Extended Epilogue
GAVIN
Five years later…
Pink frosting smears across my kitchen counter, and somewhere in the chaos, a tiny voice shrieks about wanting the blue balloon instead of the yellow one.
"Daddy, Gabby took my tiara!" Gigi's indignant cry cuts through the noise.
"Did not!" Gabby fires back, crown already perched on her head at a defiant angle.
"Girls." Georgie's voice carries that warning edge, the one that works better than any threat I could make. "What did we talk about?"
"Sharing," they mumble in unison, identical pouts on their faces.
Gary toddles over, chocolate cake smashed into his chubby three-year-old cheeks. "Dada, more?"
"You've had three pieces, buddy." I scoop him up before he can make another grab for the dessert table. "How about we play with your trucks instead?"
"No trucks. Cake."
Stubborn. Just like his mother.
Graham starts fussing from his playpen, and Georgie moves to grab him, but I beat her to it. The kid quiets immediately when I pick him up, his tiny fist wrapping around my finger with surprising strength for a one-year-old.
"Someone's got favorites," Georgie teases, hip-checking me as she passes with another tray of snacks.
"He knows who the boss is."
"Oh really?" She arches an eyebrow, that playful challenge in her blue eyes. "Because I distinctly remember you begging me last night to?—"
"Watch it." I nod toward the twins, who've temporarily made peace and now conspire together over a pile of presents. "Little ears."
Her laugh fills the kitchen, bright and unguarded. After five years of marriage, that sound still does things to me. Makes me want to drag her upstairs and show her exactly who's in charge—but four kids have a way of killing spontaneous moments.
"Make a wish!" The twins blow out their candles together, faces glowing in the flickering light.
This. This right here is everything I never knew I wanted. Never thought I deserved.
People would look at us and see wrong written in every line.
The age gap alone raises eyebrows—twenty-one years between us when we met.
Then there's the stepfather angle, conveniently forgetting we share no blood, no history, nothing except Ellen who connected us and then disappeared.
Ellen's existence barely registers anymore.
She gave me Georgie, and for that alone, I can't summon hatred.
But everything else? Society can go to hell with its judgments.
Crime boss and college student. Dangerous man and innocent girl. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Except none of them see what happens behind closed doors.
The way she challenges me, stands up to me, matches my darkness with her light without ever dimming.
How I worship the ground she walks on, how I'd burn the world down to keep her safe.
The family we built together—messy and chaotic and perfect.
Four kids running around, destroying my once-pristine house with sticky fingers and wild laughter.
Georgie with frosting in her hair, still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
My daughters who have me wrapped around their tiny fingers.
My sons, whom I'll teach to be strong and to protect what matters.
Georgie and I are consenting adults who fell in love. Who chose each other every single day since that night in the warehouse when I first tasted her milk and knew I'd never let her go.
Let them whisper. Let them judge. Let them condemn everything we are.
None of it touches us here, in this kitchen full of birthday chaos and love so thick it crowds out everything else.
This is mine. They are mine. And I am theirs, completely.
Thanks for reading!