if you ever tried to divorce me. ”
“Aw, that’s so sweet,” Aunt Faye says in her angelic voice from the courthouse’s stoop, startling me since I hadn’t known she and her husband, Harold, were there.
“I would, too, you know,” says Harold—Aunt Faye’s much older boss at Granny’s diner, where they met and fell in love after he hired her on as a waitress.
He’s my favorite uncle, since he’s always slipping me extra pancakes and bacon.
Hugging Aunt Faye from behind, he drops a kiss in her light blonde hair.
“Me too,” Garth says to Mom with hearts in his eyes.
“Same here,” Tripp adds, waggling his brows at Sondra as he spins her around, dipping her for a kiss.
Harding growls to Bridget in a dangerous voice, “So would I, my queen.”
I shiver and inch closer to Conrad.
“Can everyone just stop declaring what matching freaks they are for two seconds and let me finish!” Conrad yells with exasperation.
“What is with this town?” He shakes his head, then swallows hard.
“As I was saying, we’re in it for the long haul, princess.
You’re stuck with me, whether you want to be or not. ”
I swoon, and Mom quickly plucks Drea from my arms in time for Conrad to pull me as close as he can with my large belly in the way. He gives me the kind of kiss that would lead to yet another pregnancy if I weren’t already in the family way.
“I have something else for you,” Conrad says, unlocking his phone and pressing it into my hands.
“A whole week?” I squeal, looking at the Airbnb rental confirmation for a cabin located outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The mountain roads were scarier than anything I’d ever driven on, but the view is absolutely stunning and so not haunted or petrifying in the pitch-black of night.
“A whole week,” Conrad says with delight at having turned the day around, nuzzling my nose with his, his soft, sexy beard tickling my chin.
My smile drops, and I chew my bottom lip. “Without Drea?”
“Yup. A whole week all to ourselves.” He smiles, pleased with himself, as always.
I burst into a fresh round of tears. “I can’t leave her for a whole week! How can you?”
“Told you!” Sondra says, darting forward to flick Conrad’s ear over my shoulder. “But you never do listen.”
Conrad gives her a deadpan look while rubbing the sting out of his reddening earlobe.
“Yes, I do.” He takes his phone and swipes to another confirmation.
“I made a backup plan. Our parents are coming with us to watch Drea at the cabin next door so we can see her whenever we want. But the nights are ours.”
I slump with relief. “Ok. Then yes, please. When?”
“Now.” He checks his phone for the time. “Like, right now, or we won’t make it to the Dallas airport in time.” He drops a kiss on my lips, then claps his hands. “All right, people, we gotta hustle!”
I stop him when he tries to lead me back to our minivan. “Wait, what about Merlin?”
“Yes, Merlin is coming too.” Conrad turns his wrists up, showing off his new claw marks with flecks of dried blood that I hadn’t noticed—wounds he probably sustained while corralling our little devil into his cat carrier. So romantic.
—THE END—