Epilogue
Damon
Five Years Later
A little girl, just steady enough on her feet to trust herself with a full sprint, came barreling toward me with both arms wrapped around a battered patchwork doll. Her face—an unmistakable, miniature copy of her mother's—had arranged itself into an expression of the utmost seriousness.
"Mr. Damon Walker." She planted her feet in front of me, chin lifted. "You have to apologize to my doll. You stepped on her skirt."
I looked down at this small, formidable creature and let out a sigh of complete surrender. I crouched beside the coffee table, turned to face the doll's slightly cross-eyed stare, and delivered the most solemn bow I could manage. "My deepest apologies, Miss Doll. That was careless of me."
Satisfied, I scooped my little tyrant up onto my knee and tapped the tip of her nose. "Is my princess satisfied now?"
My princess crossed her arms, lifted her chin with the exact same aristocratic haughtiness her mother deployed in closing arguments, and announced without a shred of hesitation: "Not satisfied. Damon has to have afternoon tea with me and my doll. And as a gentleman, you have to dress properly.
You need a pretty dress and a sparkly crown."
That was when Mandy appeared in the hallway, her heavily pregnant belly leading the way by a solid six inches, one hand braced against the small of her back. She fixed the two of us with a look that had ended more than one negotiation in its time.
"Elena Walker."
She crossed the room and looked down at us, unmoved. "Nap time."
Our daughter's face crumpled instantly. She buried it against my neck and delivered her most devastated whine. "Objection! Damon and I haven't even started the tea party yet!"
Mandy crossed her arms, unmoved by the appeal. "Objection overruled. Tea party gets continued to this afternoon's docket. Right now, it's naptime."
I raised both hands in immediate surrender, shooting our daughter an apologetic, helpless look. "Sweetheart, you heard the judge. In this house, we all answer to the same authority. Mommy."
Elena puffed both cheeks out, glared first at her mother and then at me for good measure, then let out a small, theatrical sigh of total defeat. "Fine. You win, Judge Mommy."
She slid down off my lap, doll clutched tight against her chest, and toddled off toward the bedroom without any further protest.
The second the door clicked shut, Mandy dropped the stern-judge act entirely and came over with a smile already breaking across her face, leaning into me. I wrapped one arm around her waist, careful and automatic, my palm finding the curve of her belly on instinct.
"Elena's finally down." She tipped her head against my shoulder, voice pitched just for the two of us. "Lucy and Ryan emailed today, by the way. They're inviting us and Nico out to Hawaii next month."
She paused, a sly glint surfacing in her eyes.
"Guess who Nico's bringing as her plus-one."
I blinked. The answer landed a half-second later, and I raised an eyebrow, half disbelief and half something warmer. "Don't tell me. Edward?"
Mandy grinned and nodded. "You guessed it. Edward."
I stared at her for a long moment, then let out a slow breath and felt my shoulders drop, some old, half-forgotten tension finally releasing all the way out of them.
I bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Then I'm genuinely at peace with it. Edward stole my spotlight for a solid decade and made a very effective career out of being my rival. But he's a good man, Mandy. He's earned it."
My eyes dropped to the swell of her belly. "Since we're already headed out there anyway—what if we stayed longer? Long enough for the baby to come."
Mandy looked up at me, surprised, a smile already tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Why Hawaii, specifically?"
I tightened my arm around her, held her gaze steady.
"Because Hawaii is where you let me back into your life. Where you gave me a chance I hadn't earned yet. It took two years to find our way back to each other after the divorce—two years before we remarried, before Elena. Hawaii is where we actually started over."
I paused, and something in my chest went soft and full at once. "I want our son to start there too."
At our son—and everything folded inside that reasoning—Mandy's eyes went warm and glassy. She nodded, her smile widening into something unguarded. "Motion carried, Counselor."
She leaned into my chest, and I felt her breathe out slow against me before she spoke again, quieter this time. "From the divorce to finding our way back—those three years we spent apart. Was all of it worth it, Damon? Honestly?"
I pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and answered without letting a single second of hesitation show.
"I was arrogant back then. Blind. I made you wait through pain I should have spared you from the start. Three years, thirty—it wouldn't have mattered how long. As long as it ended here. With this. With you."
I breathed her in. "Every single day of it was worth it."
Mandy laughed softly, tipping her head up to look at me with exaggerated solemnity, the same look she used to give opposing counsel right before she won. "Well, Counselor. Your closing argument holds up. This judge is fully convinced."
I pulled her in against me, chin resting gently on the crown of her head, feeling her breath settle steady and warm against my chest, and beneath my palm, the mingled heat of her body and the small, stubborn life turning over inside her.
There was a version of me once—in courtrooms, in marriage, in love itself—who understood the whole world in terms of winning and losing. I thought retreat was weakness. I thought admitting defeat meant something had been taken from me that I'd never get back.
Standing here now, having actually learned what it means to love someone without keeping score of it, I understand how small all of that used to be.
Every anxious calculation, every guarded scrap of pride I used to defend like it was worth something—all of it wore away, slowly, under the weight of an ordinary, undramatic happiness I never once saw coming.
In the face of real love, winning and losing don't mean anything at all. I can barely remember, some days, why I ever thought they did.
Because with her—with this family we built out of the wreckage of everything I nearly threw away—I already have everything worth winning.