Epilogue - Part One
“Now that she’s one and you’re out of the newborn trenches, do you wish you hadn’t gotten the tubal?
” Shayla asks from beside me in the pool at the neighborhood pavilion, where we’re having Madelyn’s first birthday party.
Shayla’s only joking, the corners of her eyes crinkling with her smile, because she knows the answer.
I snort as I spin slow circles with Madelyn in her floaty, making my gorgeous, light brown-eyed little girl laugh.
It’s one of those full-belly, adorable baby-laughs that Shayla says gives her baby fever.
“Not in the least,” I answer. “Mommy would lose her mind and run screaming if she had another cutie-patootie like you, isn’t that right, Maddy?
” I pull her close and lift her sun hat to kiss her chubby cheek.
“I would too,” Bailey says from the side, sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet dipped in the water. “Thank god and modern medicine for vasectomies.”
She looks across at her husband, who is lounging on a picnic blanket in the grass with their triplets.
Dad, who has made a full recovery and lost an impressive fifty pounds since overhauling his diet and starting an exercise routine, lounges with them.
The men are probably having the most boring conversation about the disc golf tournament they’ve both entered.
My husband, as of three weeks ago when we tied the knot in Mexico, unsurprisingly, didn’t make the cut.
Shayla pokes Bailey in the side. “Imagine if he hadn’t gotten the snip and you ended up with another round of triplets.”
Bailey cringes. “Don’t jinx me. We still don’t know how we survived the first year.” She nods to Forest, who is treading water with the boys in their life jackets. “What about him? Any regrets?”
“Nope.” I lower my voice when I drift closer.
“The man wouldn’t touch me until exactly four months after his procedure, and even then, he kept his dick to himself until after two follow-up appointments to make sure he was shooting blanks.
” His excuse? The sheer inability to pull out.
That night before I went into active labor was the one-and-only time he was able to do so.
“We really picked the good ones, didn’t we?” Shayla asks, gazing at her husband as James takes turns doing back flips off the diving board with the older kids.
“‘Pick’ is the wrong word,” Bailey says. “It was more like…they were destined to be ‘the one’, and there was no use fighting our feelings for them. We had no choice.”
Shayla grins. “Neither did they, or at least poor Isaiah didn’t.”
Bailey crosses her arms over her stomach, laughing, though her cheeks grow bright red. I might be headstrong and driven in my pursuit of accomplishing my goals, but Bailey is relentless and has me beat by a mile. “He really didn’t, did he?” she asks.
“Nope. Isaiah didn’t stand a chance against you,” I say.
“I know I teased you to death about your obsession with him, but I was secretly rooting for you all along.” Several of us had caught Bailey and Isaiah together in bed the morning after they got together, and we got a full-frontal view of what he’s packing.
His dick gives Forest’s a run for his money—not that I ever wanted to know. I waggle my brows. “Way to go, sis.”
“Thanks,” Bailey says softly when she rises with a sigh, floating on air, it seems, as she makes her way to her family.
Isaiah pulls his wife down onto the blanket, his arm wound around her.
He’s as obsessed with her as she is with him, just as Mom and Dad, Shayla and James, and Forest and I are with each other.
We might have had our trials, setbacks, and upsets along the way, but it was all worth it in the end.
Lord help us, though, when the kids are grown, and it’s their turn to date.
If they give us as much hell as my sisters and I gave Dad… I shudder to think of it.
“Cake time!” Mom calls out, and we all lumber out of the water, gathering around one of the picnic tables where Mom has set a smash cake on the decorated high chair we brought for Madelyn.
When we start singing the birthday song, I have to catch Sebastian and drag him back to stop him from blowing out Madelyn’s candle.
“But Mooooooom,” he whines, and it’s one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard. “I wanted to do it!”
“You have to wait for your birthday, buddy,” I tell him as I heft him onto my hip. Only a few more months, and we’ll be right back here to celebrate his fourth.
When my son’s grumpiness doesn’t make me give in and relight Madelyn’s candle so he can blow it out, he kicks to be let down and runs to Forest. “Daaaaaad, I wanna blow out the candle!”
Forest smiles apologetically and crouches in front of him. “How about when we get home, we light a candle for your mommy and daddy, and you can blow it out before we go to bed?”
Though Sebastian crosses his arms and stomps his foot, he nods in acceptance.
We have multiple framed photographs of the boys with their biological parents hanging in their bedroom.
They’re still too young to really understand who Lindsay and Nathaniel are to them just yet, or why they have four parents, but they know that they were loved.
We didn’t force them to call Forest and me “Mom” and “Dad”—it came naturally after hearing their big sister call us such—but we’ve made it a priority to teach the boys about where they came from.
At least once a week, they ask to flip through their family photo albums, which we received after the estate was released from probate.
Josephine understands all too well, and she has a tough time seeing the photos of her biological mother, for which she’s been seeing a therapist. The boys will, too, when they’re older.
Whenever I’m with the boys, going through the albums and talking about their parents, Forest takes Josephine out for some one-on-one time.
We don’t know if her hurt will ever be fully healed, but we’ll continue to give her the resources she needs to help guide her through it.
Sebastian becomes distracted as his grandma starts passing out slices of the bigger cake she made for the rest of the party, and he darts off to join the rest of the kids.
Bundled up in their towels, Josephine makes room for him at one of the picnic tables as they and their cousins chat and eat.
Our huge, happy, tight-knit family is all I could have ever asked for, plus the job promotion I’ve been working toward since going back to work following my maternity leave.
One day, I’ll be Forest’s boss, and oh, I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. I already do.
With everyone still hopped up on sugar, after getting home and showering, Forest and I settle on the bigger sectional we bought recently to watch an animated movie with the kids.
Madelyn is the first to zonk out an hour later, and with her safely asleep in her nursery, I give in to my body’s demands.
Resting my head on Forest’s shoulder, I let my eyes drift shut.
I don’t know how much later it is when Forest wakes me.
The house is quiet, and I poke my head into each bedroom to kiss the kids goodnight.
Once inside our room, Forest strips me of my robe and tries to tuck me into bed. After my late nap, however, I’m wide awake, reaching for my husband, pulling him down on top of me. He yawns, lying with his head on my chest, and I run my fingers through his hair.
“Can you believe she’s already one?” I ask. “Time flew by in the blink of an eye.”
“I know,” he says with a small groan, nuzzling his nose between my breasts, which were already large before but now nearly unmanageable.
My poor back. Forest plumps my left breast in his hand, lightly rubbing his thumb across my nipple through my silky camisole.
“I’m scared to blink again. I’m going to miss this when you wean. ”
I lift my knees for him to get comfortable between my thighs. “Me too. Better enjoy it while it lasts, baby.”
Forest thumbs the thin strap of my camisole, slowly pulling it down my shoulder. His cock swells against my thigh, though his mouth parts wider with a yawn.
“You’re not too tired, are you?” I ask.
“I’m never too tired for you,” he says with a smirk, grinding his shaft against me.
I arch my back as I palm the nape of his neck, bringing his mouth to my chest as soon as he frees my breast, his hot tongue swirling around my nipple, teasing me until I’m panting. “Baby, please.”
He obliges, taking my breast into his mouth and lightly sucking on it, undulating his tongue along the bottom.
Leaning on one hip, he slips a hand down under the waistband of my shorts and thong, massaging slow circles over my clit.
We moan when my breast milk lets down, and he takes his first swallow.
Of all the kinks we’ve explored, this is one of my favorites, which is wholly different from feeding a child.
This kind of intimacy with my husband is one most people would turn their noses up at, which is partly what makes it so hot, especially when he sinks his middle finger deep inside my pussy.
I gasp, drop my knees farther open, and throw my head back on my pillow. “That’s it, baby, keep going.”
Forest increases the suction, taking harder swallows, while thrusting his finger faster. When he’s drained one breast and moved to the second, adding another finger, I’m close to sobbing in pleasure, every sense attuned to the way he plays with my body.
“I’m almost there,” I say, trying to keep my voice down.
“Hmmm, yes, you are. Soaking wet for me,” Forest says huskily between gulps.
“A little…little more.”
Forest lunges up to kiss me, his lips swollen and sweet with my milk. “I know what you need, Mama.” He crawls backward, pushes his shoulders between my thighs, and seals his lips over my clit. I slap a hand over my mouth when Forest forces his fingers back into my pussy, curling them just right.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I moan, then have to bite my fist to keep from screaming as my toes curl and my hips flex. I gush into Forest’s waiting, hungry mouth.
I’m a dripping, wet mess, utterly spent by the time he’s finished cleaning me up with his tongue.
Instead of immediately surging up to thrust his dick inside me, he slumps and lays his cheek on my stomach, hugging my thighs.
He’s had a long day, too, so I don’t begrudge him taking a few minutes to rest after that workout.
But then a few minutes turn into ten as I comb my fingers through his hair, watching the clock on the nightstand.
Ready for a second orgasm, I nudge his head. Nothing. I tap his cheek. “Forest?”
He mumbles something and turns his cheek.
“Are you asleep?”
I get a soft snore in answer.
Well, damn, I guess I have to settle for only one orgasm.
Can’t say I blame the man for falling asleep, considering how little we’ve gotten in the past year and a half, thanks to Benjamin and then Madelyn.
I carefully pull the side of the comforter over to cover us, letting Forest rest. He’ll wake me up when he’s ready.
And I won’t even complain all that much when he does.