Epilogue #3
"Okay, fine, this was worth it," she told me forty-minutes later, leaning back against my chest, both of us watching the pinkish-yellow sunrise, hearing the bird waking up, seeing the occasional fish ripple the surface of the water.
Sun on her face, she pushed the blanket off her shoulders.
And, well, maybe my hands helped her remove the robe, then the sweater, the shirt, laying her down on the pile they all provided, sliding off her pants and panties, burying my face between her thighs until she was crying out, then burying deep inside her.
I flipped our positions, liking the view better when she rode me, back arching, tits bouncing, the sun casting little beams of light over her body.
"Fuck me harder, baby," I demanded, my hand pressing between her thighs, working her clit, driving her up harder, faster, feeling her walls tighten around me. "Come," I demanded, thrusting up into her as her hips moved in circles.
When she came, she cried out my name, startling the birds in the trees above us as she milked my orgasm from me.
"Know what I think?" I asked as she lay over me, my hand drifting up and down her back.
"What's that?" she asked.
"This would be a great place," I told her, reaching into my pocket, finding the box.
"A great place for what?" she asked, pushing back, looking down at me, a sleepy, satisfied smile toying with her lips.
"For this?" I told her, opening the box, waiting for her gaze to fall on the ring.
"Rush," she said, sighing out her breath.
"Marry me," I demanded, hand reaching for hers.
"But it's only..."
"Been one better day after the next?" I supplied, daring her to deny it.
"That's true," she agreed, smile wobbly. "You're sure?"
"Never been so sure of anything in my life."
"Then yes," she said, beaming, reaching for the ring, shoving it on her finger.
"What?" I asked, brows pinching as I stared up at her intent gaze.
"This ring. There's something familiar about it."
To that, my lips twitched. "You've got a good memory. It's from the book."
"Which book?"
"The one you were reading when we were here last here. Wasn't my favorite book, but the ring sounded nice. Plus, I thought it had some significance."
"I love it," she declared, smiling down at it, then me. "And you," she added, folding forward, pressing her lips to mine.
"This would be a nice place for the wedding too."
"We'd never all fit," she reminded me.
"Well, Beau said he was building new cabins. We have time.”
“I’m picturing the Mallick kids waiting until we are all asleep, sneaking out, and coming back to scare the hell out of us,” she declared, grimacing.
She was getting to know them well.
Of course she was, when she was expected to be at Sunday dinner every week.
She and her mother got brave once every month and hosted a brunch for everyone as well.
Which I was pretty sure they instantly regretted when we all descended on her mom’s cozy little ranch-style home, packing it to the gills, nearly bursting it at the seams. But once everyone got a taste of their breakfast concoctions, there was no way they would be able to keep us away.
“Know what would be nice?” she asked, smiling a little wistfully.
“What’s that, baby?”
“A morning wedding. I mean, why take up the whole day, y’know? We can get up, walk down here to the lake, get married, then head back for a nice little family reception.”
There would be nothing little about a Mallick and Rivers family reception, but I liked her idea nonetheless.
“With a crêpe bar,” I demanded.
“As if there was any question about that,” she agreed, smiling. “And everyone can get day-drunk on mimosas. They will love that.”
“We’d need someone to officiate,” I reminded her, my fingers tracing over the tops of her thighs.
“Do not utter those words anywhere that Peyton might hear,” Katie demanded, a mix of grave and amused. “She would probably come with props. Of the R-rated variety.”
“Hey, we like those R-rated props,” I reminded her. Peyton had given all the couples baskets full of obscure sex toys for Christmas, which made for a lot of red faces and wide eyes in Helen and Charlie’s living room.
“Yes, but not at our wedding.”
“She is going to take over the bachelorette party,” I said, nodding. “As much as that thought terrifies me,” I added.
“Well, Atlas is probably going to take over yours,” she reminded me.
“True. But things are different now.”
And they were.
As it turned out, when he stuck around for more than a few days put together, Atlas found someone worth sticking around for. But that was a story for another day.
“So who should officiate? Fiona? Seems like the right person since she set all this up,” Katie mused.
“So long as we have Dusty check over her speech,” I agreed. “Make sure she doesn’t say anything over the top.”
“I mean, this is our family, they are always over the top,” Katie reminded me.
