Extended Epilogue
SELENE
Six years later…
The salt air is thick and golden, tasting of brine and sunscreen and the coconut oil Silas rubbed on my shoulders this morning.
I sit on the porch of the beach house we rented for August, a wooden swing creaking beneath me, lemonade sweating in my hand, the white sundress clinging to the swell of my belly.
I'm four months pregnant now, showing just enough that he can't stop staring at me across rooms with that same hunger he's had for six years.
The twins are at the waterline. Sawyer and Sullivan, five years old, wild and sun browned and impossible to tell apart unless you know them as I do.
Sawyer has a scar above his left eyebrow from the tree fort Silas built last summer, the one he fell from because he was trying to fly.
Sullivan has my mother's patience, my father's stubbornness, and Silas's absolute refusal to accept the word no.
They are building a sandcastle, their small hands packing wet sand into buckets that tip and spill and frustrate them into laughter.
Summer is two. She toddles after her brothers on legs still uncertain, her dark curls tangled with salt, her blue eyes enormous and furious and exactly like her father's.
She shrieks when the waves chase her, a sound of pure outrage and delight, and she shrieks louder when Sawyer splashes her on purpose, which he does every three minutes because he is five and she is two and this is the mathematics of siblings.
My mother sits beside me on the swing, her lemonade untouched, her eyes following the children with the watchful intensity of a woman who has learned to love what she once feared.
She has softened in six years. Her hair is gray now, swept back in a loose knot, and she wears linen instead of the pressed suits of her earlier life. She comes every Sunday for dinner. She sends birthday cards addressed to Mrs. Hayes.
She has not forgiven us entirely, I think, but she has learned that forgiveness is not required for love, and love is what remains when everything else has burned away.
"They're beautiful," she says, her voice low, almost lost in the crash of surf. "All of them. Even when they're screaming."
I laugh, the sound warm and full, and the baby inside me shifts, a small flutter like wings brushing my ribs. I press my palm to the place, feeling for movement, and Stella notices, her gaze dropping to my belly with a knowing smile.
"Another girl," she says. "I can tell. You carry differently."
"You said that with Summer," I remind her. "And she was a girl. So maybe you're right. Or maybe you're lucky."
"Maybe I'm hopeful," Stella admits, and there is a wistfulness in her voice, a longing for more granddaughters, more small hands to hold. "Another Summer would be nice."
I reach for her hand, squeeze it, feel the bones beneath the thin skin. "We'll see," I say. "Silas wants a girl. He says three boys are enough testosterone for one house."
"He would know," Stella says, and there is a glint in her eye, a spark of the sharp woman she used to be. "He has enough for three houses."
Down by the water, Richard is helping the twins pack sand into buckets, his silver hair bright in the sun, his linen shirt rolled to the elbows, his bare feet sinking into the wet sand.
He laughs at something Sawyer says, a sound that carries across the beach, warm and gruff and full of a joy he did not believe he deserved until these boys came into his life and made him a grandfather.
Out in the surf, Silas holds Summer in his arms. He is waist deep in the Atlantic, his chest bare and tattooed and massive, water streaming down his abdomen, his hair dark with salt.
He lifts her over each wave as it comes, his forearms corded with muscle, his hands spanning her small back with the same possession and protection he has shown me since the first night.
She shrieks with every lift, her tiny fists gripping his shoulders, her face alight with the absolute trust of a child who knows her father will never let her fall.
I watch him. I cannot stop watching him. My husband. My Daddy. The father of my children. The man who built me a house and carved me a bed and put four babies in my belly and still looks at me across rooms like I am the only thing in the world worth seeing.
He catches my eye from the water. Grins.
That grin. The one that undid me at twenty three, that split me open and filled me completely and has never stopped being the gravity that holds my entire universe in orbit.
I feel it all over again, that same flutter in my chest, that same heat between my legs, that same certainty that I would burn the world down for this man and let him burn it down for me.
He carries Summer to the shore, sets her down beside her brothers with a gentleness that wars with his size, his strength, his capacity for violence.
She immediately toddles toward the sandcastle and knocks it over, because she is two and destruction is her love language.
Sawyer shouts. Sullivan laughs. Richard intervenes, his hands raised in mock surrender, and herds them toward the towels spread on the sand.
Silas walks toward the porch. Water drips from his hair, his chest, the waistband of his swim trunks.
The tattoos on his shoulders gleam with salt and sun, the ink dark against his tanned skin.
He climbs the steps, his eyes never leaving mine, and I see the hunger in them, the banked fire, the need that has not dimmed and will not dim, not ever, not for anything.
He pulls me from the swing without a word. His hands span my waist, his thumbs pressing into the softness that has grown there with each pregnancy, each year, each morning waking beside him. He lifts me, careful of the belly, always careful, and he kisses me.
It is not a gentle kiss. It is the kiss of a man who has spent six years claiming me in every way possible and is still not satisfied, still not done, still hungry for more.
His mouth crashes against mine, his tongue sweeping through, his teeth grazing my lower lip hard enough to sting.
He tastes like salt and coconut and the endless summer we have built together.
"I love you," he says against my lips, his voice rough, broken, the voice that still makes me wet and terrified and desperate all at once. "I love you, and I want you, and I cannot wait until these children are asleep and I can have you alone, have you properly, have you the way I need."
"I love you too, Daddy," I whisper back, and the word still does something to him, still darkens his eyes and hardens his cock against my thigh, still makes him growl low in his throat like the animal he becomes when we are alone.
He laughs, that deep warm laugh that I will never tire of. He lifts me higher, cradling me against his chest, and carries me toward the screen door.
