Extended Epilogue
JETT
Five years later…
I lean against the doorframe and I watch her.
Jolie stands at the kitchen window with her hands wrapped around a coffee mug she isn't drinking from.
She is looking down at the street below, at the restaurant sign we hung three years ago, at the line of people already forming on the sidewalk even though we don't open for lunch for another hour.
The morning sun comes through the glass and catches the gold in her hair, which is longer now, tied up in a messy knot that she will complain about later when the twins pull on it.
She is wearing one of my old t-shirts that hangs off one shoulder and stops at mid-thigh. She looks soft and tired, like the center of my whole world.
Behind me, the apartment is quiet. The twins are napping—Mason and Mollie, almost five years old and already running us ragged.
Mason has Jarvis's sharp eyes and Jolie's stubborn chin.
Mollie has Jolie's honey-blonde hair and my inability to sit still for more than three minutes.
They are perfect, loud, and asleep in their room down the hall with a baby monitor glowing green on the kitchen counter.
Jarvis sits at the dining table with his reading glasses on.
He's fifty-one now and still looks like he could level a building with his bare hands.
His hair is more silver than charcoal, and the lines around his eyes are deeper, but his shoulders are just as broad and his hands are just as steady.
He's reviewing the monthly numbers, frowning at a spreadsheet on his laptop, and I know that frown.
It means we made too much money and he doesn't know how to relax about it.
"Stop scowling at the profit margins," I say. "You're going to scare the laptop."
He doesn't look up. "We are up forty percent from last year."
"I know. I approved the marketing spend."
"You're reckless with money."
"I'm reckless with everything. That's why you love me."
Jolie laughs at the window. It's a soft sound, barely there, but I hear it. I always hear it.
Jarvis finally looks up from the screen. His eyes go to her, and I see the shift in his face. The way it always shifts when he looks at her. Like the numbers and the restaurant don't matter anymore. Like the empire we built is just background noise compared to her standing in our kitchen.
"What's funny?" he asks her.
"Nothing," she says. "I was just thinking about the lunch rush. We have a reservation for twelve. Some corporate thing. I need to make sure Diego has the fish order right."
"Diego has it right," I say, pushing off the doorframe.
I cross the kitchen and I wrap my arms around her from behind.
She fits against me exactly the same way she always has.
Her back to my chest. Her ass pressed against my thighs.
Her head tucked under my chin. "He texted me an hour ago.
The halibut came in fresh. Stop worrying. "
"I can't help it," she says. "It's my job to worry."
"It's your job to run the place. Worrying is my job. And Jarvis's. You just look pretty and count the money."
She elbows me in the ribs. It never hurts—she never hits hard enough for that. That's not her way.
I look down at her hands on the counter. They're small and capable, but she's gripping the mug so tight her knuckles are white. She's tense. I feel it in her shoulders and the way she holds her breath when she thinks I'm not paying attention.
"You're thinking too loud, sunshine," I murmur against her ear. "Tell us."
"There's nothing to tell," she says. But her voice is too quick.
Jarvis stands up. His chair scrapes against the wood floor. He walks over to us and he stops in front of her. He puts one finger under her chin and he tilts her face up until she is looking at him.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
"Nothing," she says again. "I just... I caught my reflection in the window. That's all."
She looks away, her cheeks turning pink.
My stomach drops because I know that look.
I've seen it before—the first time she showed me her breasts when she was still binding them, the first time she stood naked between us and waited for us to tell her she was beautiful.
It's the look of someone waiting to be rejected.
I step back just enough to see her. She's gained weight over the past five years—not a lot, but enough for her to notice.
Her hips are rounder, her stomach is soft, and her breasts, once a source of shame, are now permanently swollen from five years of nursing, heavy and full even when the twins aren't feeding.
She's softer everywhere, fuller. She's a woman now, not the trembling girl we found on the stairs.
And she is trying to hide it from us.
"Jolie," I say. My voice is rougher than I want it to be. "Look at me."
She does. Her hazel eyes are wet.
"You think we care about a few extra pounds?
" Jarvis asks. He doesn't wait for her answer.
He puts his hands on her waist, his thumbs stroking the soft skin above the waistband of her leggings.
"Every part of you is ours. Every curve.
