Epilogue #3
And as I looked out at our friends and family gathered together at Rye to celebrate our daughter’s fourth birthday, I couldn’t imagine my life without the feeling. I’d forgotten what it felt like to walk around empty. To wake up lonely. To know I was breathing. I was moving. But I wasn’t living.
“Whatcha thinking about, barman?” my wife asked as she came up next to me and set her pina colada—a non-alcoholic one—on the bar. Putting her elbows to the wood, she arched her back and stuck her ass out.
“Was thinking about how lucky I am, and that I’d live and die to show you how grateful I am for the beautiful life you’ve built with me.” I looked down and caught the tears that filled her big brown eyes.
She was a badass beyond anyone I’d ever met, but pregnancy hormones always made her weepy.
Not that I would tell her that. She’d rip my dick off.
“Now, with your ass out like that, I’m thinking that I’d put my baby inside you if you weren’t already pregnant.”
She laughed softly.
I wasn’t joking.
My wife pointed to where our daughter, Tate, stood in her fluffy birthday dress, tiara, and plastic cop badge.
Jake and Piper’s son—adopted, but one hundred percent their son—had brought his handheld video game so Lo could help him beat a level.
Rather than playing with the multitude of games and activities we’d set up for the little kids, Tate took after her mother.
She was more into Rhett’s video game. And I could hear her telling him what to do.
That bossiness was definitely from her mother, too.
Lo moved her point to where our one-year-old son, Huck, sat on her dad’s lap while Anthony snuck him pieces of cookie. I was pretty sure more of the crumbs were spit out of Huck’s dimpled grin than were swallowed, but he was happy anyway.
Finally, she pointed down to her stomach which showed no signs of the baby she was just barely pregnant with. “I think we’ve got our hands full.”
“Yeah.” I paused before tacking on, “For about a year and a half or so.”
“Do you want a whole baseball team?”
“Nah, just the four will be good.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m old,” I countered. “Got old man knees. Don’t have time to wait.”
“Nice try.”
She could act like she wasn’t into it, but I knew different. She loved seeing me with our kids just as much as I loved seeing her with them. And seeing her pregnant. And making her pregnant.
And practicing making her pregnant.
Hooking a finger in her belt loop, I tugged her to me till her front was plastered to my side. “Everyone seems to be having fun.”
“Of course they are. It’s impossible not to when our motley crew is all together.”
She had that right.
Her law enforcement family should’ve clashed with my Mayhem family, Nox and his expanding crew, and maybe even the Hyde group a little.
They didn’t.
Everyone meshed well, making every get-together a blast.
Lo tilted her head up. “Did you see the cake? Tate is going to lose her tiny mind.”
“Pretty sure my blood sugar spiked just looking at it.”
The ridiculous creation from Piper was loaded with so many sprinkles and so much edible glitter, I was gonna piss rainbows.
“Okay, did you see what else she brought?” she asked.
“Yeah. It looked disgusting.” At her lowered brows and head tilt, I was quickly losing hold on the smile I was biting back. “But Jake’s her husband, so of course she brought him.”
Rolling her eyes, she tilted her head to the side toward a small cake box in the server area. “She brought my dad his own special lemon cake.”
“Of course she did.”
Everyone loved Anthony. Shockingly, Anthony loved them, too. Like his daughter, there wasn’t a blip of judgment toward the bunch. He was still intimidating as shit on first meet—and twentieth meet—but he softened up. Eventually.
Or right away when it came to Piper ’cause she kept him stocked in lemon desserts.
“I did it,” Rhett called out suddenly, doing a little victory dance. “Ma, I did it.”
“I knew you could,” Piper called back from the spot on her husband’s lap.
“Tate helped. I can’t believe a four-year-old helped me.”
“’Course I did,” our daughter said with a flip of her hair and a roll of her big brown eyes. “I’m amazing.”
“Oh God, we created a monster,” my wife whispered.
“Nah. We created a strong, brave girl who knows her worth and is shockingly good at video games. She gets it all from her mama.”
“Let’s see if you remember that when the teenage years hit.”
Tate followed Rhett as he went to tell his folks about the game. She lost interest fast and raced over to play with the other kids while being gentle with all the babies. ’Cause again like her mama, she was mindful of the little guys who needed help.
I splayed my hand across my wife’s belly. “How ’bout instead of one more after this, we adopt?”
Her huge eyes shot to mine, and I saw the excitement she was working to temper. “It’s a long process. And expensive. And… Yes. Yeah, I totally want to do that.”
“You gave me all this. Gave me you. Gave me peace. You want it, it’s yours, hellcat.”
“Including you, barman?”
“Especially me.”
THE END!