Epilogue
Hunter
Six weeks later.
She’s been throwing up for three days.
Lola thinks it’s the leftover enchiladas Ace made on Tuesday. I think Ace’s enchiladas are a threat to public health, regardless, so I didn’t argue. But by the third morning of hearing her retch into the bathroom sink before the sun is up, something clicks in the back of my skull.
A click I’ve heard before.
I don’t say anything. Not yet. I just drive into town while she’s napping on the couch with Wyatt watching cartoons beside her, and I buy a pregnancy test from the pharmacy.
Two, actually. Because Lola will want to do it twice. I need to see it more than once, too.
When I get home, she’s awake. Looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. “Where did you go?” she asks.
I set the bag on the kitchen counter.
She looks at the bag, then looks at me, then back at the bag. “Hunter.”
“Just a hunch,” I say calmly.
Hiding the fact that I am nervous as hell.
She pulls the tests out and stares at them in her hands like I’ve handed her a pair of grenades. “It’s Ace’s enchiladas,” she says.
“Maybe.”
“It’s definitely the enchiladas.”
“Then you pee on the stick and prove me wrong.”
She narrows her eyes at me. I hold my hands up with a smile. “I’ll be right here.”
She disappears into the bathroom. The door clicks shut. I lean against the kitchen counter, cross my arms, and stare at the ceiling.
My heart is hammering. And I am not a man whose heart hammers.
I’ve killed people with a steady pulse. I’ve stared down the barrel of a shotgun held by my own brother without flinching. I’ve sat in a holding cell for six hours and not broken a sweat.
But the sound of my wife peeing on a pregnancy test in the next room has me gripping the counter so hard my knuckles turn white.
Three minutes. That’s what the box says.
Three minutes is a fucking eternity.
The bathroom door opens.
Lola walks out holding two sticks. Her face is unreadable. She’s doing that thing she does when she’s trying not to react until she’s decided how she feels.
She sets them face down on the counter between us, and we just stare at them for three whole fuckin’ minutes.
“Together?” she says.
“Together.”
She flips the first one.
Two lines.
She flips the second one.
Two lines.
I look at the tests. I look at my wife. She looks at me. Neither of us can form a damn word.
And then her composure cracks wide open, and she bursts into the most beautiful, messy smile I’ve ever seen on a human face. “Oh my God,” she breathes.
“Oh my God,” I echo, and my voice comes out like someone’s standing on my chest.
“Hunter. I’m—”
“Pregnant,” I finish for her.
“Pregnant,” she repeats.
I round the counter in two strides, grab her face with both hands, and kiss her. I kiss her so hard she has to grasp onto my wrists for balance. I kiss her until we’re both out of breath and laughing against each other’s mouths.
“The baby-making room worked,” she jokes.
I bark out a laugh and press my forehead against hers. “Yeah, it did.”
She grabs my hand and presses it flat against her stomach. There’s nothing to feel yet. But my palm covers the space where my child is growing, and something shifts inside my chest.
I’ve been here before. Six years ago. And Wyatt was my biggest blessing.
But this is different. This time, the woman looking up at me is the one I’d walk through fire for.
The one who walked through fire for me. The one who pushed my son through a window and stayed behind.
The woman who truly loves my son as if he’s her own.
She’s given him the mother's love he deserves.
This time, it’s right.
“We’re having a baby,” I say, and my voice cracks on the last word. I don’t try to fix it.
She nods, tears streaming down her beautiful face.
“We have to tell Wyatt,” she says.
“Right now?”
“Right now. I can’t hold this in. I’ll explode. You know how bad he wants to be a big brother.”
I take her hand, and we walk into the living room.
Wyatt is on the floor, lying on his stomach, chin propped on his fists, watching a cartoon about a dog that solves crimes. Gary is beside him. Not watching the television, no, that little shit is chewing on the corner of the rug.
“Wyatt,” Lola says, and the tremble in her voice makes him look up instantly.
He reads her face. His own expression shifts to worry in under a second. “Are you okay, mommy?”
She drops down onto the floor beside him. I lower myself onto the couch, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.
“I’m okay, bud. These are happy tears.” She wipes her cheeks. “Me and your daddy have something to tell you.”
He sits up cross-legged. Gary headbutts his shoulder, and he absently pushes the goat’s face away without looking. “What is it?”
Lola looks at me. I nod. This one is for her to tell him.
She takes Wyatt’s hands in hers. “You know how you said you wanted a brother or a sister one day?”
His eyes go wide, and the smile already breaks out on his face.
And that completes me. After everything that’s happened in my life. All the bad and the ugly, it all disappears. Because this moment, this is everything.
“Well…” She places his little hand on her stomach. “There’s a baby growing right here. You’re going to be a big brother, Wyatt.”
He stares at her stomach. “For real? In there?”
“For real, son,” I tell him, resting my hand on his shoulder.
His mouth falls open. His eyes fill with tears that he’d deny if anyone pointed them out. And then he throws his arms around Lola so hard she nearly topples backward.
“Yes!” he shouts into her shoulder.
Lola laughs through her tears and holds him tight. Gary, sensing the commotion and not wanting to be excluded, shoves his head between them and bleats directly into Wyatt’s ear.
“Gary, get off!” Wyatt laughs, pushing him away. Then he pulls back from Lola, his face deadly serious. “Can we name it Gary?”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Gary Junior?”
“No.”
“What about Tornado?”
“Wyatt, we are not naming the baby after any of the animals.”
He crosses his arms and pouts. “What if it’s a girl?” he asks.
Lola ruffles his hair. “What would you name a girl?”
He chews on his lip with a seriousness that makes him look exactly like me. “Penny,” he says. “Because Penny is the nicest horse and she never bites.”
Lola presses her hand over her mouth. Her eyes find mine over Wyatt’s head.
Penny.
The horse I put her on the first time she rode. The one she fell in love with. The one that carried her to the lake, where I told her why I call her firefly.
“I think Penny is beautiful, but she still is a horse,” Lola whispers.
I fight back my laughter.
Wyatt grins. “And if it’s a boy, we’re calling him Gary. Final answer.”
I shake my head, but I’m laughing. Gary bleats in what I can only interpret as enthusiastic support.
Lola scoots across the floor and leans against my legs. Wyatt crawls into her lap. Gary wedges himself between them. It’s a pile of humans and a goat and love on a living room floor on a Tuesday afternoon in Arizona.
I look down at them. My wife. My son. My unborn child. And a goat who has chewed through approximately three thousand dollars’ worth of furniture and will probably chew through three thousand more.
This is my family.
Built from wreckage and held together by stubbornness and a love so fierce it terrifies me.
I wouldn’t change a single thing.
I run my fingers through Lola’s red hair. She tips her head back and looks up at me. “Scared?” she asks.
“Terrified.”
“Me too.”
“Good.” I lean down and kiss her forehead. “Means it matters, that’s what my dad always told me.”
She smiles. That smile that started all of this.
And it still drops me to my knees.
Every damn time and will until the day I die.