Epilogue
EPILOGUE
June
“Eek! They’re here.” Maisie bounced on her toes as she spotted the heads of her friends walking down the promenade.
“I don’t think you’re excited enough, Daffy.”
“This is me containing myself.”
Finally, it was summer in Wales – and also Maisie’s birthday.
Iain wrapped his hands around her hips and stepped up behind her, lowering his voice by her ear. “Then I’d like to unleash you. Tonight.”
Body shuddering in his grasp, Maisie’s round cheeks turned warm at the prospect of what he might engage her in. She was learning so many adventurous ways of pleasure in the bedroom nowadays, it was hard to keep up. Painless sex was still a work in progress. Though it certainly helped to be falling in love with a man who treated her right, took his time, and turned her on so effortlessly, but still sometimes her body rebelled in that way. It wasn’t a perfect situation, but whereas before – in the world of males with gingham bow ties – she’d been riddled with guilt for being a disappointment, now she was confident to stand up for her needs. Iain never complained and helped her through her pains – a man whose only priority was her … and his dog, too.
“Hey, Howell! Get your hands off our sister and get back in the game.”
Maisie glanced behind them to her brothers down the beach near the water’s edge, the three of them standing there under the sun. It was a rarity to see them all here as fully grown men, on the sands where they’d done that growing; she was overwhelmed with joy that the three of them were together at all.
Miles graduated from university two weeks ago, and both Maisie and Iain had travelled for the ceremony. To say that thrusting Iain into the madness of her family all at once for the first time had been stressful for Maisie was an understatement, but when Vera grabbed his hand and pulled him into the throng of Moss celebration, she’d stood back and watched, the feeling that everything would be just fine settling within her when he took it all in his stride.
Morgan had found some time between his globe-trotting to come back home for a couple of weeks, and was the one who drove out here with their parents to surprise Maisie with a knock on the door last night. She didn’t stop crying happy tears for half an hour when Iain explained – as her family stood in the middle of his house – that one of her birthday presents was that he’d organised for everyone she loved to be here.
And now they were here.
All of them.
For her.
Because of him .
What was even more special was that he’d also gone behind her back to team up with Bash – who he now had a friendship with, apparently, after several trips up to Manchester – to organise her friends being here for the weekend too. All of them: Faye, Sienna, Bash, and Freddy.
After setting up her parents in Vera’s spare room and Morgan on the sofa last night, Maisie had shown Iain her appreciation for this amazing gift in the form of one very long, hot, and sweaty evening between their bedsheets.
Calling out for Iain again, Maks tossed a rugby ball in his hands and waited for Iain to re-join them. His wife and their son built sandcastles over near where Vera and Ronnie sat wearing matching bucket hats in their foldaway chairs. To see her parents slowly turning into them as they sat almost identically a yard away made Maisie laugh.
“I better go,” Iain said before kissing her lips.
“Let them win? Just a little bit.” Maisie feigned innocence in her pleading eyes.
He smirked as he backward jogged towards the game of throw-around they had going. “No chance.”
It turned out that as soon as her brothers each met Iain, sports were all that they could talk about, and she loved that for him. She loved him. And seeing him gradually form the relationships with her brothers that he’d lost with his own made her heart melt. He deserved it – the kind of loving family that he’d missed. After he’d passed the Moss brothers’ various daft eligibility tests with flying colours, that was.
There wasn’t a day that went by where she didn’t see Iain smile now. Oh, he still had his grouchy moments. The kind with knicker-dropping smirks that usually ended just like that – and she wouldn’t have him any other way.
They’d celebrated when he’d completed his first aid course at the local college, and again for his walking leader training for lowland, hills, and moors, and now he was halfway there to making up his number of required walking days before he could be assessed. Everything was looking up for once, and Maisie physically couldn’t be more proud of him for turning his life around.
His relationship with his father slowly found an even footing, though there was still a way to go. They would never be close, but with Alun’s declining health he’d stuck to his promise of spending a few hours every Sunday just talking, and the visible difference in how Iain carried himself, as if the weight of the world wasn’t on his shoulders anymore, was a breath of fresh air each time he came home on those days.
Home.
Maisie still got giddy at the thought.
They were taking things steady, though despite that they’d moved in together. When her probationary lease on the bookshop flat had ended in May, she’d made her third move of the year, this time into Iain’s house. With the two of them and Ted it was a bit of a squeeze, but she wouldn’t have it any other way until they decided the time was right to move to a bigger house of their own.
“Maisie!” Faye’s voice hollered from the promenade next to Sienna’s exuberant presentation of a bottle of champagne. Bash and Freddy wandered up at the rear with Freddy’s twin nephews dressed in swimming trunks and lathered in sunscreen, ready for their day at the beach.
Squealing to herself, Maisie hopped her way over the shingles and sand and flung her arms out to the two women charging towards her. “You all made it!” she burst.
“If you thought we’d miss your birthday” — Freddy raised his voice over the chorus of feminine excitement — “you were wrong.”
Sienna grasped Maisie by the shoulders. “You’re thirty now, does it feel as terrifying as it sounds?”
“Hey!” Both of their male counterparts whined simultaneously.
Beaming a grin that hurt her cheeks, Maisie threw an arm around them both. “With you guys and my family all here, it’s already amazing.”
“We’re so happy for you,” Faye said sincerely. “For everything.”
Maisie’s eyes welled. “Ugh, don’t make me cry.” She wafted at her face as if the Welsh sun strobing from the clear sky was too hot. “Iain needs some teammates against my brothers. We should help him out.”
Bash’s brows raised, his gaze beyond their group. “I don’t think he needs us …”
Spinning, Maisie found Iain sprinting across the sand with the rugby ball tucked beneath his arm – all three of her brothers failing miserably to keep up with him – and her heart swelled with so much pure, unconditional happiness that she burst into laughter.
Everything was as beautiful as she’d always hoped these moments she longed for would be. Simple, earnest, effortless. She had her family, her friends, her new home, a wiry-haired companion, and the greatest man that fate could have let her fall into the arms of.
How could she be more in love with her life than this?