Epilogue #2
Ruby is crying as the nurse places him against her chest, and the sight damn near stops my heart—tiny fists, dark hair, angry little face.
Perfect. Absolutely-fucking-perfect. Ruby looks wrecked, exhausted, and beautiful beyond words while staring down at him like the whole world just narrowed to that small, warm weight against her skin.
“Hi, little man,” she whispers tearfully.
Something inside my chest cracks wide open so fast and clean it almost feels like pain.
The doctor says something. Nurses move around us. None of it fully registers, because all I see and feel is them—my family. I move closer slowly, as if I’m afraid touching either of them will make this disappear.
Ruby looks up at me, finally, and Jesus Christ, the love in her eyes hits harder than any bullet ever has. “You wanna hold him?” she whispers.
I freeze. Actually freeze. Fear punches through me unexpectedly—not fear of him, fear of me—of dropping him, failing him, or loving him enough to destroy me if something ever happened. It’s instant, ugly, and honest.
Ruby notices, and her expression softens.
“Garrett.” I swallow hard. My hands shake slightly when I reach down.
Then suddenly he’s there, warm, tiny, and real in my arms. My son opens his dark, sleepy eyes briefly before settling again against my chest, and something inside me gives way all at once.
Just like that, I’m gone, completely done for, and wrecked by seven pounds of screaming human who doesn’t even know yet that I already belong to him.
A rough breath leaves me. I look down at him in my arms—red-faced, pissed off at the whole damn world already—and something in me goes still.
Ruby is crying and smiling at the same time when she says it softly, as if she already knows what it’s gonna do to me. “Welcome to the world, Garrett Carver, Junior.”
For a second, I can’t say a damn thing. My throat locks up hard. I look at Ruby, then back at my boy, and all I can get out is a rough and low, “I love you.”
Hours later, the room fills again with the Kings’ family, Ruby’s parents, laughter, coffee cups, and congratulations. I’m standing near the hospital bed while everybody crowds around.
Riggs eventually steps forward, eyes settling on the baby before lifting to me.
Then he smirks slightly. “Well…” he says, “… looks like the Kings got another member.” The room erupts after that with voices, laughter, and a couple of smart-ass comments I don’t even fully catch.
Riggs looks at me again and clamps a hand on my shoulder.
“This is what livin’ is all about, brother.
” I glance down at my son sleeping against Ruby’s chest and feel the truth of that deep in my bones, in old scars, in every part of me that once thought surviving was the best I’d ever do.
Three days later, I drive my family home.
Only not to Ruby’s little rental house.
The car turns down a quieter road not too far from where we should have gone, and Ruby frowns immediately from the passenger seat. “I thought we were going home.” I keep driving. “You missed the turn.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.” She narrows her eyes suspiciously. Our son is asleep in the back seat, out cold.
We make another turn, and then the house comes into view with fresh blue paint, a big front porch, and flowerbeds blooming bright beneath the windows.
Ruby goes completely still. “What…” Emotion instantly clogs her voice.
I park slowly in the driveway and kill the engine. Silence fills the car while she stares at the house as though she can’t quite breathe.
I hold out the key to the front door.
Tears hit her eyes immediately, the kind she can’t stop, and her mouth trembles. “You bought the house?”
“It’s ours, babe. Paid in full.”
“You bought the house?” she repeats softly, like saying it twice might make it believable.
“Yeah.”
Ruby starts crying harder. I reach over and gently cup the back of her neck, my thumb brushing just under her ear. “You said it was already sold.”
“I lied.”
Her wet laugh breaks apart halfway through. “Asshole.”
Truth is, the second she mentioned loving this place months ago, I bought it.
The men helped fix it up. Pop rebuilt the porch railings himself.
Hell, even Everest painted two bedrooms without complaining once.
The Kings’ family takes care of their own.
And Ruby, she’s mine. Not in the ugly, possessive way broken men talk when they want to own something.
In the real way. In the sacred way. The way you look at someone and know your life makes more sense with them in it than it ever did without them.
I carry the baby inside while Ruby slowly follows behind me, one hand pressed over her mouth the entire time.
Sunlight spills across polished hardwood floors.
The living room opens wide and warm, with soft blankets folded neatly over the couch and framed photographs of the three of us in the hospital already sitting on shelves.
Ruby stops in the middle of the room, staring around silently, emotional enough that I can physically feel it radiating off her. “You did all this?”
“We did. All of us. Every brother, every woman, your parents.” She slowly turns toward me, and I swear to Christ I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than the way she’s looking at me right then.
It’s like I gave her the whole damn world, and she still can’t decide whether to kiss me or cry harder.
Truth is, she gave me the world first. I’m just trying to hand some of it back.
I gently guide her down the hallway toward the last door.
She realizes what room it is halfway there.
Her breathing catches, soft but sharp enough that I hear it.
I slowly open the nursery door, not because I’m trying to drag out the moment, but because suddenly it feels bigger than a room and bigger than paint, furniture, and all the little things we carried in with our hands.
It feels like opening the door to the life we fought like hell to have.
Soft sage-green walls, a wooden crib, walnut bookshelves already full of books, and little toys.
There’s a rocking chair beside the window where the late sun cuts in gold across the floor and tiny clothes folded neatly in baskets.
And hanging above the crib, a small, framed sketch my mother mailed down after hearing the baby’s name and three guitars leaning together beneath a painted sky.
Ruby breaks completely. Tears stream down her face while she slowly walks into the room.
Her fingers brush the crib carefully, then the rocking chair, then the tiny blankets folded beside it, as though she needs to touch each piece to believe it’s real.
I stay near the doorway and watch her take it in, because this moment belongs to her.
And there’s something holy about it, watching the woman I love stand in the middle of a life we built from blood, fear, second chances, and stubborn hope.
Finally, she turns back toward me, and there’s so much love in her face it damn near levels me.
Ruby takes our son from my arms and lowers herself carefully into the rocking chair, holding him against her chest while late-afternoon sunlight wraps around them.
My insides knot hard enough to hurt. Then she looks up at me, and the baby squirms sleepily in her arms. I realize something simple and absolute at that moment—I’m not the same man who lost everything anymore, haven’t been for a while now, and that’s because of her.
I slowly cross the room and crouch in front of them.
My hand settles over my son’s back, then Ruby’s knee.
She watches me quietly, waiting, like she already knows this is one of those moments that splits a life clean in two—the before and whatever comes after.
I lean forward and kiss her forehead gently, then her temple, unable to help myself, before looking down at our son and back at her.
My throat feels tight. My whole fucking chest does.
I tell her the only truth that matters anymore.
“Welcome home.”