EPILOGUE – CONNOR
The girls are late.
This shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve lived with them their whole lives, and none of my daughters have ever treated a departure time as anything other than a loose suggestion.
Still, I stand by the front door with my keys in hand, listening to the chaos upstairs and trying not to yell too harshly when I call out again.
“Car leaves in two minutes,” I say.
“We know,” Louisa calls back, sounding deeply offended.
“You said that five minutes ago,” Toni adds.
“That’s why he’s saying it again,” Sophie chimes in.
A thump shakes the ceiling. Then a door opens, several feet hit the hallway, and my three girls come down the stairs in a messy wave of towels, sunscreen, and tote bags.
Louisa is fifteen now, tall and sharp-eyed.
Toni is thirteen, an expert in dramatic sighs.
Sophie is eleven and currently wearing sunglasses indoors.
All three of them are growing up too damn fast.
“Bye, Mom,” Louisa calls out.
“Love you,” Toni adds, already opening the front door.
“Have fun,” Emi answers from somewhere in the back of the house. “Listen to your father.”
Sophie looks at me with grave seriousness. “Do we have to?”
I point toward the driveway. “Car.”
They pile out laughing, and I follow. The summer heat rolls across the yard. Somewhere down the street, a sprinkler ticks over a lawn. It’s an ordinary Saturday afternoon, and I’m driving the girls to a pool party, and somehow that makes my chest feel too full.
“Dad,” Louisa says from the front seat as I pull onto the main road. “Please don’t interrogate anyone when we get there.”
“I don’t interrogate people.”
All three girls laugh.
“I ask normal questions,” I say.
Toni leans forward between the seats. “Last time you asked Mia’s dad where he kept his fire extinguisher.”
“That’s a normal question.”
“At a birthday party?”
“Especially at a birthday party.”
Sophie adjusts her sunglasses. “Are you going to ask if the pool has a lifeguard?”
“Yes.”
“We already know you are,” Louisa says. “Mom said to let you get three protective dad questions out of your system.”
“Your mother is a wise woman.”
“She also said not to scare the hosts.”
“I don’t scare hosts.”
Toni snorts. “You scare everybody.”
“I’m polite.”
“You’re polite and huge,” Sophie says. “It’s a powerful combo.”
At the house, the party is already underway. Music plays in the backyard, and I can hear splashing from the street. The girls unbuckle in a rush, but I stop them with one look.
“Phones charged?”
“Yes,” Louisa says.
“Sunscreen?”
“Yes,” Toni says.
“You stay together?”
“Yes,” Sophie says, then adds, “Mostly.”
“Sophie.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“If anyone makes you uncomfortable, you call me. If you need a ride for any reason, no questions asked, you call me.”
Louisa’s face softens in a way that looks so much like Emi that it hurts. “We know.”
Toni reaches from the back seat and squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll be okay.”
Sophie leans forward and kisses my cheek fast, then immediately looks embarrassed about it. “Bye.”
I let them go.
They run toward the house in a tangle of long legs and swinging bags, calling to their friends as the front door opens. I wait until they’re inside. Then I wait until I see Louisa through the side gate, turning to wave with exaggerated patience.
I wave back.
Driving away is harder than it should be.
They’re not babies anymore. They’re not toddlers running at me with sticky hands, not little girls climbing into my lap with picture books, not sleepy bodies carried from the car after a long day.
They’re growing into themselves, and I’m proud of them with an ache that lives under my ribs.
It still breaks my heart a little.
That’s the deal, I guess. You love them with everything in you, then spend years watching them leave rooms without needing you to follow.
On the way home, I stop at the grocery store.
Emi said we needed eggs, coffee, strawberries, and the oat milk Toni likes.
I get all of it, plus the cereal Sophie eats by the handful and the crackers Louisa pretends she doesn’t finish.
Near the checkout, I add flowers. I always do when they have the kind Emi likes best.
She’s in the kitchen when I get home, barefoot in jeans and a loose top, her hair clipped up with stray pieces around her face. Sixteen years together, and the sight of her still hits me dead center.
I set the groceries on the counter and start putting things away. Emi comes over to the flowers first, smiling. She lifts them from the bag and brings them to her nose.
“These are lovely.”
“So are you.”
She looks at me over the blooms, amused. “Smooth.”
“It’s true.”
Her smile shifts into the one that belongs only to me.
The one that says she remembers every version of us, the bookstore, the rain, the first bouquet, the life we made from one unplanned day.
Her laugh lines are deeper now. Her body is softer in places, still full and lush and mine to worship.
Her curves still drive me out of my mind.
Every year has only made her more beautiful to me.
She’s the best mother I could ever have imagined for our girls. Patient when I get too rigid. Fierce when they need defending. Funny enough to turn the worst days survivable. Strong enough to hold all of us without losing herself.
Emi sets the flowers in the sink and reaches for a vase from the cabinet.
