Epilogue
ROXIE
Saturday mornings have become my favorite kind of chaos. The house smells like coffee, baby shampoo, and whatever ridiculous breakfast the boys have strong-armed Dillon into making this week.
Joshua is starfished across my stomach, Logan curled into my side like a sleepy little fox. Both are snoring in two wildly different pitches, which is bizarrely adorable even after almost three years of hearing it.
I shift a little, brushing back hair the exact same shade of blonde as mine and just as wild as Dillon’s from Logan’s forehead. The boys’ eyes could’ve come from any of my guys, and their features are similar as well.
We still have no clue who fathered them and even though I think they’ll eventually get curious, we don’t care to know. Down the hall, I hear Chance murmuring to Hailey Anne as he tries to coax her into going back to sleep for a bit longer.
She’s eight months old now, a mini-me with nothing but dimples, big eyes, and loud opinions she can’t even voice yet. She had them all wrapped around her tiny finger from the moment she was born.
“Please, sweetheart,” Chance whispers, his voice low and rhythmic. “Just close your eyes. Daddy’s right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I smile and let the sound settle deep into my bones. A minute later, the bedroom door cracks open.
“She’s down,” Chance whispers, triumphant and exhausted, then his eyes soften at the sight of the boys sprawled over me. “Well. Mostly down. I give it five minutes before she demands a rematch.”
“She’ll win that one too,” I whisper back.
He chuckles, leans over, kisses my forehead, then both boys’. Even half-asleep, Joshua smacks his lips like Chance has just fed him pie.
Before I can wriggle out from under them to make space for him with us, the door opens the rest of the way, Dillon and Boone standing there.
“All right,” Dillon murmurs dramatically. “Who ordered the flying service?”
Logan lifts his head immediately, his sleepy eyes going wide. “Me!”
Joshua doesn’t even open his eyes, but he thrusts both arms up and yells, “Up!”
I laugh. “I knew you weren’t really asleep anymore, you little tricksters.”
Boone scoops up Logan, Dillon grabs Joshua, and with perfect, choreographed precision, they zoom down the hallway making airplane noises. The boys shriek with laughter all the way to the kitchen.
Chance shakes his head. “I’m never beating them in the favorite parent contest.”
“You won last night,” I remind him. “Hailey only wanted you.”
“That doesn’t count. I have special privileges with the tiny one.”
“That’s because you still haven’t learned to say no to her,” I tease, rolling out of bed and changing into leggings and a sweater. As I pull my hair up into a messy bun, I meet his eyes in the mirror over my dressing table. “You know it’s going to have to happen sooner or later, right?”
“Nope.” He crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe, an amused smirk on his lips as he watches me. “She’s my princess. I’ll never have to say no to her. There are three other parents who can do that.”
“And the boys?”
“I’ve said no to them,” he argues lightly. “I mean, fine. It was once, and only when they wanted chocolate chip cookies at three a.m., but it counts.”
I chuckle, smacking a kiss to his lips as I pass him. “Let’s go find some caffeine before I fall asleep on my feet.”
He groans his agreement, following me into the hall and down the stairs, both of us drifting mindlessly toward the scent of coffee brewing. The new coffee maker is already sputtering when we get to the kitchen.
The windows are cracked open, and a fresh mountain breeze blows in. Logan is on Boone’s shoulders, pretending to be a firefighter. Joshua is sitting on the counter helping Dillon stir pancake batter, which mostly means creating flour-shaped explosions.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Dillon says, leaning over to kiss me.
Boone comes up behind me, his hands sliding instinctively to my hips. “How’d you sleep?”
“Not too bad until those two climbed into bed around four this morning,” I say. “Lots of feet in my ribs just like when they were still in my belly.”
He grins. “Sounds about right.”
As we take the boys outside, Joshua and Logan race each other across the yard. Hailey, who forfeited any more sleep, is strapped to my chest in her little carrier, her favorite place to be. She babbles at everything from the sky to her brothers to a pinecone.
The mountains are lush and green this time of year. Wildflowers spread across the slopes like paint. Chance takes her tiny hand and lets her grip his finger. “She’s gonna be climbing these mountains before the boys.”
“She already tried climbing the pantry shelves yesterday,” I remind him. “Maybe we shouldn’t be encouraging the habit.”
