Extended Epilogue
FIVE YEARS LATER
“Mommy, I can’t find my dinosaur!” my son shouts through the house.
“I have it!” Rowan shouts back.
I laugh as I finish applying sunscreen to my daughter’s small, gorgeous face in the master bathroom. She giggles up at me with that childish glee I want to protect forever—for both her and our son.
We adopted our four-year-old son, Jacob, in Vietnam. He was only a year old then, and an orphan, and I knew the moment I saw him he was our son. I broke down sobbing in the orphanage and Rowan held me together. I knew he would be ours to take home and love.
Our daughter, Lilac, is a year old now and learning how to walk.
Her eyes are lighter than mine, her hair is a curly mess of dirty blonde that appears more light brown, and her skin a lighter olive.
I’m not sure what I imagined a child with Rowan would look like but she’s pretty fucking perfect if you ask me.
I like to think she got all of Rowan’s best qualities.
“What are you laughing about, Lil?” I ask her as I brush out her wet curls to style them with curl cream.
My question only makes her giggle more, which always makes me laugh too. “You’re so silly,” I sigh, tremendously happy in this life I’ve made. “Okay, sweet cheeks, you’re all done.”
I lift my daughter off the counter and onto her feet, and before I can blink, her tiny legs are sprinting—moving faster than she can keep up before she lands on her butt, the diaper breaking most of her fall.
She giggles, and gets right back up.
Strong just like her mama, Rowan always says and then kisses my forehead.
I smile as I chase after her before she gets to the stairs. She’s still giggling as I scoop her up in my arms, thrashing with humor and I blow raspberries into her neck, making her squeal.
Postpartum depression was harder than I was warned it would be.
The hardest, most hurtful of all my dark thoughts was believing that my newborn daughter hated me.
That I’d already failed her and my husband, so what was the point?
I believed Lilac didn’t want to breastfeed because she resented me, and I believed that Rowan regretted having me as the mother of his children—that he wanted to leave me and take the kids.
That he didn’t love me the way he said he did.
Then I was detached. I disassociated so severely, Rowan and our friends spoke to me about inpatient help.
Instead, I went through intensive therapy twice a week as I worked on my bond with Lilac. And then I worked on my marriage with Rowan through couples counseling where I told him things that hurt to say to his face because he cried, and I ache when he cries.
I thought I was losing him somewhere, somehow.
But Rowan Asher has never been someone I’d ever lose easily. He’s never been one to give up on me—ever. And he never would.
Not even when we ultimately came to the agreement on our courthouse wedding and backyard reception four years ago.
The only people we needed were our friends and their little ones too. My maids of honor stood beside me while Rowan’s best men stood beside him. Aaliyah was the cutest little flower girl, and Lola was squealing on someone’s lap.
My curls were loose and wild, tears were smearing my mascara, and I was heaving as I sobbed. My heart had never felt so full, and I’d never felt more beautiful. I’d never felt more in love.
“Sweetheart!” Rowan shouts. “I’ve got the cupcakes.”
As I walk down the steps with Lilac’s face nestled into my neck, I meet my husband in our kitchen—wide and bright and fully equipped with everything a baker and chef could dream of.
Sunlight pours in and casts a glow around him, a halo surrounding his head.
“I’m right here,” I say with a smile, “no need to yell.”
He turns, startled before a grin slowly encompasses his face. “Hey, sweetheart.” His arm comes around me and he kisses me, then his daughter. “Jacob!”
“Yeah, Daddy!”
“We gotta go, little monster,” he calls out. “We got everything?”
I nod and kiss his jaw. “I think so. Where are the cake pops?”
He retrieves them and I wait for him to hand them to me. Jacob comes barreling in with his dinosaur and our old Binx on his tail, and he stares up at us with bright brown eyes and a grin. One of my favorite faces belongs to this beautiful boy right here.
This family I have, these kids, often make me consider having more with Rowan—I’d probably have a million kids with him as long as it’s all by his side for the rest of our life.
But Rowan and I are happy with two.
With the help of my dads, who moved back to Willow Springs after their world travels, we had even more help.
All of our friends have given, and continue to give, endless support.
Sometimes, we take turns babysitting and supervising sleepovers.
Sometimes, us moms let the dads supervise while we have our girls’ nights.
According to the kids, they are more fun than us. Personally, I just think it’s because they let the kids get away with everything because they’re cute.
Jacob’s grin is toothy and lopsided and perfect. “Mama, can I help?”
“Yes, sweetheart.” I hug him to my side. “Want to hold the macarons?”
He nods eagerly, his small hand on my thigh for comfort. I don’t know who comforts who anymore because I don’t think these three will ever understand the peace they give me.
Jacob also loves baking with me now, but his favorite part is the flour—tossing it up in the air and saying, “Mama, it’s snowing” with roars of laughter. Jacob cooks with his dad too. He loves being Rowan’s sous chef while they make breakfast and surprise me with it in bed.
On Mother’s Day, the three of my rascals jumped into bed and suffocated me with love and a three-course breakfast. And Rowan, because Lilac was still so delicate and tiny, was strapped to his chest. Talk about a DILF…
“Here, be careful.” Rowan sets the container of macarons in Jacob’s arms and our son nods, grinning. “Let’s go before we’re late.”
I hold Lilac on my left hip and the tray of cake pops in my right hand. Rowan holds the trays of rainbow cupcakes in his arms, and Jacob moves slowly—taking his job as macaron protector very seriously. He’s just like his dad sometimes.
Everything we load into the car is what I’ve baked for our niece, Nina’s, first birthday—Lana and Christian’s second daughter.
The second generation of us is growing and being raised together, and it’s so beautiful.
They’re going to be stuck in each other’s lives the way we have been since we were kids, and they’re so lucky.
I am so lucky.
Rowan, my personal DILF, buckles our babies into the family SUV. Jacob thanks his dad in his cute voice with a quick hug—Jacob’s all about physical touch—and Lilac playfully smacks his stubbled cheek before pecking it with a kiss.
Then it’s my turn.
With the kids secure, he comes to my side and opens the passenger door before my hands can even get near it. “Nope,” he says. “Don’t think about it.”
“What happened to my feminist husband?”
“I’m still a feminist.” He smirks. “But I’m also your humble servant.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so annoying.”
He opens the door and bows. “Milady.”
I scoff and take his hand as I get in. He brings my knuckles to his lips then closes the door. Rowan slides in behind the wheel, buckles himself in, and drives off.
“Can we listen to Aladdin please?” Jacob asks in his sweet baby voice. “Pleeeeeease.”
Rowan chuckles and hands me his phone. “Yeah, little monster.”
I smile as I unlock his phone, his lock screen is a family picture we took by the lake on Fourth of July when the twenty-two—yes, twenty-two of us now, including one that is still in their mother’s belly—went to Lana and Christian’s house for a night of swimming, barbecue, and fireworks.
It still throttles me sometimes how far we’ve all come.
That’s another thing I might have missed if I hadn’t gotten help when I did. I used to hate when people said, it gets better. But sometimes, it does. And when it does, you look around and count the things you have that you didn’t before and you say to yourself, wow.
I’ve got two amazing kids in the back seat, and the love of my life beside me.
So, yes. Wow.
I reach over and curl my hand around his nape, my thumb rubbing over the black ink behind his right ear.
The same semicolon I have behind my right ear.
Rowan might have been okay with a courthouse wedding, and I was okay with it too—but friends like mine would have never let me get away with it. Especially Isabelle, who loves love. Hopeless romantic that one—even now.
I hit play on his favorite song from Aladdin but fifteen seconds in, Jacob protests, “No, no. Lion King.”
I snort. “Okay, honey munch.”
I scroll until I find “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King” from the soundtrack.
It’s a ten-to-fifteen-minute drive to Lana and Christian’s, and by the time we park in their giant driveway, everyone’s cars are there—filled with car seats.
We unload, unbuckle our Jacob—who runs into Lana and Christian’s house the moment the door opens, already knowing his way around. Rowan grabs Lilac from her car seat and from here, I hear other squeals and songs of laughter coming from all the other kids invading the house, and I grin.
A warm, heavy hand finds the small of my back just before it curls around my waist, and his lips brush my cheek. “You okay, sweetheart?”
I nod with Rowan’s chin resting on my shoulder, his arms ensconcing me. Our baby girl nestles into his shoulder the way I do. “I’m okay. You?”
“Better than okay,” he whispers and kisses my neck. “Should we go inside yet?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
Lana stands at the door with her smile and dimples, a welcoming hand waving us in. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”
“Rowan took forever to get ready,” I tease and Lana holds out her hands to take a box. “He had to touch up his roots.”
Rowan gasps behind me. “LaLa knows damn well I get them done at the salon.”
Lana sucks her teeth. “RoRo never box dyes.”
“Thank you,” Rowan says, and I roll my eyes.
“Where is everyone?” Only on special occasions like this, when everyone is walking in and out, does Lana let us keep our shoes on.
“Elena and Luca are on their way, Julian is in the back with his girls, and Isa is changing a diaper.” Lana shrugs. “She offered—said she misses it.”
I snort. “Sure she does.”
Out back, by the pool, it’s sunny and warm.
The rays sink into my skin as I set the table with Lana and Isa.
Everyone else is diving into the pool and playing a game of volleyball.
Grace is playing games with Jacob and Lola, and Lilac is already in the pool with her daddy, sitting on his shoulders and watching through her baby sunglasses as they play volleyball.
Christian holds Nina in his arms and Aaliyah floats in the shallow end with floaties on her arms, taking in the sun.
We all have everything we’ve ever wanted, I think. I know I do.
We’re all so happy, and even though we’re all far from perfect, this is perfect. As perfect as anything can get.
And I think my life is so wonderful, so fucking full that when I think there isn’t space for any more of all the great things, more somehow make themselves fit. The bad days are bad days. The good days are good days.
But this life?
It’s an incredible one, even when I feel a bit inside out.