“Sophie needs new sandals before camp, and Louisa mentioned something about volunteering at the bookstore next week. Toni has that dentist appointment Tuesday, and I think we need to figure out the carpool for swim because I can’t be in two places at once. ”
I step behind her and put my hands on her gorgeously wide hips.
She pauses. “What?”
“Can we not talk about the kids right now?”
Her head turns slightly, and I catch the curve of her smile. “What do you want to talk about instead?”
I slide my palms over the soft curve of her stomach and pull her back against me. “The book on your nightstand.”
“You’ve been reading my romance novels again?”
“I read the scene you left open.”
“Accidentally, I’m sure.”
“Very careless of you.”
Emi leans back into me, her body fitting against mine with the ease of sixteen years. “Which scene?”
“The one where he takes her home after the dinner party and tells her he’s tired of being civilized.”
Her breath changes. “That scene.”
“He locks the bedroom door.”
“We don’t need to lock ours. The girls are gone.”
“True. Actually, why limit ourselves to the bedroom?”
She laughs, but it catches when I bend and put my mouth to the side of her neck. I kiss the place beneath her ear, then her jaw, then her mouth, taking my time because I can.
Emi lets me walk her backward out of the kitchen.
We keep talking at first, because she’s Emi and because she likes to pretend she can stay clever while I’m getting my hands on her. She tells me the hero in the book was less bossy than I am. I tell her the hero didn’t know what he was doing. She says I’m contrary. I tell her she married me anyway.
By the time we reach the bedroom, coherent conversation is gone.
I close the door out of habit and pull her shirt over her head.
Her bra is just a shade darker than her skin, and I take a second to look at her because I always do.
Emi’s cheeks flush, which still makes me feel violent with tenderness.
I trace the top edge of the bra with one finger, then unclasp it and let it fall away.
“Still staring?” she murmurs.
“Always.”
I lower my mouth to her breast, and she exhales my name. That sound has owned me since the first time I heard it. I take one nipple between my lips, savoring it, then move to the other while my hands work open her jeans.
She steps out of them, and I take her underwear down with them. I go slower than I need to because I want the tremble in her thighs, the impatient bite of her lower lip, the way she looks at me as if I’m both torment and relief.
When she reaches for my belt, I let her. Her hands know me. Every buckle, button, and scar. She undresses me with the same focused hunger that made me lose my mind the first time, and when my cock springs free, her eyes drop to it. The sound she makes is pleased and needy.
I guide her onto the bed and follow her down.
I kiss my way down her body, over the curve of her breasts, the softness of her stomach, the inside of her perfect thick thighs. Her pussy is already so wet for me, slick and swollen. I put my mouth to her, tongue dragging through her before circling her clit.
Emi gasps, one hand fisting in the sheets. “Connor.”
I take my time. I know every sound she makes, every place she’s sensitive, every way her body warns me she’s close. I lick her until her hips start to roll, then ease back before she can come, because I want to feel this one around my cock.
She glares down at me, breathless. “That was mean.”
I kiss the inside of her thigh. “You’ll survive.”
“Barely.”
I move up her body and settle between her legs. She reaches for me, and I catch her hand, pressing it into the mattress beside her head as I line myself up. The first push inside her steals the air from my lungs.
I watch my cock slide into her, thick and hard, disappearing inch by inch into the tight heat of her pussy. Emi’s head tips back, her lips parting as she takes me. I go slow, because I want to see all of it.
“Look at me,” I tell her.
Her eyes open.
I push all the way in and hold there, buried deep. “I love you.”
Her face changes. Her body tightens around mine, and I feel the moment tip. The emotion, the pleasure, the fullness of our life.
I start to move. Slow. Deep. Every thrust pulls a sound from her, and every sound drags me closer to the edge.
I keep one hand linked with hers and use the other to hold her hip, angling her so I can give her exactly what she needs.
Her pussy is soaked, gripping me tighter with each stroke, and I watch my cock slide in and out of her until my control starts to thin.
“Emi.” My voice is rough. “You feel so fucking good.”
She wraps her legs around me, pulling me deeper. “Don’t stop. I’m so close.”
I bend to kiss her, and she comes apart under my mouth. Her orgasm hits hard, her whole body arching as her pussy clenches around my cock. I feel every pulse of it. It drags me over with her, and I drive deep, groaning into her neck as I come.
Afterward, her hand strokes the back of my neck, slow and lazy.
I stay buried inside her, breathing her in.
The house is quiet. The flowers are still in the sink.
The groceries are half-put away. The girls will need picking up later, and there will be wet towels, dinner arguments, camp forms, and someone asking where her charger went.
For now, there is only this.
Emi kisses my temple. “Hey, you.”
I lift my head and look at her. My wife. My bookworm. The woman who became my entire life between one breath and the next.
“Hey, you,” I say.
Then I kiss her again.