He sighs, but his chest puffs out a little. “That’s my girl.”
Boone sets out the plastic toddler UFC gloves he bought the boys, and they race over to him faster than lightning. They aren’t allowed to spar but I allowed them to mimic movements, and the way Logan kicks the air makes it clear he’s inherited Boone’s instincts.
Kids come from all over for Boone’s youth UFC classes now. Parents trust him, kids adore him, and he’s stopped being haunted by the things Chance still carries. Boone has purpose again, and it’s like he’s suddenly found an extra twenty hours in every day.
Chance has carved out something gentler for himself too, just a couple of days a week volunteering with veterans’ programs. He comes home from those days tired, but alive in a whole different way.
Dillon has grown their business by leaps and bounds, hiring more help so Boone and Chance have a bit more time away from the office, and he balances work and home like he’s written the book on it.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve really hit our stride together, not just a family anymore, but a team, and a damn good one at that.
The marketing consulting business I started after the twins’ birth is thriving. I work from the sunny loft upstairs, overlooking the mountains. The boys love to sneak up and ‘help’, which usually means mashing the keys on my computer and making surprise appearances in Zoom meetings.
Luckily, all my clients adore them, and they haven’t scared any off yet.
As we soak up the sunshine outside, late morning turns into early afternoon. After lunch and naps, I take the kids out to the deck Chance and Boone expanded years ago. We rocked the babies to sleep on that swing from the moment they came home, and they still love it out here.
I watch my family scatter across the yard like they belong to the land, Boone helping Logan chase butterflies while Chance teaches Joshua how to stack river stones. Dillon dances around the yard with Hailey tucked against his chest like she’s his little princess, which, of course, she is.
I stand in the middle of it all, safe, loved, and loving back with every fiber of my being. This life of ours is loud, chaotic, and sometimes a little wild, but every moment of it is breathtakingly beautiful.
I press a hand to my necklace, the one with all our birthstones that they gave me before the twins were born. We had a setting added for Hailey’s stone too, and I now have a whole constellation resting right over my heart.
As the wind carries the boys’ laughter across the yard and into the trees, I realize I used to think merely surviving would be the whole of my story. The scrappy orphan who made it through. But that was before I knew how full life could be. How good. How full of laughter and fun.
That is something I get to experience every day now, and I never get tired of our unconventional, perfect little slice of paradise high up in the Montana mountains.
Bath time hits us as fast and furious as every other night, a blur of dinner, bubbles, and wailing about the absolute punishment of having to do something as awful as sleep.
We have the whole routine down to a T, thankfully, but we are usually all pretty beat by the time it’s over. Boone cooks, Dillon bathes, Chance changes and reads the boys their bedtime story while I feed Hailey, get her cleaned up, diapered, and into bed.
After our busy afternoon in the sunshine, she goes down a little easier than some nights, and I grin when I get back to our bedroom first. We had a bed custom-made to fit all four of us and still have space for the kids when they inevitably climb in with us.
It takes up one whole wall of the cavernous master suite.
A suite that is rarely empty by the time I get here, but tonight, I get lucky.
I stride right through to the adjoining bathroom, stripping as I go and turning on the faucet in the shower.
It’s been such a hot day that I don’t even wait for the water to heat.
I just step in and groan as the cool spray hits my muscles.
I am halfway through rinsing off all the sweat and sunscreen when I look up to find Boone standing in the doorway, watching me as intently as only he can. He’s already stripped down too, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.
His lips are parted as he watches me, a heated, longing look in his eyes that instantly wakes my body. Desire hums to life in my blood and my nipples tighten, and wetness that has nothing to do with the shower gather between my legs.
As I dip my head back to rinse off my shampoo, I tug my lower lip between my teeth and allow my gaze to drop. Boone is just as chiseled as he’s always been, he and Chance still spending at least a couple of hours a day in the gym downstairs.
When my eyes finally reach the carved lines of his abdomen, a quiet moan escapes me as I realize he’s fully erect, his hand moving as he strokes himself lazily, just watching me watch him. I run my hands over my sides, my gaze glued to him as my fingers slides over my nipples.
“Yeah, okay. You win,” he finally bites out, crossing the bathroom in a few long strides.