Epilogue
SAWYER
A few years later…
There was a baby sleeping on Ellie’s chest, a guitar sitting next to her, and grass tangled in her hair, and I swear, I’d never loved her more in my life.
She was lying in the yard behind our house, completely at peace. Just her, the sun, and the tiniest human I’d ever seen, snoozing like he owned me.
Which, technically, he did.
I was barefoot on the porch, holding a glass of lemonade I one hundred percent made from scratch. Like, squeezed the lemons, used the juicer, probably made a huge mess in the kitchen that Ellie would pretend not to notice.
“Hey, hot mama,” I called, stepping into the yard. “Brought you something citrusy and possibly too sweet.”
She glanced over and smiled—and just like that, I was gone for her all over again. “You really commit to the barefoot husband aesthetic, huh?”
“Babe,” I said, making my way across the grass, “I was born for this role.”
She patted the blanket beside her, and I dropped down.
Our son, Neo, shifted against her chest, and Ellie soothed him without thinking. She was wearing one of my old hoodies, no makeup on, hair twisted into something messy and soft. She looked more like herself than she ever had.
The breeze kicked up a little, and Ellie shifted closer. Neo made a tiny sighing noise, one hand curled into his mom’s hoodie, the other tucked against her cheek.
I traced a fingertip along his sock-covered foot. I still couldn’t believe he was real. That this was real.
“You know, I used to think football would be it,” I said. “Like that’d be the biggest thing I’d ever accomplish.”
Ellie didn’t say anything right away. She just let me talk.
“But it wasn’t the game,” I said. “It was this. You. Him. All the other babies you let me knock you up with. And all the quiet things no one claps for. This is it.”
She turned her face toward me, her eyes warm. “You’re way too good a dad—and a DILF at that—to be made only for a sports ball game.”
She laughed.
And I didn’t argue. Not anymore. I believed her. That belief, that she saw the parts of me no one else had and stayed anyway, was what made everything different.
Because of her.
She hummed, soft and low, the edges of a song she hadn’t written down yet. Then, she kissed Neo’s head and closed her eyes.
I lay there beside them, hand tucked behind my head, grass under my feet, the sun warm on my face. A husband. A dad. A man who didn’t have to earn love to deserve it.
The three of us stayed there a while, tangled up together.
Ellie smiled, eyes still closed.
Because maybe this was the only spotlight she ever needed.
THE END