Epilogue #2
My father never met Samuel. Never shook his hand, never sized him up across the dining table, never gave the speech about treating his daughter right or else. But I like to think he would have taken one look at this man holding his grandson and known he was good.
"I'm not crying." I stand and cross the room, pressing up on my toes to brush my lips over his. He tastes like coffee and the sourdough toast he bakes every morning from a starter he's kept alive longer than most people keep houseplants. At least in my experience.
"Your mascara says otherwise, princess."
"Pregnancy hormones. I'm allowed."
His free hand settles over the curve of my belly.
Warm, callused fingers spread wide over the silk, his thumb tracing a slow arc the way he did the first time he touched my bump in my father's study all those months ago.
Violet rolls beneath his palm and the way his eyes soften swells my heart with love.
The hard lines of his face loosen around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes.
For one breath, he is not the man Chicago fears. He is just mine.
"She's active today."
"She's been kicking since noon. Your daughter has opinions."
"She gets that from her mother." His lips press to my forehead and linger. The warmth of his breath fans across my skin. Between us, Vincent sleeps on, oblivious to everything but the solid wall of his father's chest.
I lean into Samuel's body and rest my head against his shoulder. Through the open window, voices drift up from the back garden. Laughter. Music. The clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation. The sounds of a house full of people who love us and who showed up to celebrate a life not yet born.
"They're all here?"
"Every one of them. Oliver's wife is rearranging the gift table for the third time. Bastian ate half the appetizers before anyone noticed. Valerian is sitting in the garden with his daughter on his lap and a cigar he promised his wife he wouldn't light."
I laugh. The sound is bright and unfamiliar enough that Samuel's arm tightens around me, like he wants to hold on to it.
"And Lavender?"
"Running the show. She cornered my caterer about the placement of the dessert tower and the man looked ready to cry."
That sounds exactly right. I love that woman.
I pull back and look up at my husband. His dark eyes hold mine and the weight of everything we survived passes between us without a single word. The grief. The blood. The night I killed my stepmother and he held me while the bodies were carried from his living room. All of it.
"I found my dad's note again."
"I know." He brushes a strand of hair from my face. "Your eyes always go red when you read it."
"He would have loved Vincent."
"He would have." No hesitation. No empty platitude. Just the simple, steady truth of a man who means every word he speaks.
I rise on my toes and kiss him again. Longer this time. My hand curls around the back of his neck and his fingers press into the small of my back. Between us, our son sleeps and our daughter kicks.
White canopies billow over long tables dressed in pale linens and wildflowers when we make our way out there.
String lights loop between the old oak trees my father planted the year I was born.
The gravel pathways my mother walked with her morning coffee have been swept clean and lined with lanterns that will glow amber when the sun sets.
And the people. My God, the people.
Oliver stands near the bar with his wife tucked under his arm.
He catches my eye across the garden and lifts his glass with a nod that carries the quiet respect of a man who has known Samuel since before I existed.
Bastian is already on his second plate, his wife shaking her head while he piles another tower of bruschetta onto a cocktail napkin.
He winks at me with that diabolical grin of his and I shake my head right back.
Valerian occupies a wrought iron bench beneath the largest oak, his scarred body tilted back with his baby daughter curled against his chest. His wife sits beside him, her hand resting on his thigh, and the look on his face is so tender it almost doesn't match the damage mapped across his skin. Almost. Love looks good on monsters.
Lavender spots me before I clear the French doors. She cuts through the crowd, flame-red hair catching the afternoon light, and wraps her arms around me until I squeak.
"You look beautiful."
"You picked the dress."
"I have incredible taste." She pulls back and her electric blue eyes sweep over my belly, my face, the ring on my finger. Her smile is warm and steady, the kind that reaches all the way up. "Your mom would be so proud, Cin."
The burn hits fast and I blink through it. "Don't you start. I just fixed my mascara."
She laughs and loops her arm through mine, guiding me down the gravel path toward the celebration. Samuel follows a step behind, our son still asleep against his chest, his presence at my back as constant and certain as gravity.
I pause at the edge of the garden and take it all in.
The canopies, the flowers, the laughter rolling across the lawn.
The house rises behind me, three stories of limestone and ivy and arched windows glowing gold in the late sun.
The banister is visible through the foyer window, its dark wood polished smooth by generations of hands.
My hands. My mother's hands. My father's.
I rest my hand over my belly and Violet presses back.
My father's spirit lives in the walls of this house, in the groaning radiators and the honey oak floors and the garden pathways where his footsteps wore the gravel thin.
He is here. He will always be here. And his granddaughter will know every story, every laugh, every handwritten lunch note, every stubborn refusal to see the bad in people because his heart was too damn big for caution.
Samuel's hand settles on my lower back. Warm. Steady.
"Ready, princess?"
I look up at my husband. At my son sleeping against his father's heart. At the family we built from wreckage.
The Cinderella who refused the glass slipper and picked up a gun instead is standing in her father's garden with a king beside her and a house full of love behind her.
I take his hand.
"Ready."
Thank you for reading, Samuel and Cinder’s hot daddy romance!