Funny how things worked out.

You might’ve guessed it, Damon knocked me up that first night.

We were asking for it.

No condoms. Total disregard for protection or consequence.

But we hadn’t quite expected the news that I was pregnant with twins.

Boys.

We already had their names picked out but we didn’t actually know which one was which, until we could take a look at them, because you know, personality and all that.

Thomas, after my brother and Leo, after Damon’s dad.

So, now I looked like a bowling ball wearing a red wig because I was round and puffy everywhere.

Even my feet were swollen.

I thought I looked like a goddamn monster.

Except when Damon looked at me.

That’s when I melted.

If I could spend the rest of my life seeing myself through Damon’s eyes, I’d never suffer a moment of weak self-esteem.

The man’s gaze heated with instant lust, no matter that I was practically a shape human beings shouldn’t be.

He would make love to me whether I was fat, thin, pregnant, breastfeeding (oh, good lord, how am I going to keep him off me when my boobs got ginormous?) or if all my hair fell out.

Damon McAvoy, as I discovered, was the kind of man that just wasn’t made anymore.

I hated the trite saying, “God broke the mold with that one” but it was true.

And now I was bloated with his spawn.

Spawn that he would teach how to be real men. My boys. Pride caused my eyes to water with sappy happiness before I could stop it.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked, catching me in my mental conversation. “Should I be scared?”

I laughed at the idea of little me scaring a man as big and fierce as Damon.

His arms circled around me — or at least he tried — and I pointed out ruefully, “You know, eventually, I’ll be so big that you’ll wonder if your wife is still in there.”

Yes, I said it.

Wife.

I married the big lug.

Okay, so ours wasn’t a fairy tale.

Unless you count blood, death, carnage and murder part of the average fairy tale but we got our happy ending so I guess it all worked out.

And, even though I still wasn’t in love with the idea of Damon running The Underground, I had to admit, he’d kept his word about turning it around.

First, he booted Manny Riggs out on his ass as part of the clean up.

Then, he took the (blood) money that Terrance had gifted him and invested it into the gym so that it no longer looked like all the equipment came from the back of a truck fifty years ago.

He had rules that made sense.

He encouraged the ones with potential and steered the ones who didn’t into going back to school.

That was my stipulation and he was happy to put it into play.

So, I guess you could say, we were the next generation of The Underground.

Oh, and my father did me a solid and choked on his own vomit after a bender, leaving me my grandparents house.

Even though the neighborhood still wasn’t fancy (or at times, entirely safe), Damon and I had worked to fix up the bungalow to its original glory.

Our love story was an urban fairytale.

Sure, there were still bars on the windows of our castle but my king was a beast who wasn’t afraid to show his teeth now and then to protect his queen.

And let me tell you a little secret…that was sexy as hell.

I’d never understood the power of true chemistry until I’d experienced what’d sparked between me and Damon.

Some might call our love story doomed to run its course with a flash and a bang because we fell in love so quickly.

Anything that kindled so fast, had no staying power.

To them, I would say, fuck off.

Somethings you couldn’t explain, you just felt.

Now I couldn’t imagine loving anyone how I loved that man of mine.

Life hadn’t turned out the way either of us had expected — in truth, it’d turned out far better than we could’ve dreamed.

And I couldn’t wait to see what else our future had in store.

* * *