Every stretch mark. Every drop of milk. You gave us a family, Jolie.
We'll never stop worshipping you for that. "
She bites her lip. "I don't look like I used to. The girl on the cover of the marketing brochure. The one you first..."
"The one we first what?" I interrupt. I turn her around so she is facing me, so Jarvis is pressed against her back, so she is trapped between us the way she is meant to be.
"The one we first wanted? The one we first claimed?
You think we want that girl back? That scared, lonely girl who thought she was a burden? "
"I wasn't saying..."
"We don't want her back," Jarvis growls against her neck, his hands sliding up under her shirt to span her ribs and cup her breasts through the fabric.
"We want you—the woman who runs this restaurant like a general, the mother who reads the same bedtime story three times because Mason loves the dragon voice, the wife who still moans when I suckle her at three in the morning because she needs relief.
That's who we want. That's who we have."
She shudders. I feel it against my chest.
"You're beautiful," I say. I mean it. I have never meant anything more. "You're more beautiful now than you were then. Because now I know what you can do. I know what you've built. I know what you've given us."
A tear slips down her cheek. Jarvis catches it with his thumb.
"Don't cry," he says. But his voice is gentle. "Not unless we made you happy."
"You make me happy," she whispers. "You both make me so happy I don't know what to do with it."
"Then keep doing what you're doing," I say. "Keep being ours. That's all we need."
She nods against my chest, and Jarvis holds her for another minute with his face buried in her hair. Then the baby monitor crackles. Mason mumbles something in his sleep. We all freeze, waiting, but he doesn't wake up. He settles back down.
Jarvis steps back. "I need to get downstairs. The delivery truck is coming at ten."
"I'll go with you," Jolie says.
"No," I say. "You stay here. Rest. The twins will be up in an hour and you'll need the energy. I'll handle the floor with Jarvis until lunch."
She opens her mouth to argue, but I kiss her hard and quick—a reminder.
"Rest," I say against her lips. "That's an order."
She smiles. It is small and wet and it breaks my heart open. "Yes, sir."
Jarvis and I head downstairs. But I think about her all morning. The way she looked in the window. The way she tried to hide. The way she still doesn't believe she is enough, even after five years of us proving it.
I decide to prove it again tonight.
The apartment is dark when we come back up at nine. The restaurant closed two hours ago. The staff is gone. The kitchen is clean. Diego locked up the back and Jarvis checked the front twice because he always checks twice.
Jolie is on the couch. Her feet are tucked under a blanket. She is wearing a soft blue dress that buttons down the front, something she bought last week because she said it was easy to nurse in. Her hair is down, damp from a shower. She smells like lavender and vanilla.
The twins are finally asleep in their room.
They fought bedtime for an hour—Mason wanted to read about dinosaurs and Mollie wanted to build a fort.
Jolie handled it with the patience of a saint.
I would have bribed them with cookies, but she actually explained why sleep is important.
It worked. I don't know how she does it.
"Hey," she says when she sees us. "Rough night?"
"Fred burned the risotto," Jarvis says, shrugging off his jacket. "He cried. I told him it was just rice. He cried more." Diego's new intern. He works hard, but he's too soft-hearted for a kitchen.
"He's passionate," Jolie says.
"He's dramatic," I correct. I walk over and I sit beside her. The couch dips under my weight. She leans into me automatically, her head finding my shoulder. "How are you?"
"Tired," she admits. "But good. The kids were... a lot today."
"They're always a lot," Jarvis says. He sits on her other side. The three of us fit on the couch the same way we fit in bed.
Jarvis pulls her into his lap. She goes easily, curling against his chest like she has done a thousand times. I shift so my thigh is pressed against hers. My hand finds her knee. I trace circles on her skin with my thumb.
"You handled them," Jarvis says. His hand is in her hair, stroking slow and steady. "You always handle everything."
"Not everything," she says. "I couldn't handle myself this morning."
"We handled you this morning," I say. "That's the deal. You don't have to handle everything alone. Not anymore."
She closes her eyes. Her breathing slows. For a minute I think she is falling asleep. But then she shifts, pressing closer to Jarvis, and her hand finds my thigh.
"I want you," she whispers. "Both of you. But I'm tired. I don't know if I can..."