My heart swelled at that.
She’d taken a while to think of them that way.
As hers as well.
Even though they’d taken her into the fold quickly, immersed her completely.
I think it was always just a little straggling confidence issues holding her back, making her think she might not be wanted.
But she was.
God, she was.
I’d never wanted anything more in my life. Which was crazy because I already had her. But the urge was still there. To pull her closer, to fill out the paperwork, to make it official.
Hell, I probably would have asked her months ago if I thought she was ready. I’d known she was the one for so long, and didn’t exactly see a reason to hold off on sealing the deal.
“Stop being in such a rush,” Kingston had demanded. “This is some of the good stuff. Take your time, enjoy it.”
That was what I did, giving her the time she needed to trust me completely, to see the kind of future I’d been seeing from the beginning.
But when Katie had surprised me for my birthday with a little long weekend at the place where things really got started for us, I decided it was too perfect not to take the opportunity to ask her.
“You know what I think we should do for the honeymoon?” she asked, and I couldn’t help but smile up at her as she got excited.
“What’s that?”
“That road trip we keep talking about. We should take that. Go to try out those skis that are collecting dust.”
“While you sit in the lodge drinking hot chocolate?”
“Naturally,” she agreed, beaming.
“Then you can warm me up in front of the fire?”
“Of course.”
“Then it sounds perfect to me.”
Katie - 2.5 years
“It’s not your usual anxiety,” Dusty said, shaking her head at me.
“It’s your fancy new mom anxiety. It has all the hallmarks of the old anxiety, but unlocks the levels that include being terrified about keeping a little human alive, about your man no longer being attracted to the sleep-deprived milk machine you’ve become, and the concerns about not ‘contributing’ to the household while you are home with the baby. ”
I should have known Dusty would be who I needed to talk to sooner.
I’d been digging myself into an anxiety hole for the ten weeks following our son’s birth—a nine-pound beast with pudgy everything who had no business growing so big inside my too-small body.
He looked like his daddy. Of course he did.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. All the charm. Everyone was wrapped around his little finger.
Leaving me feeling like the worst mom in the world because I was stressed out and short-tempered when I was supposed to be enjoying every second of this experience.
“You’re a good mom, Kate,” Dusty insisted, jiggling little Kade around, calming a sleepy fuss without any effort at all.
“It’s just your mind telling you different.
Are you getting depressed or think you might be getting postpartum?
” she asked, point-blank. “It’s normal if you have,” she insisted.
“I had it a little bit after my second. Got back to therapy real quick. And started accepting more of the help that everyone around me was offering,” she added, giving me a raised brow look.
She was right.
As soon as Kade came into the world, everyone in the Mallick and Rivers clan had been offering me all kinds of help from food cooking to grocery shopping to house cleaning to actual baby care.
It had been my pride that made me brush it off.
Well, my pride and my fear that accepting help somehow made me less of a mom.
“It’s not normal to do this alone,” Dusty went on, pushing Kade up against her shoulder, rubbing a palm up his spine, his little legs bunching up as she worked a pesky gas bubble up.
“Up until very recently in history, taking care of babies was a tribe thing or, at the very least, a multi-generational thing. Everyone helped out. That was what was considered normal. Literally no one is going to judge you for accepting help when you need it. Even if that means help every single day until you are feeling better. You know you have it.”
I did.
I had more help than I could have accepted even if I decided to take to the bed for a week.
My mom and Helen alone were constantly dropping by, doing instead of asking, seeming to know how things were for me, how I was struggling to say I couldn’t do it all.
“I am going to keep a standing drop-in,” she told me.
“Nope. I won’t hear it,” she said when I started to object.
“I would just drop in unannounced, but I know that won’t be good for you.
So just so you know, I will be coming at ten a.m. Every Tuesday and Thursday for a couple of hours.
You can take that time to shower, to go to therapy, to just catch up on sleep, or reading.
That is your time. Me and Kade will be just fine.
And I can all but guarantee that once the others get wind of this, they will all pick a day too.
And you are going to let them come to help.
Hell, you won’t be able to pry Lea away from this one,” she said, taking a sniff of Kade’s head.
“She misses the babies. We all do. This way, you give us that baby fix, and you get some help. It is a win/win.”