Epilogue

Becoming a man

 

Four years later.

Nick’s transfer had gone through, and he’d taken his wife home to Georgia.

Meadow had spent the last few months going back and forth between Virginia and Georgia to go house hunting with his aunts, who were all more than happy to help. They’d started dropping hints two years ago after he and Meadow had married that it was time to move home. The cousins missed him, and his uncles could use his help at their training facility. He wasn’t ready to leave the FBI yet, but did agree it was time to go to Georgia and start a family of his own with Meadow.

After what seemed to be a hundred houses later, Meadow declared she’d found the perfect one, a four-bedroom with a huge yard for Sally and room for a swing set. What had Meadow so excited was it was in the same neighborhood as Nolan and Reagan’s house. Nick liked that. He’d missed his family the last nine years he’d been away. Not that his family hadn’t always been close by, his uncles were always at the ready to help when he needed. Thankfully, he’d only had to call on them once, when the weight of Meadow’s near-death attack had left him close to breaking. He’d never be more grateful to the men for stopping him from what would’ve been his biggest regret. Luckily for Meadow and Nick, they knew no such regrets.

Nick watched from inside the house, through the wall of windows that gave a perfect unobstructed view of the backyard as Meadow threw Sally a ball. They were inseparable, Sally and Meadow, his girls. He couldn’t wait to start welcoming children into their new home. They had an appointment with an adoption agency in a week. Nick was trying his hardest not to get his hopes up; it could take a long time for them to be accepted and then find a child to love. But he was more than ready.

There was a knock on the door, and Nick called out the back door to Meadow. “You ready?”

Before she could answer, voices filled the entryway and people started filing in.

“Yo! Now that you’re home, you better get used to Jasper just walking in. After all these years, no one has been able to train him to wait for the door to be answered,” Lenox said.

“Even after he’s walked in on things he shouldn’t see,” Levi grouched.

“Gross,” Adalyn Walker, Jasper and Emily’s youngest daughter, said.

“Dad, why don’t you just wait? It’s totally rude,” Delaney Walker, their eldest daughter, asked.

“Because he thinks it’s funny to annoy people. Uncle Lenox said if he did it again he was going to put his foot in his ass. So, dad just does it more.” Hadley Walker, Adalyn’s twin, added.

“Hadley!” Emily Walker scolded her daughter.

“What? It’s true. He said a bunch of other bad words I’m not saying. And Aunt Lily said she’d wash his mouth out with soap if he used the frick word in front of us again. Dad says it, like, all the time. You should wash his mouth out.”

Jasper roared with laughter and patted his daughter on the head as he walked by her adding, “Sweetheart, if your mother tried to wash my mouth out with soap I’d bend her over my knee and spank her.”

“Jasper!” Emily now chastised her husband, who was unfazed and winked at her.

“That is so gross. I know what that means!” Delaney whined. “Why can’t I have normal parents? This is why I can’t bring a boyfriend to the house.”

Nick watched as two very interesting things happened. Carter Lenox, Lily and Lenox’s eldest son, cut his eyes at Delaney, the possessive sound Carter made wouldn’t have been missed if anyone had been paying attention. The other was Jasper stopped dead in his tracks, turned toward his very beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, and he too made a sound that was of a possessive father. “You do not bring boyfriends to the house, because I will shoot them. And you can thank your mother for passing down her black hair, blue eyes, and sense of humor, three things that make teenage boys lose their minds. The first boy that knocks on my door will walk away with a limp.”

“You are impossible,” Delaney told Jasper.

Jasper was not wrong. His fifteen-year-old looked more like a twenty-year-old version of her very stunning mother. Jasper had three more after Delaney to worry about – all equally pretty.

Lily Lenox walked in with her son, Ethan, following behind her; she had a tray of veggies, and Ethan was carrying a case of beer though he was nowhere near old enough to drink it.

Nick’s younger brother, Jackson, and Quinn Walker came in holding a video game console, controllers, and cables. The two of them had been best friends since before they could walk. Then when they could, everyone wished they could lock them in a padded room together to contain the tornado they caused wherever they went. The two of them were trouble, and always up to something. Nick was afraid his brother was going to be in a world of hurt when Quinn grew up a little more, and other boys started to notice how beautiful she was. There would come a time when Quinn didn’t want to build things with Jack anymore, and she’d notice the attention the boys were sure to give her.

“Where’s your mom and dad?” Blake McCoy asked as she looked around the room for Reagan and Clark. Her husband Levi and their daughter Moira had already made their way to the kitchen to unload all the food they’d brought.

“I don’t know, they told me to walk down here and they’d be up in a minute,” Jack answered, helping himself to Nick’s TV.

Nick and Meadow stood off to the side and smiled. Controlled chaos, that was what Reagan had called it when the large group got together. It was perfect. Nick wouldn’t want it any other way. This was how Nick had grown up – surrounded with love and laughter.

“Where’s Jason and Kayla?” Meadow asked Emily about Nick’s cousin and his fiancée.

“They’ll be here soon. Jason forgot something at his house; they went to get it,” Emily explained.

It took a while, but Nick had ushered everyone into the backyard where he and Meadow had set up tables for the food and coolers for the drinks. It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining, Sally was in dog heaven having six kids under the age of fifteen to chase around.

Meadow looked around the backyard and smiled.

Perfect.

She loved their family. They were loud, they were hilarious, and they loved unconditionally. Nolan and Reagan tried to slip in unnoticed and sat at a table off to the side as if they weren’t thirty minutes late.

Nick, Lenox, Jasper, and Levi glanced over at the couple and busted out laughing. Meadow wasn’t sure what was so funny until she looked at Reagan. There was no doubt what the two of them had been doing with their time alone in their house.

Reagan’s flushed cheeks turned a deep shade of pink, and she smiled wide. “What? Can you blame me?”

Meadow couldn’t stop herself; she too joined the men laughing. “Not one damn bit.”

Nick tagged her around the waist and pulled her closer to him. “Really, Red?”

“What? There’s something about the Clark men that inspires…”

“Don’t finish that sentence.” Nick laughed, and Meadow winked at Reagan.

“Damn, I knew she’d fit right in.” Lenox smiled.

Meadow had fit right in. The moment they’d met her, she was accepted into the tribe and made one of them. She felt it four years ago, and she felt it now – there was no other place she’d rather be.

***

Ethan Lenox needed to talk to his parents. He’d been putting it off for the last week, and now the rock that had started in his stomach had turned into a boulder. He knew his parents loved him, but they were going to be so disappointed in him.

He’d fucked up, and he knew it.

He was sixteen-years-old, too young.

But he’d made up his mind.

“Mom. Dad. Can I talk to you a minute?”

Now was as good a time as any Ethan thought; better to just rip the scab off and bleed.

“What’s wrong?” his mother asked.

“Fuck,” his father muttered. Ethan was unable to hide his discomfort from his father. It wasn’t often Ethan screwed up. He was a straight-A student and excelled at sports. His parents had instilled great respect in him; his coaches and teachers loved him. So did the cheerleaders, and that was where his current problem started. “As long as no one’s knocked up, we can fix anything.”

“Lenox.” His mother slapped his father’s shoulder.

Ethan tried to keep his face blank and stop his flinch, but it was too late. His father saw it.

“Shit,” Lenox muttered.

The time had come for Ethan Lenox to become a man, years before he should’ve.