Epilogue #3
Mila grabs my face with one damp hand and pats my jaw. “Dada,” she says again before she turns her head and looks past us toward the gate where Killian has been standing completely still since the first squeal.
He’s several feet back, sunglasses now pushed onto his head, trying really hard not to show emotion. For all his threats and money and ruthless planning, Killian looks almost frightened by the amount of love aimed at him from one tiny person in a duck romper.
Mila lights up all over again. “Kee!” she says, and Killian freezes.
The whole yard goes silent again—somehow my daughter has just created a new emotional crisis with one syllable.
Mila twists in my arms, reaching for Killian with grabby hands. “Kee!”
Julian lets out a choked laugh beside me. I stare at my daughter, then at Killian, then back at my daughter. “Excuse me, tiny traitor. I waited months for a proper Dada, and he gets Kee in the same afternoon?”
Mila does not care. Mila has spoken her truth.
I set her carefully back on her feet because if my daughter wants to emotionally destroy Killian King on her birthday, who am I to stand in the way?
Julian immediately braces a hand behind her without touching, ready to catch if she drops. She stands there for a second, wobbling, then takes one determined step toward the gate where Killian is now crouched down.
Then another. Then another, all the way toward Killian King—ruthless hockey player, terrifying household patriarch, builder of baby-safe outbuildings, and secret keeper of spare pacifiers.
“Come on, Ducky,” Ryan whispers, both hands pressed over his mouth now as if even he knows not to fuck this up. “Go get your emotionally constipated godfather.”
“Oh, he’s done,” Thorn whispers.
Roman, dripping water onto the pool deck, murmurs, “Completely.”
Mila makes it three more steps before gravity becomes more of a suggestion than a law. She tips forward, arms out, and Killian catches her with both hands so smoothly it’s like he’s been preparing for this exact moment his entire life.
He pulls her carefully against his chest, one big hand spread over her back, and she immediately pats his face.
“Kee,” she gurgles.
“Hey, you,” he says, and he closes his eyes for half a second. When he opens them, he looks at all of us over Mila’s head. “Anyone who comments is evicted.”
Sage smiles. “No one said anything.”
“You were all thinking loudly,” he growls.
Mila pats his face with both hands. “Kee.”
There it is. The fatal blow.
Killian looks down at her, and all the threat leaves him so fast the yard practically tilts. “Thank you, Ducky,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
My chest aches so hard I have to lean back into Julian.
His arms come around me immediately from behind, chin brushing my shoulder, his body warm and steady against mine.
I cover his hands where they rest at my stomach, and for a moment we just stand there watching Killian hold my daughter while the entire backyard pretends not to be emotionally compromised and fails spectacularly.
He then carries my daughter back toward us, and Mila reaches for me again once she’s close enough, generous now that she’s emotionally devastated the entire yard. I take her into my arms, and she comes willingly, sticky-handed and laughing, crownless and perfect.
“Dada,” she says, patting my cheek.
I close my eyes for one second and hold her.
“Yeah,” I whisper, voice breaking around the best word I’ve ever been given. “Dada’s got you.”
Ten months ago, I didn’t know if I would get to keep her.
Ten months ago, my body still felt like evidence more often than home.
Ten months ago, Julian and I were still learning how to say love without flinching from everything that came before it.
Now Mila is one year old. The pool is gated. The cake is losing the fight against the heat and melting slightly on the table. Celeste is still missing, Blakely is still facing prosecution and civil suits, and none of the ugly truths have vanished.
But my daughter just walked to me. She called me Dada, then she walked to Killian and broke him with one syllable. Julian’s arms are around me, our friends are laughing and crying in the sun, and the house that once looked like no place for a baby has become the safest place I know.
Happiness doesn’t erase harm—I know that better than most. But it can grow anyway. It can climb through the cracks, stubborn and green and impossible to kill. It can put down roots in fenced yards and yellow nurseries and crowded kitchens.
It can look like duck balloons tied to a mansion patio and a legal custody order hidden in a safe. It can look like Killian King on one knee, holding my daughter like she hung the moon and then handed it to him covered in drool.
And it can feel like Julian’s mouth against my hair as he whispers, “I love you, Liefling.”
I look at my daughter, at my best friend turned love of my life, at the impossible chosen family gathered around us, and for the first time in a long while, I don’t feel like happiness is something I have to distrust before it disappears.
I feel it.
Messy and loud and warmed by the sun.
I squeeze Julian’s hand and let the afternoon have me.