"Mommy's tired," he announces to the children, to my mother, to Richard who is herding the twins up from the beach. "Mommy needs a nap. Daddy's going to help her."
Sawyer and Sullivan cheer, because they are five and naps are hilarious. Summer toddles after us, but Richard scoops her, swings her onto his shoulders, and she shrieks with delight at the sudden height.
Stella rolls her eyes from the swing, but she is smiling, her gaze warm on my belly, on her daughter in her husband's arms. Richard follows with the children, their laughter bright and endless.
The screen door slams behind us. The house is cool and dim, smelling of cedar and salt and the lavender sachets I tucked into the closets.
Silas carries me down the hall, past the children's room where bunk beds wait and stuffed animals spill from every surface, past the master bedroom with its view of the Atlantic.
I feel the weight of me in his arms, the extra softness that has accumulated with each pregnancy, each year, each morning waking beside him.
"I'm too heavy now," I whisper, my voice small, ashamed in a way I hate but cannot shake. "I've gained so much weight, Silas. I'm not the girl you met. I'm not small anymore. I'm not?—"
He stops in the hallway. Sets me down with a gentleness that wars with the hunger in his eyes. His hands span my waist, my hips, the places where I have grown and softened and changed. He looks at me like I am the only thing in the world worth seeing.
"You're the sexiest thing on earth," he says, his voice low, rough, absolute.
"This body is a vessel for my children. Our children.
I had no clue you put on weight, Selene.
I think you're making it up. But I'm glad if you did.
Because now I can really let loose in the bedroom.
You know how you turn me into an animal.
I want you to eat as much as you can because it's always in the back of my mind that when I lose control, and you know I always do, I might hurt you.
You know I can't control myself when it comes to you and how my hips go on overdriving, pistoning like mad still trying to breed you twenty years later. "
I stare at him, my breath caught, my heart hammering. He means it. Every word. He looks at me and sees not weight but warmth, not softness but sustenance, not change but the beautiful evidence of everything we have built together.
"Daddy," I whisper, and the word breaks on a sob, on a laugh, on a need so deep it scares me.
He lifts me again, carries me to the small guest room at the back of the house where the afternoon light filters through gauze curtains and the bed is narrow and perfect for what we need.
He lays me back, checks me first as he always does, his palms spreading over my belly, feeling for the flutter of our fourth child.
"Where is she?" he whispers, his voice raw, broken.
I guide his hand. We wait. Then a flutter, small and sure, a press of a tiny foot against the wall of my womb. He gasps, his eyes wet and wide.
"She moved," he breathes. "Selene, she moved."
"She knows her daddy," I say, my voice breaking. "She's been listening to you for four months. She knows everything."
He presses his forehead to my belly, his hands trembling. "I love you. All of you. Every one of you. I love you so much I cannot breathe."
I pull him up, guide his mouth to mine, kiss him with a hunger that has not dimmed in six years.
My hands find the waistband of his swim trunks, shove them down, free his cock.
It springs free, thick and curved and pulsing, ten inches of need that has waited since this morning, since last night, since the first time he told me not to touch myself and I did it anyway.
I wrap my legs around his waist, guide him to my entrance, slick and swollen and ready, always ready for him, always his. I pull him inside.
The stretch is immediate, familiar, perfect. He enters slowly, carefully, shallow strokes that do not press too deep, mindful of the belly between us. My body knows him now, has molded itself to his shape, takes him with an ease that makes us both groan and tremble.
"Ohh," I gasp, my back arching, my nails digging into his shoulders. "Daddy, yes, please, never stop?—"
"Never," he whispers against my mouth, his hips moving slow and deep, controlled in a way that made her want to beg. "I will never stop. Not until I die. Not after."
His thrusts gain speed, gain depth, his control slipping.
I feel him everywhere, the thickness dragging through my swollen walls, the ridge of his crown catching on sensitive places, the curve of his shaft pressing against the spot that makes my vision blur.
He is careful, so careful, but also desperate, also starving, also the man who has never stopped needing me with a ferocity that scares me and saves me and makes me whole.
I come apart beneath him, my orgasm rolling through me like a warm wave, gentle and overwhelming. My walls flutter around his cock, milking him, and he follows me over the edge with a groan like surrender, like homecoming.
"Selene," he gasps, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing, his seed filling me with warmth. "My wife. My love. My forever."
He collapses beside me, careful of the belly, his hand finding my heart. We lie panting, trembling, the Atlantic crashing beyond our windows.
After, he rises, fetches a warm washcloth, cleans me with tender hands. He finds the lotion, rubs it into my swollen ankles, my arches. He kisses every stretch mark, the silver threads at my hips, the new lines beneath my breasts.
"You've made me the happiest man alive," he says, his mouth pressed to the swell where our daughter sleeps. "And I'm going to love you and these babies forever."
I am crying, laughing, so full of joy I can barely breathe. He climbs back into the narrow bed, pulls me against his chest, his hand spreading over my ribs. The baby moves, a flutter, a kick.
I reach back, find his hand on my hip, interlace my fingers with his. The emerald ring gleams in the afternoon light, green and alive and eternal.
The screen door slams somewhere in the house. Sawyer shouts. Summer shrieks. Sullivan laughs, that deep laugh that is already his father's.
Silas presses his lips to my temple, his thumb tracing circles on my hip.
"Forever," he whispers.
"Forever," I agree.
And our life continues, full and bright and perfect, the screen door slamming, the children laughing, the sun setting gold and endless over the water, and us, always us, in the center of it all, holding on.