21. Epilogue
Epilogue
Maddie
My husband is mothering me like a hen on a psychotic break.
If Demetrius had his way, I would spend the next three months wrapped in bubble wrap, horizontal on a fainting couch, and under the supervision of at least two medical professionals at all times.
He won't have his way. He knows he won't have his way. He does, however, have opinions, and he is not shy about expressing them. Surprise, surprise!
"You should sit now."
"I am fine," I reassure him for at least the third time this hour. "I'm pregnant, not sick. I will sit whenever I feel like it."
"You've been standing for twenty-three minutes," he continues, his face scrunched up with worry. "Doctor said that you should be taking a break every half hour or so."
"Or so," I point out, but allow him to come behind me and place his hands under my stomach. I appreciate the few moments of reprieve when he does this, taking the weight off my spine and cradling me like I'm the baby.
Well, babies. We're having twins. Crazy, I know.
I turn to look at him from across the drawing room of Stronghold, where our entire family has somehow been assembled and is presently making themselves at home with varying degrees of chaos.
Jazz is wedged into the good armchair by the window with a glass of sparkling apple juice and an expression of regal satisfaction.
Mom and Agatha are in what has become their natural habitat, which is the kitchen, arguing about something that smells like it involves butter.
I'm sure Mrs. Fairweather is sick of them invading her space already.
Dad is on the settee with his legs stretched out and his reading glasses on, looking at something on his phone with the unhurried contentment of a man who has nowhere else to be.
Everyone is relaxed and happy.
Everyone except Demetrius and his incessant fussing.
"I'm going to sit down as soon as I'm tired, I promise," I tell him.
"I will hold you to it," he mumbles, his eyes still narrowed at me.
I am not distressed. I'm so happy it should be illegal.
He steers me toward the deep velvet chair closest to the fireplace. The one that has my butt imprint on it already, since Demetrius is always pestering me to sit down.
"Sit," he says. "Please. For me."
The worry in his voice makes me shake my head, but I sit for his benefit and I can't help the chuckle that escapes me when he smiles broadly and turns to retrieve a pillow from somewhere else.
He comes back and positions it under my feet on the ottoman with a precision that suggests he has thought about the optimal angle.
He steps back, surveys the arrangement, and adjusts the pillow by half an inch.
"I'm going to get you some water," he declares with a self-satisfied nod.
"I have water." I lift my glass.
He looks at my glass. "But that one isn't cold anymore. Mrs. Fairweather made fresh cucumber water, I'll get you that."
I huff in mock-frustration and look at Jazz from across the room, but all she does is raise her own glass in my direction.
"I'm staying out of it," she states. "You're a big girl, you'll handle it."
Demetrius leaves to get me more water. I watch him go like he's on a very important mission, and my whole chest goes soft and stupid watching him do it. Overly protective or not, there's no denying how lucky I am.
This is my life. This enormous, fussy, devoted man is my husband. It's still a little surreal, if I'm being completely honest.
My back has been aching since this morning. That's not unusual at six months and with two passengers, but when it twinges sharply and I shift in the chair and press a hand to my lower back, I make the mistake of wincing.
Demetrius, who is walking back with the fresh glass of water, stops dead in his tracks. His eyes go straight to my hand on my back.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. My back hurts. I'm pregnant with twins, Demetrius, my back has opinions about the double-trouble situation."
He reaches into his jacket pocket for his phone before I've even finished my sentence.
"I'm calling Dr. Vasquez. She said to call if there was any discomfort."
I protest loudly, mortified at pulling my doctor away from her own life on a Sunday afternoon, but he does not put the phone away.
"Demetrius Atticus Thornwood."
The voice comes from the kitchen doorway and the room immediately goes quiet.
Agatha stands in the doorway with her cane and an expression that could strip paint.
She is wearing a wine-colored dress and her white hair is pinned between her horns in an elaborate chignon.
She looks exactly like what she is, which is a woman who has a very low tolerance for nonsense.
She points at Demetrius with one finger.
"Put that phone away."
Demetrius opens his mouth, then thinks better of it and puts the phone away with a petulant expression that would be at home on a kindergartener's face.
"Madison is a trained nurse and a grown woman in full command of her own body. She has a backache. She does not need a physician. She needs you to sit down and leave her in peace."
A beat passes. I know for a fact that not many people on this Earth talk to Demetrius Thornwood like this.
"Yes, Grandma."
Jazz, to her credit, turns her face toward the window before she covers her mouth with her hands and laughs. Dad doesn't bother, he just watches the scene over his reading glasses with the expression of a man who is genuinely enjoying himself.
Mom appears behind Agatha in the doorway and surveys the room with a frown.
"Dinner in twenty minutes," she says. "Who wants more sparkling apple cider?"
Demetrius sits across from me, in the chair Jazz has now vacated in favor of going to help Mom, and puts his hands on his knees and looks at me with the expression he gets when he's trying to be calm and finding it a challenge.
"I'm all right," I tell him, quietly. "We're all right."
Something moves through his face. The tension doesn't leave entirely, because this is Demetrius, but it loosens by a few degrees.
"I know," he says. "You're amazing."
After dinner, we move to the drawing room for the part of the evening that has been the official reason for the gathering, although we don't really need an excuse to have those and have them almost every week.
There is a box on the coffee table set in the middle of the room. It is large and white and tied with a pink and blue ribbon.
I stand with Demetrius behind the table and reach for his hand as Mom whips out her phone and starts recording. I take the time to look at each person assembled in the room. These are my people, my family.
And they are all gathered to celebrate the new life that Demetrius and I are bringing into this world. Well, the new lives.
And right now, we're about to find out their gender.
Jazz takes charge of the box because Jazz takes charge of everything, and nobody in this room has ever successfully argued with her about it. She lifts the lid and steps back with her arms folded.
Inside are two balloons and two needles, and everyone in the room seems to hold their breath at the same moment.
Demetrius takes one balloon. I take the other. The needles are small and ridiculous in our respective hands, and I hear someone, probably Jazz, make a sound of barely contained excitement.
I look at him.
He's already looking at me.
There's something in his face that lives past the controlled exterior and goes straight to the part of him that I know better than anyone.
"I love you," I tell him.
His mouth curves, slow and certain. "I love you."
We pop the balloons at the same time.
The confetti comes out pink.
All of it.
Unambiguously, entirely, completely pink.
Mom makes a sound that is somewhere between a sob and a shout and lunges for me from across the coffee table with an enthusiasm that makes Demetrius move instinctively to intercept, which means for one brief extraordinary moment, my orc mother and my minotaur husband are both reaching for me at the same time.
I get kissed on the head by Mom and steadied at the elbow by Demetrius and the pink confetti drifts in the air above all of us.
Two girls. We're going to have two baby girls.
Dad joins Mom in the group hug, laughing and hiding his face, which means he's probably crying, too. Agatha has her eyes closed for a moment, and the expression on her face is one I don't think I've ever seen on her before, something soft and deep, satisfaction and love in equal measure.
It's Jazz who breaks the stillness. She points one finger at Demetrius, with the air of someone who has been waiting her entire life to make this exact announcement.
"You will have four women to protect now," Jazz declares, still bouncing slightly on her heels in a way that contradicts the dignity she's going for entirely. "You are going to be outnumbered for the rest of your natural life."
Demetrius, still holding my hand, looks at Jazz with the expression of a man who has just been handed the mission of a lifetime.
From her position outside the group hug, Agatha says, "I need no one's protection, thank you very much."
Jazz pivots without missing a beat.
"You now have three women to protect and one Agatha to not protect, but care for."
A pause. Agatha opens her eyes, considers this with the gravity it apparently deserves.
"Better."
I'm laughing and my eyes are doing the thing where they can't decide if they want to cry or not, so they're attempting both at once. I turn to Demetrius.
He is looking at a piece of pink confetti lying on the back of his hand. His throat moves.
"Girls," he says, and the word comes out rough and a little wrecked, and this man, this enormous, controlled, borderline terrifying billionaire minotaur, looks like he might need a minute.
I reach up and take his hand.
His fingers close around mine immediately, careful the way he is always careful with me, and he looks down at me with those dark eyes and all the love in the world.
"You're going to be so bad at being outnumbered," I tell him. "Those girls are going to wrap you around their tiny, adorable fingers."
His mouth curves.
"And I'm going to cherish every moment of it," he agrees.
I take a moment to just be. To just be the woman who has it all, with my hand in Demetrius's and two small lives doing whatever they feel like doing inside me, and I think about all the years of loneliness and heartbreak and worry.
And then I stop thinking about it. Some things don't need to be revisited. Some things just need a happy ending.
As I stand with my husband and my family, feeling like my chest might actually split down the middle from how much I love them, I know.
I have the happiest ending of them all.
THE END
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