26. Conrad
CONRAD
It had been a month since Winnie and I went on our first official date and slept together. Life had been pretty damn incredible ever since. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t still exhausting.
By the end of the work week, I was running entirely on caffeine and whatever remained of my ability to answer emails without openly weeping.
The week had been a relentless barrage of quarterly reports, board meetings, and budget reviews.
Three separate emergencies apparently could not survive without my immediate involvement.
I’d begun fantasizing about throwing my phone into a lake and pretending I lived in a cabin somewhere without internet access. Preferably, Winnie’s remote cottage.
The traffic home crawled. Normally that would’ve annoyed me. Instead, I found myself smiling as I sat at a red light.
A year ago, I would’ve dreaded going home. Every day had felt like another test I wasn’t sure I was passing. Each failure was another reminder that I was raising three grieving children while trying to hold together a household that was on the brink of collapsing.
There had always been something waiting—another problem, another worry. And each reminded me of everything we’d lost.
I had spent a long time carrying the feeling that if I stopped moving for even a moment, the entire thing might fall apart.
Somewhere along the way, that feeling had disappeared.
Life was still life. The kids still argued.
The house still broke down. Bills still arrived.
Work still occasionally made me question my career choices.
But the weight wasn’t there anymore, wasn’t crushing me anymore.
My home now felt like the place where I got to rest instead of the place where another shift started.
I turned into the driveway and smiled immediately. The new garden was visible before the house came into view. What had begun as a handful of planters after our trip to the botanical gardens had somehow expanded into a full family project and had spilled into the front yard.
A combination of starter seeds and mature plants from a fancy nursery in town, along with Winnie’s and the kids’ unrelenting devotion to their plants, had yielded an unbelievable array of vegetation.
Raised beds lined one side of the property.
Flowers exploded with color along the stone pathways.
Tomatoes were growing. Strawberries were thriving.
Several herbs had taken over an entire section despite repeated attempts to keep them organized, especially the mint.
Winnie claimed gardening was educational. I suspected she simply enjoyed watching the children become emotionally attached to vegetables. She’d convinced them to eat most varieties of vegetables over the summer simply because they’d grown them from seeds.
I parked and climbed out of the car. The front door flew open before I reached the porch.
“Daddy!” Billie barreled into me. I barely had enough warning to catch her.
“Oof.”
She wrapped herself around my middle. “It’s officially summer!”
“I had gathered that from this humidity.”
“No, but it’s really summer break now.”
Behind her, CJ and Bianca burst through the doorway.
Even Bianca looked excited. “Dad, I got my final grades. They were excellent. All As!”
“I know.”
“You haven’t even seen them yet.”
I grinned. “I don’t need to, I know you.”
CJ had already started talking. “We should make a summer bucket list.”
“What kind of bucket list?”
“A summer bucket list,” he repeated.
“Very informative.”
He wasn’t deterred. “I’ve been researching.”
That statement never led anywhere reasonable. “I have concerns,” I admitted.
“We need goals. Fun goals. And if we have them written down, we’re statistically more likely to accomplish them.”
Bianca folded her arms. “I suggested a spreadsheet.”
CJ looked horrified. “Dad, she tried to organize summer. She also suggested color-coding the activities. Can you believe it?”
They were all talking at once now. Billie wanted to build a fairy village.
CJ wanted a family camping trip. Bianca wanted to visit three museums and a historical battlefield.
Billie added that she wanted a pet goat to help eat the weeds around the gardens.
Bianca immediately vetoed the goat. CJ suggested two goats so they’d never get lonely.
The argument escalated rapidly.
I looked toward the front porch. And there she was. Winnie stood in the doorway, with a smile that still managed to steal every coherent thought from my head.
It had been one month since our first official date. One month since she’d sat across from me in that little restaurant and laughed about blood sausage. One month since she’d fallen asleep beside me and somehow made my enormous bed feel smaller in all the right ways.
My heart still reacted every time I saw her. It was embarrassing, honestly.
I was nearly forty years old. A successful executive. A father of three. A grown man with responsibilities. Yet, one redheaded vampire standing in a doorway could still make me forget what I was doing.
She caught me staring. I wasn’t even going to pretend it happened accidentally anymore. Her smile widened.
Some things had become wonderfully predictable. Life with Winnie hadn’t transformed into some perfect fantasy. It had become something better. Something real. Solid. Comfortable.
We had routines now and shared responsibilities. Quiet mornings. Late-night conversations. Inside jokes. We had the kind of relationship that felt stronger because it existed in ordinary days instead of dramatic moments.
Technically, she still lived in her cottage.
In practice, she spent more time at the house than anywhere else.
The children had long ago stopped viewing her as a nanny.
Honestly, so had I. She wasn’t the nanny.
She wasn’t an employee. She wasn’t even pretending to be.
The first time I’d attempted to pay her after everything settled down, she’d looked genuinely offended.
Then she’d informed me that after surviving a homicidal vampire sire, she felt reasonably confident in her ability to avoid homelessness.
I had lost that argument immediately. Not that I minded. She was family. I finally understood something important. She hadn’t replaced Jade, she simply belonged here with us.
“Dad?”
I blinked. CJ was staring at me.
“You stopped listening.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, buddy. What were you saying?”
“We’re making a bucket list.”
“Yes, I think that’s a great idea,” I said.
The kids immediately cheered.
Winnie laughed. “Come inside,” she called. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
The kids sprinted for the house. I fell into step beside Winnie.
Without thinking, I reached for her hand, and without hesitation, she intertwined her fingers with mine.
It was so easy and natural. Her touch no longer felt new, yet it somehow made me happy every single time, no matter the circumstances.
I stopped short halfway through the kitchen. “Lady Ferdinand?”
The old woman looked up from her seat at the counter. “Hello, dear.”
I laughed. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve been having tea.”
I looked at Winnie. She shrugged innocently. “We enjoy each other’s company.”
Lady Ferdinand lifted her teacup. “Your girlfriend is significantly more entertaining than you.”
I scowled. “How dare you?”
“I only speak the truth, dear.”
I doubled down, knowing that Lady Ferdinand could take my poking and prodding. “I’ve welcomed you into my home. And this is how you repay me?”
“You’ve also corrected my bookkeeping.”
“Only because it was horrifying,” I quickly pointed out.
Lady Ferdinand shook her head. “What you call horrifying, I call creative.”
“It was fraud.”
She smirked. “Creative fraud.”
Winnie pressed her lips together.
I shook my head. “Well, since you’re already here, you should stay for dinner.”
Lady Ferdinand’s eyes warmed. “I would love nothing more.”
A year ago, dinner had often felt like another task and responsibility, just another thing to survive. Now, the kitchen felt like the center of something deeply important instead of just another room in the house.
The kids were setting the table in their own way.
Billie was carrying the silverware in a way that made me mildly anxious she might accidentally stab someone.
CJ was writing SUMMER BUCKET LIST across the top of a notebook in permanent marker.
Bianca lectured him on his formatting as she arranged the placemats.
All of it felt exactly right. I leaned against the counter, thinking about how far we’d all come.
CJ continued to work on the draft of his first novel and carried it around everywhere like it was his prized possession.
Bianca hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks and seemed lighter these days, more willing to laugh.
Billie had recently begun doing chores without being asked.
Granted, she’d also somehow managed to vacuum one room while accidentally trapping the vacuum cord outside a window. But the effort counted.
The kids had definitely been shaken by what happened.
Watching a five-hundred-year-old vampire turn to dust in our dining room wasn’t exactly a standard childhood experience.
They’d had nightmares for a while, and a lot of questions, but children had a remarkable ability to adapt to things that would’ve sent most adults straight into therapy.
More importantly, they hadn’t come away from it feeling helpless.
They’d helped stop Bogdan. They’d stood their ground when it mattered.
Somewhere in the weeks that followed, I’d noticed a change in all three of them.
They carried themselves differently. A little braver.
A little more confident. Surviving something terrifying together had convinced them they were stronger than they’d ever realized.
The kids were growing. Healing. Becoming themselves again. Life had finally started moving forward without dragging us behind it.
Winnie slipped her arm around my waist. “Long day?” she asked.
“The longest.”
She kissed my cheek. “You’re home now.”
I looked around the kitchen. At the children. At Lady Ferdinand. At the garden visible through the window. At the woman standing beside me.
“Yeah,” I said. I squeezed her hand. “I’m home.”
Summer was waiting.
Dinner was waiting.
Most importantly, my family was waiting.