Epilogue #2
I find it incredible, that people want to buy my art and that I suddenly have a surprisingly big following.
Dallas hired an assistant for me whose name is Eden Jackson.
Her job is to promote my work, even if I never want to sell it.
I told Dallas it’s not really necessary to have someone working full time on that, but he said it’s worth doing, that my art is important and deserves to be seen.
Which just made me love him even more. I didn’t know that was possible at this point, but every day he proves me wrong.
We divide our time between New Orleans and New York. Dallas also has—I couldn’t believe this when Dallas told me—six other houses, which I’ve only seen one of so far.
One of the houses, it turns out, is on its own island in the Bahamas. We spent a month there before the renovations started, as an extended post-honeymoon honeymoon, Dallas called it.
The house’s front yard is a sugar-sand beach. It’s a large white Conch-style house, on stilts, with a wraparound porch, louvered wooden shutters and light blue trim that’s almost the exact same color as the warm, crystal blue water.
We swam every day, made love non-stop and treasured every part of our crazy, deepening bond. We ate delicious local food, we laughed more than I can ever remember laughing, and we watched my belly start to grow. We also went out on Dallas’s yacht (unreal).
I didn’t know such a beautiful place existed and the month we spent there, in my memories, has taken on an almost mythical quality because it was such a beautiful time. I can’t wait to go back.
Dallas also has houses in Tuscany, L.A., Nashville and London. As soon as we have time, we’re going to visit each one of them.
We’re also going to visit the ranch in Montana. A lot has happened between Rhett and Mia, which is its own story …
Sadie hit it off with Apollo and Boone and they’ve become good friends.
The night after I went to the nightclub, got a concussion and found out I was pregnant, the three of them came to Dallas’s apartment for dinner.
Apollo asked Sadie if she’d ever done any acting because they were currently casting his next film and, as it turns out, one of the characters in the script was a dancer from New Orleans.
The director was having trouble finding someone who could do an authentic accent and also looked the part.
So, the next week Sadie went to the audition …
and she got the part. It’s not a huge role, but she absolutely loves acting.
So she’s moved to L.A. to pursue her new dream.
She had to leave Dance Utopia but she’s since joined another dance company in L.A.
, which she does part time between acting gigs.
Sadie and Apollo hang out all the time and, through him, she’s met some of Hollywood’s inner circle. For a while Dallas and I wondered if there was something romantic going on between the two them but Sadie said he’s got a “rabid harem” and she’s “not interested in joining it.”
Last time I talked to her she’d met an aspiring director named Santiago and they’d gone on a date.
She’s over the moon and I couldn’t be happier for her.
We’ve made a plan to catch up when Dallas shows me his (our—Dallas refused to sign a prenup, even when his lawyers recommended it) house in the Hollywood Hills.
Boone is the new co-CEO of Wilder Enterprises and we see him all the time. He’s one of my favorite people. Dallas said he’s a natural and business is booming because everyone he meets loves him.
Dallas still works a lot, helping show Boone the ropes of the business, but he mostly does this from his home offices because he says he can’t bear to leave me and our babies even for a single minute. Which works for me just fine.
We have two nannies who help out with the babies when we need them, but Dallas and I prefer to do most of the caregiving ourselves.
The babies are only three months old but we can already see their little personalities taking shape.
Sabine, Dallas laughed, is my tiny little clone, with strawberry-blond fuzz, but with Dallas’s turquoise eyes.
Dallas says she’s got my personality and insists on getting whatever she wants as soon as she wants it.
She already has her daddy wrapped tightly around her finger.
To me she looks like a perfect little angel.
They are just unbelievably beautiful babies, but maybe that’s how all mothers feel.
Jack has my hazel eyes but with more green than gold in them, and Dallas’s dark hair.
Everyone comments that he has an old soul, and it makes me hope that all the people who came before us and who are no longer here can somehow see these perfect tiny humans from wherever they are and bestow them with all the best of who they were.
My babies are very cuddly and they insist on breastfeeding every two hours. It’s a lot, but I love feeding my babies, even if it’s exhausting at times. It’s such a miraculous thing, to be able to feed them from my own body.
I’m in bed with them now, a baby at each breast. We’re snuggled up in the huge California king-sized bed Dallas insisted on buying for our new house’s master suite.
The babies are asleep, still suckling. Dallas is next to us on the bed, sitting up against a pile of pillows while answering emails on his laptop.
I watch him and I watch my babies and I have never felt so content and so thankful. “I love you,” I whisper.
My husband’s smile is slow and his eyes are green in the low light.
It’s late now, after a magical night. And that’s what our life has become: magical day after magical night.
He closes the laptop and puts it aside. He leans over me, kissing me, then he very carefully takes Jack in his arms. “I love you to the moon. I’m going to put these babies to bed and then I need to show my wife exactly how much I love her. I haven’t done enough of that today.”
Dallas takes Jack into the nursery room, which is attached to our room and has been decorated with murals, soft furnishings and their two luxury bassinets, each equipped with its own high-tech baby monitor.
Then he comes back to get Sabine, who fusses sleepily before Dallas croons to her and tucks her into her bed.
Once the babies are settled, Dallas comes in and climbs in next to me. “Have you checked your emails today?”
“No, I haven’t had a chance.”
“One just came through from Eden Jackson. She said she’s been trying to get a hold of you. She has news.”
“What news?”
“MoMA wants to exhibit one of your paintings, Boo.”
“What?”
“The one of the hotel at sunset.”
It’s my favorite painting. I painted it at the end of my senior year of high school, when my father was either drunk or gone somewhere (I now know he was at the casino), the hotel was at its worst and the pain of my red and blue embers were at their brightest. I poured all of my sorrow into that painting and it shows.
I’ve never quite been able to duplicate the dark emotional impact that painting seems to hum with.
To be honest, I’m not sure I ever will, and I’m relieved about that.
My paintings now are lighter, more hopeful.
But it was that one that contains, and in some ways absorbed, the hardest days of my past.
I had no way of knowing it was just the beginning of my rocky road toward destitution.
And I never imagined then that, once I reached the end of that road, under some lucky star on an ordinary Friday night, I would discover a detour. Wearing a baseball hat. With inked muscles and turquoise eyes. The perfect solution to every algorithm and the love of my life.
He pulls me close and I wrap myself around him, taking his hot thickness deep inside.
“Congratulations, sweetheart. Another wildest dream unlocked.” I’d almost forgotten. He added it to the list when he first showed me around New York.
“You are my wildest dream, Dallas Wilder.”
“And you’re mine, Amelie Thibodeaux. Let’s make another baby and live happily ever.”
And that’s exactly what we do.
Thank you so much for reading Billionaire